You remember Font Book, right? That’s the built-in app that OS X offers for organizing and previewing fonts. In Mountain Lion, it gained a feature to make organization a little simpler: Smart Collections.

They work just like Smart Playlists, Smart Folders, and Smart Mailboxes. Option-click the Plus icon at the lower left, or choose File -> New Smart Collection.

Filters in your Smart Collection can include Family Name, Style Name, PostScript name, Languages, and Design Style. That way, you could make a collection that consists of, say, only English, italic, sans-serif fonts.

Source: Mac OSX Hints

OS X’s built-in Contacts app has long offered an option to share a contact’s details via email. But OS X Mountain Lion added two additional options.

With a contact selected, click on the Send To arrow icon at the bottom of the window, and you can choose to send the card not just via email, but also via iMessage and AirDrop.

If you select the iMessage option, when the iMessage composition screen pops up, you can also use it as a quick shortcut to iMessaging the email address or phone number of your choosing: Just delete the card attachment inserted in the message body, and write whatever you’d like instead.

Source: Mac OSX Hints

Rearranging the sections in the sidebar of Finder windows used to be a beast. That hasn’t been the case since the introduction of Mountain Lion.
You can drag and drop sections like Favorites, Devices, and Shared to reorder them however you’d like. And when you do so, the change is immediately effective in all Finder windows already open.
Even better, of course: The change is reflected in any new Finder windows you open, too.

Source: Mac OSX Hints

Running a minecraft server is as easy as downloading the server jar file and runnning:java -jar minecraft_server.jar

But after the thrill is gone you will want to automate this with a launch daemon, know how to back it up, and also how to run this as user nobody for extra security.

Here’s some step by step instructions:There’s three parts to this hint. 1) creating the launchDaemon that starts the minecraft server. 2) how to debug and control the daemon 3) maintaining backups

The first step is to download the minecraft server jar file from the Mojang website. Currently that site is [url]https://minecraft.net/download[/url] but that might change in the future. And Currently the jar filename is: minecraft_server.1.6.2.jar but that will change too.

1) creating a place for it.
when you run the jar the first time it’s going to create a lot of files and subdirectories the in the current working directory (CWD) so we want to create a n …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

Here’s a recipe for setting up Minecraft server on OS X. Since I don’t fully trust the server not to have some security hole, I want it to run as user nobody so it doesn’t have a lot of permissions. And I also want it to restart automatically when I reboot the computer. Finally I show how to backup the worlds you create.

There’s three parts to this hint.

1) creating the launchDaemon that starts the minecraft server.
2) how to turn it on and off
3) maintaining backups

The first step is to download the minecraft server jar file from the Mojang website. Currently that site is https://minecraft.net/download but that might change in the future. And currently the jar filename is: minecraft_server.1.6.2.jar, but that will change too.

1) Creating a place for it.
When you run the jar the first time it’s going to create a lot of files and subdirectories the in the current working directory (CWD) so we want to create a nice place to do …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

AirPort Utility 5.6 could show you all the devices connected to your AirPort base station—wired and wireless alike. AirPort Utility 6.x, however, only lists devices connected to your base station over Wi-Fi. There’s no way to use the app to list off the IP addresses and names of devices plugged directly into the base station.

You can stil grab the old version of the utility from Apple, though you need a little help to install the app on Mountain Lion, since the installer (falsely) reports that AirPort Utility 5.6 is incompatible with Mac OS X 10.8.

But while you can force AirPort Utility 5.6 to install on Mountain Lion, there’s no guarantee that the app will continue to work on OS X 10.9 Mavericks or beyond. …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

When you lock your iPhone or iPad with a passcode, the general process for using your device is that you hit the sleep/wake button or the Home button, slide to unlock, and then tap in your passcode. But, as our old friend David Chartier pointed out at Finer Things, you can skip a step if you use an external Bluetooth keyboard.

Presuming your keyboard is already paired to the iOS device, you don’t even need to touch the iPad or iPhone at all to unlock it. Press a key on your keyboard to wake the device up, and then typing in your passcode. The iOS device understands what you’re trying to do, and jumps to the passcode entry screen automatically.

Once you finish typing in your code, your iOS device is unlocked and ready to go.

Source: Mac OSX Hints

Some applications will never get full screen support. Here’s a workaround.
1. Install SIMBL, http://www.culater.net/software/SIMBL/SIMBL.php.

2. Install Maximizer, http://chpwn.com/apps/maximizer.html.

3. Optional, but recommended step. Maximizer breaks full screen in some applications that already support it. To add it on a per application-basis edit SIMBLTargetApplications key from ‘/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/Maximizer.bundle/Contents/Info.plist’ by appending entries like explained at http://code.google.com/p/simbl/wiki/Tutorial, no. 3.

Example for TextEdit.

SIMBLTargetApplications

BundleIdentifier
com.apple.TextEdit
MaxBundleVersion
*
MinBundleVersion
*

…

Source: Mac OSX Hints

You know all the different tasks Siri can help you accomplish with your recent iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. But perhaps you didn’t realize you can teach Siri to help you save even more time when use the assistant for certain tasks.

I frequently use Siri to place calls to, or send iMessages to, my wife. She’s one of two Lauren’s in my address book; specifying to my iPhone each time that I’d like it to “Call Lauren Friedman’s iPhone” would quickly grow tiresome.

Instead, I taught Siri who Lauren is: I triggered Siri, and then said, “Lauren Friedman is my wife.” Siri then asked me if if I wanted it to remember that fact; I unsurprisingly responded in the affirmative.

Because I’ve done that, I can now tell Siri “Call my wife” or “iMessage my wife that I’m on my way home.”

And you can use a lot more than spousal relationships. Siri knows that Jason Snell is my boss, Dan Miller is my editor, and Dan Moren is my mentor. You can use pret …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

If, like me, you wish that TextEdit did not show its ruler by default, this hint is for you.

TextEdit displays the ruler by default when creating or opening rich text documents. I find the ruler visually cluttering and distracting, and I rarely ever need it.
Unfortunately, TextEdit does not offer a way to turn off the ruler by default in its Preferences window. But it can be done using the following simple steps:
Quit TextEdit if it is running.
Enter the following command into a Terminal window: defaults write com.apple.TextEdit ShowRuler 0
Open TextEdit.
Enjoy increased visual and mental tranquility.

You can always show the ruler if you need it for something by pressing ⌘R or choosing Format > Text > Show Ruler from TextEdit’s menus.

To revert TextEdit to its default setting, repeat steps 1 to 3 above, but use this command in Terminal instead: defaults delete com.apple.TextEdit ShowRu …

Source: Mac OSX Hints