UsingMac.com
Mac Tricks and Tips, Wallpapers and Applications for Mac Users
Maintaining Battery Life
If somehow you happen to hear someone said that it's fine to connect your MacBook battery to power socket all the time, then it's unlucky that you've got the wrong idea. Plugging your battery all the time will shorten your battery life.
Checking Battery Condition
There is an application called Coconut Battery that can help you inspect your battery life.
How is your battery condition?
When is Your Mac Birthday?
Maybe this question is too strange for you (and your Mac). But, this is a surprisingly interesting question to be asked; to know more about your Mac. Who knows that tomorrow will be your Mac birthday.
Do you want to know when is your Mac birthday?
Batch Resize Images
While resizing all my images, photos and wallpapers, I came into this great trick to easily batch resize images that I've never read somewhere else before; You can simply use Preview to batch resize images.
Wanna know more?
Mail Tips: Marking Messages
In order to easily distinguish between useful Mail and useless Mail from your cluster of messages inside Mail, you can use four types of message marking as your assistance. These four types of marking available in Mail are: Mark As Unread, Mark As Flagged, Mark As Junk Mail and Mark As Hidden.
How to use these four message markings for your Mail?
Quick Way to Set Image as Desktop Picture
There is a bunch of ways to set an image as your Desktop picture, such as using Quicksilver or using Automator.
Recently, I've found another quick way to do that. Do you want to know what's that?
Bookmarklets for Mac Safari
Above: Safari splitted by two. Done with bookmarklet.
There is a way to quickly run short script in your Safari web browser; It's by using bookmarklets. Bookmarklets are bookmark items and bookmark items are not limited to only url address; We can also make short javascript function as bookmark item by simply dropping the favicon to bookmark bar.
7 Tricks for Stack You Must Know
Stack has been really useful for Leopard users in organizing and keeping their stuffs clean and well-arranged. Now, there are something in the stack that will definitely enhance your experience.
7. Slow Motion Effect
Maybe you've already heard about this before, by pressing modifier key Shift and clicking on the stacked folders, you can see your Stack opened in Slow Motion. It's worth a try.
6. Open Multiple Folders from Stack
Perhaps, when you want to open multiple files from Stack, you usually open your Stack and then open one file at a time. But with the help of Option, you can click on as many folders as you want and all enclosing folders will be opened in separate Finder windows.
5. Stack in Tiger
Folks from Creative Bits pointed out that Stack can be used in Tiger by simply dragging the folder to your Dock and holding down mouse for like 2 seconds will be needed when you want to open the list of files inside that folder.
But I personally haven't tested this neat trick. So it would be great if some Tiger users can give me useful inputs on this.
4. Drag Stack Out of Dock
By pressing Command while dragging your Stack folder out of Dock, you will make a duplicate of that folder instead of making that particular folder vanish.
100+ Must Know Quick Leopard Tips
There are a lot of things out there that can be done to your Mac OS X. These 101 are just a small collection of those cool things. Since every single trick are too small to be compiled as single article, I decided to combine them all in a single post. Hope you can enjoy it.
Finder - Plain List View
Activate Plain Finder
If you dislike the blue and white stripes on your Finder list view, you can use following line of Terminal command to make the background display plain white.
defaults write com.apple.finder FXListViewStripes -bool FALSE killall Finder
Finder: Checking Total Size of Files
When you want to check the size of a single file, highlighting the file followed by pressing Command-I (Get Info) is enough to extract out the file size.
Safari and Firefox - Quick Google Search
Usually, what will you do when you want to start new search with Google search bar on the top-right corner of your web browser? There are three ways to do that.
Type 1. Google Homepage
This is the least advanced way. However, most of my friends still use this way. First, you open new tab (keystrokes : Command-T), followed by typing in the url address "www.google.com", filling in the search term and Google will return you the result.
The advantage of using this way is that you can see Google homepage which in special occasion, the logo is changed.
Safari - Easy Private Browsing Toggling
It's quite surprising that when I open my MacBook today, I saw a globe instead of Apple logo. Anyone knows why?
Safari Private Browsing
Ok. Let's talk about Private Browsing of Safari. We all know that with private browsing, whatever we browse won't come out at the History section of our Safari browser. It's quite a nice feature that Safari has.
Add spacers to Leopard OS X
In Terminal.app, execute the command for number of times you want to create spacer.
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type"="spacer-tile";}'
Then restart Dock. execute this command in Terminal.
killall Dock
Spacer can move with drag, can remove by context menu or drag outside. Another alternative, you also can download divider docks from Dock Dividers.
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Display - Hot Corners
In Tiger, Expose is very essential feature that most of Mac user need. Upgrading to Leopard, you also get the access to more Spaces. To use these great features easily, you could use Hot Corners.
Hot Corners
Hot corners help you activate one of those features whenever you move your mouse to the corner of the screen. And you can easily set up your hot corners. How to set up hot corners?
Setting Hot Corners
First of all, go inside Apple ▸ System Preferences… Go to your search box, the one with magnifier at the left, and type in "hot corner" to look for this feature. You will see 2 items highlighted. Choosing either one has the same result.
Hidden Preference Panes for Mac OS X
Preference panes are dynamically loaded plug-ins that provide a graphical user interface to the system’s or an application’s user preferences - Apple
In System Preferences, each icon represents an individual preference pane plug-in which can be used to change or modify the setting for each application.
Most of preference panes contain generally used application. We can also create our own preference panes that will be able to be used by System Preferences or even by your application. The link above contains the details, if you're interested.
Volume Adjustment - Lower a Bit
Would you mind decreasing your volume a bit please..?
Less One Block
Yeah, of course. Most of the people will just use the volume key on their laptop (F4 or worst, F3). It results in your one block of sound bar disappear.
Skype - Get Hidden Emoticons
Playing around with Skype recently drawing out my curiosity to discover more and more of its emoticons.
Visible Emoticons
At first, I think Skype's emoticons are limited only to 72 default emoticons. Who knows that Skype actually has more hidden in depth.
Shown above : 72 Skype default visible emoticons.
Leopard Finder - Smart Sidebar Items
Initially, Leopard Finder has 6 pre-defined smart folders on it sidebar. Actually, there are 11 of them provided. How to activate all 11 of them?
They are called CannedSearches
First of all, you should spot them first. If you follow these simple steps, spotting them won't be hard :
- Open Finder
- Go to Macintosh HD ▸ System ▸ Library ▸ CoreServices ▸ Finder
- Right-click on Finder icon and choose
Show Package Contents - Dig inside Contents ▸ Resources ▸ CannedSearches
MacBook - Trackpad Adjustments
Trackpad plays the most important role on using MacBook, especially when mouse isn't present. How to adjust Trackpad behavior?
Note : It's obvious that reading this article won't be useful for those Macs without trackpad. And, I'm not discussing MacBook Air's smart trackpad here.
Trackpad Preferences Pane
It's really easy to find this pane. These simple steps will do.
- Go inside Apple ▸ System Preferences…
- Click on
Keyboard & Mouseunder Hardware section - You will see 4-5 tabs inside, i.e. Keyboard, Trackpad, Mouse, Bluetooth, and Keyboard Shortcuts. Choose
Trackpad - Now, you're already inside Trackpad Preferences Pane
