Trick Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Who you gonna call? Irene's Spirit haunts your iPhone or iPod touch

by David Winograd (Nov 2nd, 2009)

Irene's Spirit [US$1.99, iTunes Link] puts a fortune telling spirit into your iPhone or iPod touch (with the exception of the first generation iPod touch) as long as you're running OS 3.0. Forget the Magic 8 Ball or Ouija Board. That's kid stuff. Irene doesn't use a 20-sided die or easily ...

Snow Leopard: Find what you're looking for

by Kevin Harter (Aug 29th, 2009)

One of the little frustrations in my everyday use of Leopard was the way it searched in folders. When in a Finder window, there was a handy-looking search box in the upper right-hand corner. I would place the cursor, type my query, and be annoyed by the fact that OS X searched my entire Mac. ...

TUAW Tip: Use Help to select menu items in Leopard

by Mat Lu (Feb 8th, 2008)

Over at Mac OS X Hints I recently ran into this doozy of a hint that I somehow missed on its first go around. Basically the idea is to capitalize on a great new feature in Leopard's help. You can get to any menu item without your mouse by activating the help menu with the keyboard shortcut ? + ? ...

Quicksilver Trigger, Strip Clipboard Formatting

by Dan Lurie (Apr 25th, 2007)

Sometimes even the best intentions of developers can't account for user preference, and after speaking with many other Mac users, this certainly seems to be the case with OS X's habitual tendency to preserve the formatting of text copied to the clipboard. For example: I copy text from OmniWeb: ...

TUAW Tip: temporarily prevent your iPod from syncing

by David Chartier (Mar 30th, 2007)

Out of the box, the iPod is designed to work seamlessly with iTunes, so the system automatically syncs (by default) when you connect your iPod. This is typically fine for most users, but what about those times when you don't want this tag team to kick into gear for one reason or another? Perhaps you ...

Time Magazine 'Person of the Year' cover redux, courtesy of that iSight trick

by David Chartier (Dec 29th, 2006)

As you may know, Time Magazine recently declared you as the person of the year. While this is a mighty nice gesture on their part, Dan Wood has created a redux of the cover for iSight-enabled Mac users that truly resembles you as Time's award-winning person of the year. He's using that slick iSight ...

TUAW Tip: type a letter to find a menu item

by David Chartier (Nov 1st, 2006)

This isn't quite a mind-blowing feature, but it might come in handy to those who frequently need to track down a specific menu item or command. In the menus of any apps (including even menubar utilities), you can simply type the first letter of an item you're trying to find in the currently selected ...

TUAW Podcast #12: Quicksilver and iCal

by David Chartier (Oct 17th, 2006)

There wasn't much podcast-worthy news to chat about last week, so we thought it was the perfect time to do something different and bring you the first TUAW screencast evar! In this podcast (netcast!), I demonstrate that trick we covered last month of how to add iCal events and todos from ...

Who needs a Mighty Mouse? Hold shift for horizontal scrolling

by David Chartier (Sep 22nd, 2006)

John Gruber linked the blog of Mike Rohde, a visual designer who discovered a slick scrolling trick built into Mac OS X: with a standard scrolling mouse, you can hold the shift key in most apps to scroll horizontally. Mike cites his day job apps like Photoshop and Illustrator, but this seems to work ...

How To: keep your iTunes library on an external hard drive

by David Chartier (Sep 19th, 2006)

For more helpful how-to guides, check out the TUAW Tips, iPhone 101 and Mac 101 topics. After discussing how my iTunes library is set up with a few readers in the comments on my First Impressions/2G iPod nano post, I figured this might be a handy tip for readers who find themselves running ...

Sunday Survey: iPod FM transmitters - yea or nay?

by David Chartier (Aug 6th, 2006)

I recently came upon owning a car again (a '99 Chevy Astro baby!), so what do you think is the first thing I needed to do? Why, figure out how to play my iPod through it, of course! It has a cassette deck, but my wife's new Toyota Matrix doesn't, so I moseyed (yes, moseyed) on over to my local Apple ...

macDazzle: magic tricks for your Mac

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Aug 2nd, 2006)

I'll cop to being a magic trick geek. I'm no good at performing them, but I love the mechanisms, and used to try to create new tricks and presentations as a kid (and, OK, later in life as well). I'm surprised it's taken this long for there to be a software-based trick for the Mac, or at least, one ...

Use the Nike + iPod Sport Kit on any shoe with help from a Nike accessory

by David Chartier (Jul 15th, 2006)

Now don't think we're just trying to pimp Nike's stuff here because we're getting hookups or something (we have to run out and buy our own kits like anyone else), but TUAW reader Mr. Gaskell recommended a tip that could allow you to use the new iPod Sport Kit with any shoes, without the need for ...

macosxhints gets redesigned

by David Chartier (May 29th, 2006)

The invaluable macosxhints has received a redesign and feature boost. The site's theme has received a stylistic bump, and legibility has improved site-wide. New functionality and features include more topic categories and a better search (while Rob won't use the term 'better', I will). Registered ...

TUAW Tip: quickly adjust viewable hours in iCal

by David Chartier (Mar 9th, 2006)

Today's tip is a quick one about iCal, and it hails from the ever-useful archives of MacOSXHints. iCal's preferences allow you to choose how many hours you see in a day or week, but you can easily and quickly change this setting with a simple shortcut key. If you have a scrollwheel mouse or a two ...