Category: Tricks

To change future Terminal windows’ transparency (0=invisible, 1=opaque) — in a shell, type this (on one line, change the 0.85 as preferred) then return: defaults write com.apple.terminal TerminalOpaqueness ‘0.85’

To change the file type that OS X outputs when using the command + shift + 3 or command + shift + 4 (with or without the spacebar after) in Tiger launch Terminal, and depending on what file type you want outputted, type the appropriate line below followed by return: defaults write com.apple.screencapture type pdfdefaults…

Tooltips are those ‘helpful’ yellow tags containing messages that sometimes appear when the mouse pointer hovers over controls in many programs. For various reasons, I sometimes find aspects of their implementation to be unsatisfactory. Fortunately, it turns out to be possible to tweak tooltip characteristics (at least in Cocoa apps) to some extent, by adding…

To quit X11 without presenting warning dialog type the following in Terminal application: defaults write com.apple.x11 no_quit_alert true See man page for Xquartz for more details.

One of the most common questions I get from users is why can’t I choose a folder when I use File -> Save (As) and I have to tell them ‘click the little blue button with the black triangle.’ This expands the sheet (collapsed by default) to allow the user to choose a specific folder.…

Before we can use xhost and xauth across machines, we need to configure the display server to accept incoming network connections. The nolisten_tcp setting controls this. It must be set to false in order to accept connections. This can easily be accomplished through the Mac OS X user defaults system. Use defaults write to change…

To configure a Mac OS X user account so that .DS_Store files are not created when interacting with a remote file server using the Finder, follow the steps below.Note: This will affect the user’s interactions with SMB/CIFS, AFP, NFS, and WebDAV servers. 1. Open the Terminal. 2. Type: defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true 3. Press…

If you’d like one of your Dashboard widgets to be available all the time, instead of only when you have activated Dashboard via F12, then activate the Dashboard dvelopment mode. Open the Terminal and type: defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES and press Return. Then logout and log back in again. Now debugging mode is activated.…

To get PDF’s from the web to open in Preview instead of Safari (like they used to) type in Terminal (with Safari off): defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool YES

There are actually a few tricks you may do with minimizing windows in OS X. In system preferences you can select either ‘genie’ or ’scale’ effect. But there is another one, called ’suck’. This one can’t be enabled via system preferences, but it can be via the terminal. So open your terminal and type the…