Mac Os X - Force Reboot

If your mac icon isn't working on the system menu, then here are 2 quick ways to achieve the same.

1. Ctrl-Cmd-Eject works - does a force reboot.
2. Open a terminal and type in:

sudo reboot

(sudo is required if you are not an admin)

or you can use

sudo shutdown -r  which is mentioned to be more gracious and other options.

Cross-posted from 

http://bschandramohan.blogspot.in/2013/02/system-restart-mac-os-x.html

TextWrangler and formating XML & JSON Documents

TextWrangler is a good alternative for Notepad++ on Mac Os X but it quite doesn't have the plugins that notepad++ enjoys.

2 Scripts which I really use:

Format Xml Document:
http://www.bergspot.com/blog/2012/05/getting-xml-tidy-xmllint-to-work-on-textwrangler-4-0/

Format JSon Document:
http://ukitech.blogspot.in/2012/08/format-json-in-free-textwrangler.html


Cross:post from
http://bschandramohan.blogspot.in/2012/10/textwrangler-and-formating-xml-json.html

Maximize window shortcut in Mac OS X

Very handy tip:
http://simianuprising.com/2010/03/15/mac-osx-setting-a-keyboard-shortcut-for-maximizeresize-window-green-jewel/

Mac OS X Lion Tweaks Tool

Mac OS X Tweaks - Very useful tool especially to show and hide hidden files.
http://ifredrik.com/applications/download_step.html

F5 and F6 on MAC OS X

If you have the Mac OS X laptops and wondering what the F5 and F6 keys do like me, then here is the answer: It's for the backlit keys of the keyboard.
I was always thinking that laptop was intelligent enough to figure out when to light up the keyboard and when not to (depending on the surrounding lights) but looks like it can't :(. That is disappointing :D :)

XCode 4.3.2 install fails

If you get an error stating mobile device framework has to be installed, but errors out when trying to install it, then try the following:
Right click on the xcode.app file and click on show package contents.
Goto Contents/Resources/Packages/ and open MobileDevices.pkg
Try launching xcode after installing above and it should go ahead fine now.

MAC: Remove icons from Finder toolbar

Customize Toolbar doesn't have option to remove the icons. Right clicking the icon only gives options to

If you want to remove the icon, then press "Command" and drag the icon outside the toolbar and release the mouse.

Associating file types to an app in MAC

There doesn't seem to be one place like windows registry classes subclass or the file associations application where you can set the application to open a file of certain extension in Mac OS X.

If you select one file and click open with and select an App, it's associated to open that file only even if you select "Always open with". It doesn't set the open with app association for all files with that extension.

Easiest way (or is it the only way?) to do that seems to be this way:
Open File Info of a file of that extension. For e.g., to set all .sh to open in macvim, select any .sh file in Finder. Then Click Command I or right click -> File Info.
In the Open With section, select the app to open the file with
And importantly select the option "Change All". That's it - This should do.

Open Terminal window here - Mac OS X

It isn't as easy as updating registry key in windows (or atleast I don't know). Found this link to be good source for app to do that.

https://sites.google.com/site/michaelsafyan/software-engineering/open-in-terminal
Chose the one with customized terminal window icon.
If the folder Finder doesn't exist in your 'Application Support' directory, then do create it.

If you have any other easy ways of doing this, let me know.

Mac DVD Not visible in Finder

In MAC, the dvd drive gets listed in finder only if a dvd is present. Else it's hidden.
In some rare cases, even after you inserted a drive, the disk might not be visible in finder and since there is no eject hardware button near the DVD, there doesn't seem to be a way for removing the disk.

Browsing around, found the following ways (from multiple sources) to eject the disk and re-insert it:

1. Force restart finder.
2. Open disk utilities (Applications/Utilities/DiskUtility) and the drive should be available there. Right click on it and select eject.
3. Command line always rocks. Run the following in a terminal: drutil tray eject