OS X has lots of files you can’t see. This is to make it look prettier and also so you don’t break things. Sometimes you may want to see a hidden folder. For example there’s a Library folder which can contain settings for Applications. To show hidden files in OSX from the finder, click in a finder window and press “Shift Command .” (Shift – Command – Period).
It will look something like this when you can see the hidden files. All the slightly opaque files are hidden files.
You can usually adjust the audio level of your Macintosh computer using the sound slider bar and also using the volume keys on your keyboard. But if you plug in a USB audio device (Focusrite, Presonus, Behringer, Rode etc) the built in Audio controls are disabled. This is so that the full volume can be sent to the device digitally which is important for professional audio applications.
But if you are just using your USB just to listen to music it is possible to adjust the volume for your own listening comfort. Here’s how to do it using a free audio utility called ‘Soundflower.
Continue reading ⟩Today I had a go at setting up wprig. It is a development environment for making WordPress themes. I’m using it to try and update our church website. Here are some tips on how to set it up. This is very advanced – for WordPress Theme Coders.
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If you get a bit bored booting up your Mac and waiting for the Apple logo, here’s a trick that will let you see what’s going on behind the scenes. It’s called verbose mode and it simply echoes to your screen everything that the computer is doing while it boots up. It doesn’t change anything about the way the computer operates, it doesn’t speed it up or slow it down, it just displays it on the screen.
To enable “Verbose mode” go into the terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type in the following line:
sudo nvram boot-args="-v"
This article was originally written in 2015 but it is still relevant. I have just updated it given that SSD prices have dropped dramatically in the last 3 years. Upgrading the boot drive on my Mac Mini to an SSD drive was by far the biggest speed enhancement I’ve experienced on any computer! The speed increase is incredible – almost hard to believe. Boot time went from 60 seconds to under 30 seconds, and applications launch instantly – no bouncing dock icon. In terms of bang for dollar, upgrading to an SSD drive is by far the best upgrade you can do.
Many businesses have a G-Suite account, Google give them to non for profit organisations for free. A G-suite account includes 30GB of Google Drive space free to each user. It also has a clever permission system where certain folders can be shared with members of teams. So you can set up various teams, put people in those teams, and any files placed in a folder for that team will be automatically shared with the users of that team.
This is an advanced topic for people wanting to host a wordpress site locally on their own Mac. Continue reading ⟩
Here’s how to get the FTP server running in OSX 10.9 Mavericks. This is advanced and not everyone will need the FTP server. The only thing I was use it for is to receive incoming scans from my Fuji/Xerox network scanner.
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