A quick no-tip: if you use and want to uninstall Tabexpose (a plugin that enables Expose on Safari tabs) from Snow Leopard (Safari 4), then you’ve probably figured out that instructions posted on Cocoamug’s website don’t quite work. Obviously, the Tabexpose plugin is not located in /Library/InputManagers/ folder, so the best thing to do is to do a Spotlight search for Tabexpose.bundle (use my previous tip on finding system files with Spotlight).

A system-file enabled Spotlight search will reveal that Tabexpose.bundle is located in ~/Library/Application Support/Pumba/ folder. Trash the file, empty Trash, restart Safari.

To make a long story short: if you’re using Snow Leopard, you have probably noticed that Spotlight search doesn’t show all files on your disk. For example, when you search for a preference file, library or other system files, nothing shows up in results. The good news is that all these files are in fact indexed, they are just excluded from showing up in the results.

To include these (system) files in the results:

1. Invoke a Spotlight search window (not the Spotlight menubar search), default key combo is Cmd-Alt-Space.

2. Click (+) and select “Other…”,

3. Add “System files” from the selection to the menu (checkbox) and then

4. select to include System files in the search:

Then do a search for your preference files, bundles, etc.

How to include system files in Spotlight search by default? I haven’t yet found a setting that overrides the default search scope in Finder, but here’s what you can do: easily create a Smart Folder for an “empty” search that includes also your preferred system files (for instance .plist files) and place it in the sidebar. So now whenever you do a search for system files, just click on the Smart Folder with the extra search criteria before you enter your search term and there are your results (works in Snow Leopard).

Cheers.

(thanks to this article from Tidbits)

Want to extend a working session on a Macbook Pro battery from, say, 2 hours to 3.5 hours? Then read this post. If you are looking merely how to extend your Macbook battery life to make it last longer in terms of months or years, there are loads of other resources on the web. Still, applying the methods explained in this post will result in less battery drain, which in turn will also extend overall battery life of your Macbook Pro. In this post I’m explaining primarily methods to squeeze most juice out of your Macbook battery in a working session, and only indirectly – how to extend Macbook battery life.

I searched for a bit more advanced and less known methods to optimize Macbook (Pro) battery session beyond the usual ones (turn down screen brightness, turn off Airport and Bluetooth etc.) . I found a couple of promising ones, implemented them and I am happy with the results, to the extent that I may not need to buy a new Macbook Pro battery just yet. It’s now 39 months old with 506 loadcycles, and still has 75% capacity, which is almost spectacular for its age. Fully charged and optimized it now blasts out a bit more than 2.5 hours of working time – before the optimization I could hope for max 1.5 hours of fun. 66% percent increase in battery session time is certainly worth a look at, regardless of what condition your battery is in. So here is how to max out your Macbook battery. » Read more: Maximize battery cycle time and extend Macbook battery life

Do you use Omnigraffle to create website wireframes/prototypes and other kind of work on your Mac? Have you reached the level of complexity in your wireframes where Omnigraffle just started to run slow? Here is a little tip on how to get this great tool to run a lot faster: launch it with QuartzGL enabled.

If you’re not sure what QuartzGL is, it is very roughly a feature in Leopard (and “Quartz Extreme 2D” in Tiger) which uses GPU to draw OSX user interface – and is not enabled by default. The main reason is that enabling this feature on a OS-level results in various drawing inaccuracies and other instabilities. However, running this feature on an application basis can be beneficial.

This trick might well become obsolete with the introduction of Snow Leopard (and a properly modified Omnigraffle probably), but until 10.6 finally comes around, it will help. I’ve been using this trick for quite a while for running various applications on a Powerbook G4 and now on a MacBook Pro, and speed boost benefits of QuartzGL are by far most noticeable with Omnigraffle.

Enabling QuartzGL in Terminal

There are quite a few how-to’s out there on how to enable QuartzGL. One way is to turn on QuartzGL in Mac OSX terminal, but a logout/restart is required in order for the new settings to work.

To enable QuartzGL in Terminal, type:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver QuartzGLEnabled -boolean YES

and log out and log back in or restart the machine.

To disable QuartzGL in Terminal:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver QuartzGLEnabled -boolean NO

Enabling QuartzGL with Quartz Debug

Enabling QuartzGL via Terminal and then restarting will enable QuartzGL system-wide. But if you want to enable QuartzGL on a per-app basis, a much more convenient way to make Quartz GL work is to use a program called Quartz Debug (use version 3.0 since the procedure explained below does not work – the way it is explained – with version 4.0), which you can find in Apple’s Xcode Developer Tools package – it’s a hefty download and you can get it from the Apple Developer Connection site (
http://developer.apple.com/devcenter/mac/index.action), a registration is required and it’s free.

Update for Snow Leopard users or users of newer versions of XCode: the procedure does not work with Quartz Debug 4.0 or at least you cannot quit Quartz Debug 4.0 and keep your settings saved – you will have to keep Quartz Debug 4.0 open all the time, since this version doesn’t save the settings on force quitting the app. An earlier version, Quartz Debug 3.0 from an older version of XCode, does just that. If you don’t want to bother looking for the right version of XCode, just enable QuartzGL via Terminal as explained above.

If you install the whole Xcode, you can find Quartz Debug in “Developer > Applications > Performance Tools” folder. You don’t need the entire Xcode installation in order to use Quartz Debug- it’s just a program that you can move to your Applications folder and delete the whole rest of the Developer folder. Initially, you could try to extract just the Quartz Debug program from the XCode package perhaps using Pacifist or similar program, or see if you can download a standalone version of Quartz Debug (preferrably 3.0) from another source on the internet. The location of Quartz Debug in Finder:

Next page: Page 2 – Applying QuartzGL for a specific application»