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Mac OS X Hints Boost your productivity with our Mac OS X tips and tricks
Copy events, delete Mail messages
Couple of quick ones today:
First, Macworld senior editor Dan Frakes recently reported that he'd inadvertently stumbled on an undocumented keyboard shortcut for deleting messages in Mail: Control-H. Hitting that key-combo does the same thing as the Delete key, sending messages to the Trash folder.
That might seem odd at first glance, but isn't really odd at all: Control-H is the Unix keybinding for the Backspace or Delete key. As a result, you can use Control-H to delete text in apps that use the Cocoa text input framework. Its ability to delete messages in Mail is an interesting side-benefit.
The second tip (from an anonymous Hints reader) is for those of you who use two calendar applications. If you do and if, say, you're switching from Outlook to iCal, you can drag an event from Outlook into iCal's window, and it will be duplicated in iCal. If you drag the event onto the iCal icon in the Dock, you'll get a dialog asking which calendar you want to use (assuming you have more than one), and the event will be added to it.
Organize videos by groups in iTunes
In iTunes, there are two ways to categorize your videos: as either Movies or TV Shows. Movies are displayed individually, but TV shows are organized in groups, as they would be if they were episodes in the same show. One anonymous Mac OS X Hints reader takes advantage of this to organize all kinds of videos, regardless of their actual source. He uses his Movies library for very large files and puts everything else in TV Shows. So, for example, in his TV Shows library, he has groups called YouTube Videos, Home Videos, Work Stuff, and so on.
To create a group, first make sure both TV Shows and Movies are visible in the iTunes source list. If they're not, go to iTunes' General preferences and check Movies and TV Shows in the Show section.
Next, import your new video into iTunes by dragging it to the source list where these libraries display. In most cases, iTunes will categorize it as a movie. In the Movies library, select the video and press Command-I to display its Info window. On the Options tab choose TV Show from the Media Kind drop-down.
Now move over to the Sorting tab. Correct the Name tag that iTunes applied, if necessary. Next, enter a group name in the Show field. This is the trick: Video files that have the same Show name will be organized into the same group; so, for example, our anonymous Hints reader created "shows" called YouTube, Home Videos, and so on. Once you've entered the Show name, click on OK, and your changes will be applied.
How to delete the Dock delay
You probably know that you can configure the Dock to hide itself when you aren’t using it. (If not: Go to System Preferences -> Dock, and select Automatically Hide and Show the Dock, or Control-click on the separator in the Dock itself and select Turn Hiding On.) You may also have noticed that, if the Dock is hidden and you then move your cursor to the edge of the screen to make it reveal itself, there’s a slight delay before the Dock slides back into view. The delay may not be that long—maybe half a second—but it does irritate some users.
If you’re one of them, OS X Hints reader bahoom found that a simple Terminal command can make the Dock appear instantly. In Terminal, run the following command: defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 0 && killall Dock. That will change the setting and relaunch the Dock. When you move your cursor to the edge of your screen now, the Dock should reappear immediately.
If you ever want to restore the default delay, go back to Terminal and enter the command: defaults delete com.apple.Dock autohide-delay && killall Dock.
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Delete Dropbox cache to recover drive space
I use Dropbox to sync files across my Macs, but also to collaborate with others using shared folders. One day, I discovered that the disk space on my MacBook Air had dropped substantially. I started poking around, looking for swap files and other usual suspects, but eventually found one especially large folder hidden inside my Dropbox folder: .dropbox.cache.
Looking inside this folder, I found that it contained three dated folders, one each for the past three days. Inside each of those were a number of files; many, I could tell, were from my shared project folders. Because we use a versioning system on one of those projects, I could see multiple versions of many files. In all, I found 8 GB of cached files.
On a desktop Mac, that many files wouldn't be a big deal. But if you have a MacBook Air, in particular, without a lot of disk space to spare, it could be an issue. So, if you see yourself running out of room on your hard drive, check that folder and delete files that you know you don't need.
Send text, files from Mac to iOS via Messages
Sometimes you want to send a file, URL, text snippet, or image from your Mac to your iPhone (or vice versa). I generally use email for this purpose, but Mac OS X Hints reader NaOH-Lye found another method (via MacDrifter): Use Messages.
If you have the Messages beta installed on your Mac, click on the Compose button at the upper left of the Messages window. At the To prompt, start typing your own name, then select your iMessage address from the list of suggestions. Then drag (or copy and paste) your file, URL, or text snippet into the text-entry field at the bottom of the window. Whatever you’re sending will appear on the “sent” side of the message pane; it will almost immediately appear in the “received” side, too. More importantly, it will almost immediately pop up on your iOS device as well.
This works in the other direction—from iOS to Mac—too, though it’s limited to text and images. For text, you obviously just type the text into the text-entry field. (This could be a handy way to take notes on your iPad, then send them quickly to your Mac.) For images, you tap on the camera icon, then select an existing image from your Camera Roll or photo library. This could be particularly useful if (like me) you have to take screenshots on your phone or tablet and send them to your Mac; it’s way easier than doing so via email.
Unzip almost any archive file
I recently downloaded a zip archive of freely-distributed MP3 files. But when I double-clicked it to decompress it, all I got was a .cpgz file (an archive file in the CPIO format). Double-clicking that file just created the zip file again, and thus I was stuck in an endless loop
Searching on Google, I saw that plenty of other people had come across the same problem. Some of them suggested some fixes, but none of those fixes worked for me. Some online posts suggested that I download the file again, because the first file might have become corrupted. But as it was a very large file, I really didn’t want to try that.
The solution for me was to use the free The Unarchiver, which turns out to be a Swiss army knife for decompressing many obscure types of archives. Opening the file with The Unarchiver decompressed it correctly.
In some cases, The Unarchiver may not work. If this is the case—or if you simply prefer using Terminal—you can try using the unzip command. Just launch Terminal, type unzip, then a space, then drag your archive into the Terminal window and press Return. That will decompress many files that are resistant to other techniques.
Search for messages by domain in Lion
In versions of OS X before Lion, you could quickly search for messages from a given domain (macworld.com, for example) just by typing it in the search field. But such searches are more difficult in Lion's version of Mail. That's because, when you type the domain name, the program will show you all of the messages that have been sent to or received from that domain, as well as any messages that contain that domain as a string of text in the body; it will also show you a drop-down suggestion-list of specific senders from that domain.
Reader pfernandes points out that there is a way to refine Mail searches to find all senders or recipients from a given domain: If you type from:@domain, you will see a list of all the messages you've received from any email addresses in that domain. You can also use to:@domain to look for the messages that you've sent to any addressees in it.
Note that you will see these search results in Mail's message-list pane after you type the search-term but before you hit Return. If you then hit Return, Mail will convert your search term into a token and treat it literally; in other words, it will look for senders (or recipients) whose addresses consist solely of the domain name and therefore return no results.
Customize shortcuts for Mission Control, Dashboard
You probably know that you can choose keyboard shortcuts for Mission Control and Dashboard in the Mission Control pane of System Preferences. But the shortcuts listed there are limited. For example, for Mission Control you can choose function keys from F1 to F13, but you can’t select, say, F14 or F15; you have a few other options, such as the right or left Shift or Control keys. The same is the case for Dashboard, though it is limited to only the F keys.
Reader channui figured out a way to enter other keyboard shortcuts for these features. Just go to the Keyboard pane in System Preferences. In the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, select Mission Control or Dashboard and enter your keyboard shortcut there. It will automatically be reflected in the Mission Control preference pane. You can use this same procedure to set keyboard shortcuts for many other system features, such as Launchpad, the Dock (hiding and displaying), and so on.
Auto-convert songs at higher bit-rates in iTunes 10.6
The recently released iTunes 10.6 has plenty of notable new features, including support for 1080p video and some tweaks to iTunes Match. But many music lovers will appreciate one new feature in particular: In the past, you could automatically convert songs with a high bit-rate to a more manageable 128 kbps when syncing them to an iPod or iOS device. Now, with iTunes 10.6, you have three bit-rate options for that conversion: 128, 192 and 256 kbps.
To access this feature, connect an iPod (or iPhone or iPad) to iTunes, select the device, and go to its Summary tab. At the bottom of that window, in the Options section, you'll see the Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs To option. If you select that option, you can then choose the bit-rate you want from a drop-down menu.
Many iTunes users have been hoping for this option for a while. If you have a lossless library, it allows you to convert audio tracks with higher quality when you sync your iOS device. Note that this conversion can take a long time the first time around, but subsequent syncs will be much faster.
Use OS X linen pattern for desktop background
If you've been using OS X Lion, you've no doubt seen the dark linen pattern that Apple uses as a background for the login screen. That same pattern pops up in iOS 5, too. If you like that look and would like to use it as your everyday desktop background, OS X Hints reader rgetter found out how to make that so.
In the Finder, choose Go -> Go to Folder, and enter
/System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Versions/C/Resources/In that folder, look for the file NSTexturedFullScreenBackgroundColor.png. Copy this file (select it and press Command-C), then go to your Pictures folder and press Command-V to make a copy of it there.
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