Category: Mac

Temporarily Speed Up a Time Machine Backup With a Terminal Command

Time Machine is a great service for backing up your computer, and by default it doesn’t use much CPU power to do it. That’s great most of the time, but sometimes you need to get stuff backed up as soon as possible. Defaults-Write points out the Terminal command for doing so.

Source: Temporarily Speed Up a Time Machine Backup With a Terminal Command (Lifehacker)

Make live bootable flash drive or SD card disks easily with Etcher

NOTE: The article referenced below is about the Linux version, but the program itself is cross-platform, with Linux, Mac, and Windows versions available.

Making live USB disks on Linux has always been hit or miss. You could use dd and the command line, and it’s mostly a good tool, but a lot of times the dd tool can destroy a drive. Other GUI tools like Unetbootin or Gnome disks are good too, but they’re mostly hit or miss, and sometimes the flashing gets messed up.

This is why Etcher is such a great tool. It’s elegant, so anyone can use it easily, and it doesn’t mess up when you flash an image. There is no more making a bootable flash drive with Unetbootin only to find out that a .c32 menu file is missing or some other error.

Source: Make Linux Live Disks Easily with Etcher (Make Tech Easier)
Software web site: http://www.etcher.io/

The thing we like most about this software, besides the fact that it’s free, is that it is smart enough to try to prevent you from accidentally overwriting one of your hard drives by mistake! And also, we like the fact that the Linux version is packaged as an AppImage, which means it should just run on whatever Linux distribution you use, once you have set permissions. At the worst you may need to install FUSE, if it’s not already installed in your distribution. That only applies to the Linux version; the OS X and Windows versions are installed just like any normal software package for those platforms.

We can think of several other Linux applications that we wish were packaged like this, particularly ones that have a higher than usual risk of breakage any time you apply an update. But, that’s a whole other article for another time.

How to Secure Erase Free Space on Mac Drives with OS X El Capitan

Many Mac users running a modern version of OS X El Capitan have noticed the Secure Erase Free Space feature has gone missing from Disk Utility. What the “Erase Free Space” feature did (and still does in prior versions of Mac OS X) was overwrite the free space on a drive to prevent file recovery, adding a layer of security and privacy to file removal, much in the way that Secure Empty Trash performed a similar function of overwriting data after removal.

Source: How to Secure Erase Free Space on Mac Drives with OS X El Capitan (OS X Daily)

Quitter for Mac Automatically Quits or Hides Apps After Inactivity 

Mac: It’s easy to let the amount of Mac apps you have open at any given time spin out of control. Quitter’s an app from Instapaper developer Marco Arment that’ll quit or hide any app you want after a period of inactivity.

Source: Quitter for Mac Automatically Quits or Hides Apps After Inactivity  (Lifehacker)

Fix a Missing Sidebar in Open & Save Dialog Windows of Mac OS X

Some Mac users have discovered the sidebar to be missing in the Open and Save dialog windows that appear throughout Mac OS X. Since the sidebar contains quick access links to various points in the file system, including user directory pictures, documents, the desktop, Macintosh HD, and tags, this can be frustrating and lead to a more difficult file opening and saving process.

Fortunately the missing sidebar in dialog windows is easy to fix, so follow along and you’ll have it back in no time at all.

Source: Fix a Missing Sidebar in Open & Save Dialog Windows of Mac OS X (OS X Daily)