tips and tricks - page 13

Update: Mailbox developers emailed us today to let us know that the option to change default browsers is indeed in version 1.6.2, but only appears if you have Chrome installed. Hooray!

One of the biggest complaints about Apple’s iOS is the inability to decide which apps will open when you click links like website URLs and email addresses. Being able to change the default web browser, or the default mail application, would be a fantastic addition to an already great operating system, iOS 7.

Until then, though, we have to use mobile Safari, and Apple’s Mail app, at least when we click through to a link on Twitter or in an email.

The developers of the Mailbox app included a little feature that–when using the Mailbox app at least–will let you choose a different browser for any web URLs you click through to. Unfortunately, it only seems to hold true for an earlier version of Mailbox, 1.5.0, instead of the current version 1.6.2. We’ve emailed the Mailbox devs to find out where this setting went and why.

If you’re running 1.5.0, still, though, here’s how to enable it.

So, it happened that a friend of mine turned off Bluetooth on her Mac mini, and then turned it off for the evening. When she got up the next morning, her Bluetooth keyboard was on, as per usual, but she couldn’t log in on start up, as her Mac did not see her keyboard.

She was worried that she’d have to go borrow or buy a wired keyboard, plug it in, and enter her password, then turn Bluetooth on again to make her wireless keyboard work again.

Luckily, that’s not what had to happen. Here’s how we solved it.

Back in the iOS 7 beta, we noticed a feature that would focus your iPhone camera when you held down the volume button in landscape mode.

When I went to do the same thing yesterday while taking pictures of my Macbook Air’s trackpad (don’t ask), and instead of a nicely auto-focused picture, I got a bunch of pictures of my (not-moving) trackpad, inadvertently activating what Apple calls “burst mode.”

Here’s how to use it to get action shots on your own iPhone or iPad running iOS 7.

If there’s one thing PC users have the hardest time with when they use my Macbook Air, it’s the trackpad. What seems completely common and functional to me leaves them baffled and confused.

“How do I click the mouse?” they ask, tapping away in frustration, not knowing that all you need to do is press down a bit and, you know, actually click the thing.

If you’re one of those folks, or you just like to be able to tap the trackpad without actually pressing it down, here’s how to do so.

iOS 7 comes with a brand new set of Siri voices. Here in the US, there’s an updated female voice, as well as a new male voice included in the latest and greatest mobile operating system.

Did you know, though, that Siri is proud of her new voice? Well, just let him know that you like her new vocal apparatus, and you’ll see a few fun new easter eggs as answers.

When you’re writing up a long document, or even in the middle of a simple one, it’s good to be able to move around and edit in the text without taking your hands off the keyboard. All the little switches from keyboard to mouse and back again take up valuable time, and–perhaps more importantly–force you to change the way your brain is processing information.

Using the arrow keys is a good way to move the cursor around, and of course there are the standard Command key shortcuts, but did you know that there’s some legacy keyboard shortcuts that come to us all the way back in Emacs, a popular text editing program for Unix, the operating system Mac OS X is based?

There are, and here are a few good ones. I’ve tested them in Text Edit, but chances are several Mac text editing programs will take advantage of these.

The OS X Finder is an amazing thing, letting you create folder within folder, duplicate files, find your documents, and generally get stuff done. More and more, the Finder features are being integrated across all apps and documents on your Mac.

Case in point is the ability to find the directory path of a document from the document’s title bar, as well as being able to (since Mountain Lion, anyway) rename your documents in the title bar as well. All of this is thanks to the proxy icon, which Apple defines as: “An icon in the title bar of a document window that users can manipulate as if they were manipulating the corresponding file-system object.”

Here’s how to use them on your Mac.

On the Mac, you can always hit Command-Z to undo something. You can also hit Command-Shift-Z to redo something and put it back to what it was before you hit undo. Make sense?

This isn’t so easily done on iOS, as there isn’t a Command key, to being with, but there is, in fact, an option to undo and one to redo hidden in the iPad keyboard. Here’s how to get to each of them.

Notification Center has new tabs now, including Today, All, and Missed notifications. Even with this bit of filtering, things can get overwhelming fast, especially if you have a ton of apps that default to sending notifications to you for darn near everything.

If you want to lower the amount of information overload in your Notifications Center, it’s a fairly simple affair. Here’s how.

I’ve just picked up one of those fancy USB 3 drives to use with my Macbook Air as a sort of secondary backup when I travel, as it was so inexpensive for a 120 Gb drive. I wanted to know how much faster it might be, even on my non-USB 3 Air, than the run of the mill USB drive that you can pick up for a few bucks at the local electronics store, or get as a giveaway at a tech conference, for example. I also wanted to see how fast the new SSD drive that I installed in my Macbook Air was, just for kicks.

I wasn’t sure how to measure the relative speed of these drives, though, until I found out about Disk Speed Test from the fine folks over at OS X Daily. I was able to check the speed of my fast USB drive, my internal SSD drive, and an external USB-powered drive, and compare them all, which is pretty peachy.

Here’s how it works.

It used to be simple to delete text messages from your iPhone (or, I suppose, your iPad if you use iMessages), but with iOS 7, the cute little Edit button has gone away from the upper right corner. Instead, there’s a Contact button up there, which–while useful–used up the space where the Edit button used to be.

You can still delete entire message conversations by swiping to the left in the list of all your text messages, but how do you delete specific messages within a conversation? Swiping to the left just shows you the timestamps of the messages.

Never fear, we’ve got the answer.

With all the excitement over the recent release of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 7, it’s easy to forget that the Cupertino-based company has another OS in the works, OS X Mavericks Beta. Currently at version 8 of the Developer Preview, or beta, OS X Mavericks continues to quietly update in the background, with more refinements over time.

One of these improvements is the ability to delete tags from the sidebar. As you may recall, we showed you how to add and modify tags to the list in the Finder sidebar, as well as how to drag and drop files to tag them.

It turns out, though, that now you can actually delete tags as well, completing the tag circle of life. Here’s how.

With iOS 7, you are no longer a slave to the constant need to update your apps. John McCain should be totally happy.

With this new automatic update feature, though, it might be nice to see what’s been updated lately. To do that, it’s just a quick trip into the guts of iOS 7. Here’s how.

Maybe it’s just me, but I always picture someone yelling at me when I get messages and emails in all capital letters. It might just be a mistake on their end, I suppose, since it’s fairly easy to accidentally hit the Caps Lock when you’re aiming for the Shift key on today’s smaller laptop keyboards.

No worries, though, since it’s pretty easy to actually turn the Caps Lock key off on your Mac. Here’s how.

Oh, hey! You got the new iOS 7 for your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad–congrats! Wondering what to do with it? Looking for the best tips and tricks to get the most out of Apple’s pastel-and-parallax-flavored operating system for that amazing mobile device?

Well look no further than Cult of Mac for your iOS 7 needs. We’ve been working through the iOS 7 features and options since the first beta came out, and we’re here to give you the best of them.

While we’ve noted that you can use panoramic photos as wallpaper on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch in in iOS 7, we haven’t spent a lot of time talking about the other major visual wallpaper and lock screen facelift: parallax.

In iOS 7, the background behind your Home screen apps is just a little bit 3D-ish, moving slightly as you twist and turn your iOS device around. Personally, I figured it was some fancy special effect that only Apple could create, but I was wrong.

Here’s how to make your own parallax wallpapers.

Yesterday, we showed you how to record your iPhone or iPad’s screen using Reflector, an app that runs on your Mac and records the iOS device’s screen via a little AirPlay magic.

Today, let’s talk about recording your Mac’s screen. I was surprised to find out that QuickTime Player (which is already on your Mac) will do this for free. Here’s how to make the magic happen.

I wasn’t sure if this would be a good iOS Tip or OS X Tip, but I figure that since most of the heavy lifting occurs on your Mac, we’d post this as an OS X Tip.

Ever want to record your iPhone screen? Maybe take a video of something you’re doing on your iPad? Well, you can record any portion of your screen with Quicktime Player, which we’ll cover later this week, but the easy way to get a video of what’s going on on your iPad or iPhone is to use an OS X App: Reflector.

What the app does is trick your iOS device into thinking that your Mac is an AirPlay device, like an Apple TV. Once your iPhone or iPad is sending it’s video display to your Mac, Reflector has a built-in recording option.

Here’s how to make it all happen.

Ever been to a professional conference? You probably take those little cardboard bits of paper with pictures and contact info along with you, right? Business cards are kind of a given at conferences, but you can also cut to the chase and send your contact info to anyone you’re chatting with.

Using your iPhone Contacts app, you can send your contact info, or any contact you have on your phone, with a couple of simple taps. Here’s how.

I watched the Apple iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c special event yesterday. I went in skeptical, not planning on wanting any of the new iPhones. I never upgraded to an iPhone 4S, so why would I want a 5s?

Turns out, I kind of do. I want a better camera. I want Touch ID and a fingerprint sensor. I want a five times faster CPU, a motion co-processor, and up to 40X faster graphics. Yes. Yes I do.

So I did what any self-respecting first-worlder does, I checked for upgrade availability. You see, here in the US, at least, we’re all kind of stuck on a two-year contract system. To get the subsidized prices, we purchase our phones on a two-year cycle.

If you’re not sure whether you are able to upgrade to a new iPhone 5s (or iPhone 5c) when it’s available, here’s where to look.

One of the worst things, in my opinion, is how modern autocorrect fixes words that I’ve misspelled into correctly spelled but inappropriate words. What’s worse is the way Mac OS X arrogantly assumes that I must mean the word that makes no sense in context, because it is closest to the typo I just made.

For me, it’s far better to just see the red line of doom; that way< i can right click and choose the right word, or just type it again. I mean, it's typing; it shouldn't be that big a deal to do it twice. If you're like me and want to turn this "feature" off, here's how.

While I still use Apple’s own Maps app from time to time, mostly because it’s built in to iOS, I tend to prefer Google Maps more. It just feels more complete, though that’s just my own opinion; I haven’t done any scientific analysis or comparison.

That said, the Google Maps app is pretty darn great, and there’s a couple of hidden features you can access with just a swipe (and maybe a tap or two). Here they are.

Poor Dashboard widgets. They seem so sad, sitting there, their vast potential wasted by a lack of any good ones.

Luckily, our friends over at OS X Daily have pointed out a pretty slick way to roll your own using Safari. Who knew?

Here’s how to make your own darn widgets in OS X with nothing more than a copy of Safari and any web page you want to keep track of.

Having access to a dictionary is one way to really improve your vocabulary. When my teacher in eighth grade English class told me that, I ignored it, because who has time to stop reading, grab the dictionary from the shelf (or under my seat, in middle school), and look up that word. By the time I was done with that, I’d have lost any meaning in the reading I was doing, anyway. Ugh.

Flash forward to now, and almost every device has a dictionary attached to it. The same is true for Mac OS X, at least the Mountain Lion variety, and it’s super easy to bring up.

Think your messages are private? Think again!

A Cult of Mac reader, asking to remain anonymous, sent in a tip about how he caught his girlfriend reading Messages on his iPhone.

Privacy is important to this fellow, but he suspected that his love was sneaking peeks at his text and iMessages.

So he took a couple of steps to catch her in the act.