
Chris Breen, esteemed Senior Editor of Macworld magazine, gave a presentation at Macworld conference on Mac tips and tricks. Here are our top 5 takeaways from his presentation.
1. Switch off those annoying Mac App Store update alerts!
If you’re in Mountain Lion or Mavericks: Go to System Preferences, choose App Store, and uncheck “Automatically check for updates.” If you’re in Lion or earlier: Go to Preferences, choose Software Update, and uncheck “Automatically check for updates.”
2. Reclaim Garage Band space
Garage Band can take up a ton of space on your Mac, so if you’re never going to use it and space is at a premium, delete the 10GB of stuff it stores.
To do it: Make sure you are in the Finder. Then click and hold the Option key while you open the Go menu. Choose Library from the dropdown. Once you’re in the Library folder, go to Audio > Apple Loops > Apple and delete everything in there.
3. Prevent iTunes from opening the wrong library
If you have moved your iTunes library to a new location, you can prevent iTunes from opening the wrong or old library accidentally. Find the old library (which is probably in your Home folder, in Music > iTunes and is called iTunes Music Library), click it once to select it, then from the File menu at the top choose Get Info. In the window that pops open, click the box next to “Locked.” Now iTunes won’t be able to open it!
4. Turn off annoying web content
If you hate having all those automated movies and pop-up notifications bother you while you’re surfing the web, The Click to Plugin extension for Safari blocks Flash movies and other annoying content. And it’s free. (It only works on Safari.)
5. Use Automator to keep yourself organized
Automator, which is built into the Mac, requires a little learning but it’s not as intimidating as it seems. For example, have your Mac automatically move your downloaded items into different folders depending on what kinds of files they are. Here’s Chris’s how-to article on sorting downloaded items using Automator.
Check out all of Chris Breen’s Macworld articles at the Macworld website.