Tag Archives: Mac

Pre-2022 content, Uncategorized

Get a Windows-Style Trash icon on your Mac’s desktop

 Are you a Mac user? Of course you are, you’re reading this. Did you come over from Windows and are having trouble adjusting to macOS? Or do you just like the idea of a Trash icon on your desktop? It doesn’t matter. Whatever your reason, there’s a way to get Trash on your desktop. And it’s not even that hard. 

Notice that there is one bug with this implementation. That bug is that whenever you drag anything onto the icon, while it will be deleted, this will also automatically open the Trash folder in Finder. However, I find that just a minor annoyance, and if you would like, you can add a confirmation dialog here. Anyhow, without further ado, here’s what you do!

  1. Start by opening the Automator app on your Mac 💻 . If you don’t know where this is, just hit ⌘+Space to search for it. 
  2. In the New Document confirmation, select “Application” and hit create. 
  3. Now find the item “Move Finder Items to Trash” and drag it into the workspace. If you only want the item to delete items, skip to step 10. If you want double-clicking the icon to open the Trash 🗑 folder 📁 as well, continue.
  4. Now drag both “Get specified Finder Items” and “Open Finder Items” into the workspace. 
  5. In “Get specified Finder Items”, if any defaults were inserted, remove them. 
  6. Now open a Finder window anywhere on the desktop and hit ⌘+Shift+G. 
  7. Here, type ~/.Trash and hit enter.
  8. Now grab the Folder proxy icon from the top of the Finder window and drag it into the “Get specified Finder items” area. Now your workspace will look like this:  
     *Blurry screenshot, apologies 🙁

  9. Also, if you want to display a confirmation dialog before opening the Trash folder 📂 , find and insert the Ask for Confirmation box into the workspace before the “Open Finder Items” action. Add whatever text you want.
  10. Now, in the menubar, click “File” and then “Export”. In the “Export as” box, you will probably want to type “Trash”, although you can name it whatever you want. Location should be “Desktop”. Once you’ve confirmed these settings, hit Save. 
  11. Now, if you want the icon to look like a Trash can 🗑 , find any icon you like online and use it. Use this tutorial to change the icon. 
  12. You’re done!

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Pre-2022 content, Uncategorized

Open files in Quick Look instead of full applications in macOS

    Are you a Mac user? Do you LOVE the Quick Look feature because it’s a lightweight way to open a file without a full application? But maybe you wish that when you double-click a file, it opens in Quick Look instead of in Preview or Microsoft Word or whatever. It’s actually a lot easier to do this than you might think. Then again, it’s not super easy, either.


Set up the App

    You ARE installing an app when you do this. But don’t worry – you don’t need to download a single file for this. Just follow these simple directions to quickly build the app yourself! 

    First, hit ⌘+Space. Now type “Script Editor” into Spotlight and hit Return on your keyboard. You’ve now opened Script Editor, where you’ll be creating this script. 

    Type (or Copy and Paste) the following into the window: 

on run

set this_application_file to the path to me

tell application “System Events”

set this_version to (the short version of this_application_file) as string

end tell

set the dialog_title to application_name & space & “v” & this_version

activate

display dialog “Open a file with this app or drop it onto this Dock icon to show it in Quick Look” buttons {“Cool”} default button 1 with icon 1 with title dialog_title

end run

on open these_items

set these_paths to “”

repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_items

set these_paths to these_paths & space & (the quoted form of the POSIX path of (item i of these_items))

end repeat

do shell script “qlmanage -p ” & these_paths & ” >& /dev/null”

end open


    Now, hit ⌘+S. In the following dialog, make sure everything looks EXACTLY like this: 

    Now click Save to continue. Do you want files to open in Quick Look instead of their default application? Or do you just want a way to show a file in Quick Look as if it’s an app?


    Before continuing, I assume you’ll want to give this app a better looking icon. That’s up to you. If you want to, I’m sure you can figure out how. However, if you can’t, here’s a tutorial on how to change a Mac App’s icon. 

Pin to Dock 

    To pin your app to the Mac’s Dock, open your Mac’s Applications folder. Hit ⌘+F, select “Applications”, and search for “Quick Look”. Find the one you think is right. Drag it onto the Dock. Whenever you want to view a file in Quick Look, you now have the option to drag it onto an icon in your Dock to view it in Quick Look. 

Set default app to Quick Look

    If you want a particular file type to always open in a lightweight Quick Look viewer instead of, say, the full-fledged and unnecessarily weighty Preview application, here’s how. 

    First, find the file type that you’re looking for, in this case JPG Images. Highlight it using your cursor, and then hit ⌘+I. Then, in the Open with section, open the dropdown, the click “Other”. Hit ⌘+F again. Search for “Quick Look”. Click the little applet we made earlier and click “Add”. 

    To set all files of this type to open in Quick Look, just hit the Change All button. And that’s all there is to it! 

   


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Using Mac OS X Snow Leopard for more than a day in 2021

Is this reminiscent of the recent post about using Windows XP in 2021? Well, it should be. This time, though, I’m firing up a 2006 MacBook that I recently received from an acquaintance. Lucky for me, it was already running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. So no install disk needed, thank goodness. Just in case, though, I had an iso file ready from http://archive.org/details/SnowLeopardInstall. Anyway, I created a user for myself, deleted the old user, and decided to get comfortable.


 


Getting to my stuff


Hmmm… well, Snow Leopard is one of those old OSes that has a loyal following. A following loyal enough to backport compatibility with the modern web back to Mac OS X Snow Leopard in the form of a browser called InterWeb, which happens to just be a backport of the Firefox 60 ESR with compatibility furthered a little. It’s compatible enough that I was fairly satisfied with my browsing experience on Snow Leopard. It opened Google Drive without a problem, and the Google Docs editing experience was the same as what we’ve come to expect on modern platforms. The experience is very conductive, and it’s been good enough that I’ve switched entirely to the Mac as my main computer. And, the software selection is better. All my friends are on Google Hangouts, and Google Hangouts is fortunately backwards-compatible with Google Talk. So, I install Adium, and add my GTalk account to it. That’s nice. I have the MarsEdit 3 free trial installed on this right now – going to buy when it seems viable. Like the Windows XP, this computer also has a lot of licensed software on it from the previous user – Microsoft Office 2011, Adobe Photoshop CS5, Toast Titanium 11, and VMWare Fusion, just to cite a few (don’t expect me to actually be using VMWare Fusion on THIS – it only has 2 GB of RAM.) Unfortunately, this computer has an i386 processor, being the original MacBook, so no 64-bit software for me. 




Everything I was hoping for


Overall, Mac OS X Snow Leopard is actually a lot more usable 12 years later than you’d expect. On June 8, 2021, Mac OS X 10.6 turns 12 years old – and it’ll still be usable. Amazing, isn’t it? And the best part is that this fits right in with the idea that if a computer can get the job done for you, it doesn’t matter how old it is, it just works. You don’t need a new one – I don’t, at least. And the user interface is beautiful. 3D Dock, translucent fabric-y menubar, Mac OS X Aqua (remember that?), and just plain UI Consistency. It is so refreshing to use this after suffering in the dump of modern stuff for so long. In fact, that Snow Leopard should compare favorably to Big Sur shows how good this operating system is. This was the last version to include many of the “power user” features which made the old Mac OS X so great. Oh, and let me just take a jab at Windows here – why does a 15-year old MacBook with 2 GB RAM, a 55 GB HDD, and a 12-year old version of the Mac OS feel more usable than my 6-month old HP PC with 12 GB RAM, a 512 GB SSD, a TouchScreen, and Windows 10 20H2 on it? And macOS Big Sur isn’t much better either – whose idea was the ugly new interface? Anyway, enough ranting. Signing off, Shreyan Jain. At least for now, this 15-year old MacBook can be my main computer. 




Oh, yes, and by the way, this blog post is written from the Snow Leopard. 


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Chrome stops updates for OS X 10.10 Yosemite

I recently had access to a computer running OS X Yosemite and Google Chrome, and I opened Chrome for a minute, and observed that there was a banner at the top, with the following text:

“This computer is running OS X 10.10. To receive future Google Chrome updates, please upgrade to OS X 10.11.”

The Google Chrome website also now lists 10.10 alongside the already unsupported 10.6 – 10.9, expanding that to 10.6 – 10.10 and listing it as a frozen version.

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However, the Yosemite version of Chrome is still the current version, there will be no future updates. It is safe to assume that Chrome support will continue on Yosemite until this version is outdated. OS X Yosemite is falling behind and this is just one sign. By 2023, OS X Yosemite will probably seem ancient, something it does not seem quite yet. Chrome freezing updates will soon leave Yosemite users without a suitable browser. Funny how the Mac timeline seems to move so much faster than the Windows one – Windows 7 is way older than OS X 10.10 and Chrome still hasn’t frozen updates for it yet. Thank you for reading this post, and please subscribe to our newsletter.

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Running iPhoto and Aperture on macOS Catalina & Big Sur

Maybe also an old version of iTunes

Hey, have you upgraded from macOS Mohave to one of the newer OSes, like Catalina or Big Sur? In that case, some of your apps might have stopped working. For example, Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac, iPhoto, Aperture, and old versions of Adobe Photoshop stop launching, with a dialog box something like this:

 

However the dialog box for your app looks, the message is clear: the app won’t run. And the reason is incredibly simple: macOS Catalina drops 32-bit support. Big Sur, being released after Catalina, naturally doesn’t support it either. For the user, what this means is older apps don’t run. However, iPhoto and Aperture, being 64-bit apps with some 32-bit code, can be patched to run on Catalina & Big Sur. Here’s how.

Using Retroactive to patch iPhoto and Aperture

Somebody has taken the trouble to create an app named Retroactive which patches iPhoto and Aperture to run on macOS Catalina and Big Sur. While we only tested it on Catalina, others have tested it on Big Sur and it works perfectly there too. The app itself is pretty self-explanatory. Here’s a direct download link. Unzip the zip and right-click the Retroactive app. Click open. It will ask you to confirm your decision. Click Open. Now, if you have installed iPhoto or Aperture, you can click on the Unlock button for that app to make the app run again on Catalina. Also, you can click the iTunes button in order to install iTunes rather than Catalina’s Music, Podcasts, and TV apps. For reference, here’s iPhoto running on my Catalina test device:

 

That’s it.

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How to add a Microsoft Account to a Mac

If you have a Mac, then you will notice that you in System Preferences, you can add Google, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, and more accounts to your Macintosh, but there is no option to add a Microsoft Account.

 

Why should you add your accounts to your Mac?

 The primary reasons why one might want to add their Internet Accounts to their Mac would be to read and send Email using Mac Mail, see their Contacts in the built-in Contacts app, and access their Calendar using iCal (not to be confused with the iCalendar ics format). Additional benefits would include access to Notes in the Notes app and to-do lists in the Reminders app.

 

Adding the Microsoft Account 

In the Internet Accounts section of System Preferences, click the + button. Then, click “Exchange”. Type your information, which is your full name, your email address for your Microsoft Account, and your Microsoft Account password. If you have 2FA enabled, you need to generate an App Password and use that.

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Then, tick the apps you want to use your Microsoft Account with.

Here’s what each option means:

Mail: brings your Outlook.com email to MacMail.

Contacts: brings your people.live.com address book to the Mac OS X Contacts app.

Calendars: brings your calendar.live.com calendars to iCal.

Reminders: brings your Microsoft To-Do task list to the OS X Reminders app.

Notes: brings your Outlook Notes to the Mac OS X Notes app. For more information on Outlook Notes, go to Outlook.com and select Notes in the folder list. These notes are also available in Office for Android, the Windows 10 Sticky Notes app, http://onenote.com/stickynotes/, and your OneNote Feed.

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How to get the Weather Forecast on a Windows or OS X Computer

While you may not use your computer primarily for checking the weather, it’s a pretty important function for your Computer to have. So, which Computers support the Weather Checker function? Well, here’s a list of Operating Systems on which you can get quick access to the Weather:

 
  • Windows Vista
  • Windows 7
  • OS X Tiger to Mohave
  • OS X Yosemite to Catalina
  • macOS Big Sur
  • Windows 10
As you will notice, Windows 8/8.1 is not on the list. This is because Microsoft has discontinued Weather for Windows 8/8.1. Sorry Win8 users!

Let’s start with the Weather on Windows Vista / Windows 7. If you use Windows Vista or Windows 7, there is a Desktop Gadget called Weather. However, you may have noticed that now, when you try to use this Desktop Gadget, it produces an error that the service cannot be found. Don’t worry, though. It’s easy to get past this error by downloading the working version of the gadget, where somebody took the pains of creating a virtually identical Gadget that uses the still up and running MSN Weather service. Download here. Then, load this Gadget onto your desktop to get quick access to the Weather.

Now, let’s move on to how to get the Weather on a Windows 10 Computer. Open the Microsoft Store up. Search for "MSN Weather". Find the app called MSN Weather and install it. Then, pin it to your Start Menu, and turn on Live Tile to get the Weather Forecast in a Live Tile. To get a more detailed forecast, just click the tile and it will open up the MSN Weather app.

Now let’s move on to how to get the weather on a Mac which is running an OS from OS X Yosemite through Catalina. To start, you’re going to open up the notifications center and click "Edit". Then, you’ll find "Weather" waiting on the right side. Click the green plus button to get a Weather Widget. It’s as easy as that! Running Big Sur? The Weather Widget should already be in your sidebar.


What about using the OS X Dashboard? As people who use OS X Tiger to macOS Mohave may have noticed, the Dashboard Weather widget is no longer functional. Well, this is because the Dashboard is discontinued, so Apple has removed internet connectivity from the widget. However, similarly to the Vista/Win7 fix, somebody took the trouble to fix the APIs and create a working version of the OS X Dashboard Weather Widget. So how do you install the patch? Well, you download it from here. Then, find the .wdgt file and copy it. In finder, open the folder /Library/Widgets. Delete the Weather.wdgt file there and paste the other, patched one. then, open your Dashboard and click +. Select the Weather icon and get a totally working Weather Widget on your OS X Dashboard.

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macOS Big Sur Released!

Yes, it’s finally here. macOS Big Sur has finally been released! And, at the same time, Apple is ditching Intel for Apple Silicon, as well as releasing a new line of Macbooks without a fan. This is big. Apple has finally moved past Mac OS X, which has been going strong for 20 years now. This is no longer macOS 10. This is macOS 11.0. That’s right, not 10.16. 11.0.

Looking Back at Mac OS X

Since we’re moving forward with what Apple is calling "The biggest UI change since the release of OS X", I decided to take a look back at how the Mac OS UI has changed over the years.

This was how Mac OS X looked when first released. Over the years, it has changed a lot. The Aqua Interface was the trademark of the Mac, and it’s something most people will remember. I don’t. I never used a Mac made before 2015.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard lives on as the Mac’s Windows XP because of the brilliant Skeuomorphic Aqua theme. Then, with Yosemite, the Skeuomorphic Aqua design was replaced with a more iOS-like one.

Now, six years later, Apple has smoothed off all the points and left us with a Mac that looks like a desktop version of iOS. The following screenshot shows macOS Big Sur running on one of my Macs.

The differences are obvious an
d clear. The new macOS introduces a new Safari, a more modern iMessage, rounded corners, and a more candy-like Aesthetic. No icon is left unchanged. And while its predecessor Catalina killed the Dashboard, Big Sur has finally made the notification center powerful enough to replace it.  Only Siri has been ruined, but she was useless in the first place. A new Control Center allows you to do exactly what its name suggests: Control your Mac. It’s definitely an upgrade worth taking.



Link: Upgrade

    

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