The 06 August 2008 issue marks yet another 50th Tip — #350. I don’t ask for payment for these Tips and don’t intend to in the future either. However, each Tip takes me quite some time to prepare — generally several hours — and that represents a huge amount of work. What would make me ubelievably happy would be for you to do two things:

1. Encourage friends and others to subscribe to the Tips — by email, RSS feed or just by visiting the Mac Tips website. Please bookmark the Tips on sites such as Delicious or Reddit, add posts to Digg, mention us on Facebook… But remember, don’t spam anyone.
2. Donate some time or money to a charity of your own choosing. You don’t need to tell me about it (but it encourages me more than I can say when I do hear about it). I currently favour a site called Kiva: you lend money to entrepreneurs in impoverished countries where even a $25 loan can change a life. Entrepreneurs use the loan to build their business, letting them send their kids to school or just pay for basic living costs.

I always welcome suggestions for Tips and am open to guest writers too.

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Many people use thumb drives — those tiny ’sticks’ you plug into a USB port — for storing backups of important documents, and they’re great for that purpose: quick, easy, convenient. Copy files to the drive, drag files from the drive, add, delete — it all takes but a moment. In the screenshot my No Name thumb drive has a bunch of files on it.

Until, maybe, something goes wrong, as friend found recently when one file claimed to be corrupted, and the daily backups wouldn’t complete. This problem isn’t unique to thumb drives, by the way — it can happen any time to any storage medium.

In my friend’s case we did some troubleshooting and then decided to reformat the thumb drive. Here’s how to do that.

Start up Disk Utility. You should find it in the Applications - Utilities folder. The Disk Utility window opens and displays a list of disks in the left-hand column.

Plug in the thumb drive you’d like to reformat. It should also show up in the list of drives.

In the screenshot you can see a list of the internal hard drive and DVD drive on my Mac. My No Name thumb drive is listed, and I’ve selected it in the list. Click on the thumbnail images in this post to see larger versions.

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Click on the thumb drive in the list to select it.

Now take great care in the next step. When you reformat a drive it completely erases everything that’s on it. Make sure you select the correct disk and also make sure you have copies of any files on the thumb drive that you wish to keep.

After selecting the thumb drive in the list click on the Erase tab on the right hand side of the window.

Choose a Volume Format from the pop-up — try Mac OS extended (Journaled), and if you wish, give the thumb drive disk a name.

Double check that you will be erasing the correct disk and then click the Erase… button. An alert appears reminding you that all data will be erased and asking you to confirm that you wish to erase the drive. Click Erase to wipe everything or Cancel to abandon what you’re doing.

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My screenshot shows that I’ve selected a thumb drive called 964 MB Ut165 USB2FlashStorage Media and am about to click the Erase button on the alert.

After a few moments the disk is wiped clean. When I look at the disk in the Finder I see that no files remain. In my screenshot you can see the thumb drive now shows up in the left-hand column of Disk utility with the name I assigned it.

Security Options…

If you wish, click the Security Options… button before you erase the thumb drive. Choose from the different methods for erasing, depending on your purpose. If all you want to do is wipe a drive you’ve been using so you can start fresh choose Don’t Erase Data, or Zero Out Data. If you’re cleaning up a drive someone else gave you, to be sure there’s nothing nasty on it, or to give the drive to someone else, choose a more secure option such as 7-Pass or 5-Pass Erase. The more secure the option you choose the longer it will take to erase the drive.

By the way: if you want to reformat a memory card to be used in a cellphone or camera first check the manual and help files for that device. You may be best to reformat the card in the camera or cellphone itself so it uses the correct formatting options.

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A colleague recently mentioned he was making a list of all his software — his computer had been in the shop for repair and he felt he needed a backup list of software in case something else went wrong.

Such a list is a handy thing to have, so I thought I’d mention 3 separate ways you can easily compile a list like that. Note: I’m using Mac OS X 10.5.4, Leopard. It’s possible older versions of Mac OS X may behave differently.

Method 1: Copy and Paste

This is the easiest way. Open your Applications folder in the Finder. Select All (Command A, or Edit > Select All) and choose Copy (Command C or Edit > Copy). Now open a text document and choose Paste (Command V or Edit > Paste). A list of all your Applications appears.

Tweaks

• before the Copy and Paste operation sort the list by Name — the pasted list will also be alphabetical.
• also use the disclosure triangle to open the Utilities folder. Items from within that folder will appear within the pasted list.
• Use this technique on any folder that’s open in the Finder.

Note: you have a text editor on your Mac — look for TextEdit in the Applications folder.

Method 2: System Profiler

This is also very easy. Open Applications > Utilities > System Profiler. A window opens, displaying a list of Contents on the left. Select Software > Applications in that list. The right-hand pane displays a list of all your software, including version numbers.

Tweaks

Choose File > Save As from the System Profiler menu, and for File Format choose either Rich Text Format or Plain Text, then save the profile. Open the saved file with your text editor to see a full profile of your computer. Scroll down to find the Applications section.

Click the thumbnail images here for larger versions.

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Method 3: Command Line

This isn’t entirely hard, but it does require some finicky typing and a moment’s thought. Open Applications > Utilities > Terminal. A Terminal window opens showing a prompt that may say something like ‘Macintosh HD:~ yourname$ ‘. Mine says ‘pluto:~ miraz$ ‘ because my computer is named Pluto and my username on that machine is miraz.

Now you need to type a command that lists the files in the Applications folder and then saves it into a text file, perhaps in your Documents folder. Type the following exactly (including spaces), but replace ‘miraz‘ with your username:

ls /Applications > /Users/miraz/Documents/apps.txt

Then press the Return key.

It will seem as though nothing has happened, but look in your Documents folder where you should see a file called apps.txt. Open that file into your text editor and you will see a list of your Applications.

Tweaks

List the contents of any folder by changing the command above. Remember to replace ‘miraz’ with your username. This one lists the Applications > Utilities:

ls /Applications/Utilities > /Users/miraz/Documents/utilities.txt

This one lists the Documents folder:

ls /Users/miraz/Documents > /Users/miraz/Documents/docs.txt

Some explanation

ls - (ell ess) is a command to list things. It’s followed by a Space

/Users/miraz/Documents - refers to the user miraz’s Documents folder

> - is a command to save the information in a file. It has a Space in front and afterwards.

docs.txt - is the name for the file the command saves.

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Sometimes I sit in the semi-dark with my MacBook Pro reading email or news feeds, maybe writing a MacTip. This is especially the case if it’s early morning, and I just don’t want to put on a harsh overhead or desk light.

Luckily the MacBook Pro has a very handy feature that I really miss on my MacBook (not Pro): an ambient light sensor to automatically adjust lights that shine through the keyboard, lighting up the keys.

A recent Tip explained the ambient light sensor that controls monitor brightness on certain models of Mac. The backlit keyboard works in the same kind of way. Brightness is controlled by physical keys in the row at the top of the keyboard.

If you have a Mac equipped with a backlit keyboard try this Tip.

Visit System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard and notice whether you must hold down the fn key in order to use the F keys across the top of the keyboard for the function printed on the key.

Also check the box labelled ‘Illuminate keyboard in low light conditions’ and adjust the slider for when the backlight should turn off if the computer is not being used.

Any light takes power — if you run on battery a lot turning off the keyboard backlight could squeeze a few extra seconds or minutes out of the battery.

Either take your Mac into a darkish room or cover up the sensor — it’s probably under the right side grille on the keyboard.

Now press the 3 keys that control keyboard backlighting. On my MacBook Pro those keys are F8, F9 and F10. The keys display a horizontal line only, with a nearby fringe of dots and a far away fringe of dots respectively.

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The two photos show the keys and the effect of the backlight.

F8 is like the Mute key for sound: it turns off the backlighting altogether. F9 decreases the brightness, while F10 increases brightness.

I find the keyboard backlight feature incredibly useful. How about you?

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Is your screen too bright? Does the glare hurt your eyes, or even give you headaches? Make it a bit dimmer — you may find you’re less tired after a session at your Mac. Here’s how.

Most Macs have a couple of ways to change the screen’s brightness, and if you use an external monitor, that may have its own settings too.

The System Preference Display Pane

Go to System Preferences > Displays and click on the Display tab. Look for a Brightness slider.

Slide the slider all the way to the left but keep your finger pressing down on the mouse button as the screen should turn completely black. If you let go of the button you may be stuck with a black screen where you can’t see the control to make it brighter again.

Now slide the slider slightly to the right again. The screen should light up. Move the slider slowly to the right until you find a brightness that is comfortable for you.

Light levels tend to change during the day so you may need to adjust the brightness according to the ambient light.

Mac laptops usually include buttons for changing screen brightness. On my MacBook and MacBook Pro the F1 and F2 keys make the screen dimmer and brighter respectively.

if you have a desktop Mac check the keyboard and also the Mac itself for buttons that may change brightness. Try the Mac’s Help menu if you need further assistance.

My MacBook Pro includes an ambient light sensor. The screen automatically changes brightness according to the light falling on the computer. In the screenshot above you can see I enabled this option below the brightness slider.

That same option is not available on my MacBook, because it doesn’t contain an ambient light sensor.

In fact, with the ambient light sensor enabled, the dot on the brightness slider pulsates gently as a subtle reminder that brightness will change automatically.

The ambient light sensor must be under the right-hand speaker on my MacBook Pro as if I cover that speaker grille with my hand the screen dims.

Whichever Mac you use, try out the Brightness slider. You may find your eyes are less tired after using the computer.

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Recent MacTips described how to have your computer read some selected text aloud. But it’s annoying to have to go to the Services menu and then several submenus to start and stop the speech.

Assign a custom keystroke to make it quicker and easier to use.

Create a Keystroke

Go to the Speech pane of System Preferences, and select the Text to Speech tab.

Check the box labelled ‘Speak selected text when key is pressed’, and then click the Set Key button. A sheet appears.

Press the keys you’d like to use to start and stop speaking. You need to include one or more modifier keys, such as Command, Shift, Option or Control. Then click OK. I’ve set the keys Control Shift = on my machine.

Now select some text, press the keys you chose, and you should hear the computer reading the text aloud. The same key combination stops the speech.

Note: if you use Firefox you may have found that it doesn’t ‘do’ speech — at least if you try to start speaking from the Services menu. Try again with this keystroke technique and you’ll find it works just fine.

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