Category Archives: FastTasks-3
how to find anything on your mac
With the release of FT2 2.13 comes a new SuperSearch function. You can use this to find anything on your mac or connected drives, open folders (including hidden ones) and launch apps. You can open SuperSearch quickly by holding down the shift key when you click the F2 icon in the status bar.
If you’re familiar with EasyFind and Spotlight, you can think of SuperSearch as sort of a ‘Spotlight on Steroids’ (use the ‘Faster’ option’) combined with an ‘EasyFind without the overhead’ (use the ‘Deeper’ option). SuperSearch supports using the spacebar to open Quick Look and double-clicking to reveal an item in the Finder.
For the most part, you’ll want to use the options ‘Faster’, ‘String’ and alternate between ‘Name’ (for files) or ‘Content’ (for text within files). Choose to include case sensitivity, emails and web history as needed. However, there’s a lot of different ways you can use SuperSearch. Here’s a few examples:
Find hidden files
(use ‘Deeper’, ‘Name’, ‘String’)
Find files by bundle identifier
(use ‘Deeper’, ‘Name’, ‘String’)
Open folders in the Finder
(just type the path and hit return; use ~/ to target the home folder; the options are not relevant)
Search for text in files
(use ‘Faster’, ‘Content’, ‘String’ for speed, or use ‘Deeper’ if you want to target a particular drive or directory, or if you want to search for content within hidden files and packages, too).
When you use ‘Deeper’ to search for content, the item name includes a hit count of the number of occurrences of the search term in that file:
Launch applications
(prefix the app name with ` (that’s the key directly above the ‘tab’ key) to tell SuperSearch you want to open it rather than find it. The options are not relevant).
🙂
FastTasks 2 v2.8 released
This update sees the introduction of a major new feature, the TaskPad. If you’ve ever been frustrated by the limitations of Apple’s Notes and Reminders apps and wondered why they didn’t, well, just combine the two, then FT2’s TaskPad may be for you.
Inspired by one of my favourite free apps from the Snow Leopard era, Lighthead software’s Remember.app (still available but sadly never updated to 10.7 and beyond), the TaskPad keeps things light and simple, while having a lot of power to keep you organised and on task.
You can set due dates, add rich-text notes, as well as order and re-order via drag and drop. If you want to use the same database across more than one mac, that’s possible, too (requires an independent syncing service such as Dropbox or similar). You can also maintain more than one list database and switch between them as you need.
Since FastTasks is all about being fast, you don’t need to wade through the main menu to call up the TaskPad (though of course you can do that if you want!). Just hold down the Command key and click the F2 icon and the TaskPad will immediately appear.
Another change in this update is that the Eject Disks function will now let you eject individual disks as well as all disks. We’ve also updated the Analyser with new definitions.
The FT2 2.8 update is available to users on 10.10.5 or above. Unfortunately, FT2 no longer supports OS X Mavericks, but 10.9 users can still download the previous version (2.7) of FT2 for the time being.
DetectX v.2.22 released
We’re now up to v2.22 of DetectX.
The major change is that we’ve moved to a generous 60-day trial period for non-license holders. Prices for home use and commercial use remain at $15 & $79.99, respectively, as promised for the remainder of v2 releases.
Heads up though, folks. DetectX 3 is nudging over the horizon (we’ve been working on it since late last year and only need to get the next FastTasks update out of the way first!) and the price of both home and commercial license keys is expected to rise for unregistered users. DetectX 3 will bring a modern UI interface and a whole new suite of tools intended to make it the most powerful tool on the market for analysing and troubleshooting you mac. If you hold a license key for any version of DetectX 2 prior to the release of version 3, you’ll get a free upgrade to DetectX 3.
The release notes for DetectX 2.22 can be found here.
news: FastTasks v2.6 released
An update to FastTasks 2 was released earlier today adding further adware definitions to the Analyser function. FT2 is available for free from here. Requires OS X 10.9 or higher.
news: FastTasks v2.4 update released
FT2 v2.4 is now available from sqwarq.com.
This update includes a new ‘delete’ button in the Analyser and an auto-kill feature which searches for and kills MacKeeper processes running in the background when the Analyser is run.
The release notes are here.
news: FastTasks v2.3 update released
FT2 v2.3 is now available from sqwarq.com. The release notes are here.
Enjoy! 🙂
news: FastTasks update 2.1 released
FT2 v2.1 is now available from sqwarq.com. The release notes are here.
Enjoy! 🙂
news: FastTasks Update
With recent adware attacks exploiting a vulnerability in OS X and giving themselves sudo permissions without the user providing a password, we thought it’d be a good idea to have FT2 show you info on the Sudo permissions file. This feature has been added in today’ update, FT2 v1.68.
The file in question, sudoers, lives in the (usually) hidden /private/etc folder at the root of your hard drive. Most ordinary users won’t have cause to go digging around in there and probably don’t even know it exists. However, sudoers is the file that determines who can get admin access in the shell (aka ‘the Terminal’), and adding a user to the sudoers file gives them pretty much a carte blanche over the system.
It appears that Apple have already taken steps to block the recent attack, and the next version of OS X (likely due out next month) will restrict what even sudoers can do to the system (although not to the user). Nevertheless, we think it’s good idea to have an easy visual check as to whether the sudoers file has been modified or not. You can find the sudoers information in the Analyser just before the System section (marked by the green dashed line).
Be aware that it is entirely possible that if an attacker gains access to your system, they could not only modify the sudoers file, but completely replace it with a new one. That’d give a new creation date but no modification date. With that in mind, it’s worth checking just when the file was created. Running the public release of OS X Yosemite, build 14E46 (you can find the build number in FastTasks menu), my default sudoers file has a creation date of 2014-09-10. If you are running a different build of Yosemite or OS X you may see a different date. Obviously, if you have modified (or given an app or process permission to modify) the file, that will cause you to see different dates also.
news: sqwarq app updates
DetectX 1.30 is now available. Aside from the fancy new icon you can see above :p, we also added the Sparkle updater to make updates more convenient for users and made a few tweaks to improve the search definitions.
FastTasks 1.67 is now available. The latest version updates the Analyser and adds AppleScript support. The functions available to AppleScript are fairly limited at the moment, but we’d love to add more. Tell us how you’d like to script FT2 (or any other Sqwarq apps!) in the comments below and we’ll look into adding your suggestions to future updates.
Thanks!
news: sqwarq app updates
FastTasks 2 v1.66 is now available. This incremental update includes an update to the Analyser and a minor bug fix.
applehelpwriter.com 