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How and when to reset your Mac’s PRAM and SMC

Posted on July 26, 2011
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There are times when your Mac will just start misbehaving. Video settings getting reset, fans start running at full speed, keyboard lights don’t come on when they should.  This is most likely to happen following a hardware upgrade, extended power outage or even a major software upgrade (like Lion). In those cases, sometimes you need to reset your Mac’s parameter random access memory (PRAM) or system management controller (SMC) to get things running smoothly again.

Try this first

There are some good best practices to perform before running off and resetting your Mac at the first sign of strange behavior. This isn’t a step-by-step list; try each and all of the below separately when you’re having trouble:

  • Quit (Command+Q) or even Force Quit (Command+Option+Esc) any and all running applications.
  • Log off and then log back on to any and all logged on user accounts.
  • Put the Mac to sleep and wake it up again.
  • Restart the Mac.
  • Shut down and unplug the Mac (and remove any battery if you have access) for at least thirty seconds before powering back on.

You may even have to press and hold the power button several seconds in extreme cases when your Mac is truly not responding or refuses to shut down and power off. But if you have tried all of this to no avail, then perhaps you do need to either reset your PRAM or your SMC.

Parameter random access memory

PRAM is used by OS X to store certain information that the system can access quickly. Macs will store settings like which startup drive to boot from, various display and video settings, startup speaker volume and even the DVD’s region settings. If you feel that you need to reset your Mac’s PRAM because of the issues you’re having, do the following:

  1. Turn off your Mac. Don’t worry about disconnecting the power or removing the battery.
  2. Turn on your Mac and hold down the Command, Option, P, and R keys all at the same time (all four keys).
  3. Keep holding down all four keys until you hear the startup sound for a second time.

If you do not hear the startup sound twice, then you most likely have not reset the PRAM.  If you find that your Mac is not retaining the information that is stored in PRAM when you perform a shutdown, then it might be time to replace your Mac’s main logic board battery.  This is sometimes referred to as the PRAM or Clock Battery. I hardly ever fully shut down and power off any of my Macs, and have yet to replace this battery on any Mac I have owned, so that should only be the culprit in very extreme cases.

System management controller

The SMC is an Intel-only feature.  There are so many symptoms that can potentially be solved by resetting the SMC that you’d think you would need to do this sort of reset all of the time. These include fans running out of control, lights not displaying correctly, the Mac does not sleep or wake properly, and just generally poor performance and high CPU cycles for no good reason. There are three ways to reset your SMC, based on what sort of Intel-based Mac you have:
Portable Macs with removable batteries

  1. Shut down the Mac, unplug and remove the battery.
  2. Press and hold the power button for five seconds before releasing.
  3. Replace the battery (just put it back in), plug in the Mac and turn it back on.

Portable Macs without removable batteries

  • Shut down the Mac.
  • Ensure that the Mac is plugged into a power source.
  • While the Mac is turned off, press and hold the Shift, Control and Option keys, as well as the Power button.
  • Release all four keys at the same time (note: the Mac should not power on when performing this task).
  • Press the power button to turn the Mac back on.

Desktop Mac Pros, iMacs and Mac minis

  • Shut down and unplug the Mac.
  • Keep the Mac unplugged for at least fifteen seconds.
  • Plug the Mac back in and do not turn it back on for at least five seconds.
  • Press the power button to turn the Mac back on.

This shouldn’t be considered a routine operation, like fixing file permissions in Disk Utility. It’s just something to keep in mind as a possible last resort solution to weird behaviors that your Mac starts to develop, which can often happen when you perform upgrades like installing OS X Lion, especially on older hardware.

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Create an Apple ID in iTunes Account Without a Credit Card [ITunes]

Posted on May 3, 2011
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iTunes: People often get confused when they go to create an Apple ID in iTunes, only to find that a credit card is required to proceed (even if they weren’t planning on purchasing any apps). Oddly enough, whether or not iTunes will give the option to choose “None” for a credit card will depend on how the account is created. More »







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Ten ‘Easter Eggs’ to Find in Your Mac OS and Applications

Posted on April 22, 2011
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While this week many people are searching for Easter Eggs or the Afikoman, here are 10 hidden settings you can find in your Mac apps and OS X. These are all small changes you can make that make using the applications and the system slightly better.

First off, you’ll need to open up the Terminal application (/Applications > Utilities > Terminal), since these ‘Easter Eggs’ have to be run from the command line. Once you’ve got that open, you can copy and paste the commands below. Each command is one line only, and you should press Return after pasting in each command. To turn these off after, replace YES with NO (or vice-versa) and repeat the command.

Allow Dashboard Widgets to be Dragged Onto the Desktop

Sometimes it’s useful to keep one of you Dashboard widgets around after you close Dashboard, so paste the following into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES && killall Dock

To use this ability, click and hold a widget and then close Dashboard using your keyboard hotkey (usually F4 on newer Macs).

Stop Twitter’s Compose Window Floating

The compose window in Twitter for Mac floats above all other windows at all times, which can get annoying. To stop it floating, paste this into Terminal, then restart Twitter for Mac.

defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac NormalComposeWindowLevel -bool NO

Allow Escape to Close Twitter Compose Window

Another one for Twitter for Mac, this allows you to press Esc to close the new tweet window. Once again, paste and then restart Twitter for Mac.

defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac ESCClosesComposeWindow -bool YES

Show Hidden Files in the Finder

There are some files which the Finder keeps hidden, but you might want to be able to see them sometimes, such as .htaccess files for web developers. To show hidden files, paste this into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES && killall Finder

Your hidden files should now show up.

Disable the ‘Unexpectedly Quit’ Dialog

When an application crashes, you’ll see a dialog telling you the application quit unexpectedly. This can get annoying if it happens often, so you can disable that dialog using

defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none

You may need to restart your computer for changes to take effect. To turn this back on again, replace ‘none’ with ‘prompt’.

Enable ‘X-Ray Folders’ in QuickLook

The QuickLook feature of Finder is great, but if you use it on a folder, you won’t see anything except a folder icon. Using this hidden setting, you’ll be able to see the contents of the folder when you use QuickLook.

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1 && killall Finder

To turn off, replace the ’1? with a ’0?.

Show the File Path in the Finder Window Title

It’s easy to get lost in your file system, so enable this to show the path of the current folder in the title bar of your Finder window. That should make it easier to remember where you are.

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES && killall Finder

Disable iTunes Arrow Links

You’ll often see tips on how to change the arrow links in iTunes’ list view to go to your library instead of the store, but what about turning them off altogether? Paste this command and restart iTunes.

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

Stop the Help Window From Floating

Another troublesome floating window is the Help window which appears when you click Help in most applications. To stop it floating, use

defaults write com.apple.helpviewer NormalWindow -boolean yes

Change the Desktop Picture on the Login Screen

If you don’t like the default image shown behind the login screen, you can change it to any other image using the following command. Just add the path of the image after the word ‘path’.

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture -path

Bonus: Control Even More Hidden Settings Using Secrets

Secrets is a preference pane which allows you to control even more hidden settings in Mac applications using a friendly interface, rather than having to use Terminal. You can download it here, and once installed you’ll find it at the bottom of System Preferences.

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Mac Maintenance: An OS X Reinstall Checklist

Posted on January 21, 2011
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It was the stuff of nightmares: What I expected to be a routine repartition of my hard drive for Boot Camp became a 12-hour slog of a reinstall. My pain can be your gain, though. It’s a good idea to reinstall OS X every once and a while to keep your system running smoothly, so here are a few things to keep in mind before you begin. While most are pretty obvious, the list might prevent one or two head-smacking moments of regret.

Time Is Not On Your Side

Assuming your reinstall isn’t an emergency from a hard drive failure, make sure you have plenty of time to devote to this task. As I often joke with a friend, do not anger or tempt the Data Gods. When’s a great time to do the reinstall? On a day you have the house to yourself, and nothing else to do. When’s a horrid time to decide to do this? When you’re on deadline, late on a project, or rushed. Because when there’s little time for anything to go wrong, everything will go wrong. Depending on how much data you have, a backup, reinstall, and data restore can take you about eight hours to complete. Don’t try it if you only have four, or decide you can “deal with stuff later.” It’s never that simple.

Your Backup Is Not Good Enough

Time Machine is a fantastic feature. It’s perfect for those “oops, I deleted that file” moments, but when you’re reformatting your drive, do not place your faith in Time Machine alone. I’ve run into a few problems restoring from it (it once told me there was “one minute remaining” for around 12 hours).  External hard drives are cheap. Buy a 1TB drive and manually backup your data. What data should you be sure to backup?

Your User Folder: Music, Downloads, Documents, Pictures, etc. Don’t forget to de-authorize your iTunes account (otherwise your prior install will count towards your maximum of five machines you can authorize). Make sure you’ve got your mobile apps backed up (they’re in the iTunes folder, so if you grab that folder, you should be ok). You don’t want to lose any apps you’ve downloaded that have since been removed from the App Store (like VLC, for instance).

Applications: You don’t need to grab the whole folder, but make sure you copy your favorite apps to save time, and in case you can’t find the original install media. Grabbing Application bundles and folders will also save you the time-consuming process of re-patching software after a reinstall.

Application Support and Preferences Folders: In your ~Library folder are two important folders to backup: Application Support and Preferences. While you can troll through them and grab what you think you need, I recommend just backing up both directories in their entirety. In these folders are any preferences or extra files an App needs. For instance, your custom templates for Pages are in Application SupportiWorkPages. OmniGraffle’s Stencils are also in its own Application Support folder. Preferences you may not need to grab anything from, but it’s good to make sure you’ve got a copy if an app writes data to it.

Fonts: If you use a lot of custom fonts, like I do, you might also take for granted they’re always there and overlook them. Make sure you back up that folder, too.

Preflight Checklist

Ok, now you’re sure you’ve got all your data backed up, so what else do you need before nuking your OS and starting from scratch?

Install Media and Serial Numbers: I keep all my serial numbers in the cloud on Google Docs and Evernote. Make sure you have the install media (be they discs or .dmg files) for apps like Microsoft Office, and that you have all your serial numbers in a safe place in the cloud or in hard copy.

Your Wireless Password: Remembering this can be like trying to find your birth certificate when you really need it. You’re sure it’s here, someplace, right? Make sure you can remember it, or reset it now (and write it down) while you’re still on the network.

Your Assorted Online Accounts: My bank account username is always a gotcha for me. Go through sites you access a lot and make sure you’ve got the usernames and passwords handy, since your browser cookies won’t be around to help your deficient memory post-reinstall.

Your Backups: Sure, I’ve gone into it at great length, but now’s the time to triple check you’ve backed everything up.

Good luck! Hopefully, this advice will save you a little frustration whenever you happen to reinstall OS X. Anything I’m missing? Let us know in the comments.

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Screencast: How to Create iPhone Ringtones for Free

Posted on January 19, 2011
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One of the best things about the iPhone is how easily you can set your own custom ringtones. Creating those ringtones from music from your own library is incredibly easy, too, and doesn’t require any paid third-party software. All you need is Garage Band and iTunes. Check out the screencast below to see how you can make your own ringtones from virtually any song in under five minutes.

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Use the Option Key to Pull Up System Preferences on a MacBook [Mac OS X Tip]

Posted on January 5, 2011
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From the files of the Total Mac Beginner Dept.: Some things on a Mac require System Preferences fiddling to fix—keyboard settings, Expose/Spaces, and so on. Press Option and the related function key, and up comes the related preferences. More »







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Mac 101: Window Management in OS X

Posted on October 28, 2010
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Moving from Windows to the Mac is a big change, and can be a little disconcerting at first. A friend of mine described the feeling akin to being “underwater.” One of the biggest differences between the platforms is in how windows are managed.

On Microsoft Windows, the application is the window, and you can use either alt-tab, win-tab, or the task bar to switch between windows. On the Mac, there are three main ways to manage windows, here’s a rundown of each, and how to use them to play up the strengths of OS X.

The Dock

The first way most new users to the Mac try to manage windows is the Dock. Clicking on a running applications icon in the Dock will bring that application’s windows to the front, which works great for apps that are only using a single window.

If, however, you have multiple windows open at once, like several TextEdit windows for example, clicking on the TextEdit icon will bring all of the windows to the front, which may not be exactly what you want.

The trick to using the Dock to manage windows is by clicking and holding on an icon. This will trigger Exposé in “Application Windows” mode, hiding all other applications and thumbnailing all of the open windows for that application. Then you can just click on the window you want to come to the front.

Exposé

Now that you’ve seen one part of Exposé in action, it’s time to see how the rest of it works. Open up System Preferences and click on “Exposé and Spaces”. You can think of this part of the preferences as the command center for managing windows.

At the top is “Active Screen Corners”, followed by keyboard shortcuts. Make note of the function key set for “All windows;” on mine it’s F3 to match my Apple Bluetooth keyboard. Open up a few different applications (it helps if one is a movie), and press F3. In one smooth animation, all of the open windows will shrink into thumbnails, with open windows at the top, and minimized windows at the bottom. From here you can click on any window you like to bring it to the front. If there are still too many windows open, you can press the tab key to cycle between the windows of running applications.

Having a function key is great, but too often I find that I need to look down at my keyboard to find the right key. That’s where the Active Screen Corners come in. Each corner of the screen can activate a function of window management. I always assign the bottom left corner of my screen to activating Exposé for All Windows, and the bottom right to Desktop. Then I put my Dashboard in the top right corner, and leave the top left blank. This gives me super quick access to all of my windows, widgets, and files I’m working with on my desktop.

You can also drag files into Exposé. For example, here’s a common workflow I run into all the time. To get a file from my desktop into a window open in the background, I’ll flick my mouse pointer to the bottom right corner to show the desktop. Then, I’ll drag the file to the bottom right hand corner to activate Exposé. Finally, while still dragging the file, I’ll select the window I want to bring it to the front, and then drop the file onto the window. Super easy, and super useful, once you get used to it.

Spaces

If, however, you still find yourself drowning in windows, or you just like to keep things clean and organized, you can enable Spaces. Spaces gives you extra desktops to work with. The default number of spaces is four, but you can assign up to sixteen. Personally, I’m normally happy with just two. I’m a developer, so I work in Xcode all the time. Some development tools, like Interface Builder, open up several windows, and can clutter up the screen quickly. So it’s nice to keep Xcode and Interface Builder in separate spaces. I always assign the CMD+Arrow Keys to switch between the spaces, and F8 to activate the spaces overview.

Once in the spaces overview, you can activate Exposé to see all of your windows, in all of your spaces.

Exposé, Spaces, and the Dock are the three main elements for window management. You can also use CMD-tab to switch between applications, or optionally, check out a third-party application like Witch that can give your keyboard even more control. If you’re new to the Mac, I hope this article helped, if you are experienced and think I missed something, feel free to mention it in the comments.

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Quick Tip: Eject a CD/DVD via the Menu Bar

Posted on August 13, 2010
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Apple has a long history of using slot-loading disc drives rather than the tray-loading drives used widely across the rest of the industry. If you want to eject the disc, there are currently two ways of doing this in OS X that most users know of, but there’s actually a hidden app that you may not know about.

You can eject from the sidebar in Finder, or from the desktop (dragging to the trash). However, there’s also a third way: a menu bar item. Apple doesn’t show this item by default in Snow Leopard, which led me to try and find a way to enable it. It’s actually fairly easy:

  1. Open a Finder window and go to /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras.
  2. Double click on Eject.menu and it should appear instantly in your menu bar.

You can move the menu bar item by holding down the Command key and dragging it around. You can also get rid of it by dragging it off the menu bar, where it’ll vanish in a puff of smoke, just like you’d drag an item off the Dock.

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How to Run Mac OS X in VirtualBox on Windows [How-to]

Posted on July 9, 2010
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If you’re on Windows, need to use OS X, but don’t want to buy or build a new computer, reader Bobby Patton shows us how to run Snow Leopard in a virtual machine on Windows with just a few tweaks. More »









Mac OS X – Operating system – Mac OS – Snow Leopard – Mac OS X Snow Leopard

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4 OS X Screenshot Tools

Posted on April 30, 2010
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Taking screen captures in OS X is pretty simple and powerful. Today I’ll explain how to use the built-in screen capture functionality, the included application Grab, and a couple of third-party options that offer extra functionality.

Built-in OS X Functionality

  • Command + Shift + 3

    This keystroke results in a full screenshot and saves the resulting file as a PNG, to your desktop. The file is named with the date and time it was captured.

  • Command + Shift + 4

    Pressing these keys initially brings up a cross hair on screen that displays the coordinates of the cursor. Click and drag to select the area you want to capture. When you release the mouse button, the capture will be saved to the desktop as previously mentioned.

    If you press the spacebar while the crosshairs are visible, it changes into a camera icon that you can position over a specific window that you may wish to capture. (That window must be visible when you initiate the keystroke.)

    During both modes you may hold the Control key at the time of capture. Doing so will save the resulting shot to the clipboard rather than a file on the desktop.

Grab

The Grab application resides in the /Applications/Utilities folder. It’s pretty simplistic, and essentially duplicates the functionality of the built-in OS X feature, albeit, with a couple of small differences. After you’ve taken the screenshot, it is displayed for you to review at which time you must explicitly save it, if it is indeed what you wanted. This also allows you to choose where you’re going to save the file. There’s a Preferences window where you can choose from eight cursor images to be captured in the resulting image. Otherwise, things are pretty much the same. The keystrokes are different, as you’ll see next.

  • Command + Shift + A

    This keystroke results in a crosshair on screen that displays the coordinates of the cursor. Click and drag to select the area you want to capture.

  • Command + Shift + W

    This keystroke allows you to move windows around to select the one you’d like to capture.

  • Command + Z

    This keystroke results in a full screenshot.

  • Command + Shift  + Z

    This keystroke results in a full screenshot after a 10 second timer elapses.

Skitch

Skitch is developed by the rockstars at Plasq. It’s super powerful and really easy to use. You get to edit size, crop, draw nondestructively, there’s multi-format export, web upload, copy to clipboard, review history and much more. The best part is, it’s 100% free to use!

  • Command + Shift + 5

    Pressing this keystroke brings up the (now familiar) crosshairs to select the region of the screen you wish to capture. The image is then opened into Skitch for further editing and use — this is the same for each key combo.

  • Command + Shift + 6

    This keystroke results in a full screen capture.

  • Command + Shift + 7

    This keystroke brings up a frame that you can resize to capture a portion of the screen. Initially this may seem to be the same as the crosshair — the difference is, the frame retains its dimensions each time, allowing you to capture uniform shots multiple times.

LittleSnapper

LittleSnapper is developed by RealMac Software. It approaches screenshots from an iPhoto perspective, allowing you to catalog, group, and tag your shots for later use. There’s a built-in browser for grabbing all or a portion of a webpage. The export feature allows you to save a webpage to a PDF file, or any screen capture to multiple image formats. There’s also an editor for tweaking the shots once you’ve captured them. With all this functionality comes a price — it’s $39. There’s also a free trial to see if it’s a good fit for you.

  • Command + Option + 3

    This keystroke produces a full screen capture. Once captured, it is loaded into the LittleSnapper gallery for further editing and use — this behavior is consistent with all key combos.

  • Command + Shift + Option + 3

    Similar to Grab, this gives you a short timer before the full screen image is captured.

  • Command + Option + 4

    This keystroke gives you the crosshairs to choose the region of the screen to capture.

  • Command + Option + 5

    This keystroke captures a specific window on screen. At least a portion of the window must be visible before initiating the keystroke.

So depending on your screenshot needs, there’s an app for that (sorry, I couldn’t help myself). The built-in tools are great and produce nice results. I personally opt for Skitch almost daily as it provides the level of control I need, but can see where something like LittleSnapper would be ideal for the designer types. There are plenty of other options out there too, if you want to get your Google on. But hopefully we’ve armed you with a little more knowledge today, to get that perfect screenshot the next time you need one.

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