So, there you are, sitting on the airplane, with your iPad on Airplane Mode. But you’re also on one of those newfangled jets that actually offers internet via Wi-Fi. What’s a jet-setting iOS user to do? Why, turn on Wi-Fi while still remaining in FAA-compliant Airplane Mode, of course.
Here’s how.
With the new-ish integrated search function in OS X, I spend a lot of time clicking over from “This Mac” to “Documents” or “Dropbox,” since I typically start out in the folder I’m searching for anyway. I usually want to just search the folder I’m in, rather than the entire Mac, since that can be a lot of files to search through, especially if the search term I’m using is fairly generic (“I think it was something about kittens…”).
Yesterday, we dove into the Finder preferences to help you tell your Mac what folder to open new Finder windows with. Today, then, we’re gonna rush headlong back to those very same preferences to tell your Mac what to do when you’re searching for a file.
If you’ve read these tips for any length of time, you’ll know that there are plenty of settings on your iPhone that were designed first and foremost for people with various disabilities, but that can be extremely useful for those of us who don’t have a specific disability, as well.
Flash-powered alerts are one of these features; for those with hearing impairments, using the iPhone’s flash to let them know when a notification alert has happened is critical, as they may not be able to hear an audible alert, nor the telltale buzz sound the iPhone makes when set on a flat surface.
If you want to use this same notification feature yourself, perhaps when having an audible alert, vibration or otherwise, isn’t viable, here’s what to do.
Ever since OS X 10.7 Lion, the Finder has a new sidebar section, called All My Files. It’s a list of, predictably, all the files on your Mac and it can be customized to show them in any style you like, sorting by Name, Date Created, Kind, Date Modified, and more. The trouble is, though, that all new Finder windows open to this All My Files section by default. Some folks might not like this, though, and wish for the long-ago days of, say, Snow Leopard, when Finder windows opened to the Desktop or some such.
Luckily, to make this happen takes just a quick trip into the Finder preferences to sort out. Thanks, Apple!
Yesterday, I tipped you off about #NoCrop for Instagram, an app that lets you submit full-sized photos to the social photo service with very little effort.
Today, I want to look at Recygram, another free app that works with Instagram, letting you send photos from your voluminous Instagram archive to Flicker and Tumblr, as well as download them or compress them for sharing. Sounds like a great way to archive all those Instagram pics, right?
Here’s what to do.
Used to be that when you shared photos from iPhoto via email, iPhoto would open up Mail app, drop the photos in as attachments, and let you send from there. Nowadays, iPhoto uses an internal email routine that mimics the iOS way of adding photos to email, but many folks just plain don’t like it. If you fall into this camp, and want to disable this iPhoto “functionality,” this tip is for you.
Want to preserve your entire photo, without having to crop it, and save it to Instagram for all your many followers to enjoy and Favorite? Well, you could pull it to your Mac, create a square canvas, add sidebars with an image editing app, and then put it back on your iPhone, ready to send to Instagram, but who wants to do all that?
#NoCrop–the app, not the hashtag–has you covered.
Cult of Mac reader, Richard, emailed us today with the following issue:
I was trying to move my photos from my Mac to an external drive and during the transfer it kept asking me if I wanted to cancel or replace the image because that image was already there. I didn’t want to stop the process so I kept saying cancel. Afterwards, I realized that I was probably replacing images with the same number (e.g., img. 18) but that the images were probably different because, for example, I had simply reused sd cards from my camera and created a whole new set of images. Does this make sense? If I did indeed do that, are those images gone forever?
Yikes! We’ve all done this at some point in our Mac lives, some of us (looking right at myself) more than once. How can we get these replaced files back? There are three options that I know of.
If you use a lot of different browsers, you’ll know that they all want to be your default browser. You’ll also know that, for some weird reason, Apple has you drop into Safari to set any web browser as the default in the first place. If you want links that you click in any other app to open up in a specific browser, you need to set it as the default browser. Which makes doing a lot of work in different browsers on the same Mac a rather tedious exercise.
Objectiv, a free Mac menu bar utility, aims to manage that much more elegantly. Here’s how.
You ever do that thing where you have to move your mouse around, jiggling the little thing just to find the dang cursor? I do it all the time these days, with my smaller screen Macbook Air and the Mac Mini that’s connected to the HDTV across the room from me, since there’s so much going on onscreen that I often lose track of it.
There’s an easy way to fix this problem, and it involves the Accessibility options that come built right in to your Mac OS X system.
I’ve been driving a lot lately, and have been wanting to listen to ebooks on my iPHone as I do so. It’s fairly simple to turn on VoiceOver and have what sounds like Siri read my books to me, but honestly? She’s a terrible narrator. The VoiceOver voice is heavily robotic, and it’s difficult to understand what’s being read to me most of the time, so I end up giving up or contemplating purchasing an audiobook from iTunes.
But I’d really like to just continue the ebooks I already have on my iPhone while I’m driving. That way I can listen to them while in the car, but actually read them when I’m not. NaturalReader just might be part of the solution I’ve been looking for, so I figured I’d share it here with you.
As email continues to be fairly ubiquitous, especially in business settings, there’s a ton of information floating around in your Mail app that may or may not be useful to you to save and archive. Mail hides a lot of the complexity of email, and as such, it can be less than intuitive to grab all the info you might need from a given email, like headers, message text, the subject, sender, and recipients’ information, and so on.
If you want to save the info from your emails, Mail Clips just might be the answer for you, especially if you use Apple’s built-in Mail app in OS X, as it integrates right there.
Ebooks are all the rage these days, and your iPad is a perfect device for reading them. Textbooks, too, are becoming de riguer for many students in college and even high school, as educators, schools, and publishers find a greater demand for electronic instructional materials.
But studying from a book requires interacting with the text at a greater level than just reading it, of course, as students need to keep track of specific passages, or comment on them as they relate to their learning or lecture notes. Most eReading apps, like Nook and Kindle, have these features as well, but iBooks definitely has the most well designed, so let’s take a look at how to use it to study with your electronic books.
Notes on Mac OS X is like Notes on iOS: a basic, skeuomorphic note taking app that lets you type notes, format text, and add images from either operating system, and have them sync up if you’re using iCloud. There’s nothing super tricky about the app on OS X, but the default font size might be a bit too small for you.
If you want to change the size of the text that appears when you just start typing in Notes, here’s what to do.
I love Do Not Disturb on my iPhone. I’ve got it scheduled to activate at 8 pm each night, and de-activate at 7 am every morning. That way, all except the most important things get to bother me when I’m with my family, in bed, and sleeping.
Mac OS X has a Do Not Disturb feature, as well, but it has to be manually activated at the top of the Notification Center by toggling the Show Alerts and Banners button to OFF. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could schedule it to turn off and on at specific times? The Automator script for Calendar below will do just that.
So, you’re surfing along on your iPhone or iPad and you want to email your buddy a fantastic new site that you’ve found. You hit the Share button, and then curse because it sends it to the default iOS Mail app. But you use the Gmail app! How will you fix this horrible, first-world problem? With a bookmark, of course.
Here’s how.
One of the coolest things about the current version of iOS, and one I show every new iOS user, is the way you can double click the Home button to bring up the multitasking bar. This shows a horizontal list of all the recently closed apps on your iPhone, making switching between their saved states super easy.
If you want something similar on your Mac, then you have to try AppsBar, a $1.99 app in the Mac App Store that does the same thing, only at the top of your screen.
So, you can scour the internet to get tips on what kinds of things you can ask Siri to do, right? Heck, we have several specific Siri tips right here on Cult of Mac.
But what if you just want to have a nice list of the commands that Siri will know and answer you with? Well, ask her!
Quicklook is Mac OS X’s way of letting you see any file up close with just a tap of the spacebar. When you’re in the finder, for example, and you click on a photo, you can hit the spacebar and see the photo large and up close, making it easier to figure out which images to toss, and which to save. You can do the same with any supported text file, like an rtf, doc, or pdf file to see what’s in it at a glance.
But what if you want to copy a quick bit of text to paste somewhere, like an email? Instead of opening the file, waiting for the associated app to load, and then copying the bit of text, give this trick a shot.
In iOS 6.1, Apple switched from using the unique identifier in the actual hardware of its iOS devices (UDID) to the more software-centric Advertising Identifier. This way, advertisers can track user behavior for the purpose of serving them relevant ads anonymously, and those very same users can reset and even turn off that tracking feature. It gives us users just a bit more control over who sees and can use our data, even the anonymous kind that advertisers track.
If you want to control your own advertising destiny on your iOS device, here’s how.
The default black type on white screen window that comes as default in OS X Terminal is functional, but it’s really not that fun to use. Adding in color and some contrast is a good way to keep your aesthetic sense engaged, as well as make Terminal a bit more useful. In fact, there are many other themes built right in that do just that, and several you can download and install from the web.
Here’s how to change to one of the built-in Terminal themes, and a bit more on how to install third-party ones to boot.
Becoming a better lover isn’t all about your technique in the sack, folks, though that does have its advantages. No, the way to capture and keep yourself another human being who will let you into their lives and possibly their beds is to work on yourself. Grooming, clothing, cooking, thinking of others, and working on the issues in your own personality will all help you land and maintain a solid, happy relationship.
Let’s take a look at all the things that you can learn and practice to do just that, via iPhone apps.
Let’s face it, even if you focus on your relationship, dress better, learn how to cook, and practice better grooming habits, the only person you’ll always be in a relationship with is you. In fact, you will be a better person to be around if you take the time to work on your self, first and foremost.
That doesn’t mean you need to eschew all relationships until you reach some sort of inner nirvana state, but it does meant that spending a little time, every day to become more confident, happy, and to engage in positive behaviors will help you become a better person, which is ultimately what makes you a better partner and lover.
That said, here are a few iPhone apps that can help you with you.
There are many times you might want to knock out the background of a particular image on your Mac. Typically, I pop into Photoshop or Fireworks to use the Magic Wand tool to select all the white space of that image, and delete from there. These programs cost hundreds of dollars, though. Isn’t there a free way to do this?
It turns out that Preview, the free image & PDF viewing (and now editing) app that comes with OS X will do the very same thing, without you having to spend an extra dime on image editing software. Here’s how to do it.
Guys, gals, ladies, gentlemen! In order to keep that special someone in your life, you’ve got to work on your relationship. I know! It’s Scary! However, there are many iPhone apps out there to point you in the right direction. So, while cooking the perfect meal, dressing well, and bathing regularly are important, if you’re a selfish jerk on the inside, it won’t matter.
With that in mind, check out the following three apps that will help you connect and communicate to become a better person and partner in your own right. Still, bathe regularly, ok?