Set up a Guest User Account
Mac Tip #428, 17 March 2010

Ever needed to let a visitor use your Mac for a few hours? Were you concerned they might accidentally trash your files or mess things up? Set them up as a Guest User. They have separate access and all their stuff is deleted when they log off.

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Let others use your Mac

It’s one thing to move aside for 5 minutes while a friend looks at a web page on your Mac. It’s quite another to hand your Mac over to a guest while they surf the web, write emails, download files, sort out photos and generally use the Mac as though it were their own.

Allow guests to login to this computer.

And then when they leave you may have to clean up bookmarks, downloads, browser history, stray files, and so on.

Luckily, Mac OS X Snow Leopard has a feature that makes all of this very much easier: a Guest Account.

The User Account

When you first set up a Mac you create a ‘User Account’. Often it carries your name. For example, on my Macs I am a user called miraz. If I ever have to log in, for example when I start up my Mac, I have to fill in my username and a password to be able to get in to all my documents.

When I save bookmarks or files they are saved in the folders for me as a User — in the miraz folder.

The Guest Account

Files will be deleted on logout.

In Snow Leopard there is a special account called the Guest Account. It doesn’t need a password to get in. The ‘catch’ is that when you log out of the Guest Account all the files belonging to the Guest are deleted.

Set up a Guest Account

To set up a guest account takes only one click, though there are a couple of steps to reach the right screen:

1. Open Apple menu > System Preferences…
2. Click on the Accounts Preference Pane (in the System row). The Accounts pane opens up.
3. If necessary, click on the padlock icon in the bottom left corner of the window to unlock the pane. You need to enter the account name and password for a user with Admin privileges. This ‘unlocks’ the settings. The padlock icon now shows as being ‘open’.
4. Select the Guest Account item in the list of Accounts on the left hand side of the window. This reveals the settings for the Guest Account. Refer to the first screenshot attached to this Post.
5. Check the box beside Allow guests to login to this computer. Now guests will be able to log in to a separate Guest account. They do not need a password.
6. If you wish, check the box to Enable Parental Controls, and then click the Open Parental Controls… button to set up limits on what guests can do.
7. Quit System Preferences.

Use the Guest Account

Now anyone can log in to the Guest Account and use any software on your Mac. They can save documents, photos and other files or bookmarks. They can customise the machine to suit themselves. None of their activities affect how things are set up for you under your login.

And unless you explicitly gave them access to shared folders they cannot access your files.

Delete on logout

For as long as the Guest does not log out their files and settings are preserved. As soon as they log out though, or presumably if the machine is restarted, all their files and settings are deleted.

The next person to log in to the Guest Account is presented with a clean slate, and default settings.

Have you used a Guest Account? Tell us in the Comments how it worked for you.

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How to use the Dock with Folders
Mac Tip #427, 10 March 2010

On its right side (or bottom), the Dock holds icons for folders. Add or Remove folders, and set them up to give you the best access to what you need. Here’s how.

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View and empty the Trash

The Trash is a special folder that always appears in the last position on the Dock and cannot be moved. Click once on the Trash icon to see the contents of the Trash.

To empty the Trash either choose Empty Trash… from the Finder menu or do one of the following:

1. Click and hold on the Trash icon. A menu appears, including the option to Empty Trash.
2. Control (⌃) click on the Trash icon. A menu appears, including the option to Empty Trash.
3. Command (⌘) click and hold on the Trash icon. A menu appears, including the option to Secure Empty Trash.

Documents Stack set to Grid view.

Document and Download Stacks

On a new Mac the Documents and Downloads folders appear by default on the right-hand side of the Dock. If you set your Dock to be vertical, they appear in the bottom portion.

In Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) these folders are set up as Stacks. When you click on a Stack its contents are displayed as a List, Fan or Grid ‘attached’ to the folder in the Dock. Whatever application is at the front stays at the front. Click on an item to open it.

That’s different from how the Finder icon at the other end of the Dock behaves. If you click the Finder icon in the Dock then the Finder comes to the front, and a folder opens.

The Stack or Folder Options menu.

List, Fan and Grid views

To change how a Stack or Folder displays Control (⌃) click on a Stack or Folder icon. A menu appears.

By default Stacks display with the most recent item first. Other Options include Date Added, Date Modified, Date Created and Kind.

Choose whether to display a Stack in a Fan, Grid or List view. If you choose an Automatic view, the Mac will display a small number of contents as a Fan or a larger number as a Grid.

Folder or Stack display

A folder and a Stack are both folders. A Stack though uses the icon of the most recently added item as the icon for the Stack. A folder simply displays a blank folder icon.

Add a folder to the Dock

To add a folder to the Dock drag the folder’s icon from an open Finder window into a position on the right-hand side of the Dock. To move it to a new position drag it sideways. The adjacent items will move to make room for it.

Remove a folder from the Dock

To remove a folder from the Dock drag it away. It disappears in a puff of ’smoke’. The actual folder is not removed from your computer.

Do you find the Dock the best way to access your folders? Tell us in the Comments how you use folders in the Dock.

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Speed up Safari by emptying the cache
Mac Tip #426, 03 March 2010

As you surf the web your browser makes copies of the pages you visit, in case you need them again. This can cause things to slow down though. Here’s how to do a clean up.

empty-cache-01a.jpg

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Safari saves web pages in a cache

The software you use to look at web pages is a web browser. You probably use Apple’s browser called Safari, though you may also or instead use Firefox, Google Chrome, Omniweb, Opera, Camino, or any one of several others.

As you surf around the web browser secretly saves copies of web pages you visit in the cache.

The reasoning behind this is that you may want to visit that same page again. It can quicker to call up the page from the cache on your hard drive than it is to go all the way out onto the Internet to get a fresh copy. And after all, many web pages don’t change much from one minute, day, hour or week to the next.

My cache is 180Mb!

If your web browser notices you visiting a page you’ve already seen before it first checks the cache. This can be a quick check if the cache is small, but over time the cache can grow big enough that checking it takes longer than getting a fresh copy of a page from over the Internet.

To see how big Safari’s cache is, look on your hard drive in your Home folder under: Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Cache.db.

When I checked mine, as the top part of the screenshot shows, it was 180Mb. That’s big.

After emptying the cache (see the lower part of the screenshot) it was 25Kb — tiny.

Empty the Safari cache

Are you sure?

To empty Safari’s cache:

1. Open Safari. I’m using Version 4.0.4 (6531.21.10), but the following should be the same for other versions.
2. Choose Empty Cache… from the Safari menu. An alert appears, asking you to confirm your choice.
3. Click the Empty button on the alert window. The cache is emptied.

You may like to Quit and restart Safari, but just emptying the cache should have done the trick.

You should now find that Safari works quicker again.

Tip for web developers

If you’re a web developer, take a look at the images in the Webpage Previews folder — it’s also in Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/.

In Snow Leopard Safari has a Top Sites feature that displays thumbnails of websites. This folder seems to be where it keeps them. It’s a very handy source of (partial) screenshots.

Did you try this Tip? Tell us in the Comments what happened for you.

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How to use the Dock with Applications
Mac Tip #425, 24 February 2010

On its left side (or top), the Dock holds icons for Applications. Click an Application to start it up or to switch to it. Add or Remove Applications, and arrange them to give you the best access to what you need. Here’s how.

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Open applications from the Dock

If an application icon is ’stored’ in the Dock click on the Dock icon to open that application. If the application is already open, then clicking the icon brings that application to the front.

Applications have their own portion of the Dock

Applications belong in the left-hand side of the Dock, and cannot be added to the right-hand side.

If the Dock is vertical then they ‘own’ the top portion of the Dock.

Remove Applications from the Dock by dragging

There may be applications in the Dock that you seldom or never use. Leaving their icons in the Dock just creates clutter. Take an application’s icon out of the Dock to free up space. The Application stays on your computer, so you can still use it any time you do need it.

To remove an application from the Dock point to it and then quickly drag it out. The icon is removed from the Dock in a puff of ’smoke’.

If the application opens, then you didn’t act quickly enough. Don’t click and hold on the icon as that will just open or switch to an application.

Instead, hover over the icon in the Dock, then quickly press on it and drag it out in one easy movement.

Remove an application from the Dock by menu

If dragging an icon out of the Dock doesn’t work well for you then use the contextual menu:

1. Click and hold the application’s icon in the Dock. A contextual menu appears. The menu in Snow Leopard is a bit different from the menu in older versions of Mac OS X.
2. From the Contextual menu choose Options > Remove from Dock.
3. The icon is removed from the Dock (with a small puff of ’smoke’) and the icons to either side move in to fill the empty space. The application itself remains on your computer.

Add an Application to the Dock by dragging

Normally, when you quit an application whose icon is not ’stored’ in the Dock that icon disappears from the Dock.

To ’store’ an application’s icon in the Dock:

1. Open the Applications folder in the Finder.
2. Select the application to add to the Dock.
3. Drag the application’s icon on to the Dock between other icons. The existing icons move aside to make room for the new application. When you release the mouse the icon is added to the Dock in the place where you dropped it.
4. Whether the application is running or not, the icon stays in the Dock until you remove it.

Add an open Application to the Dock

If an application is already open or running on your computer you can ‘keep’ its icon in the Dock to use again later.

The Keep in Dock contextual menu option in Snow Leopard.

1. Open an application.
2. Locate its icon in the Dock. There will be a marker beneath the application’s icon — in Snow Leopard the marker is a blue dot. If your Dock is against the left or right edge of your screen the dot will be correspondingly to the left or right of the icon.
3. Click and hold the application’s icon in the Dock. The screen dims, thumbnail-sized windows may appear, and a contextual menu appears. The menu in Snow Leopard is a bit different from the menu in older versions of Mac OS X.
4. From the Contextual menu choose Options > Keep in Dock.
5. That application’s icon now stays in the Dock, even if you quit the application.

Change the order of icons in the Dock

It’s easy to move icons around within the Dock:

1. Click and hold on an icon in the Dock to select it.
2. Drag the icon to the left or right for a horizontal Dock, or up or down for a vertical Dock. The icon switches places with the icon next to it.

The Finder icon is special. It always stays at the end of the Dock. You cannot move or remove it. When you double click it a Finder window opens.

Application Options

Click and hold on an application’s icon in the Dock to call up a menu of options. Depending on whether the application is already running or not you may see options such as ‘Keep in Dock’, ‘Quit’, ‘Open at Login’, ‘Hide’, and ‘Show in Finder’.

Do you find the Dock the best way to access your Applications? Tell us in the Comments how you use Applications in the Dock.

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Top 20 Tips for Apple users
Mac Tip #424, 17 February 2010

Each full Mac Tip takes between 3 and 6 hours to craft. This week deadlines have collided, so I’m bringing you a roundup of the 20 most popular Tips.

Check them out — you may have missed them the first time they were published.

iPhone, iChat and Automator Tips are the most popular on the MacTips.info website. Have you seen these:

iPhone page indicator dots. I’m on page 2 of 4.

1. Arrange Application icons on the iPhone
2. Set up iChat
3. Resize images with Automator
4. Check your battery's health with System Profiler
5. Clean up a Thumb Drive
6. Save a YouTube video
7. Share files easily with Dropbox
8. The Safari Bookmarks Bar
9. Navigate Leopard Spaces
10. What to do with the Num Lock Key

Watch the video

It was around 8 months ago that I set up a MacTips YouTube Channel. Please subscribe!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fes93NW_KE0

At the YouTube Channel, the most popular videos are:

1. Use iTunes to arrange apps on your iPhone or iPod touch
2. How to restore files from Apple Time Machine
3. How to Trim a Movie with Quicktime Player 10
4. How to change the Wallpaper on the iPod touch
5. How to organise files with Hazel
6. Annotate PDFs with Apple’s Preview
7. How to Move and Resize the Mac OS X Dock
8. How to merge and split Safari windows
9. How to do a quick Zoom on your Mac laptop
10. Meet the Snow Leopard Dictionary

To be sure you don’t miss out on any MacTips, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to the email feed or grab the RSS feed.

If you’d like to request a Tip, or have a Tip to share, please contact me.

Tell us in the Comments which Tips are your favorites, and why.

Look in next week for a new full-length practical Tip.

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How to customise the Mac’s Dock (Part 1)
Mac Tip #423, 10 February 2010

Is the Dock in your way? Too big? Too small? Too ‘bouncy’? Here’s how to make it behave as you want it to.

Watch the video

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The Dock holds icons for applications, folders and files

Dock System Preference pane.

The Dock is the strip of icons across the bottom of any new Mac. It allows you quick access to applications, files and folders.

The Dock has two parts

The Dock has two parts:

• Applications on the left
• Files, Folders and Trash on the right.

The two parts are divided by a faint stripey gray line.

If you move the Dock to the left or right of your screen the Trash is always at the bottom, and the Finder at the top.

Make the Dock look and behave how you want it to

Control the appearance and behaviour of the Dock from the Dock item in System Preferences. Quickly access the Preferences from the Dock submenu under the Apple menu.

Another way to quickly access the settings is to hold down the Control (⌃) key and click on the stripey divider line between the left and right hand sides of the Dock. This brings up a contextual menu with several of the possible settings.

Set Size and Magnification

The Dock can fill the width (or height) of your screen, or it can be quite tiny. Control its size with the Size slider.

As you hover over any icon in the Dock it enlarges, or magnifies. This can be a bit visually disturbing.

Turn off magnification altogether by unchecking the setting, or reduce the amount of magnification by moving the slider to the left. A bit of experimentation may be necessary to get it just how you like it.

Position the Dock on Screen

Position the Dock on Screen: bottom, left or right. You may need to experiment with this, as the Dock may cause windows to shift out of its way, or if you normally have it hidden you may find it becomes visible and gets in the way of scrolling or clicking on other items.

I suggest experimenting with various positions and sizes until you find what works best on your Mac.

Change the animation when opening Applications

When you open an application its icon bounces in the Dock. If that bothers you turn it off in this System Preference.

Minimize window effects

When you click the orange button in the top left corner of most WIndows on your Mac that window shrinks down into the Dock, or minimises. It minimises by distorting, shrinking and sliding, using the Genie effect.

It can be animated differently though, with the Scale effect. In that case the window becomes uniformly smaller and sliding into position in the Dock.

Choose the effect you enjoy.

Use the Shift key to make your Mac look slow

This is an old trick but a fun one. Make a window minimise extraordinarily slowly by holding down the Shift (⇧) key as you click the orange button. Try it and see.

Future Tips will explain how to add items to the Dock and remove them; how to shuffle the order; how to use the Dock to open documents, and some other features.

Share your experiences with the Mac’s Dock below.

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How to keep your Mac’s clock accurate
Mac Tip #422, 03 February 2010

Do the clocks round your house or office gradually gain or lose time? It’s annoying. Your Mac’s clock could ‘drift’ too. Here’s how to make sure it’s always correct.

Watch the video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcmhwpMyevM

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Timestamped files.

Timestamps

As you work and play on your Mac the clock is keeping track of the date and time in the background.

If you create a new file, or save one, or save changes to a file, your Mac adds a timestamp: a record of when the action took place.

The timestamp is often used by the system to decide which version of a file is ‘current’ or ‘more recent’.

The clock on your Mac is also used to display calendar reminders, timestamp emails, carry out regular activities, such as to check mail every 10 minutes between 8 am and 6 pm — anything that has some type of ‘time’ connection.

Time Zones.

Time travel

As you’ll know if you’ve ever travelled with a laptop, ‘time’ is a fairly fluid thing. When it’s 6 pm in one part of the world it is 2 am in another.

When you travel with a laptop you need to be able to change the Mac’s clock to reflect the local time.

Date & Time System Preference

The important System Preference to visit is Date & Time.

Clock

The Clock tab allows you to set display options for the Clock in the Menu Bar and for announcing the time.

Time Zone

The most important tab is the Time Zone tab. Click on the map to choose a general location, and then choose your closest city from the drop-down menu.

This tells your Mac exactly where you are.

The relevant timezone is highlighted on the map, and your Mac’s clock may change if it was previously set to another location.

If you travel with your Mac, adjust the timezone and closest city when you arrive at a new destination.

Set the time automatically

If you’re using Snow Leopard you will notice a checkbox near the top of the Time Zone tab beside the words Set time zone automatically using current location. In my experiments it failed to discover my location. It’s worth a try for you.

This setting uses information about WiFi networks near you to work out your location.

When I tested it, I was at home. It’s unlikely any service knows the location of my home wireless network, but public WIFi network information may allow your Mac to be located.

Date & Time

The Date & Time tab of the Date & Time System Preference has a crucially important setting: the Set date and time automatically dropdown menu.

Provided you have a regular connection to the Internet check that box, and then choose a Timeserver from the drop-down menu.

A timeserver is a computer that always knows the correct time, based on an extremely accurate master clock.

It doesn’t really matter which timeserver you choose, but you may like to pick the one closest to where you are.

Your Mac regularly connects to the timeserver, discovers the correct time, and adjusts its own clock to match. No more being behind (or ahead) of the times!

Share your experiences with Date and Time below.

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How to customise Date and Time on your Mac
Mac Tip #421, 27 January 2010

Do you prefer a 12 hour or 24 hour clock? Would you like the names of months abbreviated, spelled out in full, as numbers? Here’s how to customize how dates and times appear on your Mac.

Watch the video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=idbTh6IA47Y

Please visit the video on YouTube, leave comments and rate it. That helps spread the word about the MacTips. Subscribe to the channel too!

Date and Time confusions

Date and Time preferences are very personal. Some people like a 12 hour clock, with AM and PM, others prefer a 24 hour clock.

In the USA dates are written with the Month first, followed by the Day and then the Year, like this: 1/26/2010. In New Zealand we would write that as 26/1/2010.

Mind you, that’s confusing for an international audience either way, especially if the day is 12 or less: 5/1/2010 could be the 5th of January or the 1st of May.

It’s generally safer to write the month name in full, if you expect members of the public to be reading it.

Date and Time displays

Language and Text System Preference.

Some software on the Mac, for example Pages.app, provides a menu item to Insert date. What’s inserted though may not be quite what you want.

Make changes in System Preferences

To format the Date and Time to your own requirements you need to visit not the Date and Time System Preference but the Language & Text System Preference.

In versions of MacOS X before Snow Leopard it may have been called International or some other name.

Go to the Formats tab of the Language & Text System Preference. The Formats panel has a line for each of the Short, Medium, Long and Full formats.

Short, Medium, Long and Full date formats.

Each line contains a mix of blue ‘capsules’ and optional text (including spaces).

Edit the capsules

Each blue capsule has a small white arrow at the right-hand end. Click on the arrow to reveal a menu with options for that type of capsule.

For example, when I click on the Month capsule I can choose from:

1. the full month name
2. a shortened version of the name
3. the initial letter of the name
4. the month’s number, as either one or two digits.

Each capsule has its own set of options.

Add and delete capsules

Delete capsules as you would any text — click to the right and press Delete.

To add a capsule, select it from the array in the lower part of the window and drag it into position.

Remember to click in the line and press the Spacebar between capsules, to avoid dates being jammed up without spaces.

If you wish you can add other text too.

Experiment with the formats until you find the ones that suit your preferences. And start noticing where they pop up after being automatically inserted.

Share your experiences with Date and Time below.

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Set up automatic Software Updates
Mac Tip #420, 20 January 2010

Keep your Mac’s software up to date, without even trying. Or stop it from updating at inconvenient times. Here’s how.

Watch the video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PRCb-hCyOU

Please visit the video on YouTube too, leave comments and rate it. That helps spread the word about the MacTips. Subscribe to the channel too!

Software Update settings.

Manual check for updates

Call up the Software Update… menu item (under the Apple menu) to manually check for updated software.

A progress window appears. After some time a results window appears. It may advise you that no updates are available, or list updates you can select and install.

It’s fine to check manually, but you need to remember to do so regularly otherwise you could miss important security updates.

Schedule Checks

Go to the Software Update item in System Preferences to set up automatic updates.

Choose an interval from the Check for updates dropdown menu: daily, weekly or monthly.

Also choose whether the Mac should automatically download available updates ready for you to install.

If you simply use your Mac at home or in the office with an always-on broadband connection and no concerns about data and bandwidth then that may be a good option.

You may prefer to turn that option off if:

• you often do presentations. (In fact you should manually check for updates or turn off update checks before doing a presentation so your work won’t be interrupted).
• you are travelling and don’t have reliable or regular Internet access.
• your Internet connection is costly or slow.

Installed software updates.

Installed Software

Click the Installed Software tab to see a list of software that has been installed or updated via Software Updates.

The list shows the date the software was installed, the name, and the version number. This may be helpful for troubleshooting if you’re having problems with your Mac.

Share your experiences with Software Update below.

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Choose what opens when you plug in an iPhone
Mac Tip #419, 13 January 2010

A friend asked how to stop iPhoto opening up and importing pictures from her iPhone every time she plugged it in. It’s a problem common with any kind of camera: iPhone, digital still camera, movie camera, even the iPod touch. Here’s one way, using Image Capture.

Watch the video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pupgYNLNoes

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‘Camera’ actions

I have several devices that function as cameras and want to be able to choose each time I plug one in exactly what will happen.

For example, if I plug in my iPhone it may be just to charge it. I don’t want iPhoto to open automatically. And even if I did want to import images, I use Aperture, rather than iPhoto to handle all my photos.

On the other hand, if I plug in my Canon Digital SLR (or the reader with the camera’s memory card), then I want Aperture to open up and be ready to download my photos.

Set options in Image Capture.

Set options in Image Capture

The Image Capture application in your Applications folder controls what happens when you plug in a camera, or a device like the iPod touch that can make screen captures.

This Tip refers to Image Capture under Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6.2. If you’re using an older version of the OS it may not offer the same options.

Set Image Capture Preferences

1. Open the Image Capture application. The settings window appears.
2. Plug in your iPhone, iPod touch, card reader or camera. The device is listed in the Image Capture window.
3. Make sure the correct device is selected in the devices list on the left side of the window.
4. Choose an action for the selected device from the drop-down menu at bottom left of the window. Options may include opening applications such as iPhoto or Preview.
5. Quit Image Capture once you’ve selected the settings.

Next time you plug in that device the action you set in Image Capture will be triggered.

Make your own application

After recording the video for this Tip I experimented a little. I created a simple Applescript that beeped 5 times and saved it as an application.

Then I selected that application to open when I plugged in my iPhone.

On next plugging in my iPhone my Mac beeped 5 times, as expected.

5 beeps is pretty useless as an action, but you could create an Applescript to perhaps mount an external drive, copy files, send an email — depending on what would be useful to you.

Have you found other ways to do this? There’s usually more than one way to solve this kind of problem. Tell us your experiences below.

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