Get more out of your Mac with productivity tips and tricks
Leah started out as a PCWorld columnist before Macworld scooped her up as an assistant editor. Now, she happily writes features and covers iOS apps, smartphone cases, gadget bags, and social media trends across all three of our sites.
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Now that you’ve been using Time Machine regularly to back up your computer, you should be fully prepared if your Mac crashes or if you need to move data from one Mac to another. Restoring data from Time Machine is just as easy as backing things up in the first place.
If you’re looking for a certain file or folder, start by connecting the external drive that you use for Time Machine backups or by making sure that you can connect to your Time Capsule. Click the Time Machine item in the menu bar at the top of your screen (it looks like a clock with an arrow running counterclockwise around it), and choose Enter Time Machine. Here, all of your saved backups will appear in chronological order. Use the visual timeline on the right side to scroll through your backups and look for specific items or folders. Older dates are indicated in pink on the timeline; the most up-to-date data on your Mac is indicated in white. (You’ll see the word 'Now' in bold, white letters on the timeline.)
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Leah started out as a PCWorld columnist before Macworld scooped her up as an assistant editor. Now, she happily writes features and covers iOS apps, smartphone cases, gadget bags, and social media trends across all three of our sites.
More by Leah Yamshon
If you value your data—whether it’s some perfect photos you took last weekend, your entire music collection on iTunes, or your draft of the next great American novel—you must stay on top of regular system backup. One of the easiest ways of doing so is to use OS X’s built-in backup program, Time Machine. Time Machine works with your Mac and an external drive to save important documents, photos, and system files regularly. Apart from keeping spares of every file, Time Machine maintains a record of how your system looked on any given day, so you can easily put everything back the way it was if something goes wrong.
OS X has included Time Machine since OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Here’s how to get set up in OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) using an external drive. For more tips on backing up your data, see "Backup basics" and "Bulletproof backups."
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Senior Contributor Joe Kissell is a best-selling author of print and electronic books about Apple products and a popular speaker at Mac-themed events. He also serves as the Senior Editor of TidBITS.
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If you’re already backing up your Mac—perhaps by following the simple steps in “Backup Basics”—pat yourself on the back. Having any sort of backup is much better than having none, and your probability of recovering from data loss is dramatically increased. But for many people, a barebones backup strategy won’t cut it. If your livelihood depends on your data being available at all times, if you’re in the middle of a time-sensitive project, or if you’re just paranoid and want to make sure nothing has fallen through the cracks, you may want more of a guarantee.
How can you turn so-so backups into fantastic, bulletproof backups? Although everyone’s situation is a bit different, I have several recommendations that should vastly improve the quality and reliability of any backup plan.
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Senior Contributor Joe Kissell is a best-selling author of print and electronic books about Apple products and a popular speaker at Mac-themed events. He also serves as the Senior Editor of TidBITS.
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If you have no backups at all, you probably already realize your data is at risk. Any number of random things—a theft, a hurricane, or a hacker with too much time on his hands—could wipe out everything on your Mac. But you may be reluctant to start backing up because it seems like a big, scary, and possibly expensive undertaking. If that describes your situation, read on for tips on setting up easy, inexpensive backups in as little as 10 minutes. This isn’t a comprehensive strategy by any means (for that, see for my article “Bullet-proof backups”), but it’s a good starting point for anyone seeking a quick fix.
Let’s start with your day-to-day files. For file backups, I’m a huge fan of online backup services. My favorite is CrashPlan (
), but among the other excellent options are Backblaze and Dolly Drive (
). These services are fairly inexpensive and easy to set up; and if you choose one of them, you can skip the remainder of this section. But if you want the simplest, fastest, cheapest option, let me suggest a different type of product: Dropbox ().
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Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Lion’s iCal and Mountain Lion’s Calendar applications have made creating events easier by way of the Create Quick Event feature, which allows you to use natural language such as “lunch with Dan tomorrow” to set up an event. But more convenient still is the ability to create an event or reminder from within any application with the press of a couple of keys. I’ll show you how to do both. Even better, I’ll describe how to enhance one of those methods to make it even more useful…and audible.
Mountain Lion's to-do items no longer live in Calendar, having earned a spot in their own Reminders application. Yes, you can click Reminders in the Dock and then click the plus-sign (+) to make a new reminder. But with the help of an easy Automator workflow, you can keep your hands on the keyboard and make reminders using a keyboard shortcut. It works this way:
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David has been covering Apple and how to get the most out of its products since 2005. Now a freelance tech writer, he runs Finer Things in Tech, jots down thoughts at DavidChartier.com, occasionally starts outlining the great American tech novel, and might still get to snowboard Breckenridge one more time.
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Between new-product reviews, tutorials for a timesaving trick, posts from your favorite blogs, updates from the sites you have to follow for work, and—because everyone needs a break, right?—the latest YouTube meme, it can be hard to keep up with everything you want to read online. No wonder people clamor for a “TiVo for the Web.” Enter read-later services: When you see something important, click a browser button or email the link. Then, at the end or beginning of the day, open the read-later app on the device of your choice—typically a smartphone or a tablet—and download all the content you flagged earlier. Now you’re set to read on your commute, during a plane trip, or just about anywhere, even if you don’t have an Internet connection while you're on the go.
You can choose from a range of features with these services, which include Instapaper, Pocket, Readability, Quote.fm, Evernote Clearly, and Safari’s Reading List. Do you simply want to maintain a reading list, or could you use help from friends to find more interesting things to read? Do you want archival access to the items you’ve read in the past? How about tools for sharing your favorite articles with buddies or adding the stories to the other apps and services you use?
There are more questions to answer than you might think, so I’ll try to help you get started.
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