tips and tricks - page 15

One of the cool new features of OS X Mavericks is the ability to tag files in the Finder, making Finder labels a bit more useful. Want to sort a bunch of files for your upcoming vacation into one place? Make a tag for “vacation,” and then add the tag per file with a right-click as we showed you a while back.

Want to track some of those vacation files with the destinations they pertain to? Go ahead and tag them with a second tag. Can’t do that with a label.

While it’s easy to right-click on a file and choose a tag, it’s even easier to add tags with a simple Mac OS standard move. Here’s how.

I know a guy who opens the same 25 or so tabs each day, checking email, news, websites he likes to read, etc. I often ask him why he doesn’t just use RSS or something, but he usually mumbles about liking the layouts of individual web pages.

Whatever. My friend likes to open a ton of tabs every day, and he does so with a bookmarked folder full of those tabs. Now, he created this bookmark folder manually, but there’s an easier way, using either Safari or Chrome

Here’s how.

There’s a special delight to be had in watching upcoming movie trailers. Apple even has its own website and app dedicated to them. Watching a trailer is also a great way to find out if you want to even bother going to see a movie.

So, if you’re hanging out, looking for something to do on your iPhone or iPad, or you want to decide what movie to watch this evening, maybe you just want to ask Siri for help.

It’s pretty easy to ask her to show you a movie trailer. Here’s how.

When you update to OS X Mavericks beta 5, you might notice something rather exciting in your Applications folder: iBooks for Mac!

Double click on the iBooks icon to launch iBooks for Mac, and then click Agree on the iBooks Author Software agreement. You’ll see the iBooks splash screen as above. Click Get Started.

You’ll be asked to sign in with your Apple ID. Click on the blue Sign In button and enter your Apple ID and password. If you’re not ready to connect your Apple ID, click Not Now. When you do connect up, you’ll be able to get your purchase history from iCloud and sync your bookmarks, highlights, and notes you may have created on your iPad or iPhone over to your Mac.

My iPhone 5 camera has gotten some grime inside it, and my pictures are all yucky because of it. I’ve procrastinated taking it to the Apple Store to get cleaned out because, hey, I’m busy lazy.

Luckily, there’s a guy on YouTube whose buddy had the same problem, and he put up a video showing how to clean out the iPhone 5 with a tiny screwdriver, suction cup, can of air, and a plastic non-marring tool.

A quick disclaimer: if you choose to try this fairly simple iPhone 5 surgery, you’re responsible for any damage that might occur. Please don’t email us asking for a replacement iPhone.

Backing up your Mac via Time Machine is highly recommended, and super easy to do, as well. It’s really the only backup system I’ve ever found myself using on a regular basis, because it’s so simple to use and easy to set up. All you need to do is connect any USB drive to your Mac, head to the Time Machine preferences, and select that USB drive as your Time Machine backup. Mac OS X does the rest.

I was thinking, though, that since I back up my Macbook Air onto a 128 GB flash drive, it’s even more possible than ever that someone might get a hold of the drive and then be able to have all my backed up stuff on it. That’s not a huge deal for me, as I don’t keep much on the Macbook Air in terms of private stuff, but if I did, I’d want to keep those files extra secure.

Encryption could be the answer, and Mac OS X Mountain Lion makes it easy.

If you have the time and inclination, and a certain sense of daring, you can share your cellular data as a Wi-Fi signal for free, without connecting through your data carrier. I’m not a huge fan of jailbreaking, per se; even the non-jailbreaking solution seems a bit technical, and some folks might see it as borderline unethical.

If you fall into either camp, and want to set up your qualifying iOS device via your cellular data carrier, here’s how.

It looks like this has been possible since, oh, Mac OS X 10.5 or so, but I hadn’t come across it before. I’m guessing that might mean some of you haven’t, either.

If you’re one of those amazing folks who have seen this already, then feel free to check out all our other OS X tips; it’s possible there’s something in the list you didn’t know about already.

For the rest of you, if you want to disable the translucent menu bar on your Mac, it’s relatively simple. Check it out.

Have you ever lost your user account password for your Mac? You know, the one which lets you get into your Mac at login, or install software, or delete stuff from the Applications folder? You haven’t? Well, you’re a better person than I am, because I’ve forgotten mine (usually on older Macs I haven’t used in a billion years, but still) and had to pop in a Mac OS X CD and go through the recovery process.

While that’s not too big of a pain in the butt, it does take some time. Time which could be better spent drinking beer, or solving a Rubik’s Cube, am I right?

If you’re running Mac OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks, you can assign your Apple ID to your user account, which can help when you need to reset your password. You know, if you forget it or something. Ahem.

When the Podcasts app showed up a bit after the release of iOS 6, we were all excited that Apple was taking its unintended creation of a new media form seriously. While the app is fairly simple to use, there are subtleties that we might miss.

Let’s take a look at some readers’ questions about this Apple-created app and go a bit deeper into using it on our favorite iOS devices.

It’s fine to listen to one podcast at a time, one episode at a time. Of course it is. You’re more than welcome to just download and tap your way through your podcasts on a one by one basis. I’m not judging.

Sometimes, though, it’s great to queue up a whole bunch of sweet podcasting content, especially when the content is a bit shorter, or you’re on a super long drive and don’t want to have to fiddle with your iPhone or iPad when on the go. That’s where playlists come in.

Here’s how to easily set one up in Apple’s Podcast App, which calls playlists “stations.”

On my Macbook Air running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, when I click on the Time Machine backup menubar item, I see the option to browse other backup disks. That’s a pretty cool option, if I need to switch between different disks to backup my Mac; maybe to make a secondary backup for redundancy.

In Mavericks, the Time Machine menu bar icon doesn’t have this option any more, instead only showing Stop This Backup when backing up (or Back Up Now when it isn’t), Enter Time Machine, and Open Time Machine Preferences. If you’re wondering where the option to browse other backup disks has gone, you’re not alone.

One of my favorite new features of the Podcasts app in iOS, on iPhone or iPad, is the ability to stream episodes directly, rather than have to download them. It’s made me much more independent and willing to try out new podcasts; I simply don’t have to subscribe to ones that don’t catch my fancy, then delete and move all the downloaded files.

To the uninitiated, though, the difference between streaming and downloading is a tricky one. Here’s how it all works, and how to either download or stream podcast episodes as you decide which is best for you.

Reader Bruce C asks,

I just read your article Mastering Evernote on Your Mac. I began using Evernote about a month ago and am now using it exclusively for notes and writing (journal, poetry, etc.). I like the Notebook view but the program opens in the Notes view. Is there a way to set it so the program always opens in Notebook view?

Well, Bruce, there is sort of a way to make sure it opens in whatever view you like, though it’s not quite a set-it-and-forget-it kind of solution. Here’s what to do.

Cult of Mac reader, Josh K, asks:

If I download a podcast episode when I am out and about, then get home and sync my iPhone, I find when it is finished syncing, whatever episodes were downloaded have been removed. And I have to either download them again or manually sync them.

How can I make this process easier or stop the phone taking the recently downloaded episodes off every time I sync?

Unfortunately, there’s no simple fix for this one, so you’re going to have to choose, Josh: either sync via iTunes or manage podcasts on your iPhone. I’m not able to find a solution which lets you do both. Here’s what I recommend.

Sometimes, when you’re tapping away at a calculator, it helps to hear what you’re typing in. It’s like a second stream of information for your brain, and it helps keep things more accurate. There are a variety of talking calculators on the market, and a bunch of iOS apps that do the same thing.

Did you know, however, that you can make the calculator bundled in with OS X talk to you, too? Me neither.

Here’s how.

Yesterday, I told you how to delete podcast episodes from your iOS device, which lets you manage how much stuff you’re carrying around on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

Today, I got an email from Justin P, who said,

Thanks for the tips on deleting individual episodes of a podcast. However how do you remove the entire podcast icon from ‘my podcasts’ ? Tried unsubscribe but that doesn’t work. If you could let me know that would be great.

It’s a good point, Justin, so I did a little poking around in the Podcast app and figured it out.

Over at Stack Exchange, one intrepid user asks,

I would like to know if there is any way to block Facebook and other sites from being added to Safari’s Top Sites. Someone knows how to do that?

One answer is to completely keep new tabs or windows from showing Top Sites, but that’s not really the best answer. There is an answer, pulled directly from Apple’s own support page for Safari 6, however, that fits the bill.

Deleting individual episodes from the Podcasts app on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch is fairly easy if you’re a longtime iOS user. If not, then it might not be as intuitive.

Here’s how to get to, and then delete, individual podcast episodes from your iOS device of choice.

I routinely hide the Dock on my Macbook Air, since it takes up a significant portion of my screen. While I use Alfred most of the time to launch apps and such, I still like to use the Dock; call it a hold over from the last ten years or so.

Sometimes, though, when I move the mouse cursor over to the side of the screen I keep the Dock on (the left, if you’re curious), it pops up even when I don’t want it to.

Then I found this Terminal command which lets me set the time delay between when my cursor hits the edge of my screen and when the Dock actually appears. Now I have the delay period set to a larger number, making it much slower to respond and unhide.

Not only has Apple updated Siri’s default (in the US, at least) female voice to something a bit more natural, a little less arrogant sounding, but it’s also included a new male voice, as well. While a male-gendered voice has been available for a while in other regions, this is the first time Siri’s voice gender has been a choice we can enable on iOS.

Here’s how to switch Siri from a female to a male voice (and back again).

Picture this scenario: you’ve got a flash drive and there are files on it. There are also files on it that are in its Trash folder. You also have a Mac with files on it, and files in the Trash. When the USB flash drive is plugged into your Mac, OSX treats those files in the different Trashes as one big Trash folder.

What if you want to delete the files from one Trash, but not the other?

That’s where Trash Without comes in.

Screenshots are the life blood of this tips column, and I’m willing to bet a lot of you use the feature, built right in to your Mac, to capture images of stuff on your screen to share with friends, family, co-workers, and so on. It’s super simple to use; just hit Command-Shift-3 to take a picture of the whole screen, or Command-Shift-4 to just select a portion of it.

Any challenger to this ease of use is going to have to have something a little extra. Share Bucket may just be that app. Not only can it take screenshots of portions of your screen, but it can annotate those screenshots with circles, arrows, and blurs (for confidential info). Better yet, it connects to not one, but three different cloud services: Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft’s SkyDrive.

If you backup your iOS devices to your Mac, you will overwrite the latest backup each time you do so, creating a new, fully up-to-date copy of your iOS device, including settings, apps, and data.

But what if you want to save a certain backup as a snapshot, like before you upgrade to a new operating system, or add a troublesome app to your iPhone or iPad?

The trick here is Archiving your backup, which tells iTunes to stop using the backup as the latest one, and instead backup to a new file. It’s easy to do, and here’s how.

I use Apple’s built-in Screen Sharing app all the time to connect from my Macbook Air to my Mac Mini. It’s a great way to just quickly log in from the Air and restart a Minecraft server, for example, or get a screenshot of the latest OS X Mavericks beta feature.

I also use Command-Tab a lot on my Macbook Air to switch between running apps. However, I was never able to Command-Tab my way out of Screen Share, as the keyboard combination gets sent to the remote Mac Mini, keeping me fully in Screen Share Mode.

Until now.