In iPhoto 09 you can select Faces, and then one of the faces you have already identified. You can then press Confirm Name to confirm that face in other photos. The trick is to do this over and over again, repeating until iPhoto runs out of pictures to confirm. Each time you do it, iPhoto will get smarter about identifying that face, which is why it will find new photos for you to confirm.
If you use Screen Sharing or something else that requires that you can rely on a local machine’s IP address, you can tell your Airport basestation to assign a static IP address to a certain computer based on its MAC address. Run the Airport Utility program and look under Internet, then DHCP settings. There is a section called DHCP Reservations. You can tell your basestation to always give a specific local IP address to a specific device.
You may know that you can select a file or folder and press Command+I to get information about it. But did you know that if you press Command+Option+I you get the same information, but in a floating palette window called the inspector? This window will stay above all other Finder windows and the information displayed will change as you select different items in the Finder.
You can easily build your Address Book by just using Shift+Command+Y when reading your mail. This is the keyboard shortcut for Message, Add Sender To Address Book. If you already have that person in your address book, it will allow you to add the email address to their entry if it isn’t there already.
If you have shared folder on another Mac that you are always connecting to, you can make the connection a lot quicker by using an alias. Just connect to the other Mac as usual, and find the folder you use often. Then Command+Option+Drag it to a location on your desktop or anywhere on your hard drive to make an alias to it. Now the next time you want to go to that location, double-click the alias to sign in to that computer and go right to that folder.
You can create a collection of favorite styles in TextEdit to be used in all documents you create. In Rich Text mode, choose Format, Font, Styles. Then browse through the styles used in your document. When you see a style that you want to make favorite, click the Add To Favorites button. You can name the style and it will now appear in the Styles pop-up menu in TextEdit. You can also click on the Favorite Styles radio button in the style browser to go through your favorites and remove them.
If you are using Safari and want to save a copy of a Web page locally, you can use File, Save As. Then choose Web Archive as the file type. This will save not only the text and layout of the page, but all the graphics as well, to a single file. You can reopen that file in Safari while offline. You can also do this in Firefox using File, Save Page As, Web Page complete, but the images are stored individually in a folder.
You don’t need to memorize where each and every system preference is located. Just go to the system preferences and “show all” if you are not already at that view. Then type something into the search box at the upper left. Preference icons will highlight that have an item that matches your search term. Suggestions will also appear below the search box. For instance, type “corners” to find the hot corners setting.
In the Finder’s application menu are two ways to empty the Trash: Empty Trash and Secure Empty Trash. The second one will overwrite the data when you erase files, while the first leaves the data around and potentially recoverable. If you wish to use Secure Empty Trash all the time, there is no need to always go to the Finder application menu, however. Instead, just go to Finder preferences (Finder, Preferences or Command+,), go to the Advanced tab, and check off Empty Trash Securely. Now that becomes the default and even the Shift+Command+Delete shortcut maps to it instead of plain Empty Trash.
Can’t remember where a menubar command is located? In Leopard, go to the Help menu and use the Search field to search all of the menus for the application you are using. For instance, in Safari, search for “Autofill,” use the down arrow to go to the first result, and you’ll find it in the Edit menu. A big blue arrow will actually point to the menu item.
You can instantly shrink down the size of any Finder window by hiding its toolbar, sidebar and status bar. Just click on the small wide button at the very upper right of any Finder window. Click it again to show the bars. You can also use the menu View, Show Toolbar or View Hide Toolbar, or the keyboard shortcut Command+Option+T.
However, if you hold down the Command key and press the button you will instead cycle through various toolbar viewing options which affect all Finder windows.
Want to quickly force-quit an application without bringing up the Force Quit window? Just hold down the Shift key and select the Apple menu. Instead of seeing Force Quit… you will see Force Quit followed by the current application name. It even works in the Finder to force quit the Finder when it becomes unresponsive.
If you hold down the Option key and click on the WiFi indicator at the top right of your screen in the toolbar, you will get additional information about your current WiFi connection. You’ll find out your signal strength and WiFi channel. You’ll also see your MAC address, which you sometimes need to give out to be allowed to connect to closed WiFi networks.
You can make a sticky note quickly and easily from selecting text and then going to the application’s menu (named for the application, between the apple and the File menu) and selecting Services and then Make New Sticky Note. It works in Safari, Mail and many other applications. In Safari, you can also use Command+Shift+Y. This is a quick way to capture bits of information for later use.
Did you know you can customize the look and features of the clock that appears in the upper right corner of the menu bar? Just go to System Preferences, Date & Time and choose the Clock tab. You can display the clock as digital or analog. In digital mode, you can choose to show a 24-hour clock, show AM and PM, show the day of the week and display the seconds as well as the hour and minute. You can even have the colon in the time flash every second. You can also set up a chime to announce every hour, half-hour or quarter-hour.
To quickly launch an application without even touching your mouse, press Command+Space to activate the Spotlight menu at the upper right corner of your screen. Then type the first few letters of the application name, such as “Tex” for TextEdit. Type as few or as many as you need for the application to show up in the menu as the “Top Hit.” Then press Return on your keyboard to launch the application.
DNS is what finds Web sites when you are surfing. You type in a domain name, like MacMost.com and your ISP’s DNS server will figure out where that Web site is really located. But if that site has just moved, or if it was down recently, you may get an error instead. This error may persist even if the site if back up. This is because DNS information is cached on your Mac for quick access. So your Mac may have outdated DNS information.
To clear your DNS cache, open the Terminal application. In Leopard, type:
dscacheutil -flushcache
In earlier versions of Mac OS, use this instead:
lookupd -flushcache
To set which applications you would like to startup automatically at login, go to System Preferences and then click Accounts under the System header. Click the Login Items button. Next, click on the plus or minus buttons in the bottom left corner of the window to add or remove applications from your list. The next time you login to your Mac, the selected applications will launch automatically.
You can make frequently used fonts easier to find by adding them to the Favorites font collection. If you often use a particular style or color with a given font, you can save the styled font as a favorite, too.
To add a font to Favorites, open the Font panel. The way you open the Font panel depends on the application you’re using. For example, to open it in TextEdit, choose Format, then Font and finally, Show Fonts. Select a font family and a typeface, then select a font size. To select a font color, click the Text Color button and select a color. If you want to see a font preview, choose Show Preview from the Action pop-up menu in the lower-left corner of the Font panel. Finally, choose Add to Favorites from the Action pop-up menu, or drag the font from the Typeface column to the Favorites collection in the Collections column. When you select the font in your Favorites collection, it automatically appears in the correct color and style.
Do you sometimes lose you cursor when mousing around the desktop? You can make you cursor larger and easier to find. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu. Select Universal Access. Click Mouse, or if you have a MacBook, click Mouse & Trackpad. Finally, just drag the Cursor Size slider to the right to make it larger.
