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Add Facebook Contacts to Contacts App in Mountain Lion

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With Mac OS X Mountain Lion, you can import information for your Facebook contacts into the Contacts application. From System Preferences, click Mail, Contacts & Calendars under the Internet & Wireless pane and then click the Facebook icon in the left pane.

Adding a Facebook Account to Mac image

You will then need to type in your Facebook credentials. Once you have done so, any of your contacts that are on Facebook will have a Facebook entry in their contact card.

To Import Facebook Contacts into the Contacts App

  1. Click  and then click System Preferences.
  2. Click the Mail, Contacts & Calendars icon under the Internet & Wireless pane.
  3. If necessary, click the + symbol on the bottom of the left pane.
  4. Click facebook in the right pane.
  5. Enter your Facebook credentials.
  6. Click the Get Profile Photos to import your Contacts’ profile photos into the Contacts app.

Import Facebook Profile Pics into Contacts image

Quickly Find an Application in LaunchPad

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If you use LaunchPad and have many pages of applications, there is a new feature in Mac OS X Mountain Lion that allows you to find applications without needing to swipe through pages or type in a search box.

Searching LaunchBar image

All you have to do is begin typing the name of the application that you are looking for from any LaunchBar page. Items matching the text you type immediately display on your screen. Even though your mouse cursor is placed in the Search box as you type, you don’t have to click there yourself – LaunchBar does it automatically for you.

Sorting the Contents of a Folder in Mountain Lion

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The process for sorting the contents of a folder is dependent on the View (Icon View, List View, Column View or Cover Flow View) that you are using.

In Icon View, you generally drag the icons anywhere you want within a window. A quicker way to sort your icons is to choose View from the Finder menu, hold down the Option or Alt key on your keyboard, point to Sort By from the menu and then choose from the following sort arrangement:

  • Name
  • Kind
  • Date Last Opened
  • Date Added
  • Date Modified
  • Date Created
  • Size Label

Sort Command in Mac OS X image

If you are in List View or Cover Flow View, you can control the sort order by clicking on the column heading by which you wish to sort. Click the column heading again to reverse the sort order. The tiny triangle on the right side of the column heading lets you know how the column is sorted – if it is pointed downward, the column is sorted in descending order (Z-A). If the triangle is pointed upward, the column is sorted in ascending order (A-Z).

Sort 2

When in Column View, you can sort the same way as in Icon View: choose View from the Finder menu, hold down the Option or Alt key on your keyboard, point to Sort By from the menu and then choose the desired sort category.

To Sort the Contents of a Folder

  1. In Icon View, drag the icons in the desired order
    Or
    In Icon or Column View, select View from the Finder menu, hold down the Option or Alt key on your keyboard, point to Sort By and then click on the desired sort arrangement.
  2. In List View or Cover Flow View, click on the column heading to sort by the column contents, such as file name, date created, etc. Click the column heading again to reverse the sort order.

Tip: In order to apply a sort to a folder, you will first need to remove any arrangements that have been applied to the folder (View > Arrange By > None).

Quickly Encrypt an External Disk from Finder

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Mountain Lion makes it really easy to encrypt external disks and flash drives directly from the Finder. Once a disk is encrypted, a password box displays whenever the disk in connected. In order to view or save data to the disk, you need to enter in the correct password. This feature is especially handy if you travel with your external drives.

To encrypt a disk, Ctrl-click or right-click the disk either on the Desktop or in the Sidebar of the finder and then choose “Encrypt [Disk Name]…” from the menu.

Encrypt a Disk Mountain Lion image

You will then be prompted to enter in a password, retype the password for verification and then type in a password hint. Then, click Encrypt Disk.

Password prompt when encrypting a disk image

Note that if you are encrypting a large disk, it may take a good amount of time to complete the process.

Modifying Notification Center Settings in Mountain Lion

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New in Mountain Lion is the Notification Center. Carried over from iOS 5 (operating system on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch), it is a central location where you can view your notifications, events, alerts and reminders. To display the Notification Center, click the small three-lined icon on the top-right corner of the window. A new panel on the right side of your screen appears, displaying any notifications that are waiting. These can include calendar events, e-mail alerts, Twitter and Facebook alerts and/or mentions, events & appointments from the calendar app and reminders/to-do’s from the Reminders app.

To view any item in the pane, simply click it in the Notification Pane. This will display the item in its associated application. All notifications are sorted by application. To remove all notifications for a particular application (with the exception of Calendar – its events disappear automatically after the date passes), click the x next to the application’s name.

Notification center 1

If you have added a Twitter or Facebook account from the Mail, Contacts and Calendars area of the System Preferences pane, you can send updates directly from the Notification center. Simply click Click to Tweet (Twitter) or Click to Post (Facebook) and type in your Tweet or Facebook status update in the box that appears. You can also add your location to your update, if you so choose.

Notification center 2

You can access the settings for the Notification center by either clicking on the settings icon in the lower right corner of the Notification Pane or by clicking Notifications in the Systems Preferences window.

From the Notifications System Preferences pane, you change the behavior of notifications for each application in the Notification Center. One of the properties that you can set is to change the alert style. There are three styles you can set: None – You will receive no alert on your screen at all. Banners – A banner alert briefly appears on your Mac screen but will then disappear after a moment. You can still find the notification in the Notification Center Pane.

Notification center 3
Banners stay on your screen only for a few moments

Alerts – A message box appears on your screen and will remain there until you press either the Close or Snooze button to dismiss it.

Notification center 4
Alerts stay on screen until you press a button

You can also choose the number of notifications that will appear in the Notification Center for each application, whether to display a red badge icon next to the app and whether to play a sound when you receive a notification.

If you will be away from your computer or don’t with to be otherwise disturbed, you can turn off all alerts and banners. To do so, scroll to the top of the Navigation Pane and swipe the Show Alerts and Banners button to the Off position. No alerts and banners will display for 24 hours.

Notification center 5

To Set Notification Center Preferences

  1. Click the System Preferences icon on the Dock. Or Select  > System Preferences from the menu.
  2. Click the Notifications icon under the Personal area.
  3. In the left pane, click the name of the application you want to modify.
  4. In the right pane, choose None, Banners or Alerts.
  5. Click the drop-down list next to Show in Notification Center and choose how many notifications for that application you wish to display.
  6. If you wish to include the Badge App Icon, click the check box to select it.
  7. If you wish to play a sound when receiving a notification, click the check box to select it.
  8. To display the Notification Center, click the small three-lined icon on the top-right corner of the window.
  9. To remove all notifications for a specific app, click the x next to the application’s name.
  10. To turn off all alerts and banners for 24 hours, scroll to the top of the Navigation Pane and swipe the Show Alerts and Banners button to the Off position.

How to Bypass Gatekeeper When Installing Software in Mountain Lion

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If you are running Mountain Lion, you may have come across the following message when trying to install new software:

Gatekeeper warning message image

[Program Name] can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.

This is Mountain Lion’s new feature, Gatekeeper. What it does, is only allows you to install software from the Mac App Store or from developers who are known and registered with Apple. While you can turn off the Gatekeeper feature, it is not recommended as it can prevent rogue software from being installed without your permission.

So how do you install software from developers who may not yet be registered with Apple? All you need to do is right-click or Control-click the software’s icon and choose Open from the contextual menu. You will be asked if you really want to install software from an unidentified developer. Once you do this the first time, the application will run without any security warning messages in the future — opening it once permanently “clears it” with Gatekeeper.

A quick way to add accents in Mac OS X Mountain Lion

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I often correspond in French and recently discovered (by accident!) a quick way to add symbols such as accent (acute and grave), circumflex, tilde and umlaut to letters while typing, without having to open a third party application or memorize a new keyboard shortcut.

To see the array of accents and symbols available for a specific key, simply press and hold down the key that you want to mark with an accent. A small pop-up menu of accented versions of the letter will pop up. To select the accented letter you want, click it with your mouse or select it with your arrow keys on your keyboard and then press Return.

Adding accents in Mountain Lion image

The letters that have accents and symbols available are:

a
e
i
o
u
c
n

Thus far, this worked in every note-taking or word processing application I have tried.

Using Reminders in Mac OS X Mountain Lion

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We continue our discussion of new Mountain Lion features by looking at a new application in OS X called Reminders, which helps you to track to-do lists and events. Already available on iOS devices, Reminders provides the same to-do list functionality as previously found in iCal with many more features. For instance, you can set location-based reminders that will trigger alerts on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad when you arrive at or leave from a specific location. In order for this to work however, you will need to turn on Location Services for the Reminders app from the Privacy tab of Security & Privacy preferences. For instance, you can set a reminder to go off when you are near a grocery store.

Editing a Reminder in Mountain Lion image

To create a new reminder, click the + (plus) icon on top of the Reminders window or click in any empty space in your Reminders list and begin typing. From the Info window, you can also choose to be reminded on specific date and time as well as set your reminders to repeat at specified intervals. Reminders tied to a date will display in the Notification Center. If you wish, you can set a priority for your reminders from this window as well as enter in additional information in the Note field.

To mark a reminder as completed, click the check box next to the reminder to check it. The reminder will disappear from the Reminders window and move to the Completed heading, which displays all reminders that you have marked as done. Unchecking a reminder in the Completed area will return it to the Reminders area.

A nice feature is the ability to create more than one Reminders list. For instance, you may wish to separate out your grocery list from your other reminders. To do so, click the + button on the bottom of the left pane and then type in the name for your new list. It will now appear in the left pane along with your other reminder lists. You can easily move reminders from one list to another by clicking and dragging.

Adding a new Reminder image

You can have reminders tied to multiple accounts. For instance, you can link Reminders to your iCloud account, Google account or Yahoo! account. To add a new account, choose Reminders > Accounts from the menu, enter in your account information and switch on the Calendars & Reminders setting for that account. You can also configure your accounts from the Mail, Contacts & Calendars area of the System Preferences pane. Once you have set up an account to work, it will appear in the left pane of the Reminders application.

To Use Reminders

  1. Click the Reminders icon on the Dock.
  2. To create a new reminder:
    a. Click the reminder list in the left pane that you wish to use.
    b. Click the + (plus) icon on top of the Reminders window
    Or
    Click in any empty space in your Reminders list
    Or
    Press the ⌘ + N keystroke combination.
    c. Type in your reminder information.
  3. To display the miniature calendar, click the center icon in the reminders list pane.
  4. To tie a reminder to a specific date, click the desired date in miniature calendar and then type in the new reminder.
  5. To change the date or time for a reminder:
    a. Move your mouse pointer over the reminder and then click the Info icon when it appears
    Or
    Double-click on the reminder entry you wish to change.
    b. Click the On a Day checkbox.
    c. Click on the date and time and make your changes.
  6. To add a location-based reminder:
    a. Move your mouse pointer over the reminder and then click the Info icon when it appears
    Or
    Double-click on the reminder entry you wish to change.
    b. Click the At a Location checkbox.
    c. Click the Arriving or Leaving radio button.
    d. Type the location in the box
    Or
    Type in the name for one of your contacts. You can then choose which of the contact’s addresses to use from the box.
  7. To create a repeating reminder, display the info box, click the Repeat list and make your selections.
  8. To create a new reminder list, click the + button in the left pane and type a name for your new list. Press Return when finished.
  9. To tie reminders to a specific account, choose Reminders > Accounts from the menu and then enter in your account information.

Using the Dictation Feature in Mountain Lion

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Dictation is a new feature in OS X that transcribes your speech and inserts it as text into a document. How it works, is that any words you say are sent to Apple’s servers, where they are then processed and sent back to you. OS X then inserts the text into the active document. Thus, in order to dictation to work, you must be connected to the Internet.

By default, pressing the fn key on your keyboard twice will enable the dictation service. You can also choose Edit > Start Dictation from the menu of any application that supports dictation to launch the service. When you do so, a message box appears informing you that what you say will be sent to Apple for processing. If you wish to continue, click the Enable Dictation button. You can change the default hot key (fn) from the Dictation & Speech pane of System Preferences.

Dictation & Speech Preferences Pane

When dictation is on, a small microphone appears. Speak clearly to transcribe your speech into text. Note that you must say the word for any punctuation you wish to add, such as period, question mark, colon, semi-colon or exclamation point. For instance, you would say:

This is a test of dictation period

Which would be transcribed as: This is a test of dictation.

Click Done when finished. Your words will then be inserted into your document as text. Note that the Dictation feature is not always 100% accurate so be sure to proofread any text inserted by the feature.

To turn off the Dictation feature, launch the Dictation & Speech pane of System Preferences, click the Dictation tab and then click the Off radio button.

To Use Dictation

  1. To enable dictation, press the fn key twice
    Or
    Choose Edit > Start Dictation from the menu of any application that supports dictation
    Or
    Launch the Dictation & Speech pane of System Preferences, click the Dictation tab and then click the On radio button.
  2. Speak clearly.
  3. When finished, click the Done button.
  4. To continue transcribing, press the fn key twice again.

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