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Often when managing collections of files in the OS X Finder, you may find that giving the files unique or patterned names may help in your organization. For instance, if you have a set of image files it may help to quickly append a date or sequential number to the file name; to do so manually might take a while.

At other times, you might wish to quickly append a time stamp or other similar attribute to a file name without having to manually edit the name. As an example of this, if you use the OS X compress feature (… Read more

In OS X there are several ways to prevent access to files, including putting them in locked disk images or changing their permissions setting so only select accounts on the system are permitted to read them.

In addition to these options, the OS X Finder supports another method of locking a file. When you open the information window for the file, you can check the Locked check box to prevent the file from being edited, even by people who otherwise have access to it. When this lock is enabled, the file's icon in the finder will have a small … Read more

When migrating or restoring your Mac using Apple's Migration Assistant utility, if you have cancelled the migration operation or experienced an error such as a power outage or crash, then you may find some odd behavior. Changes made to some system resources might not be recognized.

For instance, if you have third-party utilities installed on your system that use launch agents or daemons to keep them running, if you decide to disable these agents by removing them from your system, you might find the programs continue to launch.

Recently I ran into such a situation. When migrating to a … Read more

If you extensively use your Mac, you might regularly end up with many windows and tabs open on your screen at once, and organizing your workflow around these windows can sometimes be a chore. To help in this process, Apple has included its Expose and Spaces features in OS X, and in Lion has implemented a combination of these two options called Mission Control, but these graphical approaches have limitations.

If you have too many windows open, sometimes you might need to preview them before closing them, and while you can use Mission Control and similar tools to browse through … Read more

When you move files from one location to another in the OS X Finder, if their names are the same as existing files or folders, the system will ask you whether you wish to keep both files, replace the existing file, or cancel the move operation. If you replace the file, then the one you are moving should be the only one left in the new location; however, a bug in the Finder in OS X might result in both files being deleted.

Earlier today, Mac OS X Hints posted steps that show the Finder deleting both the original and … Read more

Often when troubleshooting odd application or system behavior in OS X you will access the preferences folder in your user account to remove or manually edit settings for a program. While in most cases you will find the preferences file for an application directly in the Preferences folder, sometimes they will be in subfolders within the Preferences folder itself.

Usually this sequestering of preferences files is done by developers such as Microsoft or Adobe for their various applications or application suites; however, in addition to those from developers you will see a folder called ByHost that contains a number of … Read more

Google+ finally allows nicknames, Priceline is killing Shatner, and a solar radiation storm crashes communication systems.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Creating files and folders in OS X can generally be done without requiring additional steps, but sometimes you may run into situations where the system either claims access is denied or that you first must authenticate to make modifications to the current folder.

This behavior happens because your account does not have proper write access to the folder in which you are working, which may be purposeful in some cases. By default, the permissions in OS X are set to allow you access to your account's resources, but will restrict you from modifying or even reading other resources, including … Read more

LAS VEGAS--As helpful as the original Cobra Tag was for a forgetful guy like me, it had one fatal flaw: I kept forgetting to recharge the darn thing!

The new Cobra Tag G5, set to be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, now only needs charging twice per year. Cobra is claiming more than six months of monitoring between recharges of the new Tag G5 thanks to its implementation of Bluetooth 4.0 technology. However, in order to achieve this astronomic battery life, the phone the Tag G5 is paired with will also need to support Bluetooth … Read more