macOS uses VNC for remote management, and has a built-in server and viewer. (Turn on the server under System Preferences > Sharing and mash the checkbox for Screen Sharing.)
But if you’re here, you probably knew that already, and you want to change the default VNC port from 5900 to something else.
If you’re like me, you don’t love it when your Mac makes that sign-in sound every time you open the lid. (Assuming you use iMessage/Messages for any IM services.) Here’s how to disable it. (And only it.)
Make sure Messages is closed.
Go to your Applications folder.
Find Messages.app and right-click it. Choose Show Package Contents.
Find the Resources folder.
Look for a file called Logged In.aiff.
Delete that mess.
Next time you open it, that sound will be gone. (Note: This may not work on El Capitan.)
If you’re like me (and I know I am) you don’t love having a bunch of unnecessary stuff loaded when you don’t need it. Like Adobe’s Creative Cloud thingy. It can drain your battery (not by a lot, but still) and clutter up your menu bar.
Also, according to the Little Snitch app, this thing is pinging over dozen different IPs and domains across the interwebs at times. I mean, I understand pinging a couple, but this feels a little extreme.
You can also delete that .plist after running launchctl unload to shut its shenanigans down even further. I haven’t done that, though, so proceed at your own risk on that one.
So when a new version of any OS comes out, I like to do a clean install. On Macs, this has usually been fairly easy, since HFS+ partitions are pretty flexible — they’ll let you add/remove/resize without a lot of hassle.
Until Yosemite.
In the past, I’ve made a new partition on my drive, installed the new OS X (like Mavericks), copied all my files from the old partition to the new one. Once I’m sure that all is fine and dandy, I will go back and delete the older partition and give the space to the new one.
But when I tried this with 10.10 Yosemite, I ran into a new problem. Partitions were no longer flexible. I couldn’t delete or resize any of them. I found this out after spending a full day getting the new Yosemite partition just right.
Some research found that Yosemite will change its partition from HFS+ to “Core Storage”. (According to Ars Technica, there’s not a clear reason why, either.) I’m not sure of all the technical details, but this apparently killed flexibility. So my new Yosemite install was stuck on a partition with only 10GB of free space, when it could have had 400 from the old Mavericks partition. It wouldn’t even let me delete the Mavericks partition. Everything was locked.
Fortunately, I found a solution. You can convert Yosemite’s Core Storage partition back to HFS+. Once I did that, Disk Utility worked fine again. Some notes:
This is not destructive. You won’t lose anything.
This only works if you have not encrypted the partition with FileVault.
Here’s how:
First, you have to get something called a lvUUID for the partition. (Don’t worry about the annoying acronym. This is all scarier than it looks.)
Open Terminal, and run this (you can copy/paste):
diskutil cs list
This will give you a list of partitions similar to this:
Thanks to BrettApple at the MacRumors forum for this.
Okay. See how it says “Revertible: Yes”? That means we can convert it back. You’ll need that super-long string of letters/numbers. In the same Terminal window, type:
diskutil coreStorage revert [THAT LONG STRING OF STUFF]
The results should be quick. Only seconds. Once that was finished, I was able to delete the Mavericks partition and resize my new Yosemite partition to fill all available space.
In iTunes 10, you could skip to the next/previous track when Repeat One was turned on. In 11 & 12, they assume that by “skip ahead”, you somehow mean “rewind this track”.
This really bothers some people. Do not judge us, we have our reasons!
And here’s one way to fix it.
It took some work, but I finally came up with some AppleScript to handle this. Basically, we’re checking to see if Repeat One is on. If it is, we quickly disable it, skip to the next (or previous) track, and then turn it back on. Apple borked the old way of doing this (same with shuffle), so we’re using menu bar items instead.
-- This script lets you skip songs in iTunes 11/12 even if repeat one is on
tell application "System Events"
tell process "iTunes"
-- Find out if repeat one is on
-- This finds out if the menu item is checked
set isRepeatOneOn to (value of attribute "AXMenuItemMarkChar" of menu item 3 of menu 1 of menu item "Repeat" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Controls" of menu bar 1 as string) ≠ ""
if isRepeatOneOn is true then
-- Set repeat to ALL
click menu item 2 of menu 1 of menu item "Repeat" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Controls" of menu bar 1
-- Skip to previous track...
click menu item "Previous" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Controls" of menu bar 1
-- Need this, or the next step happens too fast
delay 0.1
-- Reactivate Repeat One
click menu item 3 of menu 1 of menu item "Repeat" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Controls" of menu bar 1
else
-- Just skip to previous track
click menu item "Previous" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Controls" of menu bar 1
end if
end tell
end tell
You can copy/paste that, or you can just download the script files here.
There’s one script for skip ahead, and one for skip back.
Wait—how do I use these?
Valid question. They’re not all that useful, really—unless you assign them to hotkeys.
If you use a Mac and Windows together, you’re likely to end up with a bunch of hidden .DS_STORE files all over your Windows drives. You can easily search and destroy them all using this command:
(Open the command line first of course. You can do this by mashing Win + R, then typing “cmd”. Or just type “cmd” in the Start Menu search box.)
del /s /q /f /a .DS_STORE
That will find every instance of this Mac resource file and delete it. Good times. But wait there’s more. In addition to DS_STORE, OSX will also put a bunch of other junk every where starting with “._”. Kill those like this.
del /s /q /f /a ._.*
(Why not use “._*'” instead? Apparently, you can sweep up legit files from other things such as Chrome by doing that. Thanks, commenters.)
Important note! This will only search inside the folder you’re in, as well as every folder below that. So, if you wanted to search and clean an entire drive, make sure you’re in the root folder. Get there with this:
cd \
You could also put all of this into a .bat file for great automation.
Pro tip: copy-pasting into your command window
Windows 10 will let you CTRL-V paste into the command line. Friggin sweet. But did you know you can do it in other versions of Windows too? Just right-click on the command window and click Paste. That will save you a little work.
Update: This works all the way up to 10.10 Yosemite.
Ever wanted to have some more organization on your dock? I like to keep things separated more or less by group: everyday things, development tools, and apps that just happen to be open but aren’t permanent fixtures on my dock. I also like to keep my documents and folders separated from minimized things and the trash on the right side.
A-like so
It’s fairly simple to drop some spacers into your dock. And yes, it uses Terminal, but don’t get squeamish. Just copy and paste the lines you see below. To add spacers to the left side, open up Terminal and paste this:
And now you’re wondering why nothing happened. We have to reset the dock to make the space appear. Now paste this:
killall Dock
And mash Enter again. Your dock will vanish and reappear with a space at the end of the left side. You can drag it around (or even off) just like any other icon. Repeat as desired for more spacers!
And for the right side…
Paste this, followed by the usual mashing of Enter afterwards.
iTunes 10. Good stuff. But I’m really surprised that Apple — who are known for their design expertise — would not only violate a well-known design convention, but their own well-known design convention with those stoplight control buttons. It may seem like a simple annoyance, but multiply it by 1000 times over the course of a week or a month, and you have a fairly irritating problem.
Fortunately, putting those buttons back the way they should be is pretty easy. (Mac only)
1. Close iTunes if it’s open. 2. Open up Terminal. 3. Copy/paste this line into it:
In iTunes 10, you could skip to the next/previous track when Repeat One was turned on. In 11 & 12, they assume that by “skip ahead”, you somehow mean “rewind this track”.
