I'm not sure how long this has been the case, but if you copy an address, say from a web site, and paste it into the first address field (street) in Contacts, Contacts will parse appropriately.
For example, try:
1234 Easy St
Pleasantville, CA 43402
When pasted into Contacts it will correctly place the City, State and Zip into the appropriate fields.
[crarko adds: OK, I'll admit I don't know when this was introduced either because I'd long ago stopped looking for it. Nice to know data detectors keeps being improved.]
Apple removed the option to add an action to Maverick's Calendar app but you can use Automator to accomplish this.
I found that if you use Automator to add an action an Automator calendar will appear over in the Calendar side bar. Then just select the Automator calendar for the item you are adding.
[crarko adds: I had to play around a bit in Automator to figure out what to do here, but it looks like creating a Calendar Alarm action will do the trick.]
With the latest versions of Preview.app (since OS X v10.8, I believe) which save versions of files rather than the old standard Save dialogues, it took me a while to figure out how to Save As... and encrypt a PDF file with a password.
While clicking on the File menu, press the Option key, which causes the Duplicate menu item to become Save As... instead. Then you'll see the familiar Save As.. sheet with the Encrypt checkbox. Enabling this allows you to set a password for the PDF file.
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. This may be common knowledge, but serves as another example of why it's often helpful to explore the modifier keys in an application before getting too frustrated.]
Instead of buying expensive vector drawing software, Keynote can be used as a simple but great vector drawing tool. The problem is you can only export entire slides as images from the File menu and there will be a white background. There is no obvious way of exporting just the vector art to an image file. Fortunately there is a solution. Use the following method to extract just your vector art creation to a .png file with alpha transparency.
Create a vector-based drawing.
Drag and select the entire vector drawing you are going to export.
Choose Edit » Copy from the menus.
Open Preview.app.
In Preview choose File » New from Clipboard.
The vector drawing will then appear with a transparent background, ready to be exported as a PNG.
[crarko adds: It seems like a quick, cheap way to go the job. Probably not for all situations.]
OS X and Growl notifications are AppleScriptable and great for displaying user-defined text, but not so hot for user-defined images. OS X can only display the sending application's icon, and Growl no longer accepts raw iTunes artwork image data or regular image files.
Growl's iTunes limitation can be overcome by converting an iTunes track's raw artwork image data into a TIFF file that can be read and passed to Growl:
tell application "iTunes" to set _rawData to raw data of artwork 1 of current track
set _startupDisk to (path to startup disk as text)
set _tempTiffFile to (open for access file (_startupDisk & "tmp:iTunesTiffArtwork.tiff") with write permission)
try
write _rawData to _tempTiffFile starting at 0
close access _tempTiffFile
on error a number b
close access _tempTiffFile
end try
-- Use 'sips' to make it a TIFF file:
do shell script "sips --setProperty format tiff /tmp/iTunesTiffArtwork.tiff"
set _tempTiffFile to open for access file (_startupDisk & "tmp:iTunesTiffArtwork.tiff")
try
set _readImage to read _tempTiffFile as "TIFF"
close access _tempTiffFile
on error a number b
close access _tempTiffFile
end try
tell application id "com.Growl.GrowlHelperApp"
set the allNotificationsList to {"AppleScript Notification", "Another AppleScript Notification"}
set the enabledNotificationsList to {"AppleScript Notification"}
register as application "Growl AppleScript Sample" all notifications allNotificationsList ¬
default notifications enabledNotificationsList icon of application "iTunes"
notify with name "AppleScript Notification" title ¬
"Current Track's Artwork" description "Converted to a TIFF file in '/tmp'" ¬
application name "Growl AppleScript Sample" image _readImage with sticky
end tell
The above script should display the current track's artwork in a Growl notification. Here's a script that displays iTunes artwork and a lot of other useful track information. It looks like this.
[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one. I did verify that the scripts compile, and that the downloadable script is safe. At the moment, I don't have the ability to archive that script here for FTP, but I'm working on that.]
I'm not sure if this is documented already. When you create a secure note from Keychain, it will accept an image or movie just as easily as it will accept text. I was able to put an image in one note and a movie in another. You can also play the movie while it's secured inside the note.
Create a secure note from the menu bar, then copy and paste the image into the note. That's it, the image is saved inside a secure note. You're done.
To put a movie inside a secure note, go to the file location on the Finder to locate the movie. Drag the movie to the body of the secure note.
[crarko adds: I'm not sure if it's documented either. This is a fairly old submission in the queue, so things may have changed recently.]
When assigning a keyboard shortcut to a program's menus in System Preferences, you can run into a problem if more than one menu item in the program has the same name.
If you describe the full 'menu path' using '->' as a delimiter between items (no spaces), then OS X will follow that path and select the correct menu item.
For instance:
Font->Edit->Increase
The '->' symbol seems to be used from Mountain Lion and later. Earlier systems use '>' on its own.
I don't claim to have discovered this idea myself, but the hint doesn't seem to be very well-known, so I thought it should be posted here, if it hasn't already.
[crarko adds: If someone still happens to be running Lion (10.7) can you try this and post about which delimiting symbol worked? The referenced Apple discussion implied the change happened with 10.8 but the original text for the hint said 10.7, and I'm curious to know which is correct. Thanks.]
I don't know how long this has existed (or what to call it), but in 10.9.1, just as one is able to quickly retype previous commands in Terminal by pressing the up arrow key, it is possible to retrieve a copy of entire, previously typed messages in Messages.app with a similar key command.
Just press Option+Up arrow while the cursor is in the message-typing box. How many previous entries it will resurrect appears to depend on how much of the message history is currently in memory. If you scroll further up to load more of the message history, those additional messages become available to the key command.
[crarko adds: I believe we called it the command buffer in Terminal.]
I don't like paper-like background of OS X Notes.app, and the fact that, usually after syncing with its iOS counterpart, the application doesn't remember the larger font size which I've set. Here's how I fixed it to my satisfaction.
First, navigate to /Applications and Control+click on the Notes.app icon. In contextual menu, select the Show Package Contents item. Then, browse the content of the app's package to Resources, and inside that find these two files: pad.css and paper.tiff. Make a backup copy of these files in a safe place in case you want to revert back to them sometime; otherwise you'd have to reinstall OS X to do so.
Copy the former into a folder you have write permission for, and open it with any text editor. Just replace the @[FONT_SIZE] on fifteenth line with whatever font size suits you. I've bad eyes and have choosen 18px. Save the file and replace the original with this modified version.
Then, find or create a tiff image of the color you'd to replace the notes background image with. By the way, I think you could you any picture. I just used Capture to capture a plain white portion of my screen. Be sure this image file you produce is in tiff format. If not, you can easily convert it with Preview. Name it paper.tiff and replace the original file.
Restart Notes.app and changes should be there.
[crarko adds: I haven't tried this but as a general rule of thumb I'd make a backup of the entire application, as well as the files to be modified. Also it's possible that a Software Update could overwrite your changes, so just be prepared.]
