Tag Archives: Mac OS X

Root AT&T Galaxy S III I747 In One Click On Windows, Linux & Mac With CASUAL

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Yes, the Galaxy S III from AT&T has been rooted for quite some time now, but for anyone who has just purchased the device and is looking for a simple and foolproof way of rooting it, XDA Elite Recognized Developer AdamOutler has just released his famous CASUAL root tool for AT&T’s S III. Short for Cross-platform ADB Scripting, Universal Android Loader, CASUAL works as a one-click root method and it’s massive appeal lies in its ability to run on Windows, Mac and Linux. To take it one step further, there's support for even Raspberry Pi. The tool uses the famous CFAutoRoot by Chainfire to achieve root access on the device. Read More

Remotely Control Mac Brightness, Volume & Media Apps From Android

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There are quite a few apps available in the App Store that allow you to control your Mac. Likewise, there is an equivalent number of apps in the Mac App Store that allow you to control your iOS device. We have covered a fair number of both, but if your desktop computer is a Mac and your preferred phone runs Android, you might not find many apps to bridge this gap. Mac Remote is an Android app that lets you control iTunes, VLC player, iPhoto, Spotify, Quicktime, MPplayerX, and Preview on your Mac. You can also use it to put your Mac system to sleep, shut it down, and increase or decrease its brightness and volume levels. Mac Remote works over your Wi-Fi network and requires you to manually connect your Mac to the app. No Mac app is required in the process. Read More

Bring Back Display Resolution Menu Bar Item In Mac OS X Mountain Lion

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Mountain Lion’s new features are great - so great, that they tend to let you ignore the little things that Apple took away from the OS. Among the casualties of the upgrade, was the battery notification in the Menu Bar that told you how much charge time you had left, the RSS in Safari, adding an external display to your MacBook and using it even when the lid is not closed, and the ability to adjust the display resolution from the Menu Bar. Mountain Lion doesn’t really tease you when it comes to working with multiple displays, but taking away this little functionality was a step backward. Like with the battery time issue that eventually found a solution in the form of third-party apps, you can bring back display resolution management to the menu bar with Display Menu. Read More

Enable AirDrop Over Ethernet On Unsupported Macs [Tip]

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AirDrop is OS X’s native utility for sharing files between Macs over Wi-Fi. You can find a lot of apps that add this same functionality, but the default utility does it best (and for free). Unfortunately, not all Macs support AirDrop (the earliest Mac models that support it are Late 2008 MacBooks, Late 2012 MacBook Airs, early 2009 iMacs and Mid 2010 Mac Minis). MacBook Airs and Mac Mini’s that are more than two or three years old do not support it. However, since apps you download from the Mac App Store allow you to do somewhat the same thing, there is a workaround for some of the unsupported Mac models. With the slight limitation of being connected with an Ethernet wire, you can enable AirDrop on an old Mac by running a simple Terminal command. Read More

Official Pocket App For Mac Released; Allows Clutter-Free Offline Reading Of Bookmarked Articles

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Pocket, formerly known as Read It Later, is an immensely successful web service that allows you to mark online content for reading later. In addition to its web service, it also has web browser extensions and apps for Android, iOS and Kindle, and now, for OS X as well. The Pocket app for Mac is basically a desktop reader for articles you bookmark while surfing the web on any of the mentioned platforms. It allows you to download items in your list for offline reading, and can also be used to save items directly to your Pocket account from the clipboard. The app shows you the number of unread items in the Dock and lets you sort the content by type, same as it does on its web interface. It syncs automatically and has full screen support for clutter-free reading. Bookmarked items can be emailed and/or shared via Facebook, Twitter, Evernote or Buffer. Read More

Group Different Files On Each Desktop Space In Mac With iDesktop

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Desktop Spaces are a great and unique way to manage apps, especially if you’re working with them in full screen, and want to switch between them easily. With Desktop Spaces, you can have a different space for each app or for a number of apps, which allows you to group apps relevant to a particular task in one space. The trouble with the default feature is that it's only for managing app windows, and it doesn't allow you to have different icon arrangements on each Desktop Space. Basically, you get the same files, folders and apps on each space and any changes you make to it are reflected across all of them. In a nutshell, where the spaces allow you to group apps separately, they do not allow the same for files. If you do want to sort files and folders differently for each desktop, you will need  iDesktop, a Mac app worth $4.99 in the Mac App Store, that adds a different set of desktop spaces to your Mac and allows you to change which files you see on each one. You can keep personal files on one desktop and office files on the other. Unlike the default Desktop Spaces, however, you can’t assign an app to a particular space. Read More

Add Contacts From Mac Clipboard & Easily Manage Groups With Guenon Contacts

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The stock address book app in Mac OS X, Contacts, is great in terms of both functionality and design. Managing contacts with it is pretty easy in itself, especially if you’re just looking to move a single or multiple contacts to a group, but as far as an overview of an individual contact is concerned, the number of groups associated with it is left out. Guenon Contacts is an extremely lightweight contact manager, which lets you create groups and add contacts to them from the clipboard. The app can be minimized to a thin bar and activated by a keyboard shortcut. If you think managing groups in Contacts is easy, you will be surprised at how much easier it gets with this app. Read More

Nitro Is A Simple OS X To-Do List App That Syncs To Dropbox & Ubuntu One

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Task management, at times, gets so complex that you need a better way to keep track of the things you have to get done, other than just taking a mental note of them. Not doubting the use of a stack of Post-it notes, but you might want to use a more sophisticated method for creating  lengthier to-do lists or reminders. Nitro is a free Mac app that lets you do just that. Besides an aesthetically pleasing interface, the app is very well written in terms of functionality. Tasks can be grouped into lists, you can set a due date for a task and add tags and notes to it. It supports keyboard shortcuts, allows you to control how the week and date are laid out, comes loaded with five UI skins to chose from and last but not the least, syncs with Dropbox and Ubuntu One. Read More

‘Should I Sleep’ Keeps Mac Display Awake While You’re In Front Of The Webcam

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Dimming displays and password-protected screensavers are one of the many ways a Mac computer saves energy and keeps your desktop safe from prying eyes. Many users set a very short time interval for the screensaver, so that in case they forget to manually lock their Mac, the screensaver acts as a safety net. The dimming display, however, is harder to manage. You can’t really fix a value for screen time-out. At times you’re sitting in front of it looking at lines of code or a document and the screen and you don't want to be interrupted, while other times, you go for a cup of coffee and don't want the display to be awake the entire time you're away from it. Should I Sleep is a free Mac app that helps solve this problem by removing the element of time from the equation. The app works on a very simple principle; it uses your webcam to detect if you’re really at your desk or not, and should it detect movement, it keeps your display from going to sleep. Read More

Any Send: Share Files Between Macs Over WiFi From The Menu Bar

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Macs, the newer ones and a fair number of older ones, support a feature called AirDrop, a Wi-Fi ad-hoc file sharing service that allows users to transfer files to other Macs on the same network. AirDrop is slightly problematic to set up at times, but once you set it up properly, it works without any issues. It is accessible from the Finder menu or from its respective folder, while files are sent by selecting AirDrop from the menu option or by dropping them over one of the Mac icons displayed in the AirDrop folder. If you’ve had trouble setting it up and are looking for a significantly simpler solution that requires close to no settings to configure, you should try Any Send. It's a free Mac app that runs in the menu bar and supports custom keyboard shortcuts. You can send a single or multiple files at once by selecting and copying them the conventional way. The Mac you want to send the files to can be selected from the app’s menu bar icon. Read More

PlayMood For iPhone Uses The Camera To Detect Your Mood & Plays Matching Songs

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Whenever you take out your iPod or launch a music player on your iPhone, Mac or PC, what is it that tells you to pick a particular song from the playlist? It's your mood; what you feel like listening to is usually connected to what you're feeling. Wouldn't it be great if your music player could automatically judge what you're feeling and pick appropriate songs to match your mood? PlayMood is an app for the iPhone and iPod touch that detects your mood using the front-facing camera and plays songs that match it. It can also be set to work in conjunction with PlayMood Remote, a desktop app available for both Mac OS X and Windows. The iPhone app allows you to manually mark songs in your library as either happy, neutral or sad. The desktop client simply uses your webcam to detect your mood, and remotely controls the iPhone app to play songs that you associated with it. Read More

Functional: Log Out, Sleep, Shutdown & Restart OS X From The Dock

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The menus on the left in the OS X Menu Bar change when different app windows are selected but the Apple menu doesn’t go anywhere. That little menu gives you access to the System Preferences, Dock preferences, Network Preferences, the App Store, and options to sleep, restart, shut down or log out of the system. There is an alternative way to access most of these functions. The System Preferences, the App Store and the Dock preferences can all be accessed from the Dock itself or, by extension, from the System Preferences. However, there are no native shortcuts for the frequently used power and log out options. That is where Functional comes in. This free Mac app is a combo of four others. It is added to the Dock as a Stack that, when clicked, shows separate buttons for Restart, Log out, Sleep and Shut Down (the four apps in Functional). Clicking each button executes the corresponding action. Read More

Use Keyboard Shortcuts To Tweet, Update Facebook & Send Messages In OS X

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The major difference felt when updating from OS X Lion to OS X Mountain Lion is the obvious iOS-ification of the system. In addition to integrating several features that were previously iOS-exclusive, Mountain Lion adds greater convenience for social media enthusiasts with Twitter and Facebook integration, making it easier to share links, images or updates with your network. At the same time, you can consolidate your Contacts to include emails and phone numbers from Facebook friends and Twitter followers. The integration is seen throughout all stock apps and in the Notification Center, but what’s been left out are keyboard shortcuts. Mountain Lion lets you tweet or update Facebook regardless of which app or folder you’re working in, but for some reason, you have to always access the two using their respective widgets in the omnipresent Notification Center. Introducing Eggy, a free OS X app that lets you define keyboard shortcuts for posting to Facebook and Twitter, and sending an iMessage through the Messages app. It runs silently in the background without so much as adding an icon to the Menu Bar. Read More

App Switch Moves The Mouse To The Appropriate Display When Switching Apps In OS X

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OS X does a lot of things really well, and even desktop users who prefer Windows over Mac appreciate the genius behind some of its features. What it doesn’t do as well as it should is the way it manages multiple displays. You can simply plug in a second display and it will work, but there are some inconveniences that are still there; for instance, the Dock does not appear on the second screen and if you view an app in full screen on one display, the other display is rendered useless with the grey linen background. Perhaps, the most peculiar behavior that’s observed with multiple displays is when you switch to an app open in the other display; although it activates the window, the cursor remains where it is and does not move to the second screen. App Switch is a menu bar app for Mac OS X that fixes this behavior by moving the mouse pointer to the exact center of the screen that you selected. Read More

Desktop Groups Is A Fences-Like Desktop Organizer For Mac OS X

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The best desktop to work on is the one with the least clutter. With the Dock, Launchpad, and Spotlight on Mac OS X, you certainly don’t need shortcuts for an app on your desktop so it’s mostly just your files that are there. Objectively speaking, the number of files you need to have on your desktop varies from person to person, but the one thing most users want is a clean and organized desktop. Desktop Groups Lite is a free Mac app that not only helps you organize files on your desktop, but also keeps it clean. It lets you create frames on your desktop that confine files dragged & dropped within their boundaries, much like Fences, a popular desktop organizer for Windows. You can add as many files as you like to a frame and resize it according to your requirements. A scroll bar allows you to see the files in a particular frame when they exceed the number that can be visible with the current size. The Lite version is a stripped down variant of Desktop Group (priced at $5.99) and allows adding only up to five frames. Read More

View The Latest World News From The Mac Menu Bar & Notification Center With News Loop

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You’ve probably got a favorite RSS feed reader on your Mac that you, for one reason or the other, prefer over others. Some of you might still read feeds in your browser using Google Reader or other online feed reader, subscribing to and keeping up with each feed of interest one by one. For those who aren't interested in a particular niche not thoroughly covered by mainstream news sources usually prefer to skip the entire ordeal of looking for, subscribing to and manually checking each news source for updates. Such users have a bunch of solutions available for them in the market, one of which is News Loop for Mac, a free app that sits in the menu bar and displays updates from major news websites, such as Daily News, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, USA Today and Washington Post. You can, of course, choose which of these sources appear in the updates displayed by the app. You can even have the app keep you apprised of new updates through Notification Center alerts. Read More

Cream: OS X RSS Reader With Instapaper, Pocket & Readability Support

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RSS readers for Mac come in a lot of different shapes. Everything from your desktop background, to the Menu Bar or Notification Center in Mountain Lion can be used to monitor RSS feeds. If you still prefer to read feeds in a window, Cream is a Mac app, worth $4.99 in the Mac App Store, that is worth a try. At the core, Cream is a regular feed reader, but it comes with an extra filter that sorts items by your personal preference. As you read different items in your feed, Cream learns what you like and uses the stats to find other similar news items. Soon, the creaminess filter will be able to sort your feed to display items you are most likely to be interested in. Apart from this intelligent filter, the app has one of the best interfaces you will see on an RSS reader. Like many other RSS readers, it comes packed with a few sample feeds, but lets you choose whether you want to include them too or simply want to import feeds from your Google account, Safari or a file. Read More

PDFzen: Annotate & Share PDF Documents From Web, Windows, Mac & iOS

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PDF editors come in all shapes and sizes, but not all of them (in fact, hardly any) allow you to easily annotate PDF documents and share them with others for collaboration. PDFzen from Docudesk will set you on a course that makes PDF manipulation a tad easier. It’s an HTML5 based web app (with Windows, Mac and iOS companion clients) that lets you perform basic editing and annotation on PDF documents before sharing them with friends or colleagues. You can share the annotated documents on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and Reddit, or copy their source URLs. The service is fairly easy to use, and doesn’t require you to go through the hassle of configuring editing tasks and access permissions. Read More

Obscurity For OS X: Hide Your Files In An App Disguised As A Folder

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The days of sharing a single computer with the entire family are almost over, and most people have a separate computer system for each family member. This means you have your very own system to do whatever you want. It’s entirely up to you what your desktop looks like, how you keep files organized and which apps are installed. While you get all this freedom with your personal computer, there still isn’t any guarantee that you will never have to share or lend it to someone. The number one concern you have with someone else accessing your system is privacy. Obscurity is a free Mac app that provides you the simplest way to hide your files. Unlike marking them as hidden files or adding them to an encrypted drive, the app itself acts as a cover for your files. It creates a a mock folder that looks like a normal one, but will not open when double clicked. To be able to open it, you need to right-click the folder and select the Show Package Contents option. Read More