MacOSXHints.com

An AppleScript to reinstall custom icons after updates

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:30:04 -0800

Like many people, I have customized many thing about my OS X setup, not the least of which were app and folder icons. Via programs like CandyBar or LiteIcon, or manually, any and all folder/file/app icons can be changed.

Personally, I like the pure|icns set from Interfacelift. However, there is a problem when programs update -- in my case, Dropbox -- and change their icons back to a boring old Leopard blue. To return my custom icons, I wrote an AppleScript. Since this only happens every now and then, I didn't make the script executable; I just call it from Google's quick search box whenever I need it.

At any rate, this script will copy an icon from some location (file, folder, *.icns), and paste it via the Get Info window for any second location (file, folder, app) that you...

Move forward and back in iCal with the Magic Mouse

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:30:03 -0800

The Magic Mouse lets you navigate forward and backward between web pages in Safari or Firefox with a two-finger swipe.

The same two-finger swipe also moves you forward and back in iCal. It works just the same as clicking the forward and back arrows around the day/week/month view control at the top of the iCal window.

Back up OS X to a Windows machine on the network

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:30:02 -0800

I know there are plenty of back up/synchronization packages for the Mac, and I know Time Machine is awesome. But as I have a Linux/FreeBSD background, I wanted to do it my way. And none of the software I tried was able to do it my way :-). So the command line seemed to be a good solution.

My office Windows machine has plenty of disk space on it, and it is rarely used. It was an ideal system (with not so ideal a file system) to do backups on. The solution I came up with requires:

A shared folder on the PC, mounted on the Mac.
The Unix app rdiff-backup, available via MacPorts.
Notifications are sent using growlnotify, part of the Growl notification system.

The final step was to write a custom shell script to back up my Mac to the mounted Windows shared folder; here's what that looks like: ...

Restore default bootloader without harming partitions

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:30:01 -0800

If your bootloader gets changed or corrupted, this fix will restore it without damage to your disk partitions.

This hint may be a bit esoteric, but I thought I was up for a long night of reinstallation pain before stumbling upon this fix. I made the mistake of trying to use an Ubuntu 9.04 boot CD to install Ubuntu to an external (USB) drive on my Mac.

Don't do this, unless you know the following: Regardless of the fact that you chose the external drive upon which to install Ubuntu, you won't be able to boot back into your Mac without changing the bootloader. I ended up with the dreaded question mark folder when I tried to reboot my Mac, and nothing worked to boot into my OS X partition.

Luckily, I have a bootable external drive with OS X on it, and I was able to boot into it by holding down the Option key (the primary partition still did not show up). I started searching online for the fix, and it seems that Ubuntu changes the Darwin (default) bootl...

10.5: Sync Sunbird calendars using iSync

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800

This hint is for Tiger only -- you'll have to modify it on Leopard or Snow Leopard, because of changes to iCal's folder structure.

I've recently switched to Mozilla Sunbird because it looks a lot nicer and runs faster than iCal, although it can't directly use iSync, so I can't synchronize the calendars on my laptop with my phone. By looking around in iCal's folder, I found out that you can copy a calendar file (.ics) from Sunbird into iCal and use that to synchronize with iSync. You can then load that synchronized calendar back into Sunbird.

There's a lot of mucking about, but it's well worth it :).

Export a copy of an iCal calendar and load that into Sunbird. In this case, I'm using a calendar named Work.ics as an example, and I've exported it to my user's Documents folder.
Find out where the corresponding iCal copy of...

Add a Show Desktop icon to the Dock

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800

Wouldn't it be nice to activate Expos�'s Show Desktop mode via an icon on the Dock? Here's how to make one that does just that. However, be warned: this works only one way -- it shows the Desktop, but on clicking again, it does not bring the windows back. To get out of Expos�'s Show Desktop mode, just click anywhere along the darkened screen border.

Create an AppleScript application. Open AppleScript Editor (Applications � Utilities � AppleScript Editor in 10.6) and paste in this code:

(* Show Desktop AppleScript by Mohan Noone, 2009 *)
activate application "Finder"
do shell script "/Applications/Utilities/Expose.app/Contents/MacOS/Expose 1"

Save the script, name it something like Show Desktop, set the File Format to Application, and select the Run Only option in the Save dialog.
Optional: change the boring script icon. Select the saved file in Finder and hit Command-I to open the Get Info Window, then do the same for the file wit...

10.5: Change a print job's scehduled print time

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800

If you need to hold a print job for a period of time, but forget to change the settings in the Print dialog before sending the job to the printer, here's a solution.

When the printer's window comes up, click the Hold button, then double-click the value under "When. For the date, you'll need to enter the Unix epoch timestamp for when you would like the job to print. In case you're not fluent in UNIX epoch timestamps, you can use this free converter to convert a standard date format into the Unix epoch equivalent.

For example, if I wanted to print something at 2pm Eastern time on November 10 2009, I would enter 1257879600 into the field.

[robg adds: It seems this won't work in 10.6, because there's no When column in the 10.6 print queue window. If I'm overlooking something, please...

10.6: Work around an iWeb and Pages crash issue in 10.6.2

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800

Recently, I was asked to set up a web site for a church; since I didn't want to spend days doing it, I decided to try iWeb.

Things worked well until I updated to 10.6.2. Suddenly, iWeb was crashing on startup, without fail. Fortunately, someone on the Apple forums figured out a work-around.

If you've been getting crashes with iWeb or Pages that blame the SFWordProcessing Plug In, try using Font Book to disable the font named Hoefler. Even though Font Book insists the font is valid, it appears to be triggering the crash.

Once the font is disabled, you will be able to launch iWeb (and Pages) again without crashing -- although all occurrences of the Hoefler font will be rendered incorrectly.

See this discussion (and many others) for more...

Launch login items via AppleScript to avoid login delays

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:30:02 -0800

I found that most of my startup items were things that I didn't need right away (Google Quick Search Box, LaunchBar, etc.). A simple AppleScript can be used to avoid the pileup of programs all trying to open at once at login. The result: a much faster login time.

The script works by opening programs one by one, with a little time in between. This gives the programs time to load, and allows you to use your computer as soon as you enter your password. The code looks like this:

tell application "Google Notifier" to activate
delay 3
tell application "LaunchBar" to activate
delay 3
set volume 4
tell application "BOINCManager" to activate
tell application "Quick Search Box" to activate
tell application "RealPlayer Downloader Agent" to activate

So, immediately opened is ...

Make OS X see expanded space in RAID setup

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:30:01 -0800

I expanded my RAID from 9TB to 13TB, and after it had finished, I noticed I had to resize the partition in order to use the new space. When I used Disk Utility, I got an error saying "Partition failed with the error: MediaKit reports partition (map) too small." After googling, I found the solution on the "life as i know it" blog, and thought I'd share the basics of the solution.

From the blog post, here's the essence of the problem and the solution:

Basically what�s going on here is that the GPT table is built only big enough for the drive it�s on. That�s a logical assumption - hard drives don�t magically get larger - unless they�re RAID arrays. We�re just removing the GPT partition information, and replacing it. Should things go crazy, as long as you�ve got the start and size information for the partition you care about, you should be good. No guarantees obviously, but I�ve done this three times and no da...

Move BBedit 9's Documents drawer to the left side

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800

I've been trying to move over from Smultron to BBEdit for most of my text editing needs, as Smultron isn't officially supported any longer. One thing that I found very annoying in BBEdit 9 is that the Documents drawer appears on the right, with no apparent way to move it to the right (in older versions, I believe there was a preference to change the side).

In the "read more" portion of this hint, you can read my original solution to this problem, left in place for posterity's sake. However, commenter bhas points out a much simpler solution in the comments to this hint: just Command-click on the Drawer icon, and the drawer will flip from one side of the window to the other, and stay on that side for subsequent launches.

This also works in TextWrangler. Original solution:

After Tweeting about this annoyance, I found the solution courtesy of a Tweet from ...

Manually switch to next desktop picture in shuffle mode

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:30:02 -0800

I noticed that if you have your desktop picture (wallpaper) set to shuffle between a number of images, and you don't like the currently-selected picture, you can manually skip it by killing and restarting the Dock. Just type the following into Terminal:

killall Dock

When the Dock restarts, it will shuffle to another desktop picture.

[robg adds: I believe a "friendlier" version of this command is killall -QUIT Dock, which tells the Dock to quit nicely, instead of force quitting it. If you find yourself doing this regularly, you could turn it into a simple Automator application, using the above command, or the AppleScript alternative (tell application "Dock" to quit). Then again, if you're doing this a lot, perhaps you should look to change your collection of desktop images!]

Set Firefox profile directly within the application bundle

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:30:01 -0800

I share a computer with my wife (using one account), and we both use Firefox and many of the same services (Gmail, Facebook, etc.). As such, it can be quite a hassle to keep track of who logged in last and who added what bookmarks.

Fortunately, Firefox provides the capability to have separate profiles for just such a situation. Unfortunately, it is not very simple to set up an easy and consistent way to launch those profiles. So, here are some of the options I tried before arriving at what I think is a pretty good solution. Option 1: Use the profile manager. In this mode, the profile manager will pop up every time Firefox is launched and you can choose your profile. This is nice and all, but what if my wife wants to launch Firefox while I already have it open? If she clicks the Firefox icon in the Dock, it just brings the app to the front and does not give the profile manager dialog.

Option...

Open Bento's database backup without using Bento

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800
Do you want to open a Bento database backup when you're at a friend's house, and he doesn't have Bento? It's actually really simple:

Control-click on your Bento database backup file (.bentodb) and select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu.

Navigate to the Contents » Resources folder.

Copy the file named Database to another location.

Launch a SQLite application, such as SQLite Database Browser.

Open the copy of the Database file you just created.

Enjoy your database!

Comments are now editable

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:50:00 -0800
This was one of the promised features from the Geeklog upgrade, and after resolving an issue with the theme, it's finally working -- at least, it's working in my testing. Feel free to leave a comment here and edit it to make sure it works for you, too. Note that there's a one-hour time limit on changes to comments.

We're still working on the character set issue; hope to have progress on that front shortly.

-rob.

10.6: Navigate Snow Leopard Stacks with gestures

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:30:03 -0800
Navigable stacks in Snow Leopard are a very nice feature, but the lack of gesture recognition is frustrating. Using the free BetterTouchTool, though, navigable stacks are a reality. BetterTouchTool is forked from the ">MultiClutch source. BetterTouchTool is essentially the same as MultiClutch, but it runs without a reliance on InputManagers. As a result, it works great in Snow Leopard, on 64- and 32-bit apps, and on Carbon apps (read: iTunes).

For Global Gestures, I have set the bindings:

Command-Up = Swipe Left

Command-Down = Swipe Right

In Finder, these navigate folder hierarchies more naturally. They allow me to move up and down folder hierarchies without relying on a history. This breaks the native behavior of forward-back navigation history, but for me, this method makes more sense.

Old Behavior...

Adjust browser width on a per-Spaces basis

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:30:02 -0800
Do you need to change the width of your Safari or Firefox window, but only on the desktop of the currently active Space? Try using this AppleScript. Placed in the excellent program Butler, you can even use a key combination to toggle the width.

Here's the script:
(* Thanks to: JNSoftware LLC, founded by Jonathan Nathan. See http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=23453 and Tip "10.5: Find current Space number via AppleScript " of macosxhints See: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080227075244778 *) set safariNr to get_space_binding_for_application("com.apple.safari") -- on wich space is safari? set firefoxNr to get_space_binding_for_application("org.mozilla.firefox") -- on wich space is firefox? set currentSpaceNr to get_my_space_number...

10.5: Remove Shut Down from the Apple menu

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800
We have some users who, through habit or sloppy clicking, always shutdown their machine when they leave. This means that we can't perform maintenance without walking to the machine. If you need to prevent users from shutting down machines so you can do maintenance, this will help by removing the Shut Down item from the Apple Menu.

The following patch removes the Shut Down menu item for everyone on the system, admin and non-admin users alike. The patch doesn't delete the entire object, it just replaces the content of the object with a separator. Deleting the entire object causes Bad Things To Happen. You can probably use this method to remove other items in the Apple Menu, but I haven't tested that.

Warning: Altering anything under /System/Library is always risky. Don't deploy this without testing it thorough...

Embed formatted, syntax-highlighted source code in Keynote

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800
If you have ever given a presentation on any aspect of programming (or webdesign), you may have felt the need to embed some source code (formatted and syntax highlighted to be easily readable) in Keynote. Your options have traditionally been limited:

You can take a screenshot of the code in a programmer's editor and embed this in Keynote, but you lose any ability to edit the code or change its appearance once inserted.

You can use a web-based syntax highlighter such as GeSHi, and embed the generated page in Keynote as a Web View, but this is similarly inflexible. Also, Web Views have been removed from Keynote '09.

A much better approach would be to have the source code text (suitably formatted and highlighted) inserted natively in your presentation. Since you can drag Rich Text Format (RTF) text to Keynote, all you need is a way to convert your code to RTF.

Here are three ways of accomplishing this whil...

10.5: Enable momentum scrolling for Magic Mouse in 10.5

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800
The Mouse System Preferences pane on Leopard does not include an option to enable momentum scrolling like Snow Leopard does. However, by setting a hidden preference, you can get this feature without updating to Snow Leopard.

To enable momentum scrolling, first run the following command in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse MouseMomentumScroll -bool yes
Next, go to the Mouse System Preferences panel, and uncheck and then check the Scroll option. You should now have momentum scrolling enabled.

[robg adds: I don't have a Magic Mouse, so I can't test this one.]