Here a roundup of the latest tips and tricks from Mac OS X Hints:

- Don't trash an iPod with bad blocks on the drive
- A faster way to install Cydia applications after jailbreaking
- 10.6: Unknown file extensions search App Store
- Using To Do's With iCal and Yahoo
- Encrypted TimeMachine Network Backup
- Undocumented trackpad gestures for Twitter for Mac
- Turning Crashplan backups on and off
- Twitter for Mac: Tweet from other programs
- Quick Email Attachments
- Create a Smart Folder to cull photos without Place info in iPhoto '11
- A shortcut to Reply All in Mail.app
- Disable Smart Scroll zooming in Firefox
- Viewing full webpages on iPhone
- DMG backup, archive, and transfer to remote machine script
- 10.6: Single User Mode and Bluetooth keyboards
- Find My iPhone does not require a MobileMe subscription
- iPhone lock screen reminder
- Fix Focus on Menu lock up after switching Spaces
- Installing Skype 5
- Office 2011 Search change
- Jumping to the beginning/end of a PDF in Preview using the mouse
- iPhone complex passwords with only numbers
- Have wallpaper background colors match your image
- Spaces peculiarity
- Download an MP4 file in Safari
- A Simple Menubar Task List using Google Tasks
- Limit CPU usage for an application/process
- Unset high priority flags for emails in Mail.app
- Cannot paste serial numbers on registration fields
- 10.6: Create a shortcut to move files in Finder
- iPad Charging
- 10.6: Verify Time Machine Backups
- Fix slow Internet video on iPad
- Automatically delete Mac OS X dot files from MS-DOS filesystems
- Spotlight’s search keywords are localized
- Reset existing printers to use with Airport
- Go To URL Faster on iPad
- Switch between windows in Excel 2011
- Another Timesaver for Entering URLs in Mobile Safari
- Yahoo Plus IMAP Settings for Mac OS X Mail
- Use right-click instead of menu in order to get single album artwork
- Safari loses all your open pages: recover using Time Machine



Don't trash an iPod with bad blocks on the drive

I had bad blocks on my iPod classic 120gb. I was told to trash it and by a certified technician but I wouldn't give up. I tried reformating at least 50 times. My iPod would restore and show up in iTunes no problem but I couldn't copy more than 2gb of data before iTunes would hang.

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A faster way to install Cydia applications after jailbreaking

First of all, Cydia is awesome, no question about that. But if you have anything but a 3GS or 4G, it can be painfully slow to load and that can be a deterrent for keeping things updated. Let’s have a look at a much faster way.

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10.6: Unknown file extensions search App Store

It may seem obvious, but if you have an unknown file extension and try to open the file, you will now be presented with an option to search the App Store to locate an application. I realized this when I tried to open a kdb (a keypass database file) and was presented with this new option.

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Using To Do's With iCal and Yahoo

One nice feature of iCal is that you can easily sync with other free calendars like Yahoo and Gmail (and of course with Mobile Me). iCal also has a few other features like "To Do's" and "Notes" for things that don't quite deserve being a full fledged calendar item.

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Encrypted TimeMachine Network Backup

As the default setting, Time Machine does unencrypted backups. This hint changes that and works for both AFP and SMB shares.

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Undocumented trackpad gestures for Twitter for Mac

The new Twitter for Mac application (available from the Mac App atore) has some built in trackpad support (using either a notebook trackpad or the Magic Trackpad). I couldn't find these shortcuts documented anywhere:

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Turning Crashplan backups on and off

Crashplan is a nifty off-site backup application, but it oddly lacks a setting to turn it off and on. Here's how to do that.

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Twitter for Mac: Tweet from other programs

I saw that there is now a system wide 'Tweet' function from the contextual menu in many places/apps in OS X. You can find it with a right click and highlight of any text.

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Quick Email Attachments

I use Yahoo mail and Firefox. I found that I was wasting lots of time navigating through my files to attached a document to an email, especially if I wanted to attach multiple documents that were stored in different folders. Normally, I send off a file after having just worked on it, so I decided to use Smart Folders and Saved Searches in the Select Files dialog box in Firefox.

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Create a Smart Folder to cull photos without Place info in iPhoto '11

Many of you probably know that you can create a Smart Folder in iPhoto to cull all of your photos that contain unidentified people. The condition for this Smart Folder is: 'Face' + 'is' + 'unnamed.'

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A shortcut to Reply All in Mail.app

I'm not sure how long this has been a part of OS X, but I've long lamented that Mail.app doesn't allow me to switch easily back and forth between 'Reply to Sender only' and 'Reply All' mode when composing an e-mail reply (as Entourage does).

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Disable Smart Scroll zooming in Firefox

When Apple introduced smooth scrolling it conflicted with my use of the Control key in the shortcut to change Spaces. I would scroll down a page and then switch sSaces. This would cause the page to be zoomed in/out when I returned to Firefox. The following prevents this behavior:

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Viewing full webpages on iPhone

A lot of webpages automatically redirect an iPhone to a less than full featured mobile version of the site when viewed with the Safari app on the iPhone, limiting the usability of the site.

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DMG backup, archive, and transfer to remote machine script

The following hint creates a .DMG of a given directory/folder, then uses SCP to move it from your machine to another machine. It also appends a date onto the .DMG name, and lastly sends you an email that it was transferred successfully (or not).

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10.6: Single User Mode and Bluetooth keyboards

It used to be that a USB keyboard was needed to start my iMac in Single User Mode - that has changed.

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Find My iPhone does not require a MobileMe subscription

I know many people will complain that this is not a hint, but after I discontinued my MobileMe subscription, I never bothered trying to turn back on Find My [iDevice] because I assumed I couldn't use it anymore.

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iPhone lock screen reminder

If you're like me, you often need constant reminders. I have a sure-fire way to keep you abreast of your important notes. My tip gives you an easy way to put those important items front and center using the iPhone/iPad lock screen wallpaper.

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Fix Focus on Menu lock up after switching Spaces

There is a bug that locks up the Focus on Menu shortcut if you switch Spaces.

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Installing Skype 5

Skype 5 for Mac became 'stable' today, so I decided to install it. Just installing it gave me headaches. Fortunately, I've found a way to get Skype 5 working properly.

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Office 2011 Search change

For me, the most annoying new 'feature' of Office 2011 is the new search (un)function in Word.

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Jumping to the beginning/end of a PDF in Preview using the mouse

Preview provides keyboard shortcuts for jumping to the beginning or the end of a PDF file. However, I could not find anywhere a way to do that using the mouse short of pressing Option and clicking the top or the bottom of the scroll bar. This is an alternate, and perhaps more intuitive method.

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iPhone complex passwords with only numbers

If you're like me, you decided not to use a 'complex passcode' on your iPod touch (or iPhone) because you can see each letter of the passcode as you type it, making it easy for someone to learn your passcode. Well, recently I decided to try a complex passcode with only numbers. I discovered that if the passcode contains only numbers, the iPod will use an all-number keypad like the 4-digit passcode.

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Have wallpaper background colors match your image

When the built-in color panel's eyedropper magnifying glass won't match your image's background color, what do you do? DigitalColor Meter will get you the exact color you need.

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Spaces peculiarity

Often when I opened the spaces-overview rapidly in succession I noticed that windows were consolidated in my current space. I always considered this a bug, but now I'm starting to doubt it.

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Download an MP4 file in Safari

A recent video project required me to download MP4 files from our streaming partner's site. When I would click a link, however, the video would play in Safari, and there wasn't a way to right-click on the link and download it, as you can do with other kinds of files. So how do I download the MP4?

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A Simple Menubar Task List using Google Tasks

Simple task lists seems to be all the rage lately. I've seen quite a few of them hit the Mac App Store, such as Todolicious and Tictoc.

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Limit CPU usage for an application/process

If you want to decrease the CPU demands for an application you can use this very simple and somewhat ugly trick.

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Unset high priority flags for emails in Mail.app

Many mail clients have the option of marking an outgoing message 'high priority' or 'urgent.' In Mail.app, such messages show up in the Inbox with two exclamation marks (!!) in the flags column. If you want to sort messages by the flags column, so that messages you flag yourself are at the top, all high priority messages you have ever received will also be at the top of the inbox.

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Cannot paste serial numbers on registration fields

Sometimes the Edit » Paste or Command+V is not active on some registration fields in software. For instance to register applications like CrossOver. The same issue when trying to copy from such fields via Edit » Copy or Command+C to copy out the serial number to store it in a database or spreadsheet for a permanent record.

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10.6: Create a shortcut to move files in Finder

Many ex-Windows users are frustrated by the fact that (in a standard Snow Leopard installation), there is no way to move files/folders using only the keyboard. In Windows, this is a Ctrl+X/Ctrl+V keystroke pair. In OS X, the Command+X equivalent is not enabled in the Finder.

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iPad Charging

Just in case people are not aware, although an iPad connected to a computer displays 'Not Charging' (this is the case on my MacBook Pro, with or without power cord and on my MacPro) the iPad is actually charging albeit slowly, works great overnight.

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10.6: Verify Time Machine Backups

By pressing the 'Option' key while opening the Time Machine menu bar icon you see two new options, 'Verify Backups' and 'Browse other Time Machine Disks.'

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Fix slow Internet video on iPad

If your iPad is slow or stutters when viewing video over the internet (e.g. from YouTube), and changing your network's DNS settings, or rebooting the iPad, or changes to the Airport Extreme (or other access point) frequency/band/channel/power/multicast etc. does not fix the issue, here is a possible fix.

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Automatically delete Mac OS X dot files from MS-DOS filesystems

I often use a USB flash drive on my Mac that's formatted with an MS-DOS filesystem. I usually copy JPGs and MP3s onto it for use with my household DVD player. When I plug the flash drive into the DVD player's front-panel USB port, I can view the files on my TV. The problem is that the DVD player is very simple and it shows all the dot files that Mac OS X puts on it, like .Trashes and a .DS_Store in almost every folder.

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Spotlight’s search keywords are localized

Today I needed to filter search results using Spotlight and remembered that you can use keywords to narrow down the search. In my particular case I wanted to find all emails I had received from a specific contact that I had in my Time Machine backup going back over years.

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Reset existing printers to use with Airport

If you have a USB printer that is already set up on your Mac, and try to use it as an Airport wireless printer, you may find that it doesn't work. The printer may show up in 'Printers' in the Airport Utility, but it just won't print. The solution is simple.

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Go To URL Faster on iPad

The process of loading a URL in a new tab on iPad can be rather cumbersome and slow. First, one launches Safari from the home screen, waits for the app to open and the old webpage to re-render, then one hits the tab switch button, presses the new tab space, waits for that tab to open, waits for it to switch to the search panel (this is the most irritating part of the process, since it seems to take even longer when what one really wants is the URL bar), and finally, one clicks on the URL bar to enter in a new URL.

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Switch between windows in Excel 2011

I frequently have more than one window open in many programs, and I've gotten used to the standard keyboard shortcut to switch to the next window, Command+` (backtick/tilde). This was standard in Office 2008 as well, but this no longer works in Excel 2011 (though curiously it does work in Word 2011).

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Another Timesaver for Entering URLs in Mobile Safari

A recent hint showed a great tip for quickly pulling up a blank Safari tab on iOS devices. The author's instructions, though, indicated another tip many might not know when entering a URL into mobile Safari.

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Yahoo Plus IMAP Settings for Mac OS X Mail

If you have tried and failed to configure the Apple e-mail client for your Yahoo Plus mail account here's a solution. Note: This hint has only been tested and known to work on Mac OS X 10.6.6 and Mail 4.4 Build 1082.

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Use right-click instead of menu in order to get single album artwork

Want to Get Album Artwork for just one album? Don't use the Advanced menu.

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Safari loses all your open pages: recover using Time Machine

Power users often have dozens of documents open in Safari at any one time, some possibly for months at a time, and it can be infuriating to have Safari crash or for some other reason lose everything you had open. Here's how to get it all back.

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