Archive for the ‘OS X Tricks’ Category

Many Windows users are familiar with the F8 keystroke required to start their PCs in Safe Mode for troubleshooting purposes. Mac users can do the same, but in a slightly different way. If your Mac is freezing, not starting up correctly, or behaving in another…

No matter what browser you use – Safari, Firefox, Opera, Chrome – you can easily block access to certain websites by editing your Mac’s hosts file. In fact, it’s completely free and no extra software is required. Parents, employers, and computer…

Time Machine, the automated backup utility built into Mac OS X, is set to run every hour by default. Is this too often for you? Find out how you can change the backup interval, plus how to initiate backups only when you trigger them manually…

Mac OS X occasionally gets hung up on stubborn files and refuses to easily delete them. If you can’t empty your Mac’s Trash, try some of these techniques to get rid of those nasty errors and clear out the junk. As a Mac user…

Expanding on some features already in previous versions of Mac OS X and also introducing new ones, 10.6 Snow Leopard offers users more ways to work with minimized windows. As mentioned at the end of MacYourself’s article…

When navigating through directories in Finder’s column view, file names often get truncated because they don’t fit in the default column width. Once you know the tricks that follow, that will not longer be a problem. It’s been..

Stacks are like mini-Finder viewers built right into the Dock. The feature got a few nice improvements in Mac OS X Snow Leopard and, with some shortcuts and customizations, it can be even better. Back in the early days of MacYourself, we published…

When OS X 10.5 Leopard came out a little under 2 years ago, the Mac community was split between those who loved the new 3D glass shelf Dock and those who despised it. With a quick tweak in Terminal, everyone wins. If eye…

We published an article called “Cool new enhancements to Exposé in Mac OS X Snow Leopard” a couple weeks ago thinking that was all the feature had to offer, but it turns out that’s not the case. There are even more nifty tricks to learn!

Recent switchers from the Windows world might get frustrated at the Mac operating system’s apparent anti-keyboard bias when it comes to dialog boxes. The option to Tab through buttons is there – just not by default. Have you ever had a dialog…

When ejecting a volume in Mac OS X, you may be greeted with an error that says the disk is in use. Getting past this occasional annoyance is inconvenient, but not at all painful. Just about every Mac user has seen this error…

Let’s say you totally forgot the password to log on to your Mac. Or maybe you purchased a used Mac from someone else and they’ve got it locked down. There are numerous ways to reset a password with no OS X discs…