Are you tired of not being able to see all of your browsing history in Safari? Well, with this Terminal hack, you can easily change how many items (or how many days) Safari shows in the History menu. To do this, just open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type in one of the following commands:
There are some people that like the sleekness of HTML email, then there are those that appreciate the simplicity of plain text email (no images or styled text, thanks very much). If you use Mail.app and want it to force all incoming email to display as plain text, then open Terminal (Applications > Utilities) and type in the following command:
Do you know those little arrows that appear in iTunes when you have a song selected? You know, the ones that appear just after the title of the song, artist, and album and link to the iTunes Store when clicked? Yeah, those! Well, if you want the arrows to link to your iTunes library instead of Apple's induced store (and another impulse purchase), then just type the following command into Terminal (found in Applications > Utilities):
To change things back to normal, just replace the YES in the above command with NO. As some commenters have pointed out, you can temporarily reverse this hack by pressing option and clicking on the arrow.
You may sincerely wish never to need it, but if you run into a situation where your Mac refuses to boot fully to the Finder and you don't have any boot-capable utilities to tackle the problem, Kristofer Widholm's AppleJack is probably your best friend in the trenches. The single-user-mode tool is only available if you start your machine while holding down Cmd-S to boot to the command line (as per Dave's tip from yesterday), but once there it streamlines the process of checking your disk for errors, repairing permissions, cleaning caches, zapping corrupt preference files, and deleting leftover virtual memory swap data. You could do most of this yourself via a series of commands, but AppleJack is a) much, much simpler and b) completely free and open source.
For a long while it didn't look as though AppleJack would make the leap from Tiger to Leopard, as Mac OS X 10.5 made some key changes that broke AppleJack's functionality (specifically, the 'id' command didn't work, and the /etc/rc file was removed). Developer Steve Anthony jumped into the project this summer and was able to code around the Leopard-specific problems, finally giving us back our beloved AppleJack in version 1.5.
Let's all raise a glass of the original Jersey Lightning to Kristofer and Steve for their work on behalf of Mac troubleshooters everywhere.
Recently, I had to create a new admin user on an older 500mhz Power Mac G4 running OS 10.3.9. Needless to say, there was no 10.3 install discs to be found. What to do? Follow these simple (but powerful) steps.
First, restart the Mac while holding down the Command and "S" keys to start in Single-User Mode. Next, you'll see the UNIX boot sequence in white text on a black field. Don't worry, that's what we expected. At the prompt, type the following commands, hitting "Return" after each.
mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
shutdown /h now
Please be sure to type these commands exactly as presented here (sans bullets). "rm" is a powerful little command and if the syntax isn't right, you might unintentionally delete something important. Next, your machine will shut down. Turn it back on and you'll see the "Welcome to OS X" video, and be prompted through the process of creating a new admin user.
Other users on that machine -- including other admin users -- will remain intact. This is also a good way to change the password on an older admin account without the disc. Simply follow the same steps and, once you've logged in with the new account, change the password on your old account. Then, log in as the old account and delete the new one.
Don't you hate it when an application becomes unresponsive and crashes? Are you even more tired of reading annoying application crash dialog boxes? A simple Terminal hack allows you to never see these dialogs again. Just open Terminal (Applications > Utilities) and type:
This will disable the "...unexpectedly quit" dialog that normally appears when an application crashes. If you ever want the dialogs to start appearing again, just replace "none" with "prompt".
Have you ever wanted your screen saver to appear as a background image? Probably not. But if you like to show off to your Windows-using friends, then this tip can definitely help you out. By typing the following command into Terminal (Applications > Utilities), all on one line, and hitting enter, you will instantly see your screen saver displayed as a desktop background:
To get things back to normal (which you probably will want to do, as many screensavers will put undue load on your processor), either close the Terminal window, press control + C, or restart your computer. If you are running Leopard and have the clock overlay active, it will appear above all windows, which can get a little annoying.
Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 and Terminal Tips sections.
Without using Exposé, it is hard to tell which Mac OS X applications are hidden and which aren't. But, with a simple Terminal hack, you can have all your application icons displayed as transparent. Simply open Terminal.app (Applications > Utilities) and type the following command exactly:
Once you type the command and press enter, you need to restart the Dock by typing "killall Dock" and pressing enter. Once the Dock restarts and you hide applications, you will notice that hidden applications have a transparent look. If you want to reverse the command, just replace the "YES" with a "NO" and restart the Dock again.
Like these tips and tricks? Why not take a look at TUAW's Mac 101 and Terminal Tips category.
If you are the type of person that sees Dashboard as an application that just wastes space in your Dock (and an icon on your keyboard), then why not disable it? It is very easy to disable Dashboard; just type in the following command in Terminal.app (Applications > Utilities):
You must restart the Dock in order for this hack to work, so type "killall Dock" into Terminal and press enter -- the Dock should restart. To enable Dashboard again, just type in the above command, replacing "YES" at the end with a "NO." Now when you try to launch Dashboard, nothing will happen; this will save you some system resources.
If you found this tip useful, take a look at TUAW's Mac 101 and Terminal Tips sections.
Have you been paging through a document and wished that the scroll arrows were at both ends of the scroll bar? With a simple Terminal hack, you can have it your way. Just open Terminal.app (Applications > Utilities) and type in the following command:
defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBoth
You will need to restart your Mac to see the changes. If you want to change the scroll bars back to the normal way, just open the Appearance System Preference pane and select "Together" from the "Place scroll arrows section."
For more tips and tricks like this, visit TUAW's Terminal Tips and Mac 101 sections.
Sure, we've all wanted to stop the pesky "Disk Image Verification" process that starts when you want to open that .iso, .dmg, or other disk image. While this process is a precaution against possibly installing/using corrupt files, sometimes it is completely unnecessary. To stop disk image verification forever, just open Terminal and type: defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify TRUE
If you want verification enabled again, type the same command, replacing the "TRUE" with "FALSE." While verification is off, we recommend only using disk images from trusted sources.
Are you a Terminal geek (or wannabe, but not the pop star type)? If so, did you know that you can burn discs right from the Terminal window with a simple command and a drag/drop? Just enter the following command followed by the path to a folder or disk image:
drutil burn filehere
Don't type the "filehere" -- that's where you put the path to the file/folder that you wish to burn. You can either type the location manually or drag and drop the file onto the Terminal window. But that's not all you can do with drutil; you can also eject media from the optical drive by typing "drutil eject." To see all of the available drutil options, just type in drutil for a quick list or man drutil for a full description.
The Dock's Stacks feature lets Leopard users view a folder's worth of stuff with one click. You'll either love it or hate it, use it or not. If you do use it, here's a little tip that improves it slightly (in my opinion).
When you've got a bunch of files from a Stack displayed in Grid View, it can be hard to spot the particular one you're looking for, especially if many of them look identical (such a collection of text files or word processor documents).
Luckily, there's a highlight you can switch on, that puts a whiter background around the file you're mousing over. It makes it slightly easier to ensure you click on the correct file.
The highlight appears normally if you use the arrow keys to move around a Grid, or if you type Command and the first letter of one of the files displayed. But this trick switches it on permanently, so that it is always in action whether or not you use these keyboard shortcuts.
Earlier this week, we described several ways to create screenshots with your Mac. Using the keyboard shortcuts in the Finder is great, but you may have noticed that the results aren't very sharp. Ivan at creativebits noticed that, too, and figured out how you can correct the problem.
He explains that a basic screenshot creates a JPEG with a resolution of 60 by default. As is often the case, the solution is just a couple of Terminal commands away. Set the default format to png, pdf or tiff for much better results.
If you're not the Terminal type, check out Skitch, which takes simple, great-looking screen captures.
As we know, the Finder offers four ways to display your files. Namely icon view, list view, column view, and Cover Flow. Perhaps you prefer one over the others (let's say column view), but your windows open to icon view by default. That can be annoying but here's how to fix it.
First, open a new Finder window. Next, select your preferred display method and then close the window without doing anything else. Don't open a folder, drag an icon, nothing. Now subsequent Finder windows will default to your preferred setting.
Are you tired of not being able to see all of your browsing history in Safari? Well, with this Terminal hack, you can easily change how many items (or how many days) Safari shows in the History menu. To do this, just open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type in one of the following commands: 
There are some people that like the sleekness of HTML email, then there are those that appreciate the simplicity of plain text 
Do you know those little arrows that appear in 
Recently, I had to 
Earlier this week, we described 
As we know, the Finder offers four ways to display your files. Namely icon view, list view, column view, and Cover Flow. Perhaps you prefer one over the others (let's say column view), but your windows open to icon view by default. That can be annoying but here's how to fix it.
