OS X Mac Tips & Tricks

Moon Phase Widget

2009-10-24T18:35:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to find out which moon cycle we are in? There's not very many resources online for finding out about the Lunar Calendar, but now there's a nice and simple Dashboard Widget called Moon Phase which shows the current moon cycle and how many days and hours until the next cycle.It is available for download here. It requires Mac OS 10.4 or later.

Weather Radar Widget

2009-10-24T18:11:00.000-07:00

You can use this little Dashboard Widget called Radar In Motion which actively pulls the latest Radar information from Weather.com or the NOAA, and displays the Radar images in various ways every time you look in your Dashboard. The Widget inclues a fair amount of options for displaying the latest Radar information.You have the option of viewing the latest images by city or zip code, along with

Free SMS Dashboard Widget

2009-10-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

You can send free text messages to any provider in the US or Canada by using this very simple little Dashboard Widget from txtDrop.com. No more looking up your carrier's website to send text messages if you don't have your cell phone handy. Just quickly bring up this little Widget and send your SMS instantly.There's a Universal Binary available for download at their website. It requires Mac OS

Monitor Your Mac Widget

2009-10-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

You can monitor many different statistics on your system using the iStat Pro Dashboard Widget. This handy all-in-one Widget seems to cover just about every statistic you would want to know on your Mac or Macs currently running and using different resources.It features detailed information on CPU, Hard Drives, CPU and Hard Drive Temperature, Bandwidth, IP Addresses, Detailed Memory Usage (

Show Random Desktop Picture After Restart

2009-08-20T19:37:00.000-07:00

Those of you might already be aware that you can choose a folder of pictures to display in random order in the Desktop & Screen Saver section of System Preferences. But, sometimes when you reboot the mac, it reverts back to the default Desktop Image for the machine.There's a handy way to get around this. You can go to the Desktop & Screen Saver section in System Preferences and choose Random

Album Art For Dashboard Widget

2009-08-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

Quickly displays the artwork of any currently playing song in iTunes. It also has the ability to fetch artwork from Amazon if no artwork is provided by iTunes.It also includes a star rating for different songs. You can pause/play/skip songs in the same window or go directly to the iTunes Music Store.Album Art Widget Version 2.9.2 can be downloaded here.

Instant Spell Check in any Application

2009-07-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

You can instantly check the spelling or grammar of anything you write in Safari, Mail, TextEdit, or any Application which has a space to write text. You can simply type the text out as you like, and then highlight the word or set of words and right-click, or type Control + left-click to bring up a window with a selection that says "Spelling and Grammar", then clicking the sub-selection "Show

Save or Backup iPhone Notes

2009-07-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

Want to have an easy way of backing up your notes from your iPhone 2.0 or 2.2.1 or any firmware prior to 3.0? Unfortunately, iTunes does not allow you to backup any of your notes you have saved to your iPhone unless you upgrade to the new 3.0 firmware. If you do not want to upgrade your firmware, but still want to have your notes saved, rather than transcribing potentially many many sticky notes,

Add and Remove Safari Buttons

2009-07-25T14:29:00.001-07:00

You can remove the plus sign button for adding bookmarks, or remove the forward and backward buttons for page navigation. The layout in Safari is very flexible this way, you can even add buttons you perhaps were not aware of before, like a Downloads button or an Autofill button.All you have to do is go to the View menu, and select "Customize Toolbar...". From there you can select and then drag

Disable Safari PDF Viewing

2009-06-18T17:44:00.000-07:00

You can use a simple Terminal edit to disable Safari from natively browsing PDF files, so that you can use Acrobat or any other PDF viewer that you might have available.Quit SafariRun Terminal, and type the following: defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool YESRestart SafariIf you want to revert this process, you can quit Safari, run Terminal and type the same command with the

Recall Windows When Restarting Safari

2009-05-31T18:07:00.000-07:00

Want Safari to remember which web pages you had open so they will all appear when you restart the browser? If you do not have Private Browsing enabled, and you do not empty your Cache and History, you can easily recall all of your previously opened windows.When browsing with several web page windows open, and/or tabs open, choose to quit Safari by right-clicking on the icon in the Dock or typing

How To Always "Open With" One App

2009-05-20T17:28:00.000-07:00

There are several kinds of file formats which you might prefer to always open in a specific Application. There's a way to natively set a file or set of files or all files to "Open With" one application. This seems to work uniformly on all formats, except when certain Applications override OS X associations.To set one file to always open with one specific Application:Select the desired file in

How to Convert DOC to PDF

2009-05-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

You might be wondering if you can easily turn your Microsoft Document files into PDFs on the Mac. But, it turns out that there's an easy way of converting your microsoft .doc files to the PDF format natively in OS X.1: Open your Microsoft Document file with TextEdit.2: Type Command + P, or go to File and select Print.3: Look to the lower left of the Print pane and you will see a "PDF" button.

Hotmail Account and Gmail in Mail

2009-05-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

As you probably already know, Hotmail accounts, for some unknown reasons, are not compatible with OS X Mail. I posted previously about a decent Hotmail plug-in for the Mac. But, I have been exploring another good alternative to accessing your Hotmail account with OS X Mail. One way is to create a Gmail account (which has seamless integration with Mail), and use the Gmail Mail Fetcher. Once you

Keep Application Position in Spaces

2009-05-13T18:23:00.000-07:00

There's a way to retain your window's position when moving between different Spaces. This can be useful if you want the same window ratio without having to readjust or move in the next Space.Press the shortcut key for the Spaces Overview. Hold the Command key while pressing and holding a window when you drag-and-drop to another Space.Simple! Easy!

Disable Volume Change Sound

2009-05-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when listening to music or audio from a movie you might not want to hear the volume feedback sound when you go to adjust the volume on the audio. This can be especially annoying when you are trying to be a DJ, for friends or whomever they may be, and playing songs without disrupting the audio when adjusting the levels for each track. You can turn off the volume sound with a few

How To Change Icon Size

2009-05-01T19:33:00.000-07:00

A quick easy way of adjusting your icon size is to select the icon for the file on your Desktop or somewhere in Finder, and type the key shortcut Command + J, in order to use the Show View Options command on the View menu in Finder. In this window pane you can adjust the pixel length-width ratio, space between file icons, Font Size, Label Position, and others.

Warp Quartz Composition

2009-04-29T14:38:00.000-07:00

Warp 1.1 is a nice Quartz Composition of whirling stars from OurApples.com. It is another nice addition to your Quartz Screen Savers or Desktop.Note: If you want to use any Quartz file as a Screen Saver, you can simply place the file in the Library/Screen Savers/ folder.

Quartz Files As Desktop

2009-04-26T16:20:00.000-07:00

Do you have .QTZ files you want to use as your Desktop? There's a nifty little app that allows you to use any Quartz Composition files as your background in OS X. It is called Quartz Desktop. You can use any resident Quartz files, or download many others from other sources on the web. For example, "Quartz Compositions" is a good web-based source.This version of Quartz Desktop is compiled as a

Resize Multiple Pictures At Once

2009-04-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

You can easily resize a batch of your image files in Preview. This is particularly useful when resizing the large files from the memory a digital camera. Here is the brief process:1. Go to the folder containing all of your pics you want to resize.2. Highlight all of the photos, and double-click to open in Preview, or right-click and choose Open With Preview.3. Go to Edit and choose "Select All".4

Greater Volume Control

2009-04-22T18:18:00.001-07:00

You know by now that you can use the F10, F11, F12 keys for volume controls. You know that the volume adjusts in squares. Sometimes when decreasing or increasing volume by keys, you will see that it either increases by too much volume, or not enough, in which case you end up adjusting the volume by another square, and that increases it way too much. So it can be quite difficult getting just the

Schedule Startup and Shut Down

2009-04-22T17:24:00.000-07:00

There are some benefits to to scheduling OS X to startup at a certain time: You can sleep-in while your computer is booting up and loading all your necessary apps to be ready for you when you finally get out of bed and look at your computer screen. You can also set it up to shut down at night to save electricity and also allow your machine to cool down, as well as give you a fresh and fast

Launch Application Shortcut in OS X

2009-04-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

For a long time I have been trying to find a way to create a key shortcut natively in OS X to launch an application. It appears that there is a way to assign shortcuts to switch between already running applications, but nothing which allows you to assign a shortcut for a cold start of an app.I think this is something which is very basic and Apple very much needs to hear your voice. You can leave

Sync Address Book with Windows Mobile

2009-04-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

I have been looking for ways to sync Safari Favorites, iCal, Address Book, etc. to a Windows Mobile PDA Wireless phone. I found a nice little app which does all of these things for free, but which also has a paid premium edition with optional syncing capabilities.A free version of SyncMate allows you to sync your Contacts, iCal, Favorites, Address Book, Bookmarks, and Stickies on your Mac to

Show iTunes Artwork in other Apps

2009-04-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when importing songs from your iTunes library into other audio players you will notice that all or some of the artwork is missing. Even after you have saved artwork in iTunes, and you still find that it does not load in the other application's artwork display. You need to save all your ID3 tag information properly for your artwork to cross over into another application. You can save all