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Mac 101: Get rid of that Apple watermark in iDVD
I do not spend too much of my time (free or otherwise) in the wilds of iDVD, however, last week I found myself needing to make a DVD for work. What better program, thought I, than iDVD to get these movies onto a DVD! It worked like a charm, and within 30 minutes I had a very slick looking DVD but there was one little problem. This DVD I was making had nothing to do with Apple, its products, or its technology and yet there on the lower right hand corner was an Apple logo watermark. It was out of place, and I wanted to get rid of it.Luckily, it is very easy to get rid of that watermark. Simply go into the iDVD preferences and you'll find the option right there in the General section. Uncheck 'Show Apple logo watermark' and you're good to go.Simple? Yes, however, sometimes the most difficult thing about a program is knowing the options that are available. Go forth and make watermark-less DVDs!
Mac 101: Spring-loaded folders
Dragging a file from one folder to another is one of the Great Innovations of Modern Times. It's like the web, or sporks. But sometimes it's a hassle: what if you want to drag a file to a folder...inside another folder? Dum dum dummm...In comes another Great Innovation of Modern Times: the spring-loaded folder. This allows you to drag a file to another folder through a folder hierarchy. Makes no sense? Give it a try: Click and hold a file to drag it. Move the file over a folder and wait a few seconds. The folder opens. Still holding the file, drag it over another folder. That folder opens. Repeat as necessary. Release the file when you're in the folder you want, and all the excess folders close out. You can make the process even quicker by hitting the spacebar key when you're hovering the file over the folder, instead of waiting those few second for the folder to spring-load itself.Nifty, eh?[Update:] Two more great tips from readers in the comments (they could do this job for me): From serenity: "Another simple one is that you can change the time it takes for the folder to "spring" in the Finder preferences." Hit Cmd+Comma to open Finder Preferences. And another from aptenergy: "Also, if you drag your item out of a folder that's been spring loaded, it will automatically close." Thanks guys!
Mac 101: Mimic Stacks in Tiger
Here's a simple trick that will let you approximate Leopard's "Stacks" feature in Tiger (without all the cool eye candy, of course).Lifehacker suggests moving your documents folder, a download folder, etc. into the dock. Then right click that folder (or Control-click or simply click and hold...whichever you prefer) to see that folder's contents.That's fine, but if you want to get fancy, create a smart folder to live in your dock. I made one to mimic Steve's collection of recent images: From the Finder's "File" menu, select "New Smart Folder" Set the criteria to be "Created = Today" and "Kind = Images" Give your folder a descriptive name (like "Today's Images"), save it and drag it into the dock! Now you have a folder that will automatically populate itself with all of the images you create on a given day. I clicked the folder window's chicklet (upper right hand corner) to give it more of a "Stacks panel mode" feel by eliminating the toolbar and sidebar.Yes, this only the most modest approximation of the most superficial functionality of stacks, but it's the best we have until October.
Mac 101: Launch at startup, the Login Items tab
Everybody has programs that are pretty much always open (Mail, iTunes, Quicksilver, etc.), so it's good to have them launch automatically at startup. There are a couple of different ways to do this. If the program is already running you can hold down your (left) mouse button on its Dock icon and choose "Open at Login" from the pop up menu. However, the best way to manage these is in "Login Items" tab of the Accounts Preference Pane in your System Preferences. Here you can manually add login items. In fact, in addition to adding login items (just by clicking the plus sign), you can also remove anything you don't want (with the minus). It's useful to scan the list periodically and remove anything you don't commonly use (sometimes developers, e.g. Adobe, will put things in there without asking). Removing these unused items can free up system resources for more useful things. But be careful that you do not remove anything important (basically if you don't know what it is, don't remove it). In addition to adding applications to the login items tab, you can also add Volumes to mount on login, including network mounts. Just mount the network drive first in the Finder, then after hitting the plus sign select it and it will be placed on the list, as you can see for my WebDAV mount above.
Mac 101: Mastering the Save Dialog
The Save dialog in Mac OS X (it's the box you get when you press Command-S) can often lead switchers, and inexperienced Mac users, astray. When you save a document you are presented with a dialog box like the one above (this example is from TextEdit) which is a bit limiting. Do I need to use the drop down menu for everything? How do I save this document some place other than the defaults under the "Where" pop-up menu? Read on to find out how to master any Save dialog box on Mac OS X.
Mac 101: Viewing long file names
Have you ever opened up a Finder window in column view and found yourself confronted with truncated file names? It's quite annoying. Here's a quick fix.At the bottom of the column, you'll see two short, vertical "pipes" (pictured above). Double click the pipes, and the window will instantly expand to accommodate the longest file name in the window. Hooray!
Mac 101: Input Menu and keyboard layouts
OS X has a lot of nice features for "International" users that many folks forget are there, even though some of them are handy for US English users as well. Among these are the many available keyboard layouts in the Input Menu tab of the International System Preference Pane. The Input Menu is designed primarily to give you access to foreign language keyboard layouts which remap your Roman character keys to specialized glyph sets in both Roman and non-Roman languages (e.g. Cyrillic and Asian languages, etc.). In addition to the non-English language support, however, there are other useful things such as support for the Dvorak keyboard layout. Perhaps best of all, by checking the "Show input menu in menu bar" option (see the image after the jump) you get one click access to whichever language layouts you select in the Preference Pane, as well as the Character Palette (for finding obscure symbols and glyphs) and the Keyboard Viewer (which will place a clickable keyboard on your screen). This will place a small flag in your menu bar which will indicate which key layout is active, and when you click on it you'll be able to select from among the available key layouts selected in the Input Menu tab. If you ever have to write in a foreign language using an appropriate key layout can save a lot of time for tying special characters like macra in Latin and breathings and accents in Greek. And if you want to get a little bit adventurous you can even make custom key layouts of your own.
Mac 101: Enabling Built-in Spell Check
Mac OS X offers a system-wide built-in spell checker. Many OS X applications including Mail, Pages, TextEdit, Safari and iChat AV (among others) allow you to take advantage of this feature to find and correct spelling mistakes. To enable spell checking in an application, control-click (or right-click on a two-button mouse) a text field or text entry area. Choose Spelling from the contextual pop-up menu and then make sure that Check Spelling as You Type is checked. If it is not checked, just select it to check it. Selecting it again disables the feature. More after the jump...
Mac 101: Locating files with the Title bar
You've got a window open, any window. A Finder window, say, or in many of the built-in Apple apps like TextEdit. Ever wonder exactly which directory you're looking at? Here's a simple trick that may be new to you if you're a switcher. See the name of your file or folder at the top of that OS X window? It usually has a small icon right next to it. Command-click the name or title in that title bar and OS X will show you the directory tree that leads down to the item you're looking at. And if you click on a folder in that list? Finder automatically opens a new window showing that folder. Very convenient.
TUAW Tip: Showing Desktop Hard Drives on a case-by-case basis
In my recent Mac 101 post, I showed you how to use Finder preferences to hide hard drives, CDs, and so forth in your Finder. Several readers contacted me asking how to display Desktop drives on a case-by-case basis, so here's a quick follow-up post. The secret is that Finder's preferences will show or hide actual volumes, i.e. any item that appears in OS X's /Volumes folder: partitions, iPods, CDs, DVDs, etc. But it doesn't control the display of aliases. So here's what you do. Show all hard drives. Open Finder -> Preferences. Select the General pane and check "Hard disks". Create aliases. Select a hard drive you want to keep on your Desktop. Control-click (or right-click) the drive and choose Make Alias from the contextual pop-up. Finder creates an alias file for the drive. Repeat for each drive you want to keep. Hide the drives. Return to Finder -> Preferences and uncheck "Hard disks". Your hard drive icons go away but the aliases remain. Rename the alias. If desired, return to the Desktop and rename each alias so it looks more like the original item. The arrow that appears at the bottom left of the drive icon indicates that you're dealing with aliases and not the original drive. Be aware that View -> Arrange By does not treat aliases as drives, so your disk may end up in an unexpected position after arranging.Thanks everyone who suggested aliases.
Mac 101: Remove unwanted menu extras
Sure, those little icon utility menus on the right side of the screen -- displays, sound, Airport, etc. -- are handy, but do I really need the Displays icon there for a desktop screen that never changes size, or the Modem icon when I've got broadband? While you can deactivate most of these through a parent application or System Preferences, there's a quicker way: simply hold down the Command (Apple) key and drag the offender out of the menu bar and onto a blank area of the Desktop. Poof! No more icon.
Mac 101: Tweaking your keyboard shortcuts
More Mac 101, TUAW tips for the new Mac user and for us forgetful veterans. I often hear a complaint from switchers and newcomers: "Why do I have to use the mouse for everything?" Of course, we all know that there are scores of keyboard commands waiting to be used, but some particularly helpful ones are less than obvious.Check out the Keyboard Shortcuts pane of the Keyboard & Mouse system preference panel. There you'll find my new best friends, "Move focus to the Dock" and "Move focus to the active or next window." With the first shortcut (control-F3 by default; note that on a laptop keyboard, you need to add the Fn key as well, lest you inadvertently mute your sound) you pop up your Dock, and you can select an application with the left and right arrow keys. Hold down the option key and you can relocate the selected app to another Dock slot. It's not a direct substitute for Command-Tab application switching, but it's still helpful.The second option works like a supercharged version of the Command-` window rotation shortcut, cycling through all your open windows in all applications -- similar to the difference between the F9 and F10 Expose options. This is a great timesaver when you've got two or three apps open and you need to swap between them rapidly.Have fun exploring the rest of the Keyboard Shortcuts pane![via Theocacao]
Mac101: Always Open With
A file icon's stylized display often shows you a relationship between the file and the application that it opens in. For example, an HTML file that stores web page information might display a small Safari compass or a Firefox globe. Word files are marked with a blue W, Powerpoint files with a P, QuickTime movies with a stylized Q. These icon hints indicate which program will open and attempt to read the file when you double-click it in Finder. Many file types can be used in more than one program. For example, you can play MP3 files in QuickTime or in iTunes, you can open a text file in TextEdit or in Word, movies in QuickTime or VLC. Finder allows you to change the application associated with each file. Here's how: Control-click (right-click) any file. A contextual menu opens over the file. Release any keys you are pressing and then press the option key. The menu item that had said "Open With" changes to "Always Open With". Select any application from the Always Open With submenu. Two things happen. First, your file will open in the application you select. Second, Finder updates the file's association so it will always open in that application. Its icon updates, changing to reflect its new "native" application. Say, however, you want all your MP3 files to open in QuickTime or all your text files to open in TextEdit, or so forth. Do this instead. Select any representative file in Finder and choose File -> Get Info (Command-I). Locate the section of the Info pane named "Open with". Select the Application you want to use from the pop-up menu and then click Change All... By doing this, you instruct OS X to change the application association for all files on your computer that share the same type, text, MP3, MOV, XLS, or whatever.
Mac 101: Changing the size of your icons
Finder's View Options allow you to control the way your icons look on your desktop and in your folders. You can zoom your icons all the way up to a hefty 128x128 (shown here) or shrink them down to a modest 16x16. There are tradeoffs of course. Smaller icons let you see more files at once while large icons better allow you to preview your files, especially pictures. You can easily experiment with changing your icon sizes as follows.
Mac 101: Applications in the Finder toolbar
Last year (pre Mac 101) we told you about the ability to customize your Finder toolbar with folders for quick access, but you can also put applications there to use with drag and drop operations. For instance, in my Finder tool bar I have AppZapper, ImageWell, and Path Finder. This way I can easily uninstall applications, do simple image edits (especially resizing), or reveal the file in Path Finder just by dragging things onto the appropriate icon. This can be a real time saver for any applications you use regularly, particularly by drag and drop.To customize your Finder toolbar, just right-click on an empty area of the toolbar and choose "Customize Toolbar..." You'll want to have another Finder window open to your Applications folder and then you can just drag and drop application icons from the other Finder window onto the toolbar of the window with the customize sheet open.Update: As several folks have rightly pointed out you don't need to use the "Customize Toolbar..." command, though I was under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that Apple officially recommended doing it this way.
Mac 101: Quickly resize the Dock
Here's a Mac 101 tip for you: want to quickly resize your Dock? Just move your mouse to the vertical bar on the right (or bottom) side of the Dock, where it splits between application icons and minimized windows/the Trash, and drag... up/right to biggify, down/left for enhanced shrinkitude. Fun for all ages! Click the image or here for a movie demo.If you want to move the dock to a different side of the screen, try shift-dragging instead of just plain dragging.
New TUAW feature: Mac 101
Mac users of all levels enjoy our scribblings here at TUAW. When you have such a diverse audience, and are so familiar with Macs yourself, you sometimes forget that not everyone is a Mac pro (ha! Get it? Mac pro? Ahh, I'm so funny). That's why we have decided to launch a new series of posts here at TUAW called 'Mac 101.' These posts are aimed squarely at those folks who are new to the Mac. We'll be sharing some tips and tricks that people familiar with Macs have been using forever, but neophytes might find handy.If you have any suggestions for features, or series, that you would like to see here at TUAW leave us a note in the comments. We're here for you, man.
