By tweaking one file within the System folder, it is possible to change almost any string of text that appears in Mac OS X. Amongst the endless possibilities are things like the default new folder name and the suffix added to duplicates and aliases. You can customize things like the categories in the iTunes and Finder sidebars or the System Preferences categories, or, for a bit of fun, you can change the the message you get when an application crashes.

Change the default new folder name
When you create a new folder in the Finder, it is automatically named "untitled folder". This annoyingly buries deep within a list when sorted alphabetically, rather than at the top or the bottom where it is easy to find. Luckily, it is surprisingly simple to change it.

First, navigate to Macintosh HD/System/Library/CoreServices. In here, locate the Finder application. Right-click (Control-click) on it, and choose "Show Package Contents" from the contextual menu. In the window that appears, navigate through to Contents/Resources/English.lproj. A quick way of navigating here (you might end up doing it a few times) is to use the "Go to Folder" option in the Go menu. In the box that appears, paste the following line:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/

Find the file named "Localizable.strings" and drag it to the Desktop to make a copy. We are going to edit this copy on the desktop, and then copy it back into the English.lproj folder to replace the original version. You might want to make an additional copy of the file as a backup, just in case anything goes wrong.

Open up the desktop version of the localizable.strings file using TextEdit. Scroll down to the line that starts with N2. it should say the following:

"N2" = "untitled folder";

Now you can change the words "untitled folder" to anything you want. For something at the start of the alphabet, you could simply put "*untitled folder*".

Once you are done, save the file on the desktop and quit TextEdit. Finally, drag the file back to the English.lproj folder that you copied it from. Click Authenticate and type in your administrator password.

For changes to take place, you will have to relaunch the Finder, which can be done by holding down Control and Option, clicking the Finder icon in the Dock, and choosing Relaunch from the menu.

Suffixes for duplicates and aliases
These are done in exactly the same way as the new folder tip above. Only this time, change line N3 for aliases, or N4 for duplicates.

In these cases, "^0" takes the place of the original file name. So, for a duplicate, the default is "^0 copy", meaning the duplicate of "file.doc" is "file copy.doc". As above, you can change this to anything you want. "copy of ^0" would mean the duplicate would work better with file extensions, giving "copy of file.doc". However, it wouldn't be next to the original file alphabetically.

Remember to relaunch the Finder when you are done.

Shorten the Finder's 'Show Item Info' text
One of the features I like about Mac OS X is the "Show item info" check box located in the View Options of the Finder. This works for all windows in icon view, and is therefore especially useful on the desktop. However, one problem with it is the text for Hard Drives is too long, unless you make the text size really small.

You can solve this problem by editing the same localizable.strings file as above. Carry out the steps exactly the same, but search for the line "IV9" = "^0 free";. The best way to change this is to get rid of the word free, just leaving "IV9" = "^0";. You can see the result below.

Remove default Genres in iTunes
iTunes comes with a long list of genres, some of which many people will never use. Occasionally this may become annoying, for example when using the autofill feature.

To remove some of the genres, you have to edit the localizable.strings file within iTunes, rather than within the Finder. You can find this by going to iTunes in the applications folder, right-clicking and choosing "Show Package Contents". In here, navigate to Contents/Resources/Englihs.lproj where you will find the localizable.strings file. As before, you will have to copy it to your desktop before editing.

Open up the file in TextEdit. You'll find the list of genres under the line /* ===== Genres ===== */. To remove a genre, don't bother deleting it, just in case you ever want it back. Simply "comment" out the line, by putting a /* at the start, and a */ at the end. For example, to remove Techno, you will simply replace the line with /* "9200.019" = "Techno"; */.

As always, quit and reopen iTunes for changes to take effect.

Change the iTunes sidebar labels
The most obvious reason for wanting to do this is if you would prefer the labels to be lowercase. Using the same localizable.strings file as in the genre tip above, find the following lines:

"135.011" = "LIBRARY";
"135.012" = "DEVICES";
"135.013" = "STORE";
"135.014" = "PLAYLISTS";

You can change these to anything you want, or simply remove the capitalization.

Change the Finder's sidebar labels
You can do exactly the same thing in the Finder's sidebar. The file you need to edit is localizableCore.strings, located in exactly the same place as the localizable.strings file inside the Finder application. The lines you want to change are the following:

"SD5" = "DEVICES";
"SD6" = "SHARED";
"SD7" = "SEARCH FOR";
"SD8" = "PLACES";

Customize System Preferences
All the System Preferences panes are grouped into five categories - Personal, Hardware, Internet and Network, System and Other. It is quite easy to change these category names by going inside the System Preferences package, which is in the Applications folder. Inside it, navigate to the English.lproj folder inside the Resources folder. In here, find a file named NSPrefPaneGroups.strings and drag it to your desktop. Now open this file up in TextEdit and you'll see the following lines:

"personal" = "Personal";
"digitalHub" = "Digital Hub";
"hardware" = "Hardware";
"net" = "Internet & Network";
"system" = "System";
"addons" = "Other";

Don't change the words on the left, these are the ones used by System Preferences. You can change the words on the right. These are the ones displayed in the System Preferences window. Just make sure you don't delete any quotes or semicolons. Also, ignore the "Digital Hub" entry. This isn't used anymore and is probably just left over from a previous version of the operating system.

Now save the file and drag it back to the English.lproj folder from the Desktop. You will have to Authenticate this action with your administrator password.

Dock Menu items
For a bit of fun (I can't see why else) you can change the items in the menus you get when right-clicking on icons in the Dock. The Dock application is located in /System/Library/CoreServices. Right-click on it and choose "Show Package Contents". In the window that appears, navigate to Contents/Resources/English.lproj where you will find DockMenus.strings. Copy this file to the desktop to edit it.

Some of the lines you might want to edit are the "Application Not Responding" and "Force Quit" lines to something more reflective of the feeling you get when you see them.

Change Unexpectedly Quit message
With some tinkering it is possible to customize Mac OS X alert messages and dialog box text. For a bit of fun, you can change the message that appears when an application crashes to something more humorous.

Open up your hard drive and navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices. Find the Crash Reporter package and open it by right-clicking and choosing Show Package Contents.

In the window that appears, navigate to Contents/Resources/English.lproj and find Localizable.strings. Copy it to your Desktop and open it up in TextEdit. Near the bottom of the file you will see the line -

/* Unexpectedly quit dialog */

In the lines that follow this it is fairly obvious how to change the message. The symbol "%@" will make the message display the crashed Application's name, and "\n" will make a line break. Save the file and then copy it back to the package to replace the old version. You will have to enter your administrator password.

MacTips.org recently published an article on 5 Commonly Overlooked System Preferences. I am quite familiar with the System Preferences panel and wasn't expecting to see anything new, so I was quite surprised to see something I had completely overlooked until now.

Number 5 on the list, smooth scrolling, is something I have never noticed before. You can find it in the Appearance section of System Preferences. When enabled, it means that pushing page up/down or hitting space bar makes the page glide instead of jumping straight to the next position. This small feature is fantastic when reading long web pages or news feeds, as you can just tap space to scroll down a page while keeping a good idea of where you are on the page.



The other 4 overlooked preferences are a bit more well known, but are probably still pretty useful for newer users. Head over to mactips.org for the full article.

You may already know that some of the screen savers in Mac OS X are Quartz Compositions. The RSS Visualizer, Arabesque and Spectrum were all made with Quartz Composer, which is included with the Developer Tools.

While those ones are automatically included as screen savers, there is actually a whole folder full of other compositions hidden in the system files. These files simply need to be dragged onto the Screen Saver section of System Preferences to install them.

To find these hidden screen savers, go to Macintosh HD, and navigate to /System/Library/Compositions. In here there are almost 90 Quartz Composition files. They aren't specifically made to be screen savers (it's actually a collection of iChat effects, slideshow transitions, image effects and iTunes visualizers) but some of them work just fine. When you find one you like, open up System Preferences and go to the Screen Saver section. Now just drag the file you have chosen onto the screen saver preview on the right. I have found that the following files work best:

Defocus.qtz
Fall.qtz
Floor.qtz
Grid.qtz
Image Hose.qtz
Kaleidescope.qtz
Moving Shapes.qtz
Stix.qtz
Travelator.qtz
Wall.qtz

Admittedly, Floor is pretty boring, and Stix is actually an iTunes visualizer, but they work none the less. Many of them allow you to change the options in from in System Preferences. For example, you have to choose an image for Kaleidoscope, or it will just display a blank screen.


There are even more compositions available in the Developer Tools. You can install the Developer Tools from the Mac OS X install disk. If you don't have the Developer Tools installed, it means you probably don't need them. It's overkill to install 2.5 GB of tools you will never use, just for a few screen savers. Instead, you can just install the examples. On the install disk, go to /Optional Installs/Xcode Tools/Packages and install DevExamples.pkg.

Take a look in /Developer/Examples/Quartz Composer/Compositions/Graphic Animations. Some of my personal favourites, "Scanner" and "Static" are in here. There are also two purpose built screen savers included with the Developer Tools, located in /Developer/Examples/Quartz Composer/Compositions/Screen Savers. "Retro" takes a picture of your current screen, gives it a sepia tone and bounces it up and down. "Security" takes pictures using your iSight and displays them in a grid. As with the other files, simply drag them to the screen saver preview in System Preferences to install them.

If you have more than one monitor, you may be familiar with the problem of windows getting stuck off the edge of the main screen. When you disconnect a second monitor, Mac OS X is normally quite good at bringing all the windows back to your main monitor. However, every now and again, windows get left behind, off the edge of the main display and out of reach.

Luckily, this blog post has the solution - a simple AppleScript. When run, it automatically finds all the windows that are off the edge of the screen and clusters them in the top left of the main monitor. To run it, start by opening up Script Editor (located in Applications/AppleScript) then paste in the following:

property processesToIgnore : {}
tell application "Finder"
set _b to bounds of window of desktop
set screen_width to item 3 of _b
set screen_height to item 4 of _b
end tell
tell application "System Events"
set allProcesses to application processes
set _results to ""
repeat with i from 1 to count allProcesses
set doIt to 1
repeat with z from 1 to count processesToIgnore
if process i = process (item z of processesToIgnore) then
set doIt to 0
end if
end repeat
if doIt = 1 then
tell process i
repeat with x from 1 to (count windows)
set winPos to position of window x
set _x to item 1 of winPos
set _y to item 2 of winPos
if (_x < 0 or _y < 0 or _x > screen_width or _y > screen_height) then
set position of window x to {0, 22}
end if
end repeat
end tell
end if
end repeat
end tell

Click the Compile button at the top to make sure the script is OK. If you receive an error message, check for any problems that may have occurred in the copy/paste process.

For the script to work, you will need to enable access for assistive devices. You can do this by going to the Universal Access section of System Preferences. Check the box at the bottom that says “Enable access for assistive devices”.

Now, when you click the Run button above the script, any off-screen windows will be placed in the top left of the main monitor.

One problem with this is that you may have some applications that keep windows off-screen on purpose. One example of this is Firefox, which gives you a blank square in the top left when you run the script. The first line of the script allows you to get around this by excluding specific applications from the script. For example you could change it to

property processesToIgnore : {"Firefox"}

or

property processesToIgnore : {"Firefox", "otherApp", "anotherOne"}

Now, opening up the script and clicking the "Run" button every time you disconnect your second monitor is quite time consuming. There are a couple of ways to run it much more quickly. The first is to add it to your scripts menu. If you haven't already enabled this, you can do so by navigating to Macintosh HD/Applications/AppleScript and opening up AppleScript Utility. Near the bottom of the window that appears, check the box that says "Show Script Menu in Menu Bar". To add your script to the menu, you have to save it in a specific location. Go to the Library folder inside your user folder and look for a folder called "Scripts". If it isn't there, create it. Save the script here.


An alternative way to run the script is to save it as an application. With the script open in Script Editor, go to the File menu and choose Save As. Change the File Format drop-down menu to Application and then save it. Now when you double-click the script, it will instantly run. Save it somewhere you can easily access it, like on the desktop.

Over the past few weeks, lots of people have been contacting Mac OS X Tips asking how to reset a forgotten Mac OS X user account password. Depending on the circumstances, this task could take 5 minutes or could even be completely impossible. Here is a run through of the different ways you can reset an account password depending on the type of account, whether FileVault is enabled and whether you have the Mac OS X Install Disc.

If you still know the Administrator Password
If you still know the password to an administrator account, it is very simple to reset any standard or managed user's password. While logged in as the administrator, open up System Preferences and click on the Accounts section. All the accounts on the computer should be listed down the left hand side. Under each account name it should say Admin, Standard or Managed. If the lock at the bottom of the window appears locked, click on it to allow changes to the preferences.

The next step is to select the user whose password you want to change and click on the Reset Password button. Enter the new password and click Reset Password. If you have created multiple Administrator accounts, you can use this method to reset their passwords too, as long as you know the password for the original administrator account.


Resetting an Administrator Password
Obviously, if you don't have access to an administrator account, you can't carry out any of the above steps. If you have forgotten the Administrator password or you can't log into your Mac at all, you will need to use the Mac OS X Install Disc.

Enter the Mac OS X Install Disc that is the closest version to that running on the Mac. For example, if you are running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, you should enter the Tiger install disk, not any earlier ones. Restart the computer, and hold the C key as it starts up. This might take longer than usual, and you can release the C key as soon as the Apple logo appears on the screen. When the window appears, choose your language and click the right arrow.

The next step depends on what version of Mac OS X you are using. For Tiger (10.4), choose Reset Password from the Utilities menu. For earlier versions, choose Reset Password from the Installer menu.

Choose your Hard Drive from the top and then choose the Account from the drop down menu. Be careful not to select System Administrator, as this is actually the root user, not the administrator account on your Mac. Now enter the new password, click Save, quit the Installer and restart the computer.

Note that there are a few issues with this method. Firstly, it does not reset your keychain password. You will have to do this separately. Secondly, do not attempt this if you have FileVault enabled. To reset an FileVault protected account, you need the master password.

Resetting a FIleVault Protected User's Password
If you have enabled FileVault to encrypt your Account, you need to know the master password that you set when you enabled it. This is the password that the administrator should know that allows you to reset any password on the computer. If you have forgotten the master password, unfortunately your data is lost forever.

If you know the master password, start by attempting to log into your account. When you get the password wrong three times, you will be able to click "Forgot Password". Now you will have to enter the master password and then a new login password for your account.

If you have lost the Mac OS X install Disc
If you have lost the install disc, don't try and use one from an earlier version as this might permanently block you out of your account. You really have two options: Firstly, you could buy a new copy of Mac OS X (try eBay). Secondly, there is a way of resetting an administrator password without the disc if you are running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Note: Do NOT do this with a FileVault protected account, or your data will be lost forever.

First, note the short name of the account. This is the same as the name of its home folder, but not necessarily the name that appears in the login window. Restart your computer, and while it is starting up, hold Command-S. This will start up your Mac in Single User Mode. Once it has started up, you will need to enter three lines of code. Enter sh /etc/rc and press return. Then enter passwd yourusername and hit return. Now you will have to enter a new password twice. What you type won't appear on screen, but it is working. Once you have done this, type reboot and hit return.

This is the same as the Install Disc method in that it doesn't reset your Keychain password. You will have to do this separately.

One of the problems that seems to cause the most distress amongst Mac users who contact me is when user folders go missing.

In general, there seems to be two reasons why a user account and their home folder can disappear. The first is simply that you have (accidentally) deleted the user. Any administrator account has the ability to do this from the System Preferences.

The second way occurs when upgrading or installing Mac OS X from the install disks. If you inadvertently chose an "Archive and Install" installation, all users are deleted unless you choose to preserve them.

Luckily, in both of the above cases, Mac OS X keeps a copy of the user folder in case you want to get it back.

Recovering Deleted User Folders
In the Accounts section of System Preferences you can delete a user by selecting them and clicking the minus button. You are presented with two options - to keep a copy of the user folder (the normal way) or to delete immediately. Unfortunately, if you chose to delete an account immediately, it is almost impossible to retrieve it.

However, it is more likely that you kept a copy (the option with the big blue "OK" button). This copy is kept in the Users folder under "Deleted Users". You must be logged into an administrator account to have access to this folder. Look in here for the name of the deleted user you want to recover, and double click it. This will mount a disk image on the desktop that essentially the deleted user folder. Hold option and drag this disk image from the desktop to the Users folder in your Hard Drive. Now you have restored the user folder, but you still need to create an account for it. Skip down to "Recreating the Account" to do this.

Users lost during an Archive and Install
When you perform an archive and install without preserving users, your user folders are archived away along with the rest of the existing system files for your Mac. A new folder called "Previous Systems" is created in Macintosh HD that contains all the users from before the archive and install. If you have done an archive and install multiple times, you will have a number of previous systems. Choose the one that contains all the users you wish to restore. In here is a users folder containing each of the deleted user folders. Drag the ones you wish to restore to the users folder in Macintosh HD. Now you have restored the user folders, but you still need to create accounts to be associated with them.

Recreating the Account

Go the Accounts section of System Preferences and click on the plus button to create a new account. You may need to enter an administrator password to do this. The "short name" of the new user must be the same as the name of the folder you just dragged to the users folder. When you click OK, a dialog will appear asking if you want to associate this account with the folder that is already in the users folder. Click OK to do this.

If you just want to retrieve certain files from the deleted user, you don't need to go through the hassle of creating a new user. From any administrator account you can open up the deleted user's disk image or Previous Systems folder and copy specific files from it.

Here's a quick tip. When you change the volume using the keyboard, your Mac plays the usual clicking sound associated with a volume change.

You can turn this sound off from the Sound section of System Preferences, but this is a bit time consuming to do every time you want to quietly change the volume.

Luckily there is a keyboard shortcut to silence the volume changing beep on a case by case basis. If you hold the Shift key while changing the volume, you will get no audio feedback, meaning you won't bother anyone with the clicking sound.

You can also get this to work the other way round. If you turn off the feedback in the Sound section of System Preferences, the clicking sound will only play if you hold down shift before changing the volume.

(This is vaguely related to a previous tip - holding option before pressing the volume change keys will open up the Sound System Preferences.)

Create your own alert sound
Whenever Mac OS X wants to get your attention, it plays an alert sound. For example it does this when a dialog box appears, when you receive an email and as an iCal alarm. Your Mac comes with a nice set of alert sounds, but after a while they may get a bit boring.

You can add your own alert sounds by placing audio files in a certain folder. Before you do that however, you will need to convert your sound file to the AIFF format using iTunes. Open up iTunes and choose Preferences from the iTunes menu. In the Advanced section, click on the Importing tab and choose AIFF encoder from the pop-up menu. Click OK.

If the audio file you want to use is in iTunes, select it and then click on the Advanced menu. In here choose Convert selection to AIFF. If you audio file is somewhere else, hold Option while clicking on the Advanced menu and choose Convert to AIFF. This will bring up a dialog that will allow you to navigate to your audio file. Once the file is done converting, go back to the preferences and change the "Import Using" pop-up menu back to AAC.

Now we have to get this file to show up in the Alerts list in System Preferences, Mail and iCal. Open up your user folder, look in the Library for a folder called Sounds and drag the sound here from iTunes. Your new alert should now be in the list in the Sounds section of System Preferences.

Make your alerts visual
An alternative to the audio alert is a visual alert, which is basically a screen flash. You can turn this on in the Universal Access section of System Preferences, under the Hearing tab. This will flash the screen as well as playing an alert sound. If you want to get rid of the sound and just have the flash, go to the Sounds section of System Preferences and move the Alert Volume Slider all the way to the left.

Annoyingly, this will also mute the feedback you get when the volume is changed and the interface sound effects (like when you move something to the trash). If you're fine with this then use the method above. However if you still want these other sound effects, there is a better (but more complicated) solution.

Mac OS X will also flash the screen if for some reason it is unable to play the selected audio alert. To make this happen, open up TextEdit and press Command-Shift-T to convert the document to plain text. Save this empty file as Flash.aiff in the sounds folder inside your Library. If a dialog asks you which extension to use, choose .aiff.

Now if you look in your alerts list in System Preferences there will be an alert called Flash that does exactly that - flash the screen. This is because Flash.aiff isn't really a sound file. When your Mac tries to play it and can't, it flashes the screen instead to make sure you still see an alert.

The Ask a Question page that I recently added to the site has been surprisingly popular. Here's a few of the latest questions. If you have a question or tip about Mac OS X use the corresponding link in the sidebar to send it to me.

Dan writes:

My one year old daughter attacked my wife's iBook, and has somehow changed the settings so that the computer has gone 'negative' - everything looks like a photographic negative - desktop background, icons, the dock, everything. Does anyone know how to get this back to normal?

The "negative" effect is a feature of the Universal Access preferences. To quickly reverse it, press Control-Option-Command-8. You can change all the settings for this in the System Preferences, under the Universal Access pane. For more information on this, check out this previous tip on Universal Access.

Ignacio writes:

Hello, I accidentally erased the Ical application, i would like to know how to install it again.

The iCal application is included on the Mac OS X install disks that came with your Mac. However, technically you would have to reinstall the entire operating system to get it back.

A shareware application called Pacifist ( http://www.charlessoft.com/ ) allows you to open up the installer files and just install a single application. This should work for iCal or any other application included with Mac OS X.

Sean writes:

I have a delightful neighbor who's 90 years old who uses the net daily. She is sight impaired. I need to find a method of increasing the width of the scrollbars and their arrows to a size she can use. She recently switched from a PC to the Mac. She loves the Mac. It was easy to set the scrollbar size on XP. How can this be done on the Mac? Her Mac is a beige desktop G3 with lots of memory and OS X 10.2.8.

The only tools for the sight impaired that come with Mac OS X are the settings in the Universal Access pane of the System Preferences (in the Apple menu). There is an option here for zooming that zooms in on the cursor when you press a keyboard shortcut. However, this isn't exactly what you want and it involves learning a load of keyboard shortcuts.

Another option is to change the screen resolution. Go to the Displays pane in the System Preferences and choose a lower number from the list of resolutions. The drawback of this method is that everything gets bigger, and there is less room for viewing things like large photos.

I understand that neither of these are perfect solutions, but they may be worth a try.

For those who don't know, Mac OS X packages are simply folders disguised to look like single files. The most common examples are applications. They are just folders containing all the data files for the application that open up as an application rather than folder when you double-click them in the Finder.

Packages are great because they allow the developer to store all the important related files inside the application. They are also great because they make it very easy to tinker with the way applications work.

To view or edit a package's contents, Control-click (or Right-click) on the application and select Show Package Contents from the context menu. This will bring up a finder window containing a folder named Contents. Inside here is the actual package contents.

The following are a few examples of what you can do inside Mac OS X packages.

Warning: It is a good idea to keep a backup of any file you modify. To do this, just Option-drag the file to copy it to a safe place before making any changes to the original.

1. Change Unexpectedly Quit message
With some tinkering it is possible to customize Mac OS X alert messages and dialog box text. For a bit of fun, you can change the message that appears when an application crashes to something more humorous.

Open up your hard drive and navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices. Find the Crash Reporter package and open it by Control-clicking (or right clicking) and choosing Show Package Contents.

In the window that appears, navigate to Contents/Resources/English.lproj and find Localizable.strings. Copy it to your Desktop and open it up in TextEdit. Near the bottom of the file you will see the line -

/* Unexpectedly quit dialog */

In the lines that follow this it is fairly obvious how to change the message. The symbol "%@" will make the message display the crashed Application's name, and "\n" will make a line break. Save the file and then copy it back to the package to replace the old version. You will have to enter your administrator password.

2. Change an application's default icon
You probably know how to change an application's icon by opening up its Get Info window (Command-I), clicking on the icon and pasting a new one over it. You can use the Cut tool (Command-X) to remove this icon and return to the default. To change this default icon, you have to delve into the package. The icon file is stored in the Resources folder within the package contents, and normally has the same name as the application with the .icns extension. You can replace this file with any other icon file, whether it is downloaded from the Internet or taken from another application.

If you dislike the way the iCal icon always displays the date as July 17 when it isn't open, there is an alternative icon inside the iCal package. If you look inside the Resources folder you will find two icons - App.icns and App-empty.icns. To change which one iCal uses, simply rename App.icns something like AppJul17.icns and make a duplicate of App-empty.icns named App.icns.

Some people also dislike the iTunes 7 icon. This Mac OS X Hints article describes how to change it back to the one used in iTunes 6.

3. Open help files in a Web browser
Anyone who has ever used the Mac OS X help browser will admit that it is a little on the slow side. Annoyingly, it also lacks a Save command, meaning you have to go through the slow process of loading it up and finding what you want every time. Luckily, the help pages are just HTML files stored away inside the application's package. This means you can open them up in Safari, which is much quicker for browsing and allows you to save bookmarks and Save pages.

For example, to open up the iPhoto help, open up the iPhoto package in your Applications folder. Then navigate to the English.lproj folder inside the Resources folder. Here you'll find a folder called iPhoto Help with a file named iPhoto Help.htm inside. Double-click on this file to open it up in Safari.

Annoyingly, every now and again a link will open up in Help Viewer, but generally you can browse the help files from within Safari.

Things like Airport, Applescript, Bluetooth, iPod and Mac OS X itself don't have an Application package to store the help files in, so these are located in the Library folder. To find them, go to your Hard drive and look inside Library/Documentation/Help. Each of the .help files in here is a package.

4. Change Text Clipping Behaviour
This previous tip explains how to make selections within Text Clippings by changing a file within the Finder Package. Normally you can only copy and paste the entire clipping, but by changing one line in a file, you can enable making selections within clippings.

5. Customize System Preferences
All the System Preferences panes are grouped into five categories - Personal, Hardware, Internet and Network, System and Other. It is quite easy to change these category names by going inside the System Preferences package, which is in the Applications folder. Inside it, navigate to the English.lproj folder inside the Resources folder. In here, find a file named NSPrefPaneGroups.strings and drag it to your desktop. Now open this file up in TextEdit and you'll see the following lines:

"personal" = "Personal";
"digitalHub" = "Digital Hub";
"hardware" = "Hardware";
"net" = "Internet & Network";
"system" = "System";
"addons" = "Other";

Don't change the words on the left, these are the ones used by System Preferences. You can change the words on the right. These are the ones displayed in the System Preferences window. Just make sure you don't delete any quotes or semicolons. Also, ignore the "Digital Hub" entry. This isn't used anymore and is probably just left over from a previous version of the operating system.

Now save the file and drag it back to the English.lproj folder from the Desktop. You will have to Authenticate this action with your administrator password.

6. Modify iCal alarm message
You can customize the alarm message in iCal to show something else instead of the alarm clock. First, create a Quicktime movie that is roughly 53 pixels wide and 66 pixels high, and save it as alarmclock.mov. Locate iCal in your Applications folder open up its package. Go to the Resources folder and locate the alarmclock.mov file that is already in there. Replace this with your new alarmclock.mov file.

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Using the mouse is not always the quickest way of getting things done. Keyboard shortcuts are great timesavers, but not every command has one. Luckily you can create your own keyboard shortcuts from the System Preferences to speed things up.

To do this, open up System Preferences and go to the Keyboard and Mouse pane. From the "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab you can view and edit all existing keyboard shortcuts for the system. To change any of them, double click on the current key combination then type your own. If the one you set clashes with any others, a warning icon will appear next to it. To disable a shortcut, uncheck the box next to it on the left.

Note that this list does not contain any application specific shortcuts. At the bottom there is a section for "Application Keyboard Shortcuts" but this is probably empty. The only ones that appear here are the shortcuts that you create. Click the small plus (+) button below the list to bring up a dialog box that allows you to choose an application and menu command and assign a keyboard shortcut to it.

The drop down menu contains all the applications in the applications folder, but if you want another one, choose other from the bottom of the list. Next enter the exact name of the menu item you want to create the shortcut for. This can be anything that appears in an application's menus, but don't forget to include the "..." at the end if the item has it (e.g. Customize Toolbar...").

The keyboard shortcut can use a combination of the Command, Control, Option and Shift keys, as well as any of the function keys (F1, F2 etc.). For some of the nested menu items it isn't obvious what to type. For example, to choose the menu item "Arrange by --> Kind" you have to type "By Kind".

After entering all the details, click add and your shortcut will be added to the bottom of the list under "Application shortcuts". You will have to quit and reopen the application for everything to start working. To do this for the Finder, Control-Option click on its Dock icon and choose Relaunch.

We all have to admit that we are pretty lazy at times, and would love to make our computers do stuff automatically. And because we are lazy, we can't be bothered with stuff like Applescripts that are far too much effort to create. Here are a few tips to automate your Mac and make your life that little bit easier without going over the top with scripting.

The first thing to do is to make your Mac turn on by itself. You can set it to do this in the Energy Saver preference pane in System Preferences. Just load it up and click "schedule" and choose a time to start up (and/or shutdown) and on which days you want this. This will also wake up your Mac if it is asleep, but this might not work if you have a password enabled screensaver.

Instead of loading up the same web browser, email client and iTunes every time you start up your computer, you can set them as login items in the Accounts preference pane. Choose the login items tab, click the plus and select the applications you want to automatically start up. Popular ones are Mail or Entourage, Firefox or Safari and iCal.

As far a scheduling specific applications goes, you have to use applescripts or automator actions for most of them. If you aren't completely super lazy, it is pretty straightforward to create a workflow in automator that opens up a list of websites, or starts an iTunes playlist going. To get this worklow to be carried out at a certain time, create an event in iCal and set an alarm. As the alarm action, set it to open up the automator file.

However, in some applications you can get the same results without making workflows or scripts. For example, in Firefox you can set multiple websites as your homepage, and all of these will open up when you start Firefox. There are two ways to do this. The first is to create a folder of bookmarks with all the sites you want to load on startup. After creating this folder, go to the Firefox preferences and click "use bookmark" to select the folder. The alternative way is to type in each address into the homepage field with a | (pipe) in between. Be sure to set Firefox to load your homepage on startup using the dropdown menu.

Finally, some applications have built in scheduling capabilities. Microsoft Entourage has tools to set Send and receive schedules that check for email at certain times and Apple's Backup has its own scheduling feature to carry out automatic backups however frequently you want.

You can use all of these features to automate your Mac and make sure that you never have to carry out a tedious task again.

Pressing Tab in windows and dialogs normally just moves the focus between text boxes and lists. To make the focus move to all elements of the window, start by opening the Keyboard and Mouse Preferences (in System Preferences) and going to Keyboard Shortcuts.

Under the "Full Keyboard Access" section at the bottom, choosing "All controls" will allow you to focus on things like pop-up menus and buttons too.

Now, when a dialog box opens up, there will be a faint halo around one of the buttons, which you can move by pressing the tab key. Pressing the space bar will select whatever has the focus. The up and down arrow keys now navigate menus, and right and left arrows for folders and subfolders.

The Universal Access System Preferences pane is an area of OS X that is rarely visited by most users. As well as being really useful for computer users with disabilities, it also contains some of the coolest things you can do with your mac.

While the preference pane is useful for browsing through the features, all parts of it are accessible through keyboard shortcuts, which are a much quicker way of turning the features on and off.

Firstly, you can invert the display by pressing Control-Option-Command-8. This changes most windows from black writing on a white background, making your display look much more funky. Pressing the keyboard shortcut again will change your screen back to the way it was.

Secondly the zoom function can be enabled and disabled by pressing Command-Option-8. Once enabled, this allows you to press Command-Option-Dash(-) and Command Option-Equals(=, also has the + on it) to zoom in and out. These are the two keys next to the delete key, not the ones on the keypad to the right. I could see this being especially useful when giving a presentation or tutorial if you want to highlight a particular area of the screen.

(via Silver Mac)

In the Energy Saver system preferences you will find a button labelled "Schedule." This allows you to schedule your mac to startup and shutdown at certain times, on certain days.

This is just about the only way to schedule things without buying other software or using iCal. Basically you can set your computer to come on in the morning on weekdays and go off in the evening for example.

I combine this with a locked screen saver. In the evening I start my "Big Clock" screensaver, then put my mac to sleep. In the morning it wakes up at a specified time, and loads the password dialog box. Then, when no password is typed in, it goes to the screen saver after 30 seconds. This means when I wake up in the morning I can look over and see the time in big bright letter next to me, without them on all night to wake me up.

You can also combine this with an applescript or automator actions to play music or load web pages every morning. After writing the script to do this, set a daily alarm in iCal that loads it every morning, but make sure to make it a minute later than the time your mac wakes up from sleep.

Here is a tip I discovered on TUAW. To quickly go to the display, audio and keyboard preferences, you can hold down the option key and press the relevant F-key.

On a laptop the use is printed on the keys - keyboard brightness, sound volume and display brightness. On a desktop however, the only keys that show you what they do are the volume settings. F14 and F15 control the display contrast, so pressing Option-F14 (or F15) will take you to the display preferences. Of course desktops don't have backlit keyboards, so you can't do that one.

Sleep, Restart and Shut Down also have their own keyboard shortcuts. To put your computer to sleep, press Option-Command-Eject. To Restart, press Control-Command-Eject. To Shut Down, press Control-Option-Command-Eject. These are obviously very complicated to make sure you don't accidently press them whilst doing something else.

In the System Preferences it is easy to make your desktop cycle through a series of images. Just open up System Preferences and click the desktop and screen saver section.

At the bottom of the desktop tab there is an option to change the picture for a given amount of time. With this selected, your desktop will cycle through the images in the iPhoto album or folder you have selected.

But what if you want a selection of photos that aren't in an album together, or want to use multiple albums? Open up iPhoto and click on any image. Clicking on the "desktop" button at the bottom will set this image as your desktop background. Select multiple images using shift-click (if they are in a row) or command-click (if they are separated by other photos), and click the desktop button. If you open up system preferences now, you can see that your desktop is set to cycle through these images.

An added quirk is that your screen saver is also set to make a slideshow of these pictures.