There are lots of fun things you can do with your Mac that don't involve any 3rd party software. There are tip sites everywhere, but I often learn things here that I haven't seen elsewhere (or have forgotten) - things like the control-option-?-8 trick for alternating between color and inverse B&W screens, turning on spell checking inside browser boxes using Spelling->"Check Spelling as You Type", etc. What are some of your favorite things to do that are pure OS X (i.e., you could do them with an out-of-the-box Mac and no additional software)?
Here's one of my favorites:
I like to update my desktop with pics I find on the web. In particular, ones I find on the APOD site (be sure to click on the pic on the page to get to the usually larger version).
As is common knowledge, one can select a folder of images and rotate through them (System Preferences...->Desktop & Screen Saver->Desktop, choose folder, select the "Change picture:..." checkbox).
This easily lends itself to creating an image folder on your desktop (or several, if you want different categories), then dragging images to the appropriate folder and eventually seeing them show up in the rotation.
Sometimes, though, you want to be able to set the desktop picture immediately to a new one. This is easy in Windows - but the pics get stashed in a non-intuitive place. To be more user friendly - i.e., to let you drag the picture into the folder of your choice - use Applications->AppleScript->Script Editor to create an AppleScript containing:
Save the script to "/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts".
Enable Folder Actions (control or right click on a folder and select "Enable Folder Actions" - this is global for all folders).
Associate the above script with your images folder (control or right click on the appropriate folder and select "Attach a Folder Action...").
Drag an image to the folder and it'll appear as your Desktop.
Just did this with my APOD folder. When I "rotate" images, it works as it did before. When I stop rotating, it immediately sets to picture to the latest one I dragged to it.
Here's one of my favorites:
I like to update my desktop with pics I find on the web. In particular, ones I find on the APOD site (be sure to click on the pic on the page to get to the usually larger version).
As is common knowledge, one can select a folder of images and rotate through them (System Preferences...->Desktop & Screen Saver->Desktop, choose folder, select the "Change picture:..." checkbox).
This easily lends itself to creating an image folder on your desktop (or several, if you want different categories), then dragging images to the appropriate folder and eventually seeing them show up in the rotation.
Sometimes, though, you want to be able to set the desktop picture immediately to a new one. This is easy in Windows - but the pics get stashed in a non-intuitive place. To be more user friendly - i.e., to let you drag the picture into the folder of your choice - use Applications->AppleScript->Script Editor to create an AppleScript containing:
Code:
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
try
tell application "Finder"
set desktop picture to the last item in added_items
end tell
end try
end adding folder items toSave the script to "/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts".
Enable Folder Actions (control or right click on a folder and select "Enable Folder Actions" - this is global for all folders).
Associate the above script with your images folder (control or right click on the appropriate folder and select "Attach a Folder Action...").
Drag an image to the folder and it'll appear as your Desktop.
Just did this with my APOD folder. When I "rotate" images, it works as it did before. When I stop rotating, it immediately sets to picture to the latest one I dragged to it.
