Blog Archives
fastest way to reboot your mac
If you need to teardown your current login session and get your mac up and running in a hurry, here’s a neat little trick that should take you from login to logout and back again in as little as 10 seconds. And I’m not talking about SSD-only Macbook*’s either. That’s the time I achieved on a clunky late-2014 iMac with a sluggish old mechanical 1TB Fusion drive.
Forget the Apple menu and the ‘Restart…’ menu option and don’t worry about how many login items or startup scripts you’ve got either, this method will slice through them all.
We’re going to leverage a little-known command in the launchctl command line tool that will teardown and rebuild your login sessions in an instant. To see for yourself, execute this in Terminal:
sudo launchctl reboot userspace
I was astonished at just how fast the reboot is. What’s even nicer is you don’t lose any unsaved data either. This command restores all current window sessions (similar to checking the ‘Reopen windows when logging back in…’ option in the normal Restart dialog) but without the delay of the standard restart procedure.
See the man launchctl page for more options on using its reboot command.
Enjoy. 🙂
featured picture: Steampunk boots by Imp0s5ible
restore tab & spacebar keys in logout window
If you did a clean install of Lion at any point you might have noticed that the spacebar won’t toggle the checkbox and tab won’t cycle through the options in the Logout window.
To resolve this, open Terminal.app (Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app) and copy/paste this command
sudo defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleKeyboardUIMode -int 3
Press ‘return’ and type in your Admin password. Restart your computer and your tab and spacebar keys should be back to normal!
🙂
how to unfreeze your iPad
iPads are so easy to use, why bother with the manual? 😉 The chances are though, that at some point you’re either going to find that an app freezes on your screen or your whole tablet becomes unresponsive. Don’t panic, the answer’s simple:
First, be sure that it’s connected to a power source. The most common reason for iPads not working is people don’t realise they’re out of battery! Otherwise try these:
If it’s just a particular App that’s frozen on your screen:
— Hold down the ‘sleep/wake’ button (top right, back edge) for about 5 seconds until the slider appears. Release the ‘sleep/wake’ button. Now hold down the ‘Home’ button (bottom front, centre) until you see your Home screen.
If your whole machine is unresponsive, then do a restart:
— Hold down the ‘sleep/wake’ button for about 5 seconds until the slider appears. Slide it to ‘Off’. Then hold it down again until the Apple logo appears showing that the iPad is restarting.
If that doesn’t work, do a hard reset:
— Hold down the ‘sleep/wake’ button AND the ‘Home’ button simultaneously for about 10 seconds or until the Apple logo appears.
*For more serious problems with your iPad, such as continual restarting or no home screen, have a look here.
featured picture: ice crystals by Typen
applehelpwriter.com 