The time comes in every Mac user’s life when he or she hits the metaphorical wall: That rainbow-colored beach ball shows up way too often, and your Mac is bogged down by too many files, big caches, too many cookies, and who knows what else that builds up with everyday use. Or you think you’ve done everything you can to be more, ahem, productive, and your Mac still isn’t fast enough. Well, you don’t have to live with that state of affairs. We’re skipping right past the obvious time-savers (keyboard shortcuts? Been there, done that) to show you some of the best ways to speed up your workflow - and herd some more of your time back to pasture where it belongs - whether you have absolutely no time to spare or you can make a 20-minute investment in your Mac’s smooth operation.

 

TIP CATEGORIES

 

Keep it Clean (KIC) - Remember how speedy your Mac used to be? You can restore some of that fresh-out-of-the-box performance with these clean-up tips.

Speed Demons - These applications and utilities will help make your Mac - and you - more efficient.

Working with Word (Word) - Little changes can make your life with Word much easier.

Safari - These hints will help you surf Safari with speed.

Firefox - Open-source Firefox has a lot of tricks up its sleeve.

 

TIPS THAT TAKE NO TIME

 

1. Super-Quick Search (Safari, Firefox) - Oh, please don’t go typing “www.google.com” when you want to search for a phrase you saw on another website. Instead, if you’re in Safari or Firefox, select the text and Control-click or right-click. A pop-up menu showing Google Search will appear. Try it… Yeah, we thought you’d like that one.

 

Instant Google Search is at your fingertips with a Control-click or right-click.

 

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2. Email Web Snippets Instantly (Safari, Firefox) - If you use Gmail and the Firefox browser, it’s easier than you think to email URLs to friends. Put GmailThis on your Bookmarks Toolbar. Then, when you want to email someone a link to your current webpage, click on GmailThis. A window will pop up with the link text already added; just fill in the address info and click Send. To email a chunk of text from the page, select the text before clicking GmailThis.

 

To do something similar in Safari, press Command-Shift-I and your default mail application will create a message complete with the webpage URL. You just fill in the address and send.

 

It couldn’t be easier to email a URL to a friend than clicking on GmailThis.

 

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3. Count Your Words Live (Word) - Getting your Word document’s word count by going to Word’s Tools menu and selecting Word Count—ugh, so time-consuming! Just check out the bottom of your doc’s window to see your selection’s word count. If you don’t see it, select Word > Preferences > View and check the Live Word Count box under the Window section Status Bar.

 

Just check the bottom of your document’s window to get its word count. No work needed.

 

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4. Fix Text-Selection Angst (Word) - Do you wrestle with Word when you want to make a tiny text change? Head to Preferences > Edit and deselect the check box next to “When selecting, automatically select entire word” and you can select even the teeniest bit of a word.

 

5. Stop Selecting Around the Bush (Word) - Sometimes you just want to select a block of text and hit Delete (ah, doesn’t that feel good?). Clicking and dragging to make the selection isn’t necessary, and it’s a big pain when using a laptop’s trackpad. You could triple-click on a paragraph, but that only selects one paragraph. So click once at the beginning of the text, then Shift-click at the very end of the block you want to select. This works in many applications - not just Word.

 

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TIPS THAT TAKE 5 MINUTES

 

6. Let OS X Do Its Unix Thang (KIC) - Mac OS X comes with a set of Unix cleanup scripts that are set to run automatically - unless your machine happens to be snoozing during the scheduled run times: 3:15 a.m. daily, 4:30 a.m. on Saturdays, and 5:30 a.m. on the first day of the month. If the scripts don’t run, system-clogging clutter can build up in your temporary directories, and your Mac won’t run as smoothly as it should. So just alter the schedule with a utility like OnyX (free) or Cocktail ($14.95), or run the scripts anytime from your Dashboard with Maintidget (free).

 

Maintidget shows you when the scripts have last run, and lets you run them from your Dashboard.

 

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7. Services, You Have Been Served (KIC) - Services are so cool - if you use them. But you can keep that menu streamlined and reclaim wasted system resources by getting rid of the services you don’t use. Download Service Scrubber (donationware) to do the dirty work for you.

 

You know that rascally Services menu? Keep it well behaved and then maybe you’ll use it every once in a while.

 

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8. Root Out Resource-Sucking Apps (Speed Demons) - Greedy applications may be consuming more than their fair share of system resources, slowing you down in the worst way. To root them out, try this: Open Activity Monitor (in Applications/Utilities), and click the % CPU header to show the highest to lowest percentage.

 

The app that tops the list of CPU-sucking vampires is often Photoshop or Safari, which is normal. Quit the apps you don’t need to run right now, or consider installing more RAM or clearing more space on your primary hard drive so OS X can make better use of virtual memory (see “Keep It Free and Easy” sidebar at the end of this article). If another app continually tops the list - even when it’s not doing anything - check the vendor’s site for updates or patches that may resolve the problem.

 

Find the trouble apps by hooking up Activity Monitor.

 

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9. Use Quicksilver to Speed Up...Everything (Speed Demons) - Quicksilver (free) can speed up almost every typical Mac action. It’s an incredibly versatile application launcher, search utility, file browser, and command central for interacting with all files and apps. And it’s free.

 

Who needs Spotlight? Quicksilver does things like let you rename documents with four keystrokes.

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10. Don't Overextend Your Browser (Word) - You got all excited about installing Firefox extensions, but now you have a bunch you don’t use. Stop Firefox from being bogged down by selecting Tools > Add-Ons, checking out the list in the Extentions tab, and selecting the ones you want to dump. Click Uninstall, and then restart Firefox.

 

The extension won’t be uninstalled until we restart Firefox.

 

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11. De-Webify Word Docs (Word) - As you’ve probably noticed, Word insists on turning every URL you type into a clickable Web link, resulting in a huge slowdown when you accidentally click it. Select Tools > AutoCorrect > AutoFormat As You Type and uncheck the box next to “Internet paths with hyperlinks.” Then do the same on the AutoFormat tab.

 

To stop Word from “helping” you, turn off the features that you really hate.

 

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12. Dive Into Your Surf Session (Firefox, Safari) - If you’d rather effortlessly zip to your websites every morning instead of laboriously typing each URL in its own tab, bookmark all your sites and place the bookmarks in one folder. Select Bookmarks, then the folder you just created, then select Open In Tabs (in Safari) or Open All In Tabs (in Firefox).

 

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TIPS THAT TAKE 10 MINUTES

 

13. Clear Off Your Desktop (KIC) - If you use the Desktop as an all-purpose dump like some of us do, you’ll start seeing the dreaded spinning beach ball a bit too often. Each of the folders, files, and icons residing directly on your Desktop eats up a bit of memory. Get everything off your Desktop that doesn’t need to be there.

 

This is what a clean Desktop looks like. Yeah, we hadn't seen one for a while either.

 

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14. Choose Speed Over Flashy Effects (KIC) - As fun as all the cute OS X gimmicks can be, if you’re experiencing a lot of performance lag, you may need to choose between speed and eye candy. If you favor speed, turn off features like system animations, zoom effects, and scrolling bars that gobble up system resources. The easiest way to do this is with Marcel Bresink’s TinkerTool (free), which lets you tweak hidden OS X settings to your heart’s content. And the latest release of TinkerTool, version 1.8, is compatible with Leopard.

 

TinkerTool lets you turn off OS X’s animations when speed is a priority.

 

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15. Hey, Ease Up on That Dock (Speed Demons) - If your Dock is filled to capacity, download Stunt Software’s Overflow ($14.95) to quickly launch programs and files without further stressing the Dock. In Overflow, you can organize your most-used apps and files into multiple categories.

 

Overflow handles the excess when your Dock is filled to capacity.

 

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16. Stop Annoying Websites (Safari) - Quite a few websites play annoying New Age music or flashing ads whenever they load (we’re not naming them here…lucky for them). Pretty soon we’re rooting around for a “pause” or “skip intro” button - a huge time waster. Safari Stand (donationware) lets you do things like turn off flashing ads and control which images, scripts, and other “features” load. Safari Stand can also stack open tabs in a vertical format, which is great if you like to open a lot of pages at once.

 

17. Surf With Keywords (Firefox) - Use keywords to speed up your browsing in Firefox. Go to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks, choose the five sites you visit most often, then for each, select Properties from the top bar (or Control-click to select from the contextual menu). Fill in a keyword of your choice - it can be as simple as the letter A for Amazon.com - in the keyword box. Now, just type the keyword into Firefox’s location bar and press Return to be whisked off to the website. Cool.

 

If you assign keywords to your favorite websites, you won’t even have to wait for Firefox’s autocomplete.

 

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TIPS THAT TAKE 20 MINUTES

 

18. Build a Better Clipboard (Speed Demons) - Want to stop clicking from your browser to Word and back again to paste information culled from websites as you research a topic? We’ll bet you do. Try Inventive’s iClip ($29), a Mac clipboard the likes of which you’ve never seen. It can store up to 99 clippings (text, images, and more) all neatly sorted into bins. Or try iClip Lite, the free Dashboard version.

 

iClip is the manly muscled version of your Mac’s clipboard.

 

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19. Don't Retype Passwords (Speed Demons) - Typing the same password over and over is so three years ago. If you’re forever forgetting usernames and passwords, or frequently lose software serial numbers, account information, digital sales receipts, and warranties, you need a safe and accessible place to stash this sensitive information. Install KeePassX (free), an encrypted, searchable database that lives on your Desktop. KeePassX even includes a built-in utility that will generate - and then store - secure passwords.

 

20. Keep it Free and Easy (Your Hard Drive, That is) (KIC) - OS X uses free hard drive space as virtual memory, and a stuffed drive will clog up your Mac’s performance. The OS wants at least 5GB of free space all to itself on your primary hard drive—the one where the operating system is installed - and more free space will make things run more smoothly. A good rule of thumb: Leave a minimum of 5 percent of the primary drive open for the system’s use. So if you want to leave 5 percent of a 150GB hard drive free, your magic number is 7.5GB (that’s 150 times 0.05, math genius). Here are a few tips for quickly taking back some of the wasted space on your hard drive. Each one should take you no more than 5 minutes.

 

1. Get rid of all the printer drivers that you don’t use from the /Library/Printers folder at your hard drive level (not your user level). If you can’t figure out which drivers to delete, download a copy of Printer Setup Repair ($30).

 

2. Purge your system of all unused language and localization files. Just set Monolingual (free) running and start your next project.

 

3. Dump the files in your user folder’s Library/Caches folder if OS X is still cramped. It’s not unusual to reclaim a gigabyte or two of space when you clear the caches. If you don’t want to risk dumping necessary bits and pieces, grab a copy of Tiger Cache Cleaner or Leopard Cache Cleaner ($9).

 

4. In a pinch just use Spotlight to find all the files over, say, 30MB on your drive and cautiously delete the ones you know you don’t need. Your threshold may vary depending on your line of work and thus the typical sizes of your files.

 

5. Move your older files off your primary drive to discs or another hard drive. Ruthlessly delete all the stuff you’ll never use again (if you’re undecided, burn it to an optical disc, then delete it from your drive). And don’t forget to empty the trash.

 

Removing the non-English localization and language files on our hard drive freed up almost 2GB of space.

 

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The Top 5: If You Do Nothing Else...

1. Drag your most frequently visited folders into the Finder’s sidebar for easy access and quick navigation. (5 minutes)

2. Clean off your resource-hogging Desktop clutter, ya slob. (10 minutes)

3. Make sure your Unix actions run using Maintidget, Cocktail, or OnyX. (5 minutes)

4. Give Quicksilver a try. It only takes a few minutes to download, but the more time you spend learning its capabilities, the more powerful it is. (5 minutes to install)

5. Keep your hard drive 5 percent empty for the system to have some leeway.