First off, this tip does not work with all menu bar items, only Apple-provided menu bar items (like the clock, WiFi status, iChat, etc.) and select third-party application menu bar addons. This reason behind this how to do with how developers add an item to the menu bar: only items through OS X’s SystemUIServer will work with this tip. 

Back when I first switched to the Mac, I couldn’t for figure out a way to move the items on my Mac’s menu bar around. The only way I could figure a way to do it was to manually enable/disable them in the order I wanted them to be displayed. This tip is a simple solution to that problem.

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A simple time saving tip that I’ve found useful is to quit open Applications without switching to them first. I’ve got two time saving ways to accomplish that task, first through Mac OS X’s built in Application switcher (Command + Tab) and secondly the Mac OS X Dock.

The Application switcher built into OS X and accessible through Command + Tab, this allows you to quickly switch between open Applications. By striking Command + Tab once and holding down the Command key you’ll see something like the screenshot above with icons for each running Application on your Mac. Pressing Tab again will cycle forward through the list while Shift + Tab will go backwards. A nifty trick is to hit the Q key while you have an Application highlighted in the Application switcher; you’ll notice that the icon fades out, the Application has just quit.

Using Mac OS X’s Dock is also an easy shortcut for quitting Applications. Right-click an open Application and choose Quit from the menu. If you’ve got an Application that has locked up and is not responding right-clicking the Application’s Dock icon will reveal a Force Quit option (much easier than opening the Force Quit window).

I’ve noticed most people drag an external disk to the Trash in order to unmount/eject a drive from their Mac. Thats not the only way to safely eject a disk from your system though… I can’t claim this tip saves any time, but its one I use quite often when I’ve got several application windows open, this tip is how to eject a disk through the Finder window (instead of the Desktop and the Trash located on the Dock).

Each ejectable disk has a small eject icon next to it in the left sidebar of Finder, this is highlighted in the image above (click on it to enlarge). A simple click on this eject icon will unmount the disk from your system and allow for removal without data loss (providing it ejected without an error). You’ll know its been ejected from your Mac when the disk disappears.

There are other ways of ejecting a drive from your system, using Disk Utility is one, and another method is by selecting a disk in Finder and using Command + E (while a drive is selected).

If you’ve ever found yourself thinking your Mac’s Dock is to large or to small this tip will help you change the size as well as a few other Dock options quickly and easily without opening System Preferences.

 

To do this trick, locate the “cross walk” looking area between your Applications and your Stacks and the Trash area. Once you hover over it you’ll notice the cursor changes to a resize looking pointer, drag up or down to set a new size or right click (Control + Click) to bring up a menu like the one pictured below.

 

The popup menu provides quick access to options like enabling or disabling Dock Hiding and Magnification in addition to the location (left, bottom or right) of the dock and the minimize effect used when minimizing an application window. At the very bottom of the menu is an option to launch the Dock preference pane in System Preferences.

By default Finder does not list the sizes of all items on your hard drive when viewing folders and files. If you’re curious about the size of an item and Finder simply places an -- in the Size column give this a try.

Bring up the View Options for the current folder you’re looking at, do this by either using Cmd+J, View > Show View Options or by right-clicking in a blank part of the Finder window and choosing Show View Options from the menu. Once there you’ll see a window like the one below, check the Calculate all sizes checkbox and close the window.

For an additional bonus, click the Use as Defaults button to apply this change to all subfolders. For one reason or another Finder does not remember this setting after logging out and back in, I would assume thats to minimize the work the CPU and hard drives need to do while browsing your files to make the OS snappier. If you only care about the size of a single file or folder, Quick Look will give this info to you with less effort, additionally the Get Info option under the File menu (also available by right-clicking the file/folder) will tell you a little more.

Some backgrounds look best with Mac OS X’s menu bar transparent, while others look terrible. I suppose this is why Apple allows you to toggle the transparency of the menu bar in the Desktop & Screensaver preference pane in System Preferences (as seen in the image above).

The ability to disable the transparency of the original translucent menu bar came in the 10.5.2 update released by Apple, since then users have had the ability to toggle the setting. What this comes down to is individual preference, I encourage you to try your menu bar both with and without transparency enabled to find what suits you best. Although this may be a well known feature for long-time mac users (or just Leopard early adopters), tips like this help newcomers to the mac feel at home, look for more tips like this one in our Mac Basics category. 

The Finder Path Bar is a nice addition to Finder, but it doesn’t come enabled by default. The Path Bar is located at the bottom of the Finder window and shows the path to the file currently selected in Finder. The image above is an example of the Path Bar displaying Photo Booth.app in the Applications folder.

To enable the Path Bar in Finder open a finder window and select Show Path Bar from the View menu. It’s that simple.

If you enjoyed this how-to, check out OS X 411’s other news, tips, tricks and how-tos.

Automator is a powerful application provided by Apple on every copy of Mac OS X. Although every Mac has Automator installed most users have never experimented with it, and that’s the goal of this article: to introduce you to Automator.

Automator is location in your Applications folder (/Applications/Automator.app), when Automator is opened you’ll get a workflow template chooser. Custom will start you off with a blank workflow, allowing you to add your own actions.

This is meant to be a simple article on Automator, and as such I’ll show the steps required to make a basic Automator workflow that will quit all of our open applications. (I use three primary Automator workflows, one to open my favorite applications (the ones I leave running), one to quit all applications, and finally one to put my Mac Pro to sleep.)

The workflow I’m showing you today will be based off of a Custom workflow. The screenshot below shows a empty workflow in Automator.

In the search box above the list of available actions type “quit” and Automator will show you a few actions, the one named Quit All Applications is the one we are interested in for this article. Drag the action Quit All Applications over to the blank workflow space on the right.

In the workflow pane you’ll notice a new action, the Quit All Applications action and that it has several options. 

Now we want to add some applications to the list for the action to skip over, that is, to not quit them. Click the Add… button and choose a few applications, I would suggest Safari if you are following along here. For my list I added Quicksilver and Safari, as example applications.

To get a little visual feedback, and assuming you have Growl installed, we are going to add an action named Show Growl Notification. Just as before, we are going to drag the item into the workflow pane to the right, position this notification under the existing Quit All Applications action. Give it a title and description.

You can test run your workflow by clicking the Run toolbar item in the top right corner of the Automator application (first make sure that you’ve added Safari to the Do not quit list). If you have Growl installed and added its action you’ll get a nice confirmation when its complete.

To save our workflow so we can open it at any time, choose Save As… from the File menu. Give it a name and choose Application for the File Format.

Once your workflow is saved, go to the folder you saved it to and launch your workflow. You’ll notice that by saving the workflow as an Application we can open it without having Automator open.

If you like the idea of having an application to quit all your open applications, you may want to edit the workflow to include Safari in the Quit All Applications action.

It’s easy to edit your Automator workflow, reopen Automator and choose the Open an Existing Workflow… option at startup. Choose your workflow from the list (the .app) and Automator will import all your actions. From now on when your editing a saved Automator application you don’t need to Save As…, simply saving the application is enough to update your workflow.

Automator and Quicksilver are a powerful combo, on my Mac Pro I used an add-on action called Sleep to quickly sleep the computer (I’ve found this easier than reaching for the power button or choosing it from the menu).

Apple also has a great getting started article on Automator, Mac 101: Automator.

While I was writing another post for OS X 411, I mistakenly added the word Cyrsis to Leopard’s built-in spell checker, I wasn’t paying attention, but after looking at the word more carefully (after it was added) I noticed it was misspelled. The proper spelling is Crysis, which I assumed Leopard didn’t know anyway, thats how this started… 

Most applications in Leopard that use the built-in spell checker allow you to add words to the dictionary, but not all of them allow you to remove or “unlearn” the learned words. Pages is a perfect example, it will allow you to add words to the spell checker but not remove them. Below I have an example of where I’ve added “Robetr” to the spell checker.

I’ve found two ways to remove a “learned” word from the Leopard spell checker, the first is to open TextEdit and type the word, right-click the word and select “Unlearn Spelling” from the popup (thats it, you’re done). 

If you used the TextEdit method above this is not needed (just an alternate way of removing learned words for the more curious). The second way I’ve found is to edit a file located at ~/Library/Spelling/en (en is the file name (for English I assume), and the Library folder located in your home folder). Open this file in any text editor (TextEdit even works) and remove the word from the list. Once the file is saved logout and you have just unlearned a word. This would also be a practical way to unlearn all the words known by Leopard. Note: The Spelling directory is only created if you have learned words, on a fresh install of OS X the Spelling directory doesn’t exist. It also seems that this file is not synced with the spell checker live, if you delete a name it will still show up as correct until you logout.

Having the ability to change the text on Mac OS X’s Login window is not an explicit feature of Apple’s operating system, it is however possible. Some of the reasons you may want to add text to your Mac’s login window are: security, lost/found and identification. Adding text to the login window is easy, simply add a key and value to a .plist file and logout. 

First you’ll want to navigate in Finder to the following location: /Library/Preferences/ (the Library folder in your hard drive’s root, not your home folder).

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Once there, find and open the file com.apple.loginwindow.plist in a text editor like TextWrangler.

Because this file, com.apple.loginwindow.plist is outside of your home folder and effects all users on your system, you must have administrator access on the computer you wish to modify.

Make a backup copy of your original com.apple.loginwindow.plist incase something goes wrong in any of the following steps.

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Insert into com.apple.loginwindow.plist somewhere after the <dict> and before the </dict> the italic text exactly how it is shown here: <key>LoginwindowText</key> Once that has been added, directly below it on a new line enter <string>Your Custom Text Here</string> Replace the Your Custom Text Here (red) with your message. Image: The text you will be adding is highlighted in yellow (the end of the line was omitted).

Save the file and logout to test your new login window text. TextWrangler or any other text editing program will ask for an administrator password when you attempt to save this file.

To remove the text you just added, simply remove the two lines of text you added.