Tips Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Make an SSB with Chrome on the Mac

by Michael Rose (May 28th, 2013)

A site-specific browser (SSB) is a great way to "package" a web app you use every day into a dockable, clickable app that maintains its own cookies, settings and preferences versus your everyday web browser config. On the Mac, the easiest way to make an SSB is via the handy Fluid app, which ...

iPhone 101: Getting more out of Apple's Stocks app on iOS

by Yoni Heisler (May 15th, 2013)

Apple's Stocks app on iOS isn't terribly exciting, but in typical Apple fashion, it does have a bit more functionality lurking beneath the surface. Pictured below is what you typically see when you fire up the Stocks app. The information is pretty basic. We see that Apple's current share price ...

Managing Notification Center annoyances

by Michael Grothaus (Apr 11th, 2013)

Reminders is either one of the most useful apps in OS X 10.8 or one of the most annoying, depending on who you talk to. I use Reminders on my iPhone a lot, but not so much on my Mac. Part of the reason is because I assumed that once a Reminder notification popped up on screen my only options ...

Nifty tip for retaining the detachable plug on an Apple Power Supply

by Steven Sande (Apr 9th, 2013)

Have you ever lost a "duck head"? That's the term for the detachable plug that comes with Apple power supplies. You can remove the duck head and install a full extension cord, but it's quite irritating to lose the plug if you occasionally want to use just the power supply and its thin cable. ...

Add a clone partition to your backup drive

by Shawn "Doc" Boyd (Apr 9th, 2013)

In case you missed it, March 31st was World Backup Day, a big topic of discussion on the last few Talkcasts, which culminated in a visit by the team at Dolly Drive. Inspired by the conversation, I wanted to create a clone-sized partition to mirror my SSD. I had an extra external drive on my desk ...

Lesser-known OS X tricks

by Michael Grothaus (Apr 8th, 2013)

Operating systems are so vast and complex it's virtually impossible to find any one person who knows all the tips and tricks an OS offers. OS X is no exception. Whether you're a new user or a long-time OS X user, Macworld has posted a list of seven tricks you might not be aware of. My favorite ...

More Tips for Troubleshooting Automator Workflows

by Ben Waldie (Mar 11th, 2013)

In my last post, I shared some useful tips for troubleshooting Automator workflow problems. I didn't cover everything, though. There are lots of other ways you can troubleshoot your workflow. Here are some more tips to help. 1. Use Get Selected Finder Items Wisely Automator workflows are ...

Tips for Troubleshooting Automator Workflows

by Ben Waldie (Mar 4th, 2013)

Automator's great for streamlining time consuming and repetitive tasks on your Mac. It's easy. Just launch it, find a few actions, and string them together to form a workflow. Then, run your workflow anytime you want to perform that series of tasks again. What happens if your workflow doesn't ...

Mac 101: Use Automator to extract text from PDFs

by Matt Tinsley (Feb 11th, 2013)

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice (and expert) Mac users. Have you every tried to copy and paste text from a PDF into a word processor document like Pages or Microsoft Word? Most of the time the text loses all its formatting from the PDF, which can be a real pain. Too often I've spent ...

Mac 101: Temporarily disabling Notification Center

by Steven Sande (Feb 8th, 2013)

One gripe I hear a lot from OS X Mountain Lion users is that they sometimes get notifications bothering them at the most inopportune times. I know that when I'm working on TUAW TV Live, the last thing I want is something else to distract my attention when I'm already distracted by about 15 other ...

Talking to Siri: Creating reminders without times

by Erica Sadun (Feb 7th, 2013)

This morning, beloved leader Victor wondered how he could create reminders using Siri without having those reminders tied to a specific time. He loves Siri's easy voice integration but didn't want to schedule these items. He just wanted to add them to his to-do list. Possible? You bet. The ...

Mac 101: Mountain Lion's Magic Trackpad triple-finger tap dictionary lookup

by Steven Sande (Jan 22nd, 2013)

Let's say you're reading TUAW and you see that I've used the word "peripatetic" in a post. While some of you would know the meaning of the word, others might be doing a bit of head-scratching and fire up the Dictionary app on your Mac. If you have a MacBook with a multi-touch trackpad or a ...

Mac 101: Preview's magnifying loupe

by Steven Sande (Jan 21st, 2013)

One thing I love about OS X is that no matter how long I use it, I'm often surprised by something that I didn't expect to find. That was the situation last week when i was using Apple's Preview app in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion to resize an image, and found myself looking at a part of the image ...

Tips for capturing holiday light memories with your iPhone camera

by Mel Martin (Dec 25th, 2012)

The iPhone has a great little digital camera built into it. If you're thinking about getting those last photos of the neighborhood and indoor holiday lights before they all come down, here are a few hints to make sure you get a memorable picture. Let's start with exterior lights. The iPhone ...

Cascade Finder windows with AppleScript

by Ben Waldie (Nov 27th, 2012)

You're busy. You've got tons of things going on at any given time. Your Mac's screen is constantly cluttered with a bazillion Finder windows, and you keep shuffling them around to find the one you need. Sure, Mission Control in Mountain Lion lets you view all of your Finder windows at once in a ...