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Mac Mouse Double-Clicking Instead of Single Clicking? Here’s the Fix

written by applenws

Some Mac users may encounter a weird issue where they attempt to single click their mouse or trackpad but a double-click is registered instead of the intended single click. This is obviously frustrating since a double-click in the wrong place can perform actions you may not want to perform, like full screening a window or opening an app, folder, or document, or even something more annoying.

If you have noticed that a Mac is erroneously registering double-clicks instead of single clicks of the mouse or trackpad, read on to learn a few ways to troubleshoot the issue and potentially resolve the problem.

Check the Mouse / Trackpad Hardware

Sometimes erroneous click behavior can be due to an actual hardware problem with the mouse or trackpad, as well.

The first thing if you suspect this is the case is to insure the Mouse is clean. A grimy mouse stuffed full of gunk, dust, and whatever else can cause clicks to register incorrectly or not register at all. Thus, cleaning the mouse or trackpad surface is a good place to start.

Rarely, the mouse accessory may be damaged and in such a situation, replacing the accessory can be necessary. I’ve experienced a mouse go haywire after they have been damaged from water contact, so if you have ever spilled coffee on a mouse, thrown it out the window, or used it as a mace to ward off an alien invasion, it may have an actual physical issue that makes the clicking activity not work properly. This is particularly relevant if you’re experiencing more than just improper click registry, but also other unusual behavior with a mouse or trackpad, like errant or missing cursor movements. If you’re periodically experiencing improper click registrations along with random inability to click a mouse or trackpad at all, you’ll also want to do a thorough check of the hardware condition and battery (if applicable).

The physical condition of the mouse or trackpad can also make a difference though that alone is not always an indicator of a problem. For example, I have a faulty Logitech mouse that routinely registers improper clicking activity despite being in pristine condition, and I have another beat up Logitech mouse that works great. Trying out another external USB mouse is a fairly simple way to determine if the issue is a hardware problem or not, if you don’t have one handy you can always get a new USB mouse as they are quite cheap.

How to Stop Single Clicks Registering as Double-Clicks on Mac

A common software reason that single-clicks are registered as double-clicks, or at least perceived as so, are mouse settings on the individual Mac OS installation. One setting in particular may be helpful to adjust:

  1. Go to the  Apple menu and choose “System Preferences”
  2. Select “Mouse”
  3. Look for the “Double-Click Speed” setting, and adjust the Slow-Fast dial further towards “Fast” (or all the way)

Adjust the mouse Double Click speed setting in Mac OS

Some users who are unable to rapidly double-click may not be able to use the most aggressive “Fast” setting approach to resolve this issue unfortunately, but by experimenting with the various double-click speed settings for the Mouse hopefully users will be able to find a solution which works for them.

Sometimes this setting is tucked into Accessibility options, depending on what version of Mac OS you are using, in which case you’d look for it in System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad

Adjusting click speed for double click on Mac OS Settings

The double-click speed setting has been to blame (and blamed) for this issue for quite some time and it can impact almost any version of Mac OS or Mac OS X (as you’ll notice on Apple Discussion boards: 1, 2). From the software side of things, it’s one of the first settings to adjusting see if it makes an impact.

Going further, if you’re still experiencing issues with erroneous double-clicks coming from single-clicks, you may want to follow these instructions to troubleshoot weird mouse and trackpad behavior on a Mac.

Did these tips help resolve your issues with a mouse or trackpad registering double-clicks when you single click? Did you find another solution? Let us know your experiences in the comments below!

Source: OSX Daily

April 6, 2018 0 comment
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How to Exclude a Word with grep

written by applenws

The grep command line tool is wildly useful for searching through text data for lines and snippets that match a defined string, character, word, or regular expression. While most uses of grep are for sorting data for syntax matches, what if you want to exclude a word or string with grep instead? Excluding line matches with grep is equally as useful as finding and printing matches in grep, so let’s cover how to exclude string matches and exclude words with grep.


Obviously you’ll want to have some command line experience and exposure to grep to find this useful. If you want to follow along, you can open the Terminal application and try it out yourself. Since grep is an OS agnostic utility, you can use the exclude trick in Mac OS, Linux, unix, or whatever else you have that uses grep.

How to Exclude a Single Word with grep

The most simple way to exclude lines with a string or syntax match is by using grep and the -v flag.

For example, let’s say we’re using cat to print a file at the command line, but we want to exclude all lines that include the term “ThisWord”, then the syntax would look as follow:

cat example.txt | grep -v "ThisWord"

The output will be the example.txt text file but excluding any line that contains a string match with “ThisWord”.

You can also use grep directly on files and exclude line matches based on words or syntax, like so:

grep -v "ThisWord" example.txt

Use whichever works best for your particular workflow.

How to Exclude Multiple Strings or Words with grep

Now that you know how to exclude matches for a single word, the next obvious question is about excluding multiple words with grep. That’s equally as simple, and there are a few different ways to accomplish this using the -v flag as well as the -e flag.

First lets take the above example of using cat on a file piped to grep, and exclude any lines matching two words; “Word1” and “Word2”, this would look like the following:

cat example.txt | grep -v -e "Word1" -e "Word2"

Any lines that contain “Word1” or “Word2” will be excluded from the printed results.

You can also use grep directly on files just as before as well:

grep -v -e "Word1" -e "Word2" example.txt

Another approach is to separate what to exclude with grep by using a pipe to separate each match, like so:

grep -Ev "word1|word2" example.txt

If you test out any of these options on an example text file, you will find the output is identical regardless of the approach you take, each excluding lines that include the targeted phrases, syntax, words, or text match.

Great, show me a useful example of excluding data with grep!

For a practical example that advanced Mac users may find helpful, we can use grep exclusion when printing and querying command line history to find previously executed commands to find defaults matches, but excluding some selected defaults strings from the output.

In the example here we’ll print command history for defaults string matches, but exclude anything matching having to do with iTunes as defined by “com.apple.itunes”:

history |grep "defaults write" |grep -v -e "com.apple.itunes"

So if you’ve been following along, this would report back all historical executions of the “defaults write” command, but excluding anything that pertained to the iTunes application. Nice huh?

If you have any particularly handy uses of excluding matches with grep, share them with us in the comments below! And if you enjoyed this article, you’d almost certainly like browsing through our many command line articles here where there is plenty more to learn!

Source: OSX Daily

April 5, 2018 0 comment
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How to Run 64-Bit Only Mode Mac OS

written by applenws

Advanced Mac users, administrators, and developers who wish to test Mac OS in 64-bit mode can do so with the help of a terminal command. Essentially this will only allow 64-bit applications and processes to run on the Mac, which can be helpful for discovering what (if any) apps, tasks, components, processes, and items may need updating, or could be problematic in future Mac OS releases that no longer offer full 32-bit compatibility. While 64-bit only mode is active, no 32-bit processes will execute at all.


Testing out MacOS in 64-bit only mode requires Mac OS 10.13.4 or later to be installed on the computer, earlier versions of system do not support this capability. And obviously the Mac itself must be 64-bit as well, which nearly all modern Macs (post-Intel switch) are, so if it’s running a modern Mac OS release that is covered.

This is truly intended for advanced Mac users who are testing compatibility for a particular reason, novice users will likely find that enabling 64-bit only mode is going to lead to problems with existing software, and thus it is not recommended for most people to test out 64-bit only mode. For the majority of Mac users, simply finding 32-bit apps on their Mac, updating those apps when possible, and understanding the implications of future Mac OS releases not supporting 32-bit apps is sufficient.

How to Enable 64-Bit Mode for Mac OS

  1. Open the “Terminal” application, which is found within the /Applications/Utilities/ directory
  2. Enter the following command string exactly:

    3. sudo nvram boot-args="-no32exec"

  3. Hit return and authenticate with sudo to execute the command properly
  4. Restart the Mac

Note that once you’re in 64-bit mode, no 32-bit process will launch or work. That includes any 32-bit apps, software components, Dashboard widgets, web plugins, preference panels, background tasks and processes, and anything else that is 32-bit.

If you try to open a 32-bit app when in 64-bit mode, the app will fail to launch and show a message stating the app can not be opened.

Noteworthy is that in prior macOS 10.13.4 release notes, Apple has indicated that 64-bit only mode may eventually provide additional developer-centric information to help test apps and software, but that does not yet appear to be implemented.

How to Disable 64-bit Only Mode in Mac OS

  1. Launch Terminal and enter the following command string:

    2. sudo nvram boot-args=""

  2. Hit return and then reboot the Mac for the change to take effect

Disabling 64-bit only mode just puts the Mac back where it was before, which is able to run 32-bit apps but with a warning about future compatibility and performance.

In the not too distant future, it’s likely that 32-bit apps will soon not work at all in upcoming Mac OS system software releases, which is why it’s important to either get necessary software updated to be 64-bit, or perhaps just avoid future MacOS software versions that do not offer full 32-bit support and compatibility.

As mentioned before, you can always get a list of 32-bit apps on a Mac, and that doesn’t require using 64-bit only mode or any other complex task.

Losing 32-bit app support is not totally unusual, as iOS abandoned 32-bit apps not too long ago, and it seems clear that Apple wants to do the same move to 64-bit only with MacOS as well. And for a little background, Mac OS itself has had 64-bit kernel support since Snow Leopard, so this is hardly a sudden shift in technology.

If you’re concerned about software compatibility and 64-bit only versions of Mac OS, you can always avoid the MacOS High Sierra updates completely, along with any other future MacOS system software releases that are likely to lose 32-bit support, at least until you have replacement software or have another solution worked out for a particular environment.

Source: OSX Daily

April 4, 2018 0 comment
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How to Mute Dial Sounds on iPhone

written by applenws

iPhone users may wonder how they can mute the dialing sound effects that are played when a phone number is being dialed into the numeric keypad on an iPhone. Each time you press a number button on the phone keyboard, a new sound effect plays. Some of you may be thinking, that’s great and all but how do you turn off those sound effects when dialing a number, so that I can dial a number in silence from the iPhone?

It turns out there is a way to silence the audio sound effects when dialing phone numbers on an iPhone, read on to learn how to accomplish the task.


If you’re interested in some quick background, the sounds played while dialing a number on iPhone are actually the same as you’d hear on any other traditional touch tone DTMF phone, with each dialed number having a unique dial tone sound associated with it. While those numerical audio signals were necessary in the pre-cell phone era, nowadays the sound effects are no longer needed to simply dial a number successfully, but the sound effects persist even on modern smart phones like an iPhone. It’s a historical artifact of dialing numbers that many users like, and for many people there is a strong recognition for the sounds and dialing numbers, where you can often tell a number is being entered wrong simply by hearing it incorrectly. Anyway, some people may want to just dial a phone number on their iPhone in silence without the dialing tones being played out loud, so that’s what we’re going to focus on here.

How do you turn off dialing sounds on iPhone when dialing a phone number?

There are a few different ways to mute the playing of dialing sound effects when entering a phone number onto iPhone. We’ll cover the two simplest methods to silencing the keypad tone sounds; using the mute switch, and using headphones.

Quick Note: turning off keyboard clicks and keyboard sound effects on the iPhone and iPad currently won’t disable the dialing sound effects, as the phone dialing sounds are technically not a keyboard sound effect.

1: Turn Off Dialing Sounds by Muting the iPhone

The first approach to silencing the iPhone dialing sound effects is to simply mute the iPhone. This is easy, because all iPhone devices have a hardware mute switch on the side of each model, next to the volume buttons.

iPhone mute switch

Simply look at the side of the iPhone and find the little Mute switch and activate it. Flip it on, so that you can see a little red indicator, when that red indicator in the mute switch is visible it means the Mute button is active and the iPhone is muted for all sounds, including the muting of the dialing sounds.

Just remember to toggle the Mute button switch back off again if you don’t want to keep the iPhone in silent mode, because everything on the iPhone will not produce sound if the Mute button is enabled and instead the device will just vibrate. This includes all audio, whether it’s incoming phone call ringtones, text message alert sounds, alert sounds, external music, the camera sound, and any audio or video coming out of videos or apps. The mute button is all encompassing on iPhone, which is why it works to turn off the dialing sounds too, as long as that mute switch is enabled.

2: Silence External Dialing Sound Effects on iPhone by Using Headphones

If you use headphones, or have any plugged into the iPhone, then dialing in the Phone app will not make external sounds through the iPhone speakers, instead they will play the dial sounds through the headphones, earbuds, or Airpods.

You can also plug in a set of headphones to the iPhone and not even use them simply to accomplish the silencing of the dialing sounds.

This isn’t technically muting the sound effect or turning them off, it simply redirects the sound effects when dialing through the audio output of the headphone jack, or the Lightning port if your iPhone is courageous without a headphone port.

Whether or not it’s easier for you to mute the dialing sounds on an iPhone by using the Mute button or by using headphones is entirely up to you and how you use your device, but for most users the Mute switch is probably the best approach.

As mentioned earlier, there is no setting for disabling or turning off the dial sound effects on iPhone. But it’s always possible that future iOS releases will include a toggle setting for silencing the dial tone sounds on an iPhone as some kind of option, or maybe even do away with them completely.

Personally I like the sound effects when dialing a number, but I am also one of those geeks that digs up DTMF tones buried on their Mac and plays around with them because, well, I’m a geek and that’s the type of thing I find to be interesting. But anytime I don’t want the iPhone to make a sound when dialing I just toggle the mute switch, but every user is different. Just use what works for you.

Source: OSX Daily

April 3, 2018 0 comment
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How to Turn Off Safari Suggestions on Mac

written by applenws

The Safari browser for Mac offers a feature called “Safari Suggestions” which detects what you’re typing into the URL bar / search box and, much like the name implies, offers suggestions based on what you typed. For example, if you type “AAPL” into the Safari Search box, you’ll see the stock price for that ticker symbol as it appears directly under the Safari address bar, or if you type “Carl Sagan” you’ll see a short blurb and a link to Wikipedia appear under the Safari URL bar.

Many Mac users undoubtedly like Safari Suggestions since it can offer a shortcut for searching and finding specific information, but some users may not appreciate the feature and would rather disable it.


This works for both Safari and Safari Technology Preview, obviously you’ll need a modern version of the application which supports the feature in the first place to be able to disable it. If you do not see the option available, the Safari version in use is not new enough to have the feature anyway.

How to Disable Safari Suggestions on Mac

  1. Open Safari on the Mac if you haven’t done so already
  2. Pull down the “Safari” menu and choose “Preferences”
  3. From the Safari Preferences, choose the “Search” tab
  4. Alongside “Smart Search Field” uncheck the box for “Include Safari Suggestions” *

    5. Disable Safari Suggestions on Mac

  5. Close Preferences and use Safari as usual

You can immediately confirm that Safari Suggestions have been disabled by clicking into the address bar and typing something that would typically result in a suggestion, for example a ticker symbol, or a famous persons name, or a popular movie. With Safari Suggestions disabled, those little recommendations won’t show up anymore.

With Safari Suggestions disabled, none of those recommendations will show up anymore. For example typing out a ticker symbol would look like this:

Disable Safari Suggestions on Mac

Compare to the default setting with Suggestions enabled, where the same text entry will look like this:

Disable Safari Suggestions on Mac

* Note that Safari Suggestions are different from search engine suggestions, which come from the default search engine in Safari. If you want to not see those any longer, you can disable search engine suggestions on Safari for Mac too. Yes the names are similar, but the functionality is different.

If you’re an iPhone and iPad user as well, you might also appreciate knowing that you can also disable Safari Suggestions in iOS too if desired.

Aside from personal preferences, some older Macs may notice a slight performance boost to Safari by turning this feature off, and disabling the Suggestions options have been a a resolution to stop Safari freezing with address bar usage in the past too.

Oh and while you’re tinkering with Safari settings, you might want to enable the setting to show a full website URL in the Safari address bar too, something that is curiously disabled by default in modern Mac OS releases.

Source: OSX Daily

April 2, 2018 0 comment
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How to Change the Key Photo of Live Photos on iPhone and iPad

written by applenws

Live Photos are the fun animated images captured by modern iPhone and iPad cameras. Essentially each Live Photo is a still image attached to a short movie clip, and much like movie clips there is a key image that can be set to represent the picture as a thumbnail. Changing that key photo can be desirable if the Live Photo thumbnail preview doesn’t really capture the image well, and you can instead scrub around in the Live Photo for a thumbnail that better represents the image.

This tutorial will show you how to change and set a Live Photo key photo in iOS.

You will need a device that supports Live Photo and an actual Live Photo to do this, you can take a Live Photo with the iPhone or iPad camera if you haven’t done so before, and then use that for testing this out yourself if desired. Of course you’d need to enable Live Photos first before such an image is captured.

How to Set Key Photo in Live Photos for iOS

  1. Open the “Photos” app and choose any Live Photo
  2. Tap the “Edit” button in the corner

    3. How to set key photo on Live Photos for iOS

  3. Scrub on the timeline with your finger to find the key photo you want to set

    4. How to set key photo on Live Photos for iOS

  4. Tap and hold on the thumbnail then choose “Make Key Photo”
  5. How to set key photo on Live Photos for iOS
  6. Choose “Done” to set the changed key photo in iOS

    7. How to set key photo on Live Photos for iOS

Now anytime you’re browsing the thumbnail view of Live Photos in the Photos app, or if you share the Live Photos, the newly set Key Photo will be the default.

How to set key photo on Live Photos for iOS

Live Photo is a neat feature with a lot of tricks up its sleeve. One of the more interesting capabilities recently added is the ability to use Live Photos to take long exposure images on iPhone or iPad. And don’t forget you can always convert a Live Photo to still image in iOS if you later decide the animated picture isn’t what you’re looking for after all.

If you liked this trick, you’ll probably appreciate checking out more Live Photo tips here too.

Source: OSX Daily

March 31, 2018 0 comment
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iPhone X Ringer Volume Very Low? Here’s the Fix

written by applenws

Have you noticed the iPhone X ringer volume goes from loud to low? Often iPhone X users notice that the iPhone X ringtone will sound very quiet after initially sounding loud, but despite pressing the volume up buttons they can’t get the iPhone X ringtone to sound loud again, it’s just stuck quiet. Don’t fret and there’s nothing wrong with your iPhone X for exhibiting this behavior, in fact this is actually a feature.

If your iPhone X rings loud but then gets quiet and stays quiet, but you’d rather have the iPhone X ringer volume stay loud all the time when getting a call, read on to learn the proper settings adjustment to stop this behavior. The end result will be that iPhone X sounds loud on incoming calls all the time and the iPhone X will stop quieting the ringtone volume itself.

What causes the iPhone X ringtone volume to be very low after initially sounding loud? It’s actually a Face ID feature. And yes, this ring sound volume lowering capability applies even if Face ID is not being used on iPhone X to unlock or authenticate the device, and much like how Animoji uses the Face ID camera to scan your face even if you aren’t using Face ID authentication, the front camera for face scanning is active for other features too, and that includes the ringtone volume.

How to Stop iPhone X Ring Volume Going Quiet

You can disable the attention awareness feature that scans your face and determines you’re looking at the iPhone X, which in turn lowers the ring volume on the device. With this feature turned off, the iPhone X will stop lowering the ring volume of calls automatically when you pick up the iPhone and look at it.

  1. Open the “Settings” app on the iPhone
  2. Go to the “Face ID & Passcode” section
  3. Locate the “Attention Aware Features” option and turn the switch to the OFF position
  4. Exit out of Settings

Disable Attention Aware Features on iPhone X to stop quiet ringer volume sound

You can confirm this works by getting an incoming call on iPhone X, it should now be loud as your settings were set to beforehand and no longer quiet the call to a very low volume automatically.

Another helpful step is to make sure your iPhone ringer volume is turned up all the way to the loudest setting, since sometimes users have inadvertently made the iPhone volume low.

How to Turn Ringer Volume Up to the Loudest Setting on iPhone X

Here’s how to adjust the Ringtone Volume so that it is up all the way to a loud setting:

  1. From the “Settings” app go to “Sounds & Haptics”
  2. Under the ‘Ringer and Alerts’ section slide the volume indicator all the way to the right for full volume
  3. Optionally, toggle the switch for “Change with Buttons” if you want to be able to adjust ringtone volume with the physical buttons on the iPhone*

* Some people turned this Volume button adjustment feature off long ago, particularly if they have kids that like to fidget with their iPhone. But many new iPhone models ship with this feature disabled by default. Whether you want to adjust the ringtone volume by the volume buttons is a matter of personal preference and your individual usage.

Finally the other options to make sure are not enabled is the physical hardware mute button on the side of the iPhone (if you can see the little orange indicator, mute button is on), and also check for Do Not Disturb not being enabled, since Do Not Disturb mode will cause an iPhone to not get incoming calls or make sounds at all.

Keep in mind that if you press the volume buttons on an iPhone when a call is actively incoming, you will mute the incoming call sound on the iPhone just temporarily for that specific individual phone call. That’s a completely separate feature and it’s quiet useful if you’re in a meeting or talking with someone and you want to quickly silence just that single call without muting the phone entirely.

That should cover all the bases, and your iPhone X should now ring loud for incoming calls as usual just like other iPhones do. No more automatically quieting down after the first ring, as long a you have the facial attention awareness feature off this behavior will stop.

Source: OSX Daily

March 30, 2018 0 comment
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How to Set & Use the Accessibility Shortcut on iPhone and iPad

written by applenws

The Accessibility Shortcut in iOS allows users to quickly enable and use various accessibility features on an iPhone or iPad, giving near instant access from just about anywhere to features like AssistiveTouch, Invert Colors, Color Filters, the Magnifier, Reduce White Point, Smart Invert, VoiceOver, and Zoom.

For example, a great usage for the Accessibility Shortcut is to quickly access the Magnifier feature of iOS, or to toggle Smart Invert on, or to temporarily turn the screen greyscale, or zoom the display to read some text or element that is too small to distinguish without that extra zoom level.

There are nine possible Accessibility Shortcut options to choose from in the latest iOS releases, we will show you how to set the Accessibility Shortcut to customize it for your own use, and of course we’ll show you how to use the Accessibility Shortcut on an iPhone and iPad as well.

How to Set the Accessibility Shortcut in iOS

The Accessibility Shortcut can be customized to initiate a single Accessibility feature, or bring up a menu with multiple Accessibility choices. Here is how you can set and customize this capability on an iPhone or iPad:

  1. Open the “Settings” app in iOS
  2. Go to “General” and then to “Accessibility”
  3. At the bottom of the Accessibility section, tap on “Accessibility Shortcut”

    4. How to change the Accessibility Shortcut in iOS

  4. Choose the Accessibility item you want to activate when the shortcut is accessed:
  • AssistiveTouch
  • Classic Invert Colors
  • Color Filters
  • Magnifier
  • Reduce White Point
  • Smart Invert Colors
  • Switch Control
  • VoiceOver
  • Zoom

Select your Accessibility Shortcut settings for iPhone or iPad

  • OPTIONAL: select more than one to have the Accessibility Shortcut show a short menu with each selected option
  • When satisfied exit out of Settings

    • Go ahead and summon the Accessibility Shortcut* to confirm your changes are working as expected.

    Note that whether you select multiple Accessibility Shortcut options or just a single option, summoning the feature is the same.

    What is the Accessibility Shortcut for iPhone and iPad? How do I use it?

    * Accessing the Accessibility Shortcut differs per iOS device, and whether or not the iPhone or iPad has a Home button or not.

    For all devices with a Home button, including nearly all iPad and iPhone devices, you triple-click the Home button in rapid succession to access the Accessibility Shortcut.

    For devices without a Home button, like iPhone X, you triple-click the side Lock / Power button to access the Accessibility shortcut instead.

    If you have just a single option chosen as the Accessibility Shortcut, then triple-clicking the button will enable that particular Accessibility feature. If you have multiple Accessibility Shortcut options enabled, then triple-clicking the button will trigger a menu:

    The Accessibility Shortcut seen on iPhone

    It may be helpful to know that you can also change the click speed of the side button on iPhone X, as well as change the click speed of the Home button on other iOS devices if you find that the default click speed required isn’t working well for you.

    The Accessibility Shortcut isn’t the only way to quickly get to various Accessibility features, and if you find yourself using some with some regularity but not often enough to include it in the Accessibility Shortcut, then you can customize the Control Center of iOS to have access to those, or also to have access to some other helpful Accessibility features as well, like the ability to increase text size.

    It’s worth mentioning that Mac users aren’t left out either, where a similar feature exists with the instant Accessibility Options keyboard shortcut on Mac OS.

    Source: OSX Daily

    March 28, 2018 0 comment
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    How to Play MP3 or Audio Without Adding to iTunes Library on Mac

    written by applenws

    Want to play an mp3, m4a, or audio file on a Mac, but you don’t want to add that MP3 or audio file to your iTunes Library?

    There are a few different ways to accomplish this task; one approach allows you to play an audio file in an iTunes playlist without copying it to the iTunes music library, and that works in iTunes for both Mac and Windows, and two other approaches will allow you to play audio files and mp3s on a Mac without using iTunes at all, instead utilizing either Quick Time or Quick Look, thereby never adding those audio files into iTunes or any playlist.


    These tricks can be useful for one-off audio files that you just want to listen to but don’t want to permanently store on the computer. Maybe it’s a shared voice memo from an iPhone, maybe it’s a podcast you don’t want to store or listen to again, perhaps it’s a shared voicemail from an iPhone, or maybe it’s an audio file you need to hear but don’t want to save. There are many practical applications for this, as surely you can imagine.

    In the examples below, we’ll be listening to a podcast mp3 file without adding the file itself to iTunes, the first method uses iTunes, the second option uses QuickTime, and the third option uses Quick Look.

    How to Play Audio Files in iTunes Without Adding to iTunes Library

    You can create a playlist for audio files without adding those audio files to the iTunes library itself. This is done by holding down a key while adding audio files to the iTunes app. Here’s how it works:

    1. Launch iTunes on the Mac or Windows computer
    2. From the file system of your Mac (or PC), locate the audio file you want to play in iTunes but not add to the library
    3. Hold down the OPTION / ALT key and drag and drop the audio file into iTunes, this adds the audio file to iTunes playlist but will not copy the iTunes file to the iTunes media library

    In the example screenshot below, four podcast files were added to iTunes in the general playlist, but without adding those podcast files to the audio library of iTunes itself.

    Listen to audio in iTunes without adding to iTunes library

    This approach will add the audio file to the iTunes Library, but not copy the audio files to the iTunes media library on the computer, essentially using an alias or soft link from iTunes to the files original location on the computer.

    You can later remove the audio file from iTunes playlist at any time if desired.

    You may find it useful to know you can also use a similar approach to copy music and audio files directly to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod without adding the audio to iTunes as well, as discussed here.

    But what if you want to play an audio file without even adding it to the iTunes playlist or library? What if you just want to listen to an audio file without iTunes at all, perhaps for hearing a podcast once, listening to an iPhone recorded voice memo, or hearing a shared audio file just once? The next options can be useful for that scenario.

    How to Play Audio Files on Mac Without iTunes by Using QuickTime

    QuickTime also offers a simple way to play nearly any audio file on a Mac without having to use iTunes at all, thereby preventing the audio file from being added to either an iTunes Library or iTunes playlist. This is great for a one-off listening, and if you want to avoid iTunes in general for whatever reason.

    1. Open QuickTime on the Mac (found in the /Applications folder)
    2. Drag and drop the audio file into the QuickTime Dock icon, or into the QuickTime app directly to open that audio file and play it directly in QuickTime

      3. Listening to audio files with QuickTime

    An advantage to using Quick Time is that you can background the app while the audio file is playing, and continue to perform other functions on the Mac, similar to how iTunes plays in the background.

    How to Play Audio Files with Quick Look on Mac

    You an also play audio files directly in the Finder of the Mac by using Quick Look:

    1. From the Finder of the Mac, locate the audio file you want to play
    2. Select the audio file you want to play, then press the SPACE bar key on the Mac
    3. The audio file will play automatically and will continue playing as long as the Quick Look preview window is open and in focus

      4. Listen to audio in Quick Look

    The downside to Quick Look is that it Quick Look stops playing audio files when the Quick Look window is no longer in focus, or if another file is selected in the Finder.

    Of course there are other apps out there that can play audio files and media files on the Mac, without requiring iTunes, but for our purposes here we’re sticking to the default apps bundled in Mac OS, that way you won’t need to download any additional apps or utilities. Another option not directly mentioned here is the tool afplay, afplay allows you to play mp3 files at the command line, or play nearly any other audio files at the command line of the Mac. The command line approach is certainly valid and works great, but it’s a bit more advanced.

    Do you know of any other tricks that allow you to play an audio file, mp3, m4a, etc, without adding the original file to iTunes? Share them with us in the comments below!

    Source: OSX Daily

    March 27, 2018 0 comment
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    Command LinehomebrewMacMac OS XmacOSOSX DailyterminaltipsTips & Trickstricks

    9 of the Best Homebrew Packages for Mac

    written by applenws

    If you’re an advanced Mac user who spends a considerable amount of time at the command line, you likely have Homebrew installed by now. So, how about sharing a list of some of the best Homebrew packages available for Mac users?


    We’ve discussed Homebrew many times before, but essentially it makes installing additional command line tools easier than ever, as there is no compiling necessary and it handles dependencies for you. Even if you don’t have Homebrew installed, this list of some of the more helpful Homebrew packages and tools may inspire you to get Homebrew on your Mac.

    To get any use from this list you’ll want to be a reasonably advanced command line user, and you’ll obviously need to install Homebrew on the Mac if you haven’t done so yet. Then you’re ready to go and enjoy the collection. And don’t forget to share your own favorite Homebrew packages in the comments too.

    In no particular order, here are some of the top Homebrew packages for Mac:

    cask

    Cask allows you to easy install Mac OS GUI apps and binaries directly from the command line using Homebrew. First you install cask, and then you can install normal Mac apps directly from the command line.

    brew install cask

    For example, once you have cask, if you want to install Chrome from the command line, then Cask can do that with with a command like the following:

    brew cask install google-chrome

    Or maybe you want to install iterm2 so you can have that cool drop-down command line available from anywhere:

    brew cask install iterm2

    Cask can install tons of applications in Mac OS without needing to download them individually from various websites and then going through the typical drag-and-drop install routine.

    Note that Cask has some limitations, for example it can’t install anything from the Mac App Store, and Cask is not able to install software updates to the Mac like the ‘softwareupdate’ command is able to, but that doesn’t make it any less useful of a tool for advanced Mac users.

    htop

    htop is a system resource monitor for the command line. htop is basically a superior version of ‘top’, with a nice visual indicator of process activity, CPU activity, memory usage, load average, and process management. You can kind of think of it like Activity Monitor for the command line, though many command line users would argue it’s even more useful than Activity Monitor is.

    brew install htop

    We’ve discussed installing htop on the Mac before, it’s really a fantastic tool that deserves to be a part of any command line toolbox.

    wget

    wget can download data from the web and ftp, making it one of the best tools out there to download anything via the command line. Whether you want to download just a single file from somewhere, or you want to download an entire directory or even mirror a full website, wget can do it for you.

    brew install wget

    You can also install wget without Homebrew, but if you’re reading this article you likely already have Homebrew.

    nmap

    nmap is a top notch network security scanner. It can find network assets, discover services and hosts on local networks, perform port scans, map a network (hence the name), detect operating systems and versions of software on clients and servers, and so much more. It’s an excellent tool for systems administrators, network admins, security researchers, and anyone else who needs to dabble in network scanning activity.

    brew install nmap

    You can also get nmap for Mac as a disk image in a self contained binary if you’d rather not deal with home-brew, but again, we’re talking about homebrew here.

    Oh and if the concept of nmap appeals to you but the command line is far over your head or too cumbersome, then you can use Network Utility on Mac OS to perform port scans, finger, whois, trace route, ping, and much more, all from a friendlier GUI app.

    links

    links and lynx are command line web browsers, allowing you full web access (well, as long as there’s text to navigate) from the command line. This is useful for many reasons whether researching and web browsing from a terminal window, or even for testing web site functionality and compatibility with alternate browsers and for alternate use cases. I’m partial to ‘links’ but ‘lynx’ is good too, or you can install both.

    brew install links

    We’ve discussed lynx before macports, and you can also get lynx with image support if you’re interested, but again if you have Homebrew installed then it’s a piece of cake to install through the command line.

    geoiplookup

    geoip gives you geolocation data for an inputted IP address. This is useful for network and systems administrators, web workers, security researchers, and much more.

    brew install geoip

    If you ever wondered where a particular IP is located in the world and to what ISP it belongs, then geoip is for you.

    irssi

    Do you like to chat on IRC? Want to be told to ‘rtfm’ when you ask a question in #linux? Then irssi is for you, because it’s arguably the best irc client for the command line (or perhaps in general, sorry ircii, mirc, and ircle).

    brew install irssi

    /join away!

    bash-completion

    If you use the bash shell, then bash-completion is likely something you’re either familiar with or soon will be since it dramatically improves command completion and is programable. Personally I’m partial to zsh which also has great completion capabilities, but bash-completion makes bash much more useful, so if you’re a bash fan then check it out if it sounds appealing to you.

    brew install bash-completion

    Oh and this probably goes without saying but if you changed your shell at some point in Terminal app then you’d want to use bash to get any use out of bash-completion.

    watch

    The watch command is super useful to keep a continuous eye on another process. For example you can use watch to track disk usage or IO, or virtual memory usage, or anything else, updating the command output every few seconds. This is one of those great tools for administrators but it’s useful for many other purposes too.

    brew install watch

    Home-brew isn’t the only approach for watch, you can also install watch on Mac OS using MacPorts, from source, or as a precompiled binary too.

    What do you think? Do you have any particularly favorite Homebrew packages? Share your own top Homebrew packages, tricks, installs, and add-ons in the comments below!

    Source: OSX Daily

    March 26, 2018 0 comment
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