This hint shows a way to close an application AND its windows.

In Lion Command+Option+Q lets you quit an application and close all of its windows so that when you reopen the app there won't be open windows.

[crarko adds: In Snow Leopard it there are options to close all windows (generally Command+Shift+Option+W) but it's not tied into the Quit operation. I imagine since Lion re-opens all the previous windows when the application launches the new shortcut was added to prevent that.]

This keeps the fullscreen display of Flash videos open on all spaces. Nice for watching streams/videos on a second display (TV) and then switching around.

You'll need a plist-editor like XCode (or just a text editor if you're comfortable with that) and Flash version 10.2 or later, so it remains open when the application focus changes.

Do this:

• First backup and then open the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist with your editor.
• Add a new line under workspaces-app-bindings
• Name it org.mozilla.plugincontainer.
• Change the data type to Number.
• Set the value to 65544.
• Save the file.
• Log out and back in.

Works on 10.6. but I cannot check this on Lion, so please do and comment.

[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one. I admit I'm not quite exactly sure what this does, so exercise some prudence. Make sure you do the backup before making changes to the plist file. If you are adventurous and give it a go, do post results in the comments.]

When you use Mail, or another email client, together with a Gmail account you will surely know that clicking on a message and pressing the delete key does remove that message from Inbox folder but leaves a copy of it in the 'All Mail' folder on the Gmail server. Effectively the message has not been deleted. This is the default Gmail behavior.

While I like using Mail.app with Gmail I don't like the 'All Mail' folder. Here's how to configure Mail so a deleted message ends up in the Trash folder on the Gmail server.

In Mail.app, under Preferences click the Accounts icon. Select your Gmail account. In the Trash section check the box 'Move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox' and check the box 'Store deleted messages on the server'. Close the Mail.app Preferences.

On the left side where the Mailboxes are located, expand the Gmail folder, and click on the Trash folder. Next, from the Mail.app menu select Mailbox » Use this Mailbox For » Trash.

Now messages you delete in Mail.app will from now on be moved to the Trash folder where you can permanently delete them by selecting them and pressing the Delete button on your keyboard or by enabling the automatically delete after x number days setting in Mail.app preferences.

I hope you find this hint useful. It's tested on Mac OS 10.7.2 Mail 5.1.

[crarko adds: It looks to me that these options are available in 10.6.8 Mail as well, although I haven't verified that it works the same.]

You can manipulate Collada (.dae) 3D objects in Lion.

I was converting a Sketchup 3D file to Collada to be able to open it in Cinema 4D when I noticed the Finder icon generated was looking same as the model. I could Quick Look at the file and discovered that you can manipulate the whole 3D right into Quick Look, or Preview.

[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one. The file type is one that is used for a lot of interchangeable 3-D graphics modeling in various game engines.

According to several comments, this also works in Snow Leopard.]

After upgrading to Mac OS X Lion, I started searching for mail to find registration emails for software that I had to reinstall. I knew they were in my mailboxes because I had found them with no problem in my previous Snow Leopard Install. None of the emails were showing up when I did a search via Lion's search function.

After doing a search I found a thread on Apple Discussions that helped solved the problem but I went back to search for the thread so I thought I'd submit it as a hint.

The solution is to force Spotlight to re-index your hard drive. There are a few ways you can do this:

Follow this Apple Knowledge Base article,

or in Terminal type:

sudo mdutil -E /

You will need to enter your admin password to execute the Terminal command.

[crarko adds: I had to do a Spotlight re-index when I did the Lion upgrade. It took forever on the Firewire drive that I'm using. But afterwards searching behaves quite well.]

In previous versions of iCal, calendar items and to-do items (reminders) were contained in the same calendar container. In Lion, they are separated into Calendars and Reminders Lists.

To see the Reminders Lists, click on the word 'Reminders' above the list of reminder items on the right side of the screen. To create a new Reminders List, select File » New Reminders List.

You may have a Calendar and a Reminders List with the same name. But you can also have Calendars and Reminders Lists which are only displayed in the one place.

When I upgraded from MobileMe to iCloud, I thought some of my calendars had disappeared, except the reminders from those calendars still appeared in the list. These were special calendars I had that only contained reminders. Then I clicked on 'Reminders' and discovered that they were listed separately.

[crarko adds: Seems like a good addition.]

More of an observation than hint but from the Apple site (and Geniuses at the stores), I was expecting to have to move photos taken on my iPhone from Photostream to the permanent library on the iPhone to preserve them after the 30 day limit.

Not so. Both on my iPhone and my iCloud-synced MacBook Air, the photos are both in Photostream and in the Library automatically. Personally, I think this is preferred behavior but does seem to defeat Apple's goal of not having too many pics stored on the iDevices.

[crarko adds: I haven't tried Photostream as part of my general putting-off of the iCloud transfer, but the behavior mentioned here is what I would expect, and would have been pretty annoyed has it been otherwise. You should never be forced to do these things manually.]

It looks like you can finally hide purchases from the the App Store (and the iTunes store).

This may have been mentioned somewhere before, but I haven't seen it.

If you open iTunes and go to the iTunes store and click on 'purchased,' you'll get your list of purchases. From here, if you mouseover a particular purchase (movie, tv show, app), you'll see a little X in the top left corner. If you click on the X, you'll see a message: 'Are you sure you want to hide this purchase? You can unhide purchases from your Account Information page.'

Click the X and the purchase is now hidden on all your Apple devices.

[crarko adds: I don't know how new this is, but I'd not noticed it before either. Handy to know for things like the MLB app that have a new version each year.]

There is a way to add an iCloud Calendar in iCal in Snow Leopard.

Open iCal in Snow Leopard (if is up to date, it should be Version 4.0.4 (1395.7).

• Select 'Preferences' from the iCal Menu.
• Go to the Accounts tab.
• Click the + sign to add a new account.
• Select the 'CalDAV' option under the Account type.
• Enter your 'User name' which is your iCloud .me email address.
• Enter your iCloud 'Password'.
• Now comes the tricky part; the 'Server address'. See below.

It will be of the form pXX-caldav.icloud.com (the XX would be numbers of the dedicated server). I was able to determine this value by sending an invite to another one of my other email accounts and clicking the 'Accept' button. This will open the reply in a web browser. If you look at the long URL, at the end there is a pXX value and that's the dedicated server.

Once that is done, the calendar will show up iCal. However, a few minor updates will need to be done so that it behaves just like in Lion's iCal.

Click the 'Server Settings' tab for your new calendar and update the 'Server address' with your pXX-caldav.icloud.com.

Next you need to update the 'Server path'. The way that it was configured is based on the MobileMe configuration and it needs to be updated to the iCloud. The value that MobileMe has is /principals/users/1.XXXXXXXXXX/ (The XXXXXXX is the dedicated number for your account. Update the path to /XXXXXXXXXX/principal/.

Update the 'Port' to 443 and select the 'Use SSL' option if is not selected.

Restart iCal in Snow Leopard. The Calendar will refresh.

[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one, although it looks very similar to the hoops you have to jump through sometimes when running the iCal service in OS X Server.

I'm one of those poor folks maintaining a mixed Lion/Snow Leopard setup holding out for some kind of update to Snow Leopard that will support a few basic iCloud functions like this. And I'm not switching from MobileMe to iCloud until either I see that, or have no other choice next Summer.]

I just accidentally discovered that in most typing fields in 10.6 or 10.7 (and maybe older as well) that if you hold down Option and hit Delete OS X will delete the last word you typed. If you hold Command and hit Delete it will delete the entire line.

I haven't stumbled across this documented anywhere and it will become part of my keyboarding repertoire. I confirmed it works in iChat, TextEdit, Mail and Safari so I would think it's part of the standard text input library. In MS Word 2008 and 2011 both command and option delete only remove the previous word.

[crarko adds: This is part of the Cocoa text handling system. I found an earlier reference in this hint but it's buried in there and so this particular usage may not be well-known. I trust nobody will be too alarmed if it's pointed out again.]