Mac How-Tos

Tired of seeing the name, “untitled” under your Bootcamp partition? With a few easy steps, you can change it to something more interesting. Before changing the partition’s name, you must reboot into Windows. Unable to take screenshots in Windows, I was forced to use my camera :-/. Here’s how you do it:

1. Reboot into Windows

2. Go Start > My Computer

3. You will see the C: named “UNTITLED”.

4. Highlight the HD’s name, enter a new name and press Enter

5. Reboot in OS X and you should see your partition with its new name. The only issue with this tweak is that the new name will be in caps.

Before:

After:

I personally don’t use a name at all – At startup in OS X, highlight the partition’s name and press Spacebar and Enter. This must be done in OS X, because Windows doesn’t permit empty Disk names. At the computer’s next startup, the name will be changed back to “Untitled”.

- Alexander Garovi

Sometimes it’s nice to have a fully lit screen that doesn’t dim down. Lighthead’s Caffeine is the perfect solution to prevent your Mac from falling asleep. Caffeine is a tiny application that is situated in the menu bar. Simply click on the mug icon and your Mac will not start screen savers or dim the screen. You can also set a time limit from five minutes to two hours for Caffeine to run. Caffeine is definitely one of my favorite OS X apps and I highly recommend it to all Mac users. It’s a free download and can be found on the Free Apps page.

Caffeine allows you to set the amount of time it runs for

- Alexander Garovi

If you’re like me, you frequently monitor how much hard-disk space you have. Here are some useful disk monitoring applications that help you see what’s taking up disk space and easily delete applications.

Disk Inventory X is a disk monitoring application that allows you to see how much space your applications and other files take up. A column and color-coded tree map display the hard-disk space distribution.  The app is very easy to use, with a simple UI making it easy to view the status of your hard-disk. At startup, the app allows you to scan the Macintosh HD or other volumes, enabling you to  monitor Bootcamp partitions. Once a volume is selected, Disk Inventory X takes a couple of minutes to gather up information depending on the size of the volume.

AppCleaner is one of my personal favorite disk monitoring apps for OS X. AppCleaner is a simple drag-and-drop application that allows you to completely delete unwanted apps. By completely delete, I mean delete the application as well as its library files. Simply dragging applications from the Applications folder into the trash does not completely delete the application, leaving library .plist files behind. I highly recommend AppCleaner to anyone who wants to free up some hard-disk space.

OmniDiskSweeper is a mass file deleting utility that helps you get rid of many unwanted files at a time. The layout is pretty similar to Disk Inventory X, sorting your files by size in columns. At startup, the application asks you to select a volume. Simply select the unwanted files and click the delete button on the bottom of the window.

These applications can really be useful if you’re running low on disk space. They can be found in the “Free Apps” page. I Hope this is helpful.

- Alexander Garovi