Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

You can change the alert sound on your Mac using System Preferences. There are a variety of built-in sounds to choose from. You can also import your own sound files by placing them into a special folder. These files must use a special format, or at least have the file extension set to that format.

In addition to being able to record your iOS screen using your Mac, you can use QuickTime Player to simply view it live. Just connect your device with a cable, run QuickTime Player and choose File, New Movie Recording. Then choose your iOS device from the pull-down menu next to the record button. Even if you never hit the record button, you can see your iOS screen on your Mac. Could come in useful in situations where you want to see the contents of your screen in a larger format.

You can quickly find information inside of long web pages using Safari's Find function. By default you are searching only for the letters at the start of words, but you can change this to search for any place the letters appear. You can also select some text in a web page and then search for other occurrences of that text.

You can choose almost any image to be your desktop background. Apple provides a variety of images to use, or you can select one of your own photos or any image you obtain. You can also choose a solid color. You can set the desktop background to change at regular intervals, selecting from a folder of images. Advanced users can even access and change the default backgrounds.

In Safari in Yosemite you’ll only see the domain name in the address bar when viewing a web page. If you’d rather see the full URL of the page you are viewing, you can set that in Safari’s preferences. Go to Safari, Preferences, Advanced and check Show full website address.

With Yosemite can use Automator to create commands that your Mac will react to using only your voice. In this example, we create a command that responds to the command 'day of week' with the spoken day of the week. You can now use JavaScript to create Automator scripts which makes this even easier to do.

You can use the QuickTime Player in Yosemite to record your iOS device's screen and create videos. You'll need iOS 8 on your device and Yosemite on your Mac, plus the lightning cable to attach the two. Then you can record the screen as well as audio from a microphone. You can then save it, trim it or share it. You can also bring the video into other apps for more editing.

Need to send someone a map with some annotations on it? Start with the Apple Maps app on your Mac and position it to include everything you want. Then use Edit, Copy to grab a bitmap image just as you see it. In Preview, choose File, New from Clipboard to put this into a new Preview document. You can then use Preview’s annotation tool to add lines, circles, text, and so on. Use the Share button to attach it to an email. Strangely enough, if you try to paste into Mail instead of Preview, you just get a link to show those coordinates in the Maps app.

If you need to type special characters, such as letter variations or symbols, you can use one of several different methods. For letters with accent marks, you can just hold down the key on your keyboard. You can also learn special keyboard combinations. For other symbols you can use the Character Viewer to special for them. You can also save characters you use often for easy access.

You can use many different methods to trim video clips in iMovie. You can bring in a section of a clip, trim the ends by dragging or using keyboard commands, split the clip and remove unwanted sections, or adjust the clip ends with the Precision Trimmer and other tools. Some methods are easier while others are more versatile.

On your iPhone or iPad you can quickly get to an app’s settings using Siri. From inside an app, just hold down the Home button to activate Siri. Then say “Settings.” The Settings app will open and take you right to the settings from that app.

Next to a back drive, a UPS is the most important accessory you need if you own an iMac, Mac mini or Mac Pro. Essentially a power strip with a battery, a UPS will keep your Mac running if you have a power outage or even a split-second power interruption. Then you can shut down your Mac gracefully and not lose any work. Most UPSes today come with a USB connection that you can connect to your Mac. Then you get a new section in System Preferences where you can set your Mac to shut down on its own if power is out and the battery is in use.

You can filter junk mail in the Apple Mail app, but you should first try to prevent spam email from even getting past your server. If you use a good transportable email address, like Gmail, you'll get most of your junk mail filtered out before it gets to your Mac. Apple Mail can act as a last line of defense if you set up junk mail filtering in the preferences. You can also add your own filters for reoccurring spam email in Gmail and in Apple Mail. If you no longer want to receive mail from a company you have done business with or have subscribed to, be sure to use their Unsubscribe button instead of reporting the email as junk.

The Music app in iOS 8 features a few buttons across the bottom of the app: Radio, Genius, Artists, etc. You can customize this toolbar by tapping the More button at the bottom right, then the Edit button at the top. Now you can drag buttons in and out so the ones you really want are there.

Learn about the Energy Saver system preferences. You can set an amount of time before your Mac goes to sleep or puts the display to sleep. This will help conserve energy and prolong your battery charge. There are also other settings that can help, and even a way to schedule your Mac to sleep or wake up. You can have different settings for battery versus being plugged in.

Activity Monitor is a tool that comes with your Mac. You can use it to see which processes are using CPU power, memory, disk use and even energy. Most users never need to use Activity Monitor, but it can be interesting to see what is going on with your Mac. You can monitor processor use in several ways and watch it change as you use applications.

When you search using Spotlight Search, you’ll get a list of results on the left and a preview of the selected result on the right. You can use the up and down arrow keys to move between results on the left. If you select a folder on the left instead of a file, you’ll see a list of folder contents on the right. Use the Tab key to move the selection over there to select a file inside the folder.

You can buy inexpensive holiday gifts using gift cards from Apple's online stores. You can have a gift card sent by email, or send a physical card. You can also gift a specific item in the music, iOS apps or iBooks store. This year, another gift to consider is Apple's Beats Music service. The iTunes store doesn't have a normal wish list feature, but you can still gather links to items you want and send them to those looking to buy you gifts.

Before Yosemite, the preview pane was only a part of the Finder's column view. But now you can use it in icon and list view as well. This makes it easy to move through a collection of photos or other documents to select the one you want. You can even watch videos or listen to audio with the preview pane. You can also look inside folders and select an item with the keyboard.

In Yosemite, you can drag a tag from the left sidebar of a finder window onto the right side of the Dock to create a Stack for that tag. This gives you quick and easy access to files when you apply that tag to them.