How to Set a Screen Saver to Run at the Login Window of Mac OS X osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® How to Set a Screen Saver to Run at the Login Window of Mac OS X

The Macs default boot login screen is fairly boring by default, and though it can be spruced up with custom wallpaper, another option is to set a screen saver to run at the login window of OS X. This requires using a defaults command string entered at the command line, which then makes the screen saver visible at the boot login window of OS X, as well as the general login screen if all users have logged out of the Mac.

There are some limitations as to what types of screen savers you can use, but overall it’s fairly flexible, and is supported in virtually all semi-modern versions of OS X, from Snow Leopard to Mavericks. Any of the image slideshow screen savers work, and a few of the Quartz Composer screen savers too, but third party screensavers are not supported, and neither are RSS feeds, iPhoto based slideshows, or iTunes artwork. That may sound a bit limited, but you’ll still have some good options available, including Floating, Flip-up, Reflections, Origami, Shifting Tiles, Arabesque, Shell, Flurry, and Message.

Launch the Terminal, found in /Applications/Utilities/ to get started.

1: Define the Idle Time for the Login Screen Saver

First you’ll need to define an idle time before the login screen saver appears, the syntax for this is as follows:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowIdleTime 60

The number at the end is the idle time in seconds, thus in the example above, 60 means the screen saver will start after one minute of being idle. You can set it to be more or less aggressive according to your preferences.

2: Choose What Screen Saver to Display at the Mac Login Window

Now you’ll want to set the actual screen saver itself. Remember there are some limitations about which are allowed, but we’ll make it simple with four examples that work without incident. Copy and paste any of these commands into the terminal to set it, the sudo prefix means you’ll need to enter an administrator password for the command to work.

Set the floating Message as the login screen saver in OS X

This is likely the most useful screen saver option setting for large deployments of Macs and public machines in general:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowModulePath "/System/Library/Screen Savers/FloatingMessage.saver"

If you’re going to use the Message screen saver, be sure to set a custom message in the Screen Saver preference panel, otherwise it will default to showing the Mac’s computer name.

Set Arabesque as the login screensaver

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowModulePath "/System/Library/Screen Savers/Arabesque.qtz"

Set Shell as the login window screensaver

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowModulePath "/System/Library/Screen Savers/Shell.qtz"

Set Flurry as the login screensaver

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowModulePath "/System/Library/Screen Savers/Flurry.saver"

You’ll want to log out and back in for the change to take effect, you can then test it out by logging out or rebooting and letting the Mac sit idle for the allotted time. If the screen saver doesn’t trigger automatically, you may have entered the wrong syntax, so double-check that the path is correct, and that the command syntax is proper and entered on a single line within the Terminal.

Thanks to Nor Eddine for the passing along this trick from Apple on the OSXDaily Facebook wall.

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How to View and Re-Send an “Unsent Message” in Mail for iOS osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® How to View and Re-Send an “Unsent Message” in Mail for iOS

Ever launched the Mail app on your iPhone or iPad to discover an “Unsent Message” indicator at the bottom of the screen? An email usually goes unsent if you lose internet access while trying to send the message, a fairly common occurrence for those who live in areas with poor cellular reception or that have flaky internet access in general. While iOS will usually successfully send the message on it’s own once a signal has been found again, it doesn’t always work, which is why you may need to trigger a resend yourself to move it along as intended.

We’ll cover how to see what email message got stuck without sending, and, more importantly, how to re-send that unsent message so that it goes to the recipient as intended. You’ll obviously need an “Unsent Message” message within Mail on an iPhone or iPad for this to work as described here, otherwise you’ll just end up in an empty outbox within the Mail app of iOS.

1. Double-check that the iPhone / iPad / iPod has an active internet connection


2. From the Mail app, tap on the “Mailboxes” text at the top of the Mail window


3. At the Mailboxes panel, choose “Outbox” to see the unsent messages
   

   

   
   
   
   
   • To re-send the unsent message, use the pull-to-refresh option by pulling down at the Outbox screen until the spinning indicator shows up
   
   
   • To delete the unsent message, tap on “Edit”, tap the message, and choose the Trash icon
   
   
   
   

   

   
   

Assuming you chose to resend the message, a “Sending # of #” indicator will appear at the bottom of the Outbox with a blue progress bar. When the message has finished sending, it’ll disappear from the Outbox to show a “No Mail” screen.

As mentioned before, unsent messages are almost always a result of internet connectivity difficulties. If you continue to have trouble with a cellular network try joining a wi-fi network, or resetting network settings. If the message continues to appear in Mail app, you may want to check outbound Mail server settings, otherwise simply removing the Mail account and re-adding the same account again usually resolves the problem.

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Place the Cursor at the Mouse Position in Terminal with an Option+Click osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® Place the Cursor at the Mouse Position in Terminal with an Option+Click

Most command line users rely heavily on Terminal keyboard navigation to move about within text files and get around within the Terminal, but OS X has a super simple trick up its sleeve that lets you instantly position the mouse cursor anywhere in the Terminal. Yup, no more tabbing around or repeatedly tapping on the arrow keys, you can just point and click to focus the cursor in the Terminal, just like it was the GUI, and it works the same whether the cursor destination is at the beginning/end of a line or smack dab in the center of a text block.



You’ll really want to try this out yourself to get the hang of it, so open any notably sized text document into the command line with your favorite text editor.

Move the cursor anywhere by holding down the Option key and clicking to a position in Terminal

The cursors position in the Terminal window will immediately jump to that position. Keep Option+Clicking around to see how it works, if you click an exact location the cursor goes there, if you aim away from a specific character it will go the line instead.

This may seem like a huge “duh” for most Mac users who stay within the GUI, or anyone who is accustomed to making mouse-based adjustments and edits within the graphical interface of any other app. But because the command line is keyboard centric, there is reasonably limited mouse support, which makes this using the mouse for precision pointing and cursor placement like this pretty awesome. Or maybe us nerds are just easily impressed.

Be sure you’re tracking the cursor properly when doing this, you’ll find the familiar mouse pointer turns into a set crosshair once you’re hovering in the command line, which is pretty easy to lose track of. If you’re having trouble seeing it, consider making the cursor larger for great visibility in general.

Thanks to Peter for sending along this handy tip found on MacWorld.

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How to Set a Screen Saver to Run at the Login Window of Mac OS X osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® How to Set a Screen Saver to Run at the Login Window of Mac OS X

The Macs default boot login screen is fairly boring by default, and though it can be spruced up with custom wallpaper, another option is to set a screen saver to run at the login window of OS X. This requires using a defaults command string entered at the command line, which then makes the screen saver visible at the boot login window of OS X, as well as the general login screen if all users have logged out of the Mac.

There are some limitations as to what types of screen savers you can use, but overall it’s fairly flexible, and is supported in virtually all semi-modern versions of OS X, from Snow Leopard to Mavericks. Any of the image slideshow screen savers work, and a few of the Quartz Composer screen savers too, but third party screensavers are not supported, and neither are RSS feeds, iPhoto based slideshows, or iTunes artwork. That may sound a bit limited, but you’ll still have some good options available, including Floating, Flip-up, Reflections, Origami, Shifting Tiles, Arabesque, Shell, Flurry, and Message.

Launch the Terminal, found in /Applications/Utilities/ to get started.

1: Define the Idle Time for the Login Screen Saver

First you’ll need to define an idle time before the login screen saver appears, the syntax for this is as follows:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowIdleTime 60

The number at the end is the idle time in seconds, thus in the example above, 60 means the screen saver will start after one minute of being idle. You can set it to be more or less aggressive according to your preferences.

2: Choose What Screen Saver to Display at the Mac Login Window

Now you’ll want to set the actual screen saver itself. Remember there are some limitations about which are allowed, but we’ll make it simple with four examples that work without incident. Copy and paste any of these commands into the terminal to set it, the sudo prefix means you’ll need to enter an administrator password for the command to work.

Set the floating Message as the login screen saver in OS X

This is likely the most useful screen saver option setting for large deployments of Macs and public machines in general:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowModulePath "/System/Library/Screen Savers/FloatingMessage.saver"

If you’re going to use the Message screen saver, be sure to set a custom message in the Screen Saver preference panel, otherwise it will default to showing the Mac’s computer name.

Set Arabesque as the login screensaver

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowModulePath "/System/Library/Screen Savers/Arabesque.qtz"

Set Shell as the login window screensaver

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowModulePath "/System/Library/Screen Savers/Shell.qtz"

Set Flurry as the login screensaver

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowModulePath "/System/Library/Screen Savers/Flurry.saver"

You’ll want to log out and back in for the change to take effect, you can then test it out by logging out or rebooting and letting the Mac sit idle for the allotted time. If the screen saver doesn’t trigger automatically, you may have entered the wrong syntax, so double-check that the path is correct, and that the command syntax is proper and entered on a single line within the Terminal.

Thanks to Nor Eddine for the passing along this trick from Apple on the OSXDaily Facebook wall.

Email this How to Set a Screen Saver to Run at the Login Window of Mac OS X to a Friend! Receive Articles like this one direct to your email box! Subscribe for free today!

How to Set a Screen Saver to Run at the Login Window of Mac OS X osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® How to Set a Screen Saver to Run at the Login Window of Mac OS X

The Macs default boot login screen is fairly boring by default, and though it can be spruced up with custom wallpaper, another option is to set a screen saver to run at the login window of OS X. This requires using a defaults command string entered at the command line, which then makes the screen saver visible at the boot login window of OS X, as well as the general login screen if all users have logged out of the Mac.

There are some limitations as to what types of screen savers you can use, but overall it’s fairly flexible, and is supported in virtually all semi-modern versions of OS X, from Snow Leopard to Mavericks. Any of the image slideshow screen savers work, and a few of the Quartz Composer screen savers too, but third party screensavers are not supported, and neither are RSS feeds, iPhoto based slideshows, or iTunes artwork. That may sound a bit limited, but you’ll still have some good options available, including Floating, Flip-up, Reflections, Origami, Shifting Tiles, Arabesque, Shell, Flurry, and Message.

Launch the Terminal, found in /Applications/Utilities/ to get started.

1: Define the Idle Time for the Login Screen Saver

First you’ll need to define an idle time before the login screen saver appears, the syntax for this is as follows:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowIdleTime 60

The number at the end is the idle time in seconds, thus in the example above, 60 means the screen saver will start after one minute of being idle. You can set it to be more or less aggressive according to your preferences.

2: Choose What Screen Saver to Display at the Mac Login Window

Now you’ll want to set the actual screen saver itself. Remember there are some limitations about which are allowed, but we’ll make it simple with four examples that work without incident. Copy and paste any of these commands into the terminal to set it, the sudo prefix means you’ll need to enter an administrator password for the command to work.

Set the floating Message as the login screen saver in OS X

This is likely the most useful screen saver option setting for large deployments of Macs and public machines in general:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowModulePath "/System/Library/Screen Savers/FloatingMessage.saver"

If you’re going to use the Message screen saver, be sure to set a custom message in the Screen Saver preference panel, otherwise it will default to showing the Mac’s computer name.

Set Arabesque as the login screensaver

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowModulePath "/System/Library/Screen Savers/Arabesque.qtz"

Set Shell as the login window screensaver

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowModulePath "/System/Library/Screen Savers/Shell.qtz"

Set Flurry as the login screensaver

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver loginWindowModulePath "/System/Library/Screen Savers/Flurry.saver"

You’ll want to log out and back in for the change to take effect, you can then test it out by logging out or rebooting and letting the Mac sit idle for the allotted time. If the screen saver doesn’t trigger automatically, you may have entered the wrong syntax, so double-check that the path is correct, and that the command syntax is proper and entered on a single line within the Terminal.

Thanks to Nor Eddine for the passing along this trick from Apple on the OSXDaily Facebook wall.

Email this How to Set a Screen Saver to Run at the Login Window of Mac OS X to a Friend! Receive Articles like this one direct to your email box! Subscribe for free today!

How to View and Re-Send an “Unsent Message” in Mail for iOS osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® How to View and Re-Send an “Unsent Message” in Mail for iOS

Ever launched the Mail app on your iPhone or iPad to discover an “Unsent Message” indicator at the bottom of the screen? An email usually goes unsent if you lose internet access while trying to send the message, a fairly common occurrence for those who live in areas with poor cellular reception or that have flaky internet access in general. While iOS will usually successfully send the message on it’s own once a signal has been found again, it doesn’t always work, which is why you may need to trigger a resend yourself to move it along as intended.

We’ll cover how to see what email message got stuck without sending, and, more importantly, how to re-send that unsent message so that it goes to the recipient as intended. You’ll obviously need an “Unsent Message” message within Mail on an iPhone or iPad for this to work as described here, otherwise you’ll just end up in an empty outbox within the Mail app of iOS.

1. Double-check that the iPhone / iPad / iPod has an active internet connection


2. From the Mail app, tap on the “Mailboxes” text at the top of the Mail window


3. At the Mailboxes panel, choose “Outbox” to see the unsent messages
   

   

   
   
   
   
   • To re-send the unsent message, use the pull-to-refresh option by pulling down at the Outbox screen until the spinning indicator shows up
   
   
   • To delete the unsent message, tap on “Edit”, tap the message, and choose the Trash icon
   
   
   
   

   

   
   

Assuming you chose to resend the message, a “Sending # of #” indicator will appear at the bottom of the Outbox with a blue progress bar. When the message has finished sending, it’ll disappear from the Outbox to show a “No Mail” screen.

As mentioned before, unsent messages are almost always a result of internet connectivity difficulties. If you continue to have trouble with a cellular network try joining a wi-fi network, or resetting network settings. If the message continues to appear in Mail app, you may want to check outbound Mail server settings, otherwise simply removing the Mail account and re-adding the same account again usually resolves the problem.

Email this How to View and Re-Send an “Unsent Message” in Mail for iOS to a Friend! Receive Articles like this one direct to your email box! Subscribe for free today!

How to View and Re-Send an “Unsent Message” in Mail for iOS osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® How to View and Re-Send an “Unsent Message” in Mail for iOS

Ever launched the Mail app on your iPhone or iPad to discover an “Unsent Message” indicator at the bottom of the screen? An email usually goes unsent if you lose internet access while trying to send the message, a fairly common occurrence for those who live in areas with poor cellular reception or that have flaky internet access in general. While iOS will usually successfully send the message on it’s own once a signal has been found again, it doesn’t always work, which is why you may need to trigger a resend yourself to move it along as intended.

We’ll cover how to see what email message got stuck without sending, and, more importantly, how to re-send that unsent message so that it goes to the recipient as intended. You’ll obviously need an “Unsent Message” message within Mail on an iPhone or iPad for this to work as described here, otherwise you’ll just end up in an empty outbox within the Mail app of iOS.

1. Double-check that the iPhone / iPad / iPod has an active internet connection


2. From the Mail app, tap on the “Mailboxes” text at the top of the Mail window


3. At the Mailboxes panel, choose “Outbox” to see the unsent messages
   

   

   
   
   
   
   • To re-send the unsent message, use the pull-to-refresh option by pulling down at the Outbox screen until the spinning indicator shows up
   
   
   • To delete the unsent message, tap on “Edit”, tap the message, and choose the Trash icon
   
   
   
   

   

   
   

Assuming you chose to resend the message, a “Sending # of #” indicator will appear at the bottom of the Outbox with a blue progress bar. When the message has finished sending, it’ll disappear from the Outbox to show a “No Mail” screen.

As mentioned before, unsent messages are almost always a result of internet connectivity difficulties. If you continue to have trouble with a cellular network try joining a wi-fi network, or resetting network settings. If the message continues to appear in Mail app, you may want to check outbound Mail server settings, otherwise simply removing the Mail account and re-adding the same account again usually resolves the problem.

Email this How to View and Re-Send an “Unsent Message” in Mail for iOS to a Friend! Receive Articles like this one direct to your email box! Subscribe for free today!