UsingMac.com
Mac Tricks and Tips, Wallpapers and Applications for Mac Users
Daily Trick 20. Quick Equation
I believe most of us have already known that we can type in an equation on the Spotlight and straightaway get the result without the need to open Calculator. Also, I believe that only few of us know that we can do a quick equation without using Spotlight.
How can it be done?
- Type in the equation, let say (5*3)+8*9-3
- Highlight all of the equation and hit Cmd-Shift-8
- The equation will be immediately changed to 84
- It's important to note that some applications don't have this feature
So, next time if you want to do a quick equation, you should use this instead of Spotlight. Cheers from UsingMac!
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Calculator,
Daily Trick
Daily Trick 19. Time Announcer
While we're kept occupied by some tasks, we may have lose the attention of the time, and may miss certain important events.
But with using Mac, you can set the clock to auto-announce the time every hour. Setting can be made easily with these steps:
- Go to your menubar and there you should be able to find your clock displayed
- Click it and choose Open Date & Time…
- Go under Clock section
- Tick the checkbox: Announce the Time
Not only set it to announce every hour, but there is also options for you to set the announcement to be made at interval of half hour or even quarter hour.
Obviously, don't try this in your office with your volume turned to maximum. You will annoy your colleagues, especially if you're using Hysterical as your custom voice.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Clock,
Daily Trick
Daily Trick 18. Quote Message
When replying or forwarding mail, there would be a high chance for us to quote some parts of the message. By quoting, you can pin-point the discussion of the mail.
To quote portion of your message, follow this steps:
- Highlight the portion of the message you want to quote
- After that, click on the Reply or Forward button
- All of the highlighted part will be put on new message
The good thing is, you don't need to waste time deleting unnecessary part of the received mail. Just quote it.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick
85 Useful Free Mac Apps for Designers
With many applications emerging one after another, it's not really difficult to find free apps out of the net. Perhaps, those free applications are suitable for us compared to commercial ones.
Knowing there are quite a number of designers out there using a Mac, we compiled free Mac applications for designers. In this compilation, you can find useful Mac applications that can be downloaded and used for free.
Update. Some screenshots are added for readers' convenience.
Daily Trick 17. Set Finder Home
Most of the time, we will use Finder to browse through our files. If you've noticed, there will be the same directory shown in the first time you open Finder.
Let's call it Finder Home.
By default, this finder home is set to your user home. Perhaps you don't need to visit our home frequently; You visit our Pictures folder more often. Then it would save you several clicks if you change the default Finder Home, with these simple steps.
- Access Finder menubar and choose
Finder → Preferences - Under the preferences pane, choose the General section
- Look for the only combo box and apparently it is used for setting Finder Hoome
- Choose the directory that you often visit
- Changes will be applied instantly and be shown when you open new finder window
However, if you don't want to set Finder Home, you can always drag-drop your favorite directory or folder to the sidebar and have access to it within single mouse-click.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick
Daily Trick 16. Stream Download Video
If you have followed UsingMac articles for quite some time, I believe that we all have known how to download YouTube video easily even in HD quality.
For large videos, however, we will need to wait several tens of minutes before we can open the video. Hey, why don't we just stream download it? Like what we did while watching the video on YouTube?
If you want to stream download it, follow these steps:
- I assume that the video download process is already begun and you can see it in the Download Activity (Safari: Cmd-Opt-L; Firefox: Cmd-J)
- Now Ctrl-Click on the download item (the video) and choose Show in Finder
- The filename will be shown with format .download, you can't open it
- Ctrl-Click on it and select Show Package Contents
- Inside you can see the file with video format .mp4
- Run it and you've successfully stream download the video
This trick works well for downloading video from YouTube. I haven't tested it for other video sites.
Categories:
Daily Tricks,
Video
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Download
Daily Trick 15. Quick Dictionary
Having English as my second language, there are many words that I don't know. As a result, I will need to open Dictionary most of the time.
If everytime I need to launch Dictionary.app to see the word definition, I will waste my precious time and decrease my productivity.
However, thanks to my Mac, with a simple keystrokes Ctrl-Cmd-D a quick dictionary pane will appear right in front of your eyes. If you failed to call the quick dictionary, it's possible that you've previously changed the shortcut. To change the shortcut back, follow these steps:
You can click on the thumbnail for larger view.
- Open Apple → System Preferences
- Go to Keyboard & Mouse and choose Keyboard Shortcuts section
- Search for Look up in Dictionary and change the shortcut back
Unfortunately, this feature is not supported by some applications, like Firefox.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Dictionary
Daily Trick 14. Minimize Window
In many occassions, we will need to minimize application windows in order to reduce distraction level to minimum. Of course, we can always use key combination Cmd-M to minimize a window or even use Cmd-Opt-M to minimize all opened windows.
But the problem arise as soon as we want to restore the window. Most of the time, we will click on the Dock thumbnail to restore minimized window. However, if you feel tiresome to reach your mouse/trackpad, you can use this trick:
- Hit Cmd-Tab (+Tab) until you reach the application that has one of its windows minimized
- Still holding the Cmd key, press Opt key followed by releasing Cmd key
- The earlier minimized window will be restored without any clicks
Anyway, if you're ready to install additional application, you can use Witch to assist you in application switching process.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Window
Daily Trick 13. Schedule Shut Down
As Mac users, it would be much more convenient if we can schedule our shut down time. Using this scheduling feature, we can shut down our Mac even though we are not nearby.
The setting process is quite simple, you just need to follow these steps:
- Go to System Preferences → Energy Saver
- Click the Schedule… button at bottom right-corner of the pane
- A pane will appear for you to set up your schedule for shut down
You can click on the thumbnail for viewing larger screenshot.
Not limited to shut down, you can also use this setting to sleep, wake up, or even restart your Mac.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
system,
System
Giveaway: (3x) Blogo Blogging Editor
If you own a blog or twitter account and you're looking for an easy-to-use interface with complete features, Blogo will be your best choice for blogging editor.
There are several appealing features that make Blogo stand out from other editors and make Blogo recommended blog editor:
- Twitter Support - Quickly follow friends or post status
- Offline Mode - Live preview even when offline
- Drag-and-Drop - Easily edit and add image
- Fullscreen Mode - Cut down distractions
- Javascript Bookmarklet - Post content from YouTube, Flickr, etc
Keep reading for Screenshots and How to Win.
Daily Trick 12. Trim MP3 Song
Talking about mp3 songs, one application should instantly crawl inside our mind: iTunes. Yes, today I will share with you how to trim your mp3 songs with iTunes.
As usual, first step you will need to open iTunes and then followed by:
- Select mp3 song you want to trim
- Open contextual menu and click on Get Info
- Go to Options tab
-
Inside you can see Start Time and Stop Time.
Fill it with the wanted start time and stop time of that mp3 song after trimming - Now select the song again, open the contextual menu and choose Create MP3 Version
- Last step is to wait for the process to finish
You can click on the thumbnail for viewing larger screenshot.
Have fun in trimming! And don't forget to introduce me some nice songs as you can see that I've no much songs in my iTunes playlist.
Categories:
Audio,
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
iTunes,
Song
Daily Trick 11. Decipher Serial Number
No, we're not talking any hacking process here. We will talk about our Mac serial number. Every Mac comes with serial number, do you know about this?
If you want to know your Mac serial number, you can click on the Apple logo on the menubar and then open About This Mac. On the floating pane, click the version number of your Mac two times, it will change into Mac serial number.
Then how can we decipher this serial number?
- Go to chipmunk.nl
- Enter your Mac serial number
- See interesting facts about your Mac, including production date and factory of production Ah! My Mac is produced in 4H (China), on May 2006 and it's number 1889.
This conversation often takes place after reading this trick.
"Where is your Mac coming from?"
"China. So, what can I do with this?"
"I dunno. Don't ask me."
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Mac,
mac
Daily Trick 10. Show Only One
It's good that we can open many applications at once, without any hesitation, using our Mac. The bad thing is, more often than not, we will get distracted if we open more than one applications at the same time.
Perhaps, some people will suggest using Isolator or Think. But for you (and me) that are often lazy to download additional applications, there is still a way out.
You can press Cmd-Opt-H to hide all other applications.
Or you can also hold modifier keys Cmd-Opt while clicking on the Dock icon.
Either one will result in showing only one application and hide others.
Personally for me, I seldom use Dock-clicking, usually I will just combine Cmd-Tab with Cmd-Opt-H. I am addicted to Mac keyboard shortcuts, I admit it!
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Finder,
finder
Daily Trick 9. Glims for Safari
Many have tried to tweak Safari, including me. Initially, I'm really satisfied with the tweaking process. But now, not really. What's the reason behind?
After browsing around the web, I found this little cocoa application for Safari called Glims. Glims empowers our Safari with many additional tools, such as Full Screen View, Search Engine Thumbnails, Tabs Re-open from Last Sessions, Bookmarks Separator and other gorgeous features.
You can click on the thumbnail for viewing larger screenshot.
Believe me, you should try installing this application. It's just a minute away, which is much faster and more gorgeous compared to tweaking by yourselves.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Safari
Daily Trick 8. Site Hierarchy
After navigating deeper, deeper, and even deeper on a website, eventually we will find ourselves get lost inside the web. Often, we need to press the back button many times just to get back.
Maybe some have noticed it, if we're using Safari Web Browser, we can see the hierarchy of current viewing site.
Simply by moving to window title and Cmd-Click, site hierarchy can be shown.
From the top one is current hierarchy we're in, go down all the way to the website address. With this, it's much easier for us to move around the site.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick
Daily Trick 7. Change Privilege
Sometimes, without having enough privileges for a file, we will end up unable to save, edit, or even open it. Of course, we can easily change the privilege by using Get Info pane.
Problem arises when we want to change the privileges of a folder and hundreds of items inside. It would be time consuming to change the privilege one by one. The best solution is by changing the privilege recursively.
- Open Get Info pane of the folder
- Go to Sharing & Permissions
- After unlocking, find the little gear icon and click on it
- Select Apply to enclosed items
- Changes made later on will apply to folder & all items inside it
We can now say good-bye to the traditional, super-slow way of changing privileges!
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick
30 Free System Tools for a Better Mac
It's not an easy task to maintain our Mac system clean, healthy, and appealing with just relying on built-in applications. We will end up scratching our head just to delete some unnecessary binary files to clean our disk.
Therefore, we all here decided to make a good compilation of free system tools for Mac. With many varieties of applications, from system cleaner to system tweaker, from data organizer to system display manager, we have those all collected in this article.
Click on the application title to get to application homepage.
Daily Trick 6. Toolbar View
After using Mac for quite some time, I believe we all have made use of our Finder toolbar. Many things can be done to our Finder toolbar, such as sticking application to toolbar for quick launch and dropping simple AppleScript.
Apart from those functions, everyone has different taste for how the icons should appear on the toolbar.
Be it like normal icon, text icon, or icon with text, we can easily change it by performing Cmd-Click on the pill button (top-right).
FYI. Cmd → Command
For more toolbar tricks, you can read our previous article about finder toolbar tricks:
[1] Finder Tweaks 1: The Toolbar
[2] Finder Tweaks 2: Extra Toolbar Items
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick
Daily Trick 5. Clean Desktop
After using Mac for quite some time, our desktop will surely cluttered with many files. Those icons make your desktop uglier and slow down the system.
Usually, people will suggest you to delete those items on the desktop or move them
somewhere else. However, we can always use this terminal code to hide all desktop
items:
chflags hidden ~/Desktop/*
And to reveal it again, we can use terminal code:
chflags nohidden ~/Desktop/*
But for those people who are not familiar in using Terminal, we can always use Camouflage for Mac.
Using Camouflage, with just a click away you can hide/show your icons.
And what's best is that, you can grab this application for free.
Finally, you will get the cleanest desktop ever. Make sure you grab some gorgeous walls from our previous wallpaper compilation to even beautify your clean Mac desktop.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick
Winners of CleanMyMac Giveaway
Many thanks to everyone who has participated in the giveaway to try out luck in winning one free CleanMyMac from MacPaw.
Regardless of the order, here are the five lucky winners we have:
-
Vinicius
“ Tried several uninstallers and cleaning utilities for macs, but CleanMyMac really blows the competition … ” -
Aaron
“ … The user-interface it great. It's so simple! … ” -
GSquared
“ … It's as easy as pushing one button. BAM! Clean! ” -
Kaspth
“ … This is one of the applications that truly deserves the tagline, Apple gives its products: "It Just Works". ” -
Gabriel Everett
“ … I'm a student so I'm a freeware addict, and I simply can't afford to pay for cleaning up computers. … ”
License codes are on their way, should reach their places soon!
Daily Tricks 4. Eternal History
After using Safari for quite some time, it will be normal for us to have visit many sites and pages. All of those are tracked and saved in our history.
Perhaps after a year or more, we will forget some of useful sites and want to find it. At that time, we can use our history to trackback.
If you are using Firefox as web browser, you can have your eternal history by following these steps:
- Open Firefox and go to its Preferences
- Under Preferences Pane, choose Privacy Section
- Take a look at the first check box labelled "Keep my history for at least … days". You can fill any large numbers here, e.g. 99999.
- And your history files will remain there for that written days, practically eternal
On the other hand, if you want to make your history only lasts for 1 day, you can simply change the number to 1.
For Safari, the setting is under Safari Menubar → Preferences → General Section.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
Firefox,
Safari
Get the Most out of Adium
Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.
Most of Mac users have known the existence of this instant messaging client. And today, I would like to reveal some of the nifty tricks while using Adium to get the most out of Adium, such as inserting line break, changing nickname, updating Twitter with Adium, and many others.
Don't forget to leave your comment or feedback.
Daily Trick 3. Quick Look Zoom
Quick Look usually scales down big images to suit the screen resolution. Because of this, we may lose some details of the image while we observed it in Quick Look mode.
Some people maybe suggest using Full Screen Mode, but that's not solving the problem for images with higher dimension than our screen resolution.
The ideal solution is to use Quick Look Zoom that is achieved by pressing (and holding down) Option key and you will see the cursor change to a magnifier icon. After the zooming, you will be able to drag the image around.
Zooming in effect:
[1] Normal View
[2] Zoom View
For zooming out, use Shift-Opt with mouse-click(s).
This trick only works on image files. If you want to zoom in/out PDFs, you can simply use Cmd-[+] or Cmd-[-].
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick
MacBook Spaceship
A French guy is using his MacBook when it suddenly transforms into a MacBook Spaceship.
Let's watch and be amazed by this new MacBook technology.
Source: LiveLeak - MacBook Transform
Daily Trick 2. Total Darkness
Usually, in order to adjust the brightness of our Mac to 0%, we will press and hold the function button all the way until the light from our Mac is gone. And I am not satisfied with this usual stuff as it's not giving me immediate darkness to my Mac.
I've mentioned this trick somewhere in previous articles, we can use single keystrokes to get total darkness of our Mac.
0% Brightness
Shortcut: Ctrl-Shift-Eject.
This will sleep only the display without turning your Mac into sleep mode.
And this saves more battery power compared to turning on screen saver.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick