Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

Want to really delete a file? Instead of choosing Empty Trash from the Finder menu, choose Secure Empty Trash. The difference is that the latter will overwrite the bits for that file, completely erasing it. The former only forgets that the bits were a file in the first place, but leaves them there until they are overwritten by something else. It is possible in that case to sometimes retrieve the file using special software. You can also go into Finder, Preferences, Advanced and make this option the only one.

Most people use a click and drag action to select text. But you can also use a variety of other techniques that work better in many situations. You can click once to define the start position and then again to define the end of a selection. You can select by word or line. You can also select everything with a simple keyboard shortcut. There are even more obscure ways to select text.

If you have adware on your Mac, it is fairly easy to remove. In fact, Apple provides a handy page with clear steps at http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203987. In this episode, follow along as I go through the steps to check my Mac for adware.

Did you know you can have multiple viewer windows in Apple Mail? Just choose File, New Viewer Window. You can focus on different messages or even different inboxes in each window. This makes managing multiple email accounts much easier.

It is important to understand that the app icons shown in the Dock are not the apps themselves, but simply shortcuts to the apps. You can easily remove or add shortcuts, but this is not the same as removing or adding apps to your Mac. You can also access special functions of these apps through the Dock, and use these shortcuts as drop targets for documents.

You can add Automator actions and even AppleScripts as alarms in the Calendar app on your Mac. It may look like this is no longer possible with Yosemite, but you can do it as long as you use the special Calendar Alarm document type in Automator, or if you simply use an On My Mac calendar instead of an iCloud one.

It is quick and easy to see what coverage you have for your Mac if you have Yosemite. Choose About This Mac from the Apple menu. Then Click Service at the top. Now click the “Check my service” link and it will load a page on the web that uses your serial number to check your coverage. You can even contact support or set up a repair from this page.

Apple Music Connect is a free part of iTunes that lets you view posts from artists you like. The artists can post updates, pictures, music and video. You can like or comment on a post. Following artists can be tricky as you've got to use the Apple Music side of iTunes, not the iTunes Store.

The Digital Color Meter is a utility that comes with your Mac that lets you find the color of a pixel on your screen. This can be very useful for artists and developers. You can grab the color of a pixel from an image or web page. You can also get the average color of a group of pixels and get the exact pixel location of the cursor.

If you are chatting from Mac to Mac using the Messages app you can click on the Details button at the top and select the screen sharing button (two rectangles) to share your screen or have the other party share theirs. You can use this to help a less computer savvy relative or friend with a problem, or just to let them observe a presentation you are working on.

You don't have to settle for a ringtone as your iPhone's alarm sound. You can use any song in your music library. This means you can also record your own audio track, sync that through iTunes, and select that as your alarm sound. You can use that audio to give yourself reminders or other information upon waking.

Sharing videos via email, file transfer or using old technology like DVDs can be impractical. Uploading your videos to a service like YouTube that almost anyone can access is easy and useful. You can set these videos to be unlisted or private if you aren't interested in the general publicseeing them. YouTube videos can be viewed on computers, set-top boxes, TVs, tablets, phones. Plus, they can be high definition, giving them a big advantage over DVDs.

If you have been tinkering with the icons on your Dock on your Mac and other Dock settings and wish to start over with the default set of shortcuts, you can do so by typing two lines in the Terminal app. First type “defaults delete com.apple.dock” — that will clear your Dock preferences. Then type “killall Dock” — that will restart the Dock. Note that you need to capitalize the D for it to work as Terminal commands are case-sensitive.

The best way to protect yourself against online scams is to learn about them. Here are three web sites that report scams. By browsing these sites a little each week, you will become knowledgable about these scams and learn to recognize when someone is trying to pull one on you.

You can record your voice and the timing between slides inside Keynote and play the recording back. You can also export the recording as a video. The recording does not have to show the slides in order. You can also record in sections, moving on to the next section after checking to make sure the previous sections are good. Once you export to video, you can bring the video into iMovie to add music.

With Apple Music and Beats 1 more people are keeping iTunes open on their Macs while doing other work. The MiniPlayer window is handy for pausing, skipping or liking songs. You can bring it up many ways, including choosing Window, MiniPlayer or clicking on the small album artwork icon at the very top of the main iTunes window. By going to iTunes, Preferences, Advanced you can can select “Keep MiniPlayer on top of all other windows” to make sure you don’t lose it while working in other apps.

If you find yourself stuck on a web page in Safari that is claiming that you are infected with a virus or that your computer needs to be scanned, it is a scam. But sometimes you can find that these pop-up warnings are hard to get rid of. Even if you quit and restart Safari, they reappear. It is easy to restart Safari without returning to the same page that starts the cycle all over again. You can also get help from Apple if you are infected with a more serious problem.

Learn the basics of starting with Apple Music. With Apple's streaming music service, you can access nearly all of Apple's music library at any time. You can add songs and albums to your music library and create playlists. You can also access the music offline for situations when you don't have an Internet connection.

If you close a window in Safari by mistake, you can instantly reopen it and reload that page by choosing History, Reopen Last Closed Window. If you closed a tab in a window it is even easier. You can useEdit, Undo Close Tab or just press Command+Z.

You can alter the existing templates in Pages or create new ones from scratch. Templates make it easy to get started when creating documents you often need. Your can alter a stationary template to create your own version and save time. You can also create a blank template that includes styles you often need.