Tag Archives: mac

Remove The Mac Dock Delay When Auto-Hide Feature Is Enabled [Tip]

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The Dock in Mac provides an easy way to launch your frequently used apps. The space it offers is limited though, and that is why most users reserve it for apps like a text editor or web browser etc. Mac OS X lets you auto-hide Dock when you aren’t using it and access it by simply hovering the mouse pointer. If you choose to auto-hide the Dock, then you may have noticed that it takes a few milliseconds (very long and annoying milliseconds) to reveal itself when you move your mouse to the edge of the screen. The time delay is obviously there to prevent the Dock from reappearing when you don’t intend to use it, but it can get annoying when you do want it to appear. This tip lets you remove that little time delay and have the Dock popping up on the slightest mouse hover. Read More

Quickly View & Insert Accented Characters When Typing On Mac [Tip]

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If you’ve ever eaten at a French or Mexican restaurant, and afterwards tried to tell a friend over email or text message what you had, it’s likely that you had difficulty in spelling out the name of the dish, since both French and Spanish have special accented characters. Many words in the English language, like cliché and Résumé, that originate from French, make use of accented letters, and when writing emails or using them as part of ordinary everyday writing, you might face difficulty because your keyboard doesn’t have a quick option for printing these characters. For Mac users, these options are actually easily accessible in any app that allows text input. Read More

Walletx: Feature-Rich Password Manager With Encrypted Dropbox Sync Support [Mac]

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From a security perspective, Macs haven’t been having a great time lately. Just last month, the Flash Trojan had many people scanning their systems for a possible infection, and now the news of the password exposing bug in OS X 10.7.3 is going to leave you wondering how secure your login credentials are. Undoubtedly, Apple will have a fix for this, just like with the Trojan. In the event that you’ve been unaffected by either of these incidents, it’s time to count your lucky stars and at the same time, perhaps consider putting your information behind an extra layer of protection. Walletx is a free Mac app that lets you store your important information, like login IDs, passwords, credit card numbers, insurance information, home address, banking information, contact numbers, emergency numbers, and more. The app allows you to create several separate databases (or profiles), and save items to them. This is helpful when you want to keep your work and personal information in the same place, but avoid mixing them up, or just make it easier to retrieve later. The app additionally allows you to sync data to Dropbox, so that it is available across different Macs. Walletx saves information in its own format, and the data saved to Dropbox is password protected. Read More

[Giveaway] DragonDrop Makes Drag & Drop Easier By Providing A Temporary Holder For Copying Files [Mac]

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If you’ve used a Windows PC, you know there is no such thing as Desktop Spaces like there are in Mac, and, without question, they are an excellent feature to have. While they make it extremely easy to manage windows and group your work by the apps you have opened, it can sometimes be inconvenient when you have to move an item from one desktop space to another. DragonDrop is a Mac app, worth $4.99 in the Mac App Store, that acts as a ‘holder’ for any file, folder or text you want to copy and paste from one location or space to another. The app works entirely in the Menu Bar and captures anything you drop onto it, leaving you free to use your mouse for clicking, selecting and dragging other things around. Read More

View Character, Word & Paragraph Count For Selected Text From Mac Context Menu [Tip]

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Counting the number of words in a file is probably something you do when you’re in college and you have a paper of a specific length to turn in. There are few other occasions when you would actually need to count the number of characters or words in a file, but if you do, there isn’t a quick way to do so in Mac. A Terminal command does exist that counts characters in a text file, but if you need a more universally applicable solution, you can use this script to create a service that does just  that. You will be able to run it from the context menu, and can forgo having to copy text to the clipboard and then pasting it into an app that does the same. Read More

Free Video Converter Embeds Subtitles In Videos, Converts To MP4 [Mac]

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Video converters are as common as they get for pretty much any platform. Even if you don’t have the perfect desktop video converter, there are plenty of web apps that let you convert video formats and you can use them without having to worry about platform compatibility. What’s harder to find is an app that will let you add subtitles to your videos. Free Video Converter is, as its name implies, a free Mac app that does precisely that. Not only does this utility batch convert videos from various formats to MP4 (including FLV to MP4), it also embeds the specified subtitle file within the converted output, so you can play it wherever you want, however you want. Converting and adding subtitles can be done in bulk, that is, you can convert multiple media files at once. The only downside to this otherwise-reasonable app is that it's ad-supported. Read More

Reddit Notifier: Menu Bar Notifications & Audio Alerts For New Reddit Messages [Mac]

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When it comes to web portals, Reddit is an amazing one; it may waste a lot of your time, but you will still end up learning a ton of new things in the process. While the site is one of the many reasons people all over the world don’t manage to get to sleep as early as planned, it is also a great place for raising awareness about important events. If you obsessively read everything on Reddit, and are more than the average lurker, Reddit Notifier is a Mac app (worth $1.99 in the Mac App Store) that you may find useful. It gives you notifications in the Menu Bar and sounds audio alerts when you receive a new message on Reddit. The alerts are customizable, so you can set them to sound once, continuously or not at all. Read More

[Giveaway] Video Flow: Create Screencasts, Split/Merge & Annotate Them [Mac]

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If you’re in the market for an amazing screen casting tool, look no further than Video Flow for Mac OS X. The app is a video creation and editing tool, which allows you to create screencasts, annotate them with text, and add videos or audio files to your screencast, or simply annotate existing videos that you may have downloaded or recorded yourself. The app lets you split videos, and also supports video-in-video frame sets (whereby you can start a video within the current one),  truly setting itself apart from its peers. It allows you to resize your screencasts to the right size for viewing on an iPod, iPhone, iPad or YouTube. Additionally, when saving your file, you can choose the frame rate it should be saved with. The available range is from 10 to 45 fps. The only downside is the rather hefty price tag, which stands currently at $50, but you can skip that if you're lucky enough to win a license in our giveaway. Read More

FileDesk LITE: Tabbed File Browser With Command+X Cut Support [Mac]

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Mac’s default file browser, the Finder, isn’t one of the things you hear users complain about. It works reasonably well and for the few things that are missing, you can always enable them via a few simple Terminal commands or apps. For some, the Finder may not be a matter of too few features, but rather too many of them that you might not use or need. FileDesk LITE is a simple file browser for Mac that lets you browse files in tabs. The app mimics how you would use a web browser and has a ‘up one level’ button that lets you return to the previous or parent folder. Additionally, the app has Command+X support for files (cut functionality), which is missing in Finder. The app doesn’t support complex features; labels and shortcuts (aliases) are supported but the app is interface focused and is meant for someone with simpler needs. The app runs in a single window and tabs allow you to view different folders separately. Read More

How To Cut & Paste Files/Folders In Mac OS X Lion Finder via Keyboard [Tip]

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If you’ve used Windows or have had the opportunity to hear a Windows user describe in detail how Microsoft's OS is better than Apple's Mac, you probably know that Windows users take pride in the right-click context menu options provided by the OS, and the fact that they have easy Cut, Copy and Paste for files as well as text. The fact is that all these options are available in Mac as well, one just needs to do a little digging around. When it comes to moving a file or folder from one location to the other in Mac, you have to select and drag it to the new location. This proves that the Cut functionality exists, just not via Command+X. Here’s a little tip to reproduce the same effect with keyboard shortcuts. It is super simple and you need only learn a slightly different hotkey. Read More

5 Tricks For Tweaking Finder In Mac OS X Lion

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Mac OS X Lion does quite a few things differently from Snow Leopard, and for the most part, users have either reconciled with it or found an app, script or tweak that helped restore it to how it looked or worked before the new version. Whether you are yet to upgrade to Lion, have recently done so or are already using it without any modifications in the hopes that you will eventually get used to it, here are a few things you can do to bring back some functionality to the Finder. Read More

Time Sink: Record & Generate Reports For Usage Time Of Mac Apps

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As much as you may convince yourself that you’re a productive, well focused and difficult to distract person when it comes down to work, the fact is that the internet is ruled by kittens and you just can’t get enough of them. For many people, especially those who work remotely, the temptation to check your Facebook feed or read an interesting article is sometimes too much to overcome, often leaving them wondering where the time went. Time Sink is an excellent Mac app, worth $4.99 in the Mac App Store, that tells you just how you’ve been spending your time. Not only does the app have an excellent interface, but is feature rich, allowing you to create ‘app pools’ to measure the time spent on a particular task which may involve using more than a single app. It additionally gives you the option to run either as an application window, or from the Menu Bar. At the same time, it supports an activity monitor in its Dock icon, which pretty much means you can’t escape the fact that you’re wasting precious time. Read More

FileWard DES: Encrypt/Decrypt & Create Checksum For Files, Folders & Clipboard Content [Mac]

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Encrypting files or folders on Mac isn’t as easy as you would expect. If you often encrypt folders to ensure your data is always safe should it fall into the wrong hands, and remains inaccessible for as long as possible, then FileWard DES is a free Mac app that might be extremely useful for you. The app has an excellent, yet simple interface that supports drag & drop. It allows you to encrypt and decrypt files and folders, uses the OS X password assistant to suggest passwords, and also lets you generate checksum values for files and folders. Additionally, the app lets you securely delete files, so that they are not recoverable. Read More

TXTcrypt: Encrypt Private Text Messages Before Sending Them [Mac]

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If you enjoyed making up your own language as a kid and using it in front of your parents to make them think you were up to something, and for some reason, haven’t outgrown this fascination, it might appeal to you to code the messages you send. Whether this, or because your life’s circumstances are such that you would like to add an extra layer of security to your communication. TXTcrypt is a free Mac app that lets you do just that. It can both encrypt and decrypt text. The encryption requires a passkey, which may be up to 8 characters long. The app does not encrypt on the AES standard; instead, it uses the RC4 standard, which, while not as secure as AES, nevertheless provides a reasonable level of protection. Read More

Scrapbook: Clipboard Manager That Remembers Copied Items Even After System Restart [Mac]

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We’ve covered quite a few clipboard managers in the past, each with its own special feature to set it apart from the rest. Scrapbook is yet another free clipboard manager for Mac that lets you copy and paste text, files and folders from your Mac and text from apps, for pasting anywhere. The app uses Bonjour to connect and send snippets to other Macs on the same network. What’s particularly unique about this app is that, unlike other clipboard managers that are erased when you restart your system, Scrapbook remembers the items you copied. Additionally, the app allows you to categorize your clipped items into folders, which makes it an effective way of keeping links and text organized for future reference. Read More

View Signal Strength For Any Bluetooth Device Connected To Your Mac [Tip]

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As technology has progressed, bluetooth has become more of a better way for connecting devices, rather than transferring data. When it comes to data transfer, even wirelessly, there are much faster modes available. Bluetooth’s core usefulness lies in the number of devices you can connect over it. The Apple Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad and the keyboard are just some examples of devices you can use this way. Further additions can be speakers or a headset, thus avoiding lots of wires and capitalizing on the available ports. If you use a large number of Bluetooth devices, you may have wondered what is the best placement for them. A device’s performance is affected by signal strength, and you can’t really put everything in the same spot, due to interference. If you’ve ever wondered how you could view the signal strength of a Bluetooth device and use that information to create an optimum setup, OS X has a solution available in Bluetooth Preferences. Read More

How To Set Mac OS X Sound Volume To A Level Lower Than The Lowest [Tip]

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Some people are embarrassed by the sounds their computers make; no matter how great the start up chime or tune is, it has the ability to annoy people at large and is one of the main reasons why people mute their system’s sound. Of course, not all situations allow you to keep the sound off and if for your comfort, reassurance or need, you feel there has to be some sound coming out of your system , you can set it at the very minimum. What might surprise you is that the lowest volume level in Mac isn’t actually the lowest it can go. This little tip tells you how you can use the volume and mute keys on your Apple keyboard to enable the lowest volume level there is. Read More

Liquid Words: Search, Reference & Translate Text Selected From Within Any App [Mac]

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The right-click context menu in Mac is a fairly sophisticated one. It allows you to search the web for text selected from within any app. This simple little feature makes it easy for us to look up the background story of something, or just search for the meaning of a word. Worth $0.99 in the Mac App Store, Liquid Words is a handy Mac app that not only allows you to search text, selected from within any app, in Google, Google Images, Google Maps, YouTube, Flickr, Amazon and LinkedIn, but also lets you convert currency, temperature, area, speed, distance, volume, weight and data, reference items from Wikipedia, Wordnik, Wolfram Alpha, Google Definition, IMDB and Etymonline in the same manner. That's not all; it even allows you to translate selected text from any language to another. Read More

CornerClick: Assign Any App, File Or Action To Mac Hot Corners

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The default Hot Corners in OS X Lion allow you to start the screensaver, disable it, launch Mission Control, View Application Windows, Desktop, Launchpad or put your system to sleep. Barring the screensaver, you can perform these functions via gestures as well (provided you have a Trackpad). What would have been more useful is to be able to launch any app using one of these Hot Corners. CornerClick is a free Mac app that lets you do just that. You can pick any one of the four Hot Corners, and associate it with a file, an app or multiple apps. When you drag your mouse to the specified corner and click it, the apps or files you’ve associated with it are launched. Read More

InsomniaX: Disable Sleep On Idle Or Lid Close While On Battery Or AC [Mac]

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MacBooks, like all other laptops, go to sleep when their lids are closed. The benefits of this simple function are multiple; you can close the lid and leave your MacBook with the assurance that it will be locked, and should you have forgotten to power it off, the power consumption will be minimized. That, nevertheless, doesn’t mean you always want the lid to trigger this function. Windows allows you to disable this function completely, but Mac, unfortunately, does not. InsomniaX is a free Mac app that not only lets you disable Mac’s idle sleep function, but also lets you stop your MacBook from entering sleep mode when you close the lid. The app lets you define these settings based on the power source, i.e., if the MacBook is running on battery, you may choose to allow it to enter sleep mode when the lid closes or the system is idle, and disable this behavior when it is plugged in. Read More