If you are ever reading a blog post and see a word you don’t recognize, click Ctrl+Click or right click on the word and you’ll get a contextual menu. You can choose to quickly look that word up in Mac OS X’s dictionary, or start a Google search with that word.
If more than one person uses your Mac, and you have a user set up for each person, then you should enable Fast User Switching to allow you to switch between accounts without logging off and logging on each time. Go to System Preferences, Accounts and then Login Options. Turn onEnable fast user switching. Now you can switch between users using a pull-down menu on the right side of the menu bar.
If there are items you do not want to back up using Time Machine, go to System Preferences, Time Machine and click on the Options button. You can add folders and files. Remember that anything you add here will not get restored if your hard drive fails.
If you copy text that is styled, like from a Web page, and then paste it, you will get the style as well. If you just want to paste the text, use Edit, Paste and Match Style in TextEdit and Pages. In Word, use Edit, Paste Special.
You can set which browser is your default browser. This browser will be launched when you click on links in Mail, iCal, Address Book and other applications.
Launch Safari. Select Preferences in the Safari menu. Go to the General tab. The first option is for “Default web browser.” Change that to any browser shown, or select one not shown with the Select choice at the bottom.
It can be annoying when a web site link automatically opens up a new window, especially if you prefer tabs to windows. You can force all of these kinds of links to open a new tab by using the Terminal and changing a Safari preference. Simply type:
defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true
If you have a folder filled with files and want to have some of them stand out, set a label color for that file. Just Ctrl+Click on the file and look for the Label: item and the color chips under it. Select a color and that file will now stand out in your Finder list. Then, under Finder Preferences you can name each of the colors, changed Red to Important, Orange to Work and Yellow to Personal, for instance.
You can create new tabs in Safari, assuming you have Tabs turned on in your Safari preferences, in two ways. The first is to press Command+T. But you can also create a new tab by clicking in the blank space to the right of the right-most tab label at the top of the Safari window.
When opening a document from inside an application it is not necessary to navigate to the folder where the document is located. Instead, use the search box at the upper right corner of all Open windows. Search for the file by name or content. The results will be displayed in the Open window for you to select the one you want.
Mail servers are not perfect and they sometimes leave messages you have read behind on the server as unread. Ctrl+Click on your account in the left sidebar of Mail and choose Get Account Info. Look at “Messages on Server” and select and remove old ones to clean your server up.
You can choose the first menu item in the Apple menu at the upper left corner to get the About This Mac box. Then click on More Info… to launch the System Profiler. But you can also hold the Option key and the first item in the Apple menu now a direct link to the System Profiler.
Officially, you can use Time Machine to back up to a connected hard drive, or to a Time Capsule or Airport Extreme hard drive. But an unsupported mode allows you to back up to a drive connected to another computer on your network. You’ll need to run the Terminal program and execute the line “defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1”. Then mount the network drive you wish to use. Then you should see it turn up in the drives you can select in the Time Machine preferences.
If you ever get a disk or disk image that will not unmount, you can force it with a Terminal command. Run Terminal and use “df” to list the drives. Find the one you want to unmount, such as /dev/disk3s2. Then use “diskutil unmountDisk force /dev/disk3s2” to force it to unmount.
Do you use one of those camcorders that records direct to DVD? You may not have to use the cable that came with it to transfer your video to your Mac. After you finish off a DVD, try inserting it into your Mac’s drive with iMovie running. iMovie may recognize the data files on the DVD and provide a handy import wizard to allow you to grab the video.
If you want to take a screen shot of what’s on your iPhone, simply press the button on top of your iPhone and the main home button of your iPhone at the same time. This will place a crisp screen image into your Photos on your iPhone. You can then sync and get the image onto your Mac. You can also then use the images like any other photo, sending it via email or processing it in third-party photo apps.
You can change your account icon by going to System Preferences, Accounts. Then click on your icon to select a new one, or choose Edit Picture to select a file or use your iSight camera to take a new picture. You can also drag and drop from the finder onto the icon. Or, you can select the icon and paste into it. You will then have a chance to zoom in and recenter.
Always finding it hard to locate system preference panes in System Preferences? You can change the window to show you the panes in alphabetical order, instead of by category. Just open the System Preferences and choose View, Organize Alphabetically. You can also use the search box at the top of the window to quickly find things throughout all preference panes.
You can change how standard scrollbars work throughout OS X in the Appearance system preferences. The two options are to have a click on the scroll bar page forward or back, or to have a click instantly jump to that position in the page.
In iPhoto 09 if you drag events from one iPhoto library to another in iPhoto 09, all the pictures will be placed in a single new untitled event. But if you go to the iPhoto library in the Finder and drag and drop folders of pictures into your iPhoto library, then each folder will be placed into a new event using the name of the folder. You may have to select the iPhoto library and Ctrl+click it and select “Show Package Contents” to see the folders inside. Then look in “Originals.”
Sick of having Time Machine backup every hour? Want to only have it backup when you want? Simply turn off Time Machine in the preferences. You’ll still be able to use the menu bar drop-down menu to “Back Up Now” whenever you want.
