Apple Tips and Tricks

As I haven’t posted in a while, I thought I would publish a few tips and tricks for Apple computers.
All of the tips below are done inside Terminal.

I find most of them useful, don’t blindly copy and paste unless you understand what you’re doing.
Some of them can be accomplished in the OSX Gui, some cannot.

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Getting access to the Beta’s for OS X
Accessing public beta’s via Software update (on Yosemite)
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL https://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-10.10beta-10.10-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog.gz

softwareupdate -l

Accessing all available beta’s via Software update (on Yosemite)
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL https://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-10.10seed-10.10-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog.gz

softwareupdate -l

Resetting Software Update catalog to the defaults (eg if you used one of the above 2 catalogs)
sudo softwareupdate –clear-catalog


Making TextEdit default to plain text mode for new documents
defaults write com.apple.TextEdit RichText -int 0


Change the default Finder location to your home folder (~/)
defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTarget -string "PfLo" && \
defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTargetPath -string "file://${HOME}"


Make the save panel expanded by default
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool true


Turning off the warning when changing file extensions
defaults write com.apple.finder FXEnableExtensionChangeWarning -bool false


Check for software updates daily
defaults write com.apple.SoftwareUpdate ScheduleFrequency -int 1

Show the icons for drives, network drives, and usb disks on the desktop
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowExternalHardDrivesOnDesktop -bool true && \
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowHardDrivesOnDesktop -bool true && \
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowMountedServersOnDesktop -bool true && \
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowRemovableMediaOnDesktop -bool true

Disable creation of .DS_Store files on network shares
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool true

Unhide the user Library folder
chflags nohidden ~/Library

Enable AirDrop over Ethernet and on unsupported Macs
defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser BrowseAllInterfaces -bool true