In iOS 4, there was a toggle-switch that let you turn Notifications off and on. (If you’re still running iOS 4, that’s in Settings -> Notifications.) But with iOS 5’s Notifications overhaul, there’s no longer an obvious means of disabling all notifications on your iPhone or iPad.
This toggle vanishes in iOS 5.
So what do you do if you don’t want to disable your notifications one app at a time, but you still want to be free from them once in a while? The answer depends upon your particular situation.
You’ve just started using a brand-new Mac. You launch Mail.app and start to compose an email to a friend. That’s when it hits you: You haven't yet sent any messages on the new machine, so Mail.app hasn't had any addresses to remember, so it can't autocomplete your friend's address when you begin to type his name. Drat! Fortunately, as Marco Arment recently blogged, there’s a way to copy Mail.app’s autocomplete database from your old setup to your new one. (Marco also happens to be the developer of Macworld favorite Instapaper [].)
On the original Mac—the one that successfully autocompletes email addresses for you—use the Finder to go to the folder ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/. (If you wish, you can select and copy that path here, then go back to the Finder, choose Go -> Go To Folder or type Shift-Command-G, and paste the path.)
Earlier this week, we shared a hint about applying Finder labels from the keyboard. But that hint, which focused on adding labels to the Finder’s toolbar, suffered from a few annoying limitations. One Macworld reader, who asked to remain anonymous, contacted us with a much better solution to the same problem.
This reader’s solution uses Automator. Launch Automator, and create a new Service.
Look for the “Services receive selected…” dropdown menu at the upper right, and choose “files or folders.”
One of the new features in Apple’s Mail app in Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) is a widescreen-friendly, three-column layout, displaying your mailboxes on the left, your message list in the middle, and a message preview on the right. I love this layout—I used a Mail add-on to get it under Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6)—but it’s not without drawbacks.
One of those is that there’s less room to display information about each message in the message list. As a result, Mail shortens the date display dramatically compared to what you’d see in the “classic” Mail layout. Specifically, for messages received today, Lion Mail shows only the time received; for messages received yesterday, Mail displays just the word Yesterday; and for messages received prior to yesterday, Mail displays just the date.
Macworld reader Lynn P. wanted to know if there’s a way to get Mail to display both the date and time for all messages. Though I haven’t found a way to display the date and time for messages received yesterday—Mail is downright determined to use just Yesterday for those messages—with a bit of trickery, it’s possible to add the date for messages received today, and to add the time to messages received prior to yesterday.
The Finder lets you apply different color labels to your files and folders, using the File -> Label control. But there’s no way to apply those labels from your keyboard, right? Wrong! Hints reader gabester discovered that indeed there is a way, if you’re willing to work for it up front. Here’s how:
First, add the Label button to your Finder’s toolbar. To do so, go to the View menu and choose Customize Toolbar. Drag the Label button into your window’s toolbar, and then click on Done.
Now launch System Preferences, select the Keyboard pane, and then open the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Choose Application Shortcuts on the bottom of the list on the left, and then click on the plus (+) icon.
Back in July, I explained how Lion’s new AirDrop feature lets you exchange files simply between two computers with up-to-date Wi-Fi hardware. As I wrote then, AirDrop is a breeze to use if you have the right Mac. You’re out of luck if your computer doesn’t have the right hardware—specifically, if it doesn't have Wi-Fi chips capable of personal area networking (PAN) for peer-to-peer connections. Many Macs, even many of relatively recent vintage and many that can run Lion, don’t have those chips and so can’t use AirDrop. (Apple provides a list of AirDrop-capable Macs here.)
But, it turns out, there’s a workaround. An anonymous Mac OS X Hints reader found that, if you have one of those older Macs, you can add a setting to AirDrop’s defaults that allows AirDrop to work over regular networks, not just PANs.
The change is a one-liner: Open Terminal and, at the command line, type:
Sometimes, you’ll encounter URLs in text that aren’t active links. That is, you can see the URLs, but clicking on them won’t open the requested page in your default browser. Instead, you’re forced to copy and paste the URLs, or Control-click (right-click) and choose Open URL from the contextual menu. Hints reader McYukon discovered a Lion shortcut for opening URLs that you come across in Terminal. It could come in handy if, for example, you use Terminal to look at Read Me files or other text documents.
The trick? Hold down the Command key as you double-click on the URL. That’s it! And it works even if the URL you encounter lacks the http:// portion; Command-double-clicking on www.macworld.com works just fine.
It’s worth experimenting in other apps, too. BBEdit (), for example, offers the same functionality, though the behavior doesn’t appear to be supported system-wide.
