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.

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!

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.

Email this Place the Cursor at the Mouse Position in Terminal with an Option+Click 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 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!

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.

Email this Place the Cursor at the Mouse Position in Terminal with an Option+Click to a Friend! Receive Articles like this one direct to your email box! Subscribe for free today!

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.

Email this Place the Cursor at the Mouse Position in Terminal with an Option+Click to a Friend! Receive Articles like this one direct to your email box! Subscribe for free today!

How to Play YouTube Audio / Video in the Background of iOS 7 osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® How to Play YouTube Audio / Video in the Background of iOS 7

Playing YouTube videos and audio in the background of iOS is an easy way to listen to a song or show that you want to stream to your iPhone, but the ability to play that stream in the background has changed a bit with the newest versions of iOS. As many recall, users on the iPhone and iPad with prior versions of iOS used to be able to start playing a video or music from YouTube and then just switch out of the app to keep the audio playing in the background of iOS, but it’s not quite the same anymore. While you can continue to listen to YouTube video and audio streams in the background, you’ll have to rely on a slightly different method.

Forget the official YouTube app for now, because at the moment in order to play a YouTube video with audio in the background of iOS 7, you’ll need to use the Safari web browser instead, then you can trigger the audio stream into the background from Control Center. It sounds more confusing than it is, and after you do it once or twice you’ll get the hang of it rather quickly, so follow along to learn the new backgrounding process.

Backgrounding YouTube Streams on the iPhone / iPad

1. Open Safari app (yes, Safari, not YouTube) and go to the YouTube.com website to find the video to play


2. Start playing the video from the YouTube website as usual by tapping on the (>) play button


3. Once the video has started playing and gone full screen, hit the Home button on the iPhone to go to the Home Screen – this will temporarily stop the audio
   

   

   
   


4. Swipe up from the bottom of the display to summon Control Center, you’ll see some gibberish URL under the scrub audio tools, now tap the Play button in Control Center to start playing the audio


5. Swipe down to close Control Center, the music/audio will continue to play from YouTube

That’s all there is to it, the YouTube audio will continue to play until the video itself has finished playing.

If you’re doing this on an iPhone that is not connected to wi-fi, the video will stream using the cellular connection instead. That includes starting the video on wi-fi, but using Control Center to start the stream in the background later when away from wi-fi. Just be aware of that, since streaming video and audio can be heavy on the bandwidth usage.

Unfortunately, YouTube Playlists don’t seem to be supported, so if you want to hear another video you’ll need to go back to Safari and start to play it again, then use the Control Center trick to again start the audio stream.

It’s not entirely clear why the YouTube app doesn’t have native support to play audio in the background of iOS, though it first occurred when the Apple’ provided YouTube app disappeared. Presumably this is a limitation from Apple since most other apps also do not allow background audio either, suggesting this is not a feature that Google intended to leave out of the native iOS YouTube app. At least there’s a workaround, even if it’s not perfect.

This works the same with YouTube in Safari for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, running any version of iOS beyond the 7.0 release. Enjoy.

Email this How to Play YouTube Audio / Video in the Background of iOS 7 to a Friend! Receive Articles like this one direct to your email box! Subscribe for free today!

How to Play YouTube Audio / Video in the Background of iOS 7 osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® How to Play YouTube Audio / Video in the Background of iOS 7

Playing YouTube videos and audio in the background of iOS is an easy way to listen to a song or show that you want to stream to your iPhone, but the ability to play that stream in the background has changed a bit with the newest versions of iOS. As many recall, users on the iPhone and iPad with prior versions of iOS used to be able to start playing a video or music from YouTube and then just switch out of the app to keep the audio playing in the background of iOS, but it’s not quite the same anymore. While you can continue to listen to YouTube video and audio streams in the background, you’ll have to rely on a slightly different method.

Forget the official YouTube app for now, because at the moment in order to play a YouTube video with audio in the background of iOS 7, you’ll need to use the Safari web browser instead, then you can trigger the audio stream into the background from Control Center. It sounds more confusing than it is, and after you do it once or twice you’ll get the hang of it rather quickly, so follow along to learn the new backgrounding process.

Backgrounding YouTube Streams on the iPhone / iPad

1. Open Safari app (yes, Safari, not YouTube) and go to the YouTube.com website to find the video to play


2. Start playing the video from the YouTube website as usual by tapping on the (>) play button


3. Once the video has started playing and gone full screen, hit the Home button on the iPhone to go to the Home Screen – this will temporarily stop the audio
   

   

   
   


4. Swipe up from the bottom of the display to summon Control Center, you’ll see some gibberish URL under the scrub audio tools, now tap the Play button in Control Center to start playing the audio


5. Swipe down to close Control Center, the music/audio will continue to play from YouTube

That’s all there is to it, the YouTube audio will continue to play until the video itself has finished playing.

If you’re doing this on an iPhone that is not connected to wi-fi, the video will stream using the cellular connection instead. That includes starting the video on wi-fi, but using Control Center to start the stream in the background later when away from wi-fi. Just be aware of that, since streaming video and audio can be heavy on the bandwidth usage.

Unfortunately, YouTube Playlists don’t seem to be supported, so if you want to hear another video you’ll need to go back to Safari and start to play it again, then use the Control Center trick to again start the audio stream.

It’s not entirely clear why the YouTube app doesn’t have native support to play audio in the background of iOS, though it first occurred when the Apple’ provided YouTube app disappeared. Presumably this is a limitation from Apple since most other apps also do not allow background audio either, suggesting this is not a feature that Google intended to leave out of the native iOS YouTube app. At least there’s a workaround, even if it’s not perfect.

This works the same with YouTube in Safari for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, running any version of iOS beyond the 7.0 release. Enjoy.

Email this How to Play YouTube Audio / Video in the Background of iOS 7 to a Friend! Receive Articles like this one direct to your email box! Subscribe for free today!

How to Play YouTube Audio / Video in the Background of iOS 7 osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® How to Play YouTube Audio / Video in the Background of iOS 7

Playing YouTube videos and audio in the background of iOS is an easy way to listen to a song or show that you want to stream to your iPhone, but the ability to play that stream in the background has changed a bit with the newest versions of iOS. As many recall, users on the iPhone and iPad with prior versions of iOS used to be able to start playing a video or music from YouTube and then just switch out of the app to keep the audio playing in the background of iOS, but it’s not quite the same anymore. While you can continue to listen to YouTube video and audio streams in the background, you’ll have to rely on a slightly different method.

Forget the official YouTube app for now, because at the moment in order to play a YouTube video with audio in the background of iOS 7, you’ll need to use the Safari web browser instead, then you can trigger the audio stream into the background from Control Center. It sounds more confusing than it is, and after you do it once or twice you’ll get the hang of it rather quickly, so follow along to learn the new backgrounding process.

Backgrounding YouTube Streams on the iPhone / iPad

1. Open Safari app (yes, Safari, not YouTube) and go to the YouTube.com website to find the video to play


2. Start playing the video from the YouTube website as usual by tapping on the (>) play button


3. Once the video has started playing and gone full screen, hit the Home button on the iPhone to go to the Home Screen – this will temporarily stop the audio
   

   

   
   


4. Swipe up from the bottom of the display to summon Control Center, you’ll see some gibberish URL under the scrub audio tools, now tap the Play button in Control Center to start playing the audio


5. Swipe down to close Control Center, the music/audio will continue to play from YouTube

That’s all there is to it, the YouTube audio will continue to play until the video itself has finished playing.

If you’re doing this on an iPhone that is not connected to wi-fi, the video will stream using the cellular connection instead. That includes starting the video on wi-fi, but using Control Center to start the stream in the background later when away from wi-fi. Just be aware of that, since streaming video and audio can be heavy on the bandwidth usage.

Unfortunately, YouTube Playlists don’t seem to be supported, so if you want to hear another video you’ll need to go back to Safari and start to play it again, then use the Control Center trick to again start the audio stream.

It’s not entirely clear why the YouTube app doesn’t have native support to play audio in the background of iOS, though it first occurred when the Apple’ provided YouTube app disappeared. Presumably this is a limitation from Apple since most other apps also do not allow background audio either, suggesting this is not a feature that Google intended to leave out of the native iOS YouTube app. At least there’s a workaround, even if it’s not perfect.

This works the same with YouTube in Safari for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, running any version of iOS beyond the 7.0 release. Enjoy.

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Watch File Download Progress Easily in OS X from Dock or Finder Windows osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® Watch File Download Progress Easily in OS X from Dock or Finder Windows

OS X includes many smaller details that can make digital life much easier, but because they’re fairly minor features, they can often go overlooked by Mac users. An excellent example of such a feature are the transfer progress indicators that are native throughout OS X, these make it extremely easy to keep an eye on the progress of files you’re downloading from anywhere, whether it’s from a website, SFTP, AirDrop, or even file transfers between Macs on the same network. The two most useful places to find these are right in the Dock and the Finder of OS X.

See the Download Progress Indicator in the Dock

Often overlooked, particularly if you’re one to auto-hide the Dock, the simplest place to watch file transfer progress is right in the Dock of OS X. To have access to this download indicator, you’ll need to maintain the users “Downloads” directory as a Dock item, if you pulled it out at some point simply drag it back into the Dock again.

If you’ve never noticed this before, simply start downloading a file to trigger it:

If you have multiple files downloading concurrently, clicking onto the Downloads folder in the Dock will reveal details for each file. Using the mostly unloved “Fan” view for Dock folder expansion shows this best:

Because this watches the ~/Downloads folder and nowhere else, you’ll want to be sure to keep all file downloads, whether from your default web browser to elsewhere, are congregated into that directory (note that most apps default to putting things into the Downloads folder, it’s usually a user made change). That’s good practice anyway, and it makes it much easier to perform necessary cleanup if you’re running low on hard drive space or just want to dump the download contents from time to time.

See the File Transfer Indicator in the Finder of OS X

While the Dock Downloads indicator shows the progress of files being downloaded to that specific location, it turns out all Finder windows offer a file transfer indicator. This means that any file being copied, downloaded, or moved to just about anywhere on the Mac will show you a progress bar.

To get the most use out of this, you’ll want to use the Finder in a List view option, though the indicator will also popup onto icons if you prefer icon view.

Note the file name of the document(s) being transferred is a lighter shade of grey, it will turn black when the file is finished. This offers another simple indicator that a file transfer is active, though it won’t give you an idea of duration as the progress bar does.

Tracking download progress is also possible elsewhere in OS X, including the Mac App Store and iTunes too.

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How to Show Holidays in the Calendar App for OS X osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® How to Show Holidays in the Calendar App for OS X

With so many holidays scattered throughout the year, it’s easy to lose track of when is what, and on which day the next falls. Fortunately, the Mac Calendar app makes it simple to toggle the display of all holidays directly in the Calendar app, so you’ll never lose track over what date Palm Sunday, Earth Day, Thanksgiving, or Cinco De Mayo (ok that one’s easy) is, whether it’s this year or the next.

Sure, for most us, holidays in the USA have no particular impact on our employment status for that given day, but they can still be helpful to know for celebratory reasons or planning. At the very least, they make an important addition to our calendars when defining a schedule around the dates, even if it’s just a trip to the DMV to renew a license, or for sending out event invites.

How to Show Major Holidays on the Mac Calendar

Showing major holidays in the Calendar app of OS X is remarkably simple, though most users will find the setting is not enabled by default on their Macs:

1. Open the Calendars app and pull down the Calendar menu to select “Preferences”


2. Under the ‘General’ tab check the box for “Show Holidays Calendar”


3. Close out of Preferences and go back to the Calendar to see the holidays

The Holidays will immediately be visible in the Mac Calendar. Technically they appear within their own unique calendar, labeled as “US Holidays”, so they won’t muck up any existing calendars that you’ve made for work, home, school, or personal. Because the dates are contained within a separate calendar, you can also toggle them off quickly from the Calendar apps sidebar if their visibility is interfering with anything.

If you can’t see them immediately, flip to a month view where there’s a notable amount of special days to see them labeled on the specific dates, April is a good example:

Seen under the “Year” view, the holidays are scattered throughout the year as yellow highlights on the annual calendar:

While the screen shot demonstrates US-defined holidays, the feature should work with all other countries too.

If you’re big on celebrating and recognizing birthdays, there is also a “Show Birthdays” setting in the Calendar app preferences directly above the Holiday toggle, but keep in mind that the Holiday dates are imported from Apple directly depending on your country settings, whereas the birthday setting requires user input per specific details to be entered into your address book for each specific person.

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How to Turn Off the New Mail Alert Sound in iOS osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® How to Turn Off the New Mail Alert Sound in iOS

All iOS users know the familiar “ding” alert sound of a new email landing in the inbox of your iPhone or iPad. For those of us who live attached to technology, these alert sounds have basically trained our brain to stop what we’re doing and check our inbox, often relying only on the mute button or Do Not Disturb function to get a break.

A great option is to turn off the new email alert notification sound completely, preventing that ding sound from activating entirely. This is particularly helpful for users with multiple Mail accounts setup on an iPhone / iPad, where turning off the alerts for one of them isn’t going to impact anything important. Another common purpose of this is to stop getting alerts when an inbox is being pelted with inconsequential emails, which can be effectively sorted by turning off the wider alert sound and adding important people to VIP lists to override that setting.

For the purpose of this walkthrough, let’s focus on simply muting the new email sound from triggering when new mail arrives in the iOS Mail app:

1. Open “Settings” in iOS and go to “Notification Center”


2. Tap on “Mail” then choose the mail account you want to adjust the alert sound for


3. Choose “Alert Sound”
   

   

   
   


4. Under ‘Alert Tones’ select “None”


5. Want to mute the vibration alert too? Go to “Vibration” and scroll all the way down to choose “None”
   

   

   
   


6. Exit out of Settings and enjoy the new email silence

Though optional, if you’re turning off the mail alert sound you will probably also want to turn off the vibration alert, otherwise your iPhone will still rumble every time a new email comes in.

The change is instantaneous, new emails will arrive silently. Send yourself an email to test it out, or sign up for our daily newsletter, you’ll get an email from us to test it with.

For those with multiple email accounts setup with the Mail app on an iPhone or iPad, this is almost a necessity to maintain some level of sanity, but it’s also helpful if you’re just looking to tone down distractions from largely unnecessary inactionable emails from everything from your bank to Aunt Suzy’s latest forwarded chain letter. Even if you’re using different mail apps for different accounts like Gmail and Yahoo, you can still turn on or off the alert sounds for new emails arriving in those apps too.

As mentioned earlier, it’s a good idea to create a VIP list of contacts to override this setting, but you can go further by setting custom VIP alert sounds as well.

Looking for some additional email advice? These 10 Mail tips for the iPhone and iPad are a great place to get started, or browse our Mail archives for more tips and tricks for the emailing portion of our digital lives.

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Ask Siri to Find You a 7-Eleven, The Response Is Unexpected osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® Ask Siri to Find You a 7-Eleven, The Response Is Unexpected

If you’re a regular reader here, you already know that Siri can be used for directions, and you know there’s plenty of funny commands to ask, but this one is an unexpected combination of both… Grab your iPhone (or iPad) and ask Siri to find you a 7-Eleven (yes the global 24 hour convenience store), you’ll get a rather unexpectedly hilarious response. For whatever reason, whether it’s intentional or Siri is trolling everyone, Siri turns your 7-11 inquiry into a math problem.

Try it yourself, bring about Siri and say “Find a 7 11″.

Making this even more funny is that Siri properly converts the “7-11″ request into the correct spelling of the store chain “7-Eleven”, but nonetheless she/he feeds you a mathematical answer of -4 anyway. You’ll even get a nice number line showing where the number is. In reality, this probably has little to do with Siri and more to do with Wolfram Alpha, the engine behind much of Siri’s behavior and responses that also turns up a plotted graph as a response if fed the 7-Eleven question directly.

Of course you can do intentional math with Siri too by feeding your iOS AI brain some simple equations, genuinely useful for things like calculating tips and other brain-offloading tasks.

This was originally discovered by @kylenw on Twitter and, yes, we can confirm it works exactly as shown in the image, assuming you ask the ‘proper’ (or is it improper?) way.

So that’s your goofy Siri response of the day, perhaps better suited to the funny commands list than anything particularly helpful.

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How to Fix an “Unable to Join the Network” Error in iOS osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® How to Fix an “Unable to Join the Network” Error in iOS

Considering that so much of the functionality of iOS is dependent on the internet, it’s pretty frustrating if you can’t join a wireless network because of a mystery “Unable to join the network [name]” error popping up on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. You may encounter this alert trying to join a wifi network as usual, or by trying to manually join a network:

With such a nondescript error message, it’s hard to know exactly what the problem with the wi-fi is, but for most cases you can resolve the issue fairly quickly with the multistep process described below:

1. Go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings


2. Enter the devices passcode and confirm the reset


3. Let the iPhone/iPad restart, you’ll see a spinning cursor on the device as it finishes the reset before the device boots back on


4. Go back to Settings > Wi-Fi and join the network again

Resetting Network Settings removes saved passwords and configuration details, and the device automatically restarts itself to (presumably) dump any residual cache or preferences . Yes, you’ll have to re-enter passwords and specific network information again.

At this point the iPhone / iPad should connect to the network fine as usual. If you’re still having trouble after taking the aforementioned steps, go forget the Wi-Fi network via the iOS Settings and then manually join it again. Manually joining networks is done by choosing “Other” from the Wi-Fi menu and entering the exact router name, network encryption type, and router password.

From personal experience, the “unable to join network” error seems to occur when connecting to certain Wireless N routers more often than anything else, so if you have a dual band router you may just opt for the other network and skip the troubled signal. Sometimes restarting the router can help too, but since not all users have control over that, it’s generally best to offer an iOS client specific resolution.

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2 Critically Important Things Every Apple User Must Do This Weekend osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® 2 Critically Important Things Every Apple User Must Do This Weekend

Two hugely important software security updates have been released for many Apple devices recently, and if you haven’t updated your software to the latest versions yet, you really should do it while you have some free time this weekend. Do this for all of your own Apple hardware, do this for your parents Macs, grandparents iPads, aunts iPhone, uncles iPod, cousins SE/30 (just kidding), everyone who owns an Apple device needs to update all of their operating systems to a patched iOS or OS X version as soon as possible.



For those who missed it, the security updates are aimed at plugging the SSL/TSL security flaw that was uncovered a few weeks ago, which leaves nearly every recent Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch vulnerable to the following potential situation we described here:

“… an attacker could use this [security] flaw to intercept data, like email, passwords, banking information, communications, basically anything, if the attacker is on the same network as you, or is otherwise able to get between your computer and a remote server.”

That’s bad, but here’s what’s good; there are updates available for nearly every one to prevent this exploit being used against them.

Got a Mac? Update to OS X 10.9.2 or the Security Update

First things first: Back up your Mac with Time Machine before installing any system software update. It’s always unlikely for something to go wrong, but making a backup takes a few seconds and can prevent a world of frustration in the odd event something goes haywire in the update process (even something unexpected like a power outage mid-update can lead to a broken OS X installation)

Backed up? Good, now go to the  Apple menu and head to “Software Update” to install the update available to you, it will be one of the following, depending on your version of OS X:

• OS X Mavericks users can update to OS X 10.9.2 through Software Update


• OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) users will find the “Security Update 2014-001 (Mountain Lion)” available under Software Update


• OS X Lion (10.7) users will find the “Security Update 2014-001 (Lion)” available from Software Update

Mac users running OS X Snow Leopard won’t find any updates available for them, but that’s because Snow Leopard is not vulnerable to the SSL / TSL bug. In other words, 10.6 is safe from this specific security flaw, despite the load of erroneous hysteria in many other tech publications about Apple ‘dropping support’ for Snow Leopard and leaving them vulnerable. This can be confirmed by any Mac running Snow Leopard using Safari to visit the GoToFail test website.

For Mavericks users, installing OS X 10.9.2 also has nice perks, like resolving the final Mail problems that many Mac users had encountered, and there’s even a few new features added to OS X, like the ability to block iMessages from the Mac.

Those interested can read the release notes of OS X 10.9.2, and one of our readers was nice enough to paste the entire detailed security notes in the comments as well.

Can’t update quite yet for some reason? You really need to do so as soon as you can, whatever your version of OS X, but if you have some reason why you can’t update quite yet follow these basic protection tips in the meantime (for everyone else, it’s good advice to follow in general).

Got an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch? Update to iOS 7.0.6

Before anything else, back up your iPhone or iPad before beginning, you can back it up to iCloud or iTunes, or both. Just don’t forget to back up first. iOS updates usually go without a hitch, but it’s not completely unheard of to wind up with a ‘bricked’ device after installing a minor update, and a backup lets you recover from that situation in minutes rather than hours.

With a fresh backup handy, update directly by going to Settings > Software Update and installing the latest version available. This is known as “OTA” or Over-The-Air updating, and the device needs to be on a wi-fi network to accomplish this.

Advanced users can also go the manual route and download the iOS 7.0.6 IPSW.

Yes, even jailbreakers should update their devices too you can read more about the evasi0n jailbreak for 7.0.6 here.

For nearly everyone, the iOS 7.0.6 update goes without a hitch, but if you have an experience like my iPhone 5 or some of our readers, and happen to experience some truly unusual reduction in battery life post-install, you’ll find the rapid battery draining issue is easily resolved with this simple trick.

Got an Apple TV? An update is available to plug the security hole for you too, found in Settings > Software Update.

Whatever your Apple device, do not leave yourself vulnerable to malicious individuals, update to the patched iOS or OS X version as soon as possible.

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Reduce Data Usage When Web Browsing on iPhone with Chrome osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® Reduce Data Usage When Web Browsing on iPhone with Chrome

The latest versions of Chrome for iOS offer an optional data compression feature that uses Google servers to further compress web pages visited before accessing them from your iPhone or iPad. Put simply, toggling this setting can help to reduce your cellular data consumption when browsing the web within the Chrome app for iOS, and for some users it may even offer a bit of a speed improvement to their mobile web browsing experience too.



This is a reasonably new feature, so you’ll need to update to the latest version of Chrome for iOS to get access to the feature. If you’re not sure if you have it, check the App Store for any updates and download what is available before beginning.

1. Launch the Chrome app if you haven’t yet


2. Go to any webpage, then access the Chrome Settings by tapping on the [=] menu button alongside the URL bar, choosing “Settings” from the pull-down menu options


3. Scroll down near the bottom and select “Bandwidth”, then choose the “Reduce Data Usage” option
   

   

   
   


4. Flip “Reduce Data Usage” to ON then tap “Done”


5. Use Chrome as usual, the effect is automated

Once the feature has been turned on, the Data Usage settings panel in Chrome will convert into a ‘Data Savings’ graph, demonstrating the amount of bandwidth that has been saved by compressing pages before downloading them to the device.

As noted in the app Settings, neither SSL (secure sites and pages) or Incognito (anonymous browsing) pages are included in Chrome pre-compression.

Because most of the web is reasonably compressed these days, you’ll probably see between a 5%-15% reduction in bandwidth on average over time. That may not sound like much, but if you’re frequently hitting the data caps on your cellular plan and it’s because you’re browsing the web often, it can make a difference between getting whacked with overage charges or falling within the limits.

To be perfectly clear, this only impacts web browsing through the Chrome app in iOS, and it has no effect on any other form of data transfer through the iPhone or cellular iPad, and no impact on Safari. For the time being, this is limited to the mobile versions of Chrome, so if you rely on the personal wi-fi hotspot to tether your Mac to the phone and are running into excess data usage issues, you’ll need to follow some other tips to reduce that. Considering how handy this is, and how Chrome offers built-in bandwidth usage charting on the desktop through a hidden internal feature, it’s certainly possible the desktop Chrome apps will adopt such a feature in the future. We can hope the native Safari browser will get something similar too.

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Remove Provisioning Profiles from an iPhone to Stop the Expiration Alert osxdailynews.blogspot.com

osxdailynews.blogspot.com ® Remove Provisioning Profiles from an iPhone to Stop the Expiration Alert

Provisioning profiles are typically installed onto iPhones and iPads for development and testing purposes, but non developers may wind up with them on their iOS devices too, whether from testing an app or installing something like GBA4iOS from the web. For non-developers, this usually goes unnoticed until they get one of the “Provisioning Profile Expiration” alerts on their device, informing them that a profile will expire in however many days. As many users have discovered, simply deleting the related app does not remove the provisioning profile, which is often why they see the expiration alert. So, here is how you can remove the profiles from any iOS device.

Note: You will not see a “Profiles” option in Settings if the device does not have a provisioning profile installed. Devices with multiple profiles installed will find all of them here.

Remove Directly from iOS

1. Open Settings and head to “General”


2. Scroll all the way to the bottom and choose “Profiles”


3. Select the provisioning profile you want to remove


4. Tap the out of place* looking “Remove” button, then confirm the removal of the profile

(* The “Remove” button looks weird because it uses the graphic from iOS 6 and prior, even on iOS 7 and newer.)

Generally, removing the profile directly from the device is thee easiest way to go, but if there’s trouble you can turn to Xcode from the Devices list, a third party tool called Cupertino, or the iPhone Configuration Utility, with the latter being the easier option for those who don’t have Xcode.

Removing Provisioning Profiles with iPhone Configuration Utility

1. Download iPhone Configuration Utility if you don’t have it yet


2. Attach the device to the Mac or PC and launch the app


3. Select the device in the Configuration Utility app, then choose the “Provisioning Profile” tab


4. Locate the profile to delete, then choose the “Remove” option

Once the profile is gone from the iOS device, the alert message for that specific provisioning profile shouldn’t appear again.

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