Category: Mac

Link: Clean-up the “Open With” Menu of your Mac

The “Open With” menu of your Mac, that you get when you right-click (or control-click) a file in the Finder window, may become extremely cluttered with time containing duplicate entries or even stale ones pointing to applications that are no longer installed on your Apple computer. Here’s an example:

Mac Contextual Menu Cluttered

If the “Open With” menu of your Mac is also messy and filled with applications that you no longer use, you can easily clean it up by rebuilding the Launch Services database with a simple Terminal command.

Full article here:
Clean-up the “Open With” Menu of your Mac (Digital Inspiration)

Link: Video Monkey – an excellent free video encoding (format converter) application exclusively for Mac OS X

We came across this fantastic free video format converter software for Mac OS X users, and wanted to bring it to your attention. It’s simpler to use that some other, possibly better known programs, yet it is capable of producing very good quality video conversions.

Video Monkey is a free video encoding application exclusively for Mac. With it you can encode multiple videos, automatically add metadata from sources like theTVDB.com andtheMovieDB.org, and then add them to your iTunes library, all at the touch of a button. The UI is simple and intuitive and lets you encode almost any video to many Apple and non-Apple formats. It uses the super fast ffmpeg encoder for high quality results. Whether it’s converting recorded TV shows, or transferring a video to a format for use in other video editing software, Video Monkey is a great way to simplify all your encoding needs.

Full description at software about page:
About Video Monkey (Video Monkey)
Main page:
Video Monkey

Link: Some of the Best FTP Clients for Mac

There are a few ways you can access the FTP (File Transfer Protocol) using your Mac, one of them being typing in the FTP address in your web browser’s address bar and performing some of the very basic operations. The other way is to use an FTP client that lets you do advanced operations as well as manage multiple accounts. If you are much into these geeky things and often upload and download files using FTP, you should consider using an FTP client that has all the features you need on your day-to-day basis. Here are some of the best FTP clients for Mac that are ready to serve you with all the features you would ever need.

Full article here:
Some of the Best FTP Clients for Mac (Make Tech Easier)

Link: Prevent System Sleep While a Process or Command is Active in Mac OS X

Many Mac users use utilities to temporarily prevent their computer from sleeping, often relying on sleep corners, the third party tool called Caffeine, pmset, or more recently, the command line utility that is now bundled with OS X called caffeinate. By default, the Caffeine menubar item and the caffeinate command both will prevent sleep as long as they are individually activated for, very useful for desktop users while at a Mac, but not particularly useful if you’d like to have the OS X sleep function dependent on the completion of a specific process or task.

That’s what we’re going to cover here by using the command line, which is having process-dependent sleep prevention that only blocks the Mac sleep function while a specified command, task, or process is running or active, then when it’s finished, the computer will restore traditional sleep habits.

Full article here:
Prevent System Sleep While a Process or Command is Active in Mac OS X (OS X Daily)

Link: How to Clear and Manage “Recent Places” In OS X

Whenever you save files to a specific location on your Mac, OS X will save this location in a “Recent Places” listing which will be available the next time you save another file. This feature allows quick access to the folders you commonly use and hence saves a lot of your precious work time.

By default, the recent places list will show you the past five most recently accessed folders. Now, while this may be convenient for some, it can become annoying, especially if you would just like to clear an item or the entire list. …..

Full article here:
How to Clear and Manage “Recent Places” In OS X (Make Tech Easier)

Link: Mikogo: A Multi-platform Desktop Screen Sharing And Remote Access Software

Most of you have heard and used the LogMeIn service which is used to access a remote system screen via Internet or through native applications. We can use Logmein software to online meetings, remote IT supports, web conferences etc. Unfortunately, Logmein is now switched to paid version and the free service is no longer available. …..

Luckily, we have another application called Mikogo which will help us to access the Desktop and Mobile screens remotely via web and manage them from anywhere. Mikogo is a free for personal use and works well on almost all modern operating systems such as GNU Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Android, and Web. It is very simple to use, you don’t need to be an expert at all to use it. All you need is a decent uninterrupted Internet connection on both side. Mikogo has intuitive and decent interface to work with, and offers similar features present in Logmein.

Full article here:
Mikogo: A Multi-platform Desktop Screen Sharing And Remote Access Software (Unixmen)

Link: Using Time Machine on unsupported volumes

I wanted to use Time Machine on my exFAT hard drive, but turns out that these volumes aren’t supported from Time Machine! There is a very simple way to use Time Machines on unsupported hard drives, as long as you follow these instructions carefully you shouldn’t have any issues at all.

Full article here:
Using Time Machine on unsupported volumes (Mac OS X Hints)

Link: OS X: Roll Your Own Malware Detection

Macs are not immune to malware.  Authors of malicious software often try to get a LaunchDaemon or LaunchAgent installed onto your computer [in any of several system folders]…

OS X has a lesser-known feature called Folder Actions.  These allow you to run scripts when an item is added to a folder.  You can set up a simple script that lets you know when an item is added to one of the folders above and then open it to see what was added.  If it is not something you recognize or were expecting, delete it.

Full article here:
OS X: Roll-your-own Malware Detection (Jacob Salmela)

NOTE: The instructions in this article are slightly out of the correct sequence for OS X 10.9 Mavericks, but if you follow them as shown you will see the problem. The main thing is, after right-clicking the folder you wish to monitor, and then selecting Services and Folder Actions Setup, on the first screen that appears select add – new item alert.scpt as shown below:

Choose script to attach

Then on the next screen, just make sure all the boxes are checked, especially the first one “Enable Folder Actions” as shown below:

Adding new item alert folder action

Link: Bulk Replace Text In Many Text Files

Finding and replacing text in a single text file is simple, you can use the Find and Replace function within the edit menu of your text application. The problem arises is want to use this feature in many text files. You can open each one, but that is a little complicated. Today we are going to adapt a script within terminal to carry out this command on a set of text files within a folder. It will open each text file, search for the exact or partial string and then replace it with the text we want. This is a little complicated but a great time saver.

Note: While this article was written specifically for use with OS X, the technique shown should also work in Linux and similar OS’s, with the caveat that perl must be installed on the system.

Bulk Replace Text In Many Text Files (MacTricksAndTips.com)