As satisfying as the swipe to close feature in mobile Safari is, it becomes a bit of a chore to close more than a few tabs.

To close all tabs at once, tap the new tab icon (two overlapping squares), tap Private, and then Close All. Repeat the first two steps and tap ‘+’ (or the screen) to get back to an empty Safari in your preferred browsing state.

I only have an iOS 7 device to test this in.

[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. I also only have iOS 7.]

Source: Mac OSX Hints

Maybe less of a hint, and more of a “I didn’t know you could do that!”

If you have connected to a remote Mac using Screen Sharing and don’t have a mounted disk, then you can still copy between the two Macs via drag and drop.

Basically, you take a file from the local Finder and drag it to a window of the remote Finder. This will automatically initiate a copy. The reverse is also true. A little experimenting shows numerous applications can act as source, but in all cases a Finder window needs to be the final destination.

[crarko adds: I’ve done this for ages using things other than Apple’s built-in Screen Sharing program, so I don’t know when this became available. Did it come along with AirDrop? The full Remote Desktop program has done this since the beginning.]

Source: Mac OSX Hints

When re-installing Mountain Lion from the Recovery Partition, the installer needs to check installation eligibility with Apple’s servers. If your computer needs to access the Internet through a proxy server for whatever reason, the installer won’t pick up on this; it will attempt to make a direct connection, fail, and tell you to contact AppleCare.

As per my earlier hint (10.7: Get the Lion installer to work behind a proxy server), you could simply use the networksetup command in Terminal to get around this. However, as of 10.8 Apple’s software download servers appear to require additional checks to verify machine eligibility which – if you’re behind a squid proxy server – may require additional configuration changes to squid itself in order for it to work. You may therefore need help from your network administrator for that part …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

When assigning a keyboard shortcut to a program’s menus in System Preferences, you can run into a problem if more than one menu item in the program has the same name.

If you describe the full ‘menu path’ using ‘->’ as a delimiter between items (no spaces), then OS X will follow that path and select the correct menu item.

For instance:

Font->Edit->Increase

The ‘->’ symbol seems to be used from Mountain Lion and later. Earlier systems use ‘>’ on its own.

I don’t claim to have discovered this idea myself, but the hint doesn’t seem to be very well-known, so I thought it should be posted here, if it hasn’t already.

Credit goes to this discussion thread on the Apple forums.

[crarko a …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

Here is a method for updating SSH private keys to work with OS X 10.9 Mavericks, using Terminal commands.

cd /Users/nameofuser/.ssh
cp id_rsa{,.bak}
chmod +w id_rsa id_rsa.pub
openssl rsa -in id_rsa -out id_rsa # decrypt in place
openssl rsa -in id_rsa -aes256 -out id_rsa # encrypt in place
ssh-keygen -y -f id_rsa > id_rsa.pub # regen public key
chmod 400 id_rsa id_rsa.pub

The source of this hint.

[crarko adds: I haven’t tested this one. At least not yet. The solution seems to come from a question asked on StackExchange.]

Source: Mac OSX Hints

The behavior of this hint has changed slightly with Mavericks Calendar app from the older iCal method.

Now you first need to go to day view (e.g., by pressing Command+1) and then you can use Command+Option+(2-6) to view 2 to 6 days in the week view.

It would be nice if something like this was also available for month view (2-4 weeks) and year view (2-11 months).

[crarko adds: Not much for me to add here.]

Source: Mac OSX Hints

I don’t know how long this has existed (or what to call it), but in 10.9.1, just as one is able to quickly retype previous commands in Terminal by pressing the up arrow key, it is possible to retrieve a copy of entire, previously typed messages in Messages.app with a similar key command.

Just press Option+Up arrow while the cursor is in the message-typing box. How many previous entries it will resurrect appears to depend on how much of the message history is currently in memory. If you scroll further up to load more of the message history, those additional messages become available to the key command.

[crarko adds: I believe we called it the command buffer in Terminal.]

Source: Mac OSX Hints

I came across this by pure accident but did you know that all of your iOS Keyboard Shortcuts that you create are then stored to iCloud Keychain and can be used in OS X 10.9?

I was in iMessage when I accidentally typed “eag” which is a shortcut I have created to easily insert my work email in iOS. Well I typed that and pressed space and the text autofilled into the message. So then I went ahead and typed other shortcuts I actively use in iOS and sure enough, they all auto-complete very nicely. After noticing this, I went to System Preferences

I don’t like paper-like background of OS X Notes.app, and the fact that, usually after syncing with its iOS counterpart, the application doesn’t remember the larger font size which I’ve set. Here’s how I fixed it to my satisfaction.

First, navigate to /Applications and Control+click on the Notes.app icon. In contextual menu, select the Show Package Contents item. Then, browse the content of the app’s package to Resources, and inside that find these two files: pad.css and paper.tiff. Make a backup copy of these files in a safe place in case you want to revert back to them sometime; otherwise you’d have to reinstall OS X to do so.

Copy the former into a folder you have write permission for, and open it with any text editor. Just replace the @[FONT_SIZE] on fifteenth line with whatever font size suits you. I’ve bad eyes and have choosen 18px. Save the file and replace the original with this modified version.

Th …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

I recently switched from working in plain text files to working in rich text in TextEdit and one of the most annoying things about rich text is pasting from other types of windows. I like to use a fixed width font most of the time, such as Courier New. Unless I’m diligent and use Command+Option+Shift+V, I end up with a mix of fonts and font styles. I finally got fed up enough with it today to do something about it. This work-around will only work with pasting from the keyboard. It will not correctly paste text that has been dragged and dropped.

The solution is to use Keyboard Shortcuts to switch the Edit menu’s items for Paste and Paste and Match Style. It’s such a simple fix, I never thought to do it before now. After this fix, Command+V will paste and match style and Command+Option+Shift+V will paste (and keep the style the copied text was in).
Open System Preferences
Click Keyboard
Click the Shortcuts tab
Cli …

Source: Mac OSX Hints