Mac OS X

Tricks

Disable sudden motion sensor

The motion sensor is great to save the hard drive if the machine is ever to fall a fair height or be struck, but it also can make the heads park more often than necessary.

To disable the sensor:

1. Open the Utilities folder, find Terminal
2. Enter sudo pmset -g to see the current system settings, sms indicates Sudden Motion Sensor and is normally 1
3. To disable the sensor use sudo pmset -a sms 0, where 0 is disable and 1 enable
4. The change is permanent until the pram and maybe the SMC is reset

Make current folder default search

For some reason the default search source folder is "This Mac" when CMD+F is issued. I would argue that you're more interested in the content of the current folder where you issued the command than the entire hard drive.

1. Open a Finder window, select "Finder" and "Preferences"
2. Go to "Advanced" and under "When performing a search", pick "Search the Current folder"

Now it's quicker to search a folder for specific files.

Show file extensions

Default behavior is to not show file extensions, for better file management disable hidden filename extensions in Finder.

1. Open a Finder window, select "Finder" and "Preferences"
2. Go to "Advanced" and check "Show all filename extensions"

Require password after sleep or screen saver

To avoid friends messing around with the machine, require the account password when waking-up from sleep or deactivating the screen saver.

1. Open System Preferences, open Security
2. Check "Require password [immediately] after sleep or screen saver begins"

References

• Apple Portables: Advanced tips for Sudden Motion Sensor