No hints today, in honor of Memorial Day.
Spend a moment to think about those who fought.
Spend a moment to think about those who fought.
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No hints today, in honor of Memorial Day.
Spend a moment to think about those who fought.
Post a comment •
Comments (0)
There are plenty of hints on this site that use the defaults command to change preferences or settings that are unavailable via the GUI. These are fine to use for isolated changes, but there are some applications where you might want to change a number of settings.
iTunes is one of these. Over the years, Apple has removed a number of options from iTunes; at least from its menus and preferences. Many of these options remain, but are hidden. Doug Adams' free Change Hidden iTunes Preferences is an applet that lets you change a number of settings. I use it to make sure that when I rip CDs, track numbers are added to the file names; to hide Ping buttons; and to hide the arrow buttons that display next to tracks. Other options it offers are the ability to turn on half-stars for ratings (useful for smart playlists), showing the "Libary" playlist at the top level of the iTunes source list, and to create playlists for new purchases such as albums. This is a simple GUI tool that allows you to check some buttons and click Apply. So if you want to make changes to some of these hidden settings, check out this applet.
I love TextWrangler, and I have a Mac at work and one at home, but often do coding on both. I set up a system using Dropbox so both my preferences and my Application Support files sync so I always have my stationery files and the same settings, wherever I am.
Run the following as a shell script on each of the Macs. This will copy TextWrangler to your Dropbox folder, and create the support folder on Dropbox, then create a symlink to it in the correct location on your Macs. It will then copy the preference files to Dropbox, so when you launch the application on either Mac, you'll have the same setup.
If you want to do this with BBEdit, it's much simpler. As explained on the Bare Bones web site, BBEdit will look for the support folder on your Dropbox folder.] Two AppleScripts for unmounting, mounting local disk volumes
May 15, '12 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: llee
These AppleScripts are related to this hint. Both can already be found in the replies to the hint topic post, but I'm resubmitting them so that they will appear together.
The first is an improved version of the original AppleScript which presents a dialog box from which a selection of local volumes to be ejected can be made. An example of its usefulness might be that it provides a reliable method for quickly ejecting a MacBook's mounted local volumes for users on the go. I've configured it as a "Run AppleScript" step for an Automator-based Mac OS X Service called "Unmounter" and assigned it the keyboard shortcut of (Command-Control-Shift-E) in System Preferences on my system. The second is a more robust version of the AppleScript included in my first reply to the original hint topic. It attempts to automatically unmount all unmountable local volumes, and if it finds none, attempts to mount any local volumes that are available. I've configured it as a "Run AppleScript" step for an Automator-based Mac OS X Service called "Toggle Available Local Volumes" and assigned it the keyboard shortcut (Command-Option-Control-Shift-E) in System Preferences on my system. For both Automator-based Mac OS X Services that I created to provide key triggers for the AppleScripts, the scope specified is "Service receives no input in any application."
set alldisks to paragraphs of (do shell script "df -hlg | awk -F/ '/disk*/ {print $5}'")
set nonbootnumber to (count of alldisks)
try
set alldisks to items 2 thru nonbootnumber of alldisks
activate
set your_selected_device_id to choose from list alldisks with prompt "Please choose one or more volumes to be unmounted." with multiple selections allowed
repeat with the_Item in your_selected_device_id
set the_ID to (do shell script "df -hlg | grep -m 1" & space & quoted form of the_Item & space & "| grep -o 'disk[0-9][a-z][0-9]*'")
try
do shell script "diskutil unmount /dev/" & the_ID
on error the error_message number the error_number
display dialog "Error: " & the error_number & ". " & the error_message buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end try
end repeat
on error the error_message number the error_number
if the error_number is -128 or the error_number is -1708 then
else
display dialog "There are no unmountable volumes." buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end if
end try
set alldisks to paragraphs of (do shell script "df -hlg | awk -F/ '/disk*/ {print $5}'")
set nonbootnumber to (count of alldisks)
try
set all_non_boot_disks to items 2 thru nonbootnumber of alldisks
on error
set all_non_boot_disks to {}
end try
if (count of all_non_boot_disks) > 0 then
try
activate
repeat with the_Item in all_non_boot_disks
set the_ID to (do shell script "df -hlg | grep -m 1" & space & quoted form of the_Item & space & "| grep -o 'disk[0-9][a-z][0-9]*'")
try
do shell script "diskutil unmount /dev/" & the_ID
on error the error_message number the error_number
display dialog "Error: " & the error_number & ". " & the error_message buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end try
end repeat
on error the error_message number the error_number
if the error_number is -128 or the error_number is -1708 then
else
display dialog "There are no unmountable volumes." buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end if
end try
else
set actiondisks to {}
set allvols to paragraphs of (do shell script "diskutil list -plist | grep -o 'disk[0-9][a-z][0-9]*'")
repeat with i in allvols
if i is not in actiondisks then
set actiondisks to actiondisks & i
end if
end repeat
repeat with myitem in actiondisks
try
do shell script "diskutil mountDisk /dev/" & myitem
end try
end repeat
end if
iTunes Smart Playlists don't offer a criteria to find tracks which have been partially played. While "Last Skipped" is an option, this track property may not be set if the track wasn't actually skipped and was merely stopped.
However, if a track's "Remember playback position" option is set (and most audiobooks have this set by default) the track's AppleScript bookmark property will contain the number of seconds that a track has advanced before being stopped. Thus, any track with a bookmark value greater than zero would have been partially played. Here is an AppleScript that will copy all the tracks in the "Books" library to a new playlist named "Partially Played". Each time it is run it will update the "Partially Played" playlist.
I recently tried to drag from Safari's Downloads popup and found that if you drag from the icon of the downloaded file, you can move it where you want.
Click on an icon in the Downloads popup and drag it to any folder, or even onto a Dock icon to launch a file you've just downloaded with a specific application. [kirkmc adds: This seems obvious, but there's no hint here for it. There have been hints about double-clicking an icon in the Downloads window to open it, copying and pasting URLs from the Downloads window, and the keyboard shortcut to show the Downloads popup (Command-Option-L).]
Combining some findings from a recent hint and on Apple's forums, I've finally found a way to disable the annoying rubber-band scrolling in most applications. All the credit goes to those guys as they did the initial investigation.
It works in applications like:
In Terminal type:
It should work after you relaunch your applications.
To undo this change, run this command in Terminal:
[kirkmc adds: Works as described. I haven't tested many apps, so feel free to post which ones work and which don't in the comments.]
Mac OS X Lion introduced iOS-style scrolling elasticity. Do you think it's annoying, and it slows you down while working in Xcode? Here's how to remove it.
Copy this Xcode plugin to the following directory: ~/Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Xcode/Plug-ins/ You should create the directories if needed. Enjoy! Option-up arrow and Option-down arrow cycle through sent messages in iChat
May 02, '12 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: jaydisc
When focus is in the text entry field in an iChat chat window, holding option and using your up and down arrow keys cycles through the previous messages you've sent. This is very similar to how Terminal lets you cycle through previous command just using the up and down arrow keys.
[kirkmc adds: I actually spotted this a while ago. I'm not sure why it's there; and I don't really see any use for it, other than, perhaps, to find a text you sent to someone without scrolling in the window, and then copy it to send to someone else. This works in Lion; can anyone confirm that whether works in earlier versions of OS X or not?]
]Google Chrome keeps older versions of its web browser causing it to balloon in size. I noticed that the Google Chrome App on my Mac was 1.2 GB. That seemed a bit portly for a web browser. Upon looking into the app's bundle, by right-clicking and choosing Show Package Contents, I found multiple old versions of the app, all which appeared to be nearly identical. I removed all but the most recent version and everything appears to run correctly and the app size is now a much more slim 113 MB.
[kirkmc adds: Interesting. On my Mac, in the bundle, in Contents > Versions, there are, indeed, two versions of Chrome. This presumably has something to do with Chrome's silent updating. (Queries on Twitter suggest that this is the norm; a number of people replied that theirs was around 220 MB, as was mine.) Make sure you keep the one with the highest version number. You could also, of course, just download a new copy. If you want to turn off this automatic updating, see this hint from 2010.] |
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