If you've ever explored the possible actions offered by Mail's rules, you've probably wished that you could apply some of them to any message on command. For example, you might want to move the selected messages to one mailbox or another at the press of a hotkey, or to replicate Eudora's labels by changing the text color of messages in their mailboxes (Mail's GUI only allows changing their background color, which I dislike as much as OS X's Finder labels).

The problem is that Mail's rules are intended to run automatically on incoming or outgoing emails, so such "manual" rules cannot easily coexist with automatic rules. The good news is that it's very easy to work around that conflict using AppleScript and Keyboard Maestro.

The trick is to group the "manual" rules at the top of the list, end each of them with with 'Stop evaluating rules,' and to keep them disabled so they won't interfere with automatic rules. To run one of these rules manually, you need a Keyboard Maestro macro that will enable that particular rule via AppleScript, tell Mail to 'Apply Rules' (which will run it on the selected messages), and then to disable the rule.

I had always thought that Chrome's method of private browsing, which allows you to intermingle private and normal browsing in separate windows/tabs, was better than Safari or Firefox, which are an all-or-nothing proposition. Now Firefox, at least, can emulate Chrome's behavior.

With the Firefox add-on Private Browsing Window, the user can have private and normal browsing windows simultaneously. This can be used for things other than simply secure browsing, too. You could, for instance, log into two Gmail accounts simultaneously, or test a web app using two different accounts in one browser.

This isn't really Mac-specific, but it's very useful. There are a lot of reasons people like/want to create RSS feeds for Google searches (e.g. for their name, so they see when something new comes up). However, most of the ways out there for making feeds are very unreliable, available for Windows only, quickly out-of-date, and/or cumbersome. So here's a foolproof way using Google's own services.

This is very simple -- in fact, it involves using Google Alerts. All you have to do is create a new alert for the search you wish to create a feed for, then edit it. Click the Deliver To pop-up and select Feed instead of Email. This gives you an RSS feed that can be either directly added to Google Reader, or viewed in any RSS reader you wish to use.

[robg adds: This works; just make sure you save and verify the alert first, then you can edit it to turn it into an RSS feed.]

Xcode now has gesture support to quickly switch between files. For instance, you can switch between the .h and .m file with a three-finger upward swipe. A three-finger side-to-side swipe puts you back or forward in the file history.

People often want to share a folder on their startup drive (or another drive with ownership enabled) between several local users. It's easy to change permissions on the whole folder, but any newly created files inside that folder will only be writable by the user that created them.

A standard way of dealing with this issue is by using inherited ACLs as described in this hint. However, that method has a couple of drawbacks. Namely, some applications like Open Office don't understand ACLs. Other applications use temporary files when saving files that can wash out the ACLs, depending on particular setup. That includes, for example, Photoshop which strips off ACLs on re-saves. Lastly, inherited ACLs are only applied to newly created files and files copied to the shared folder. They are not applied to files moved to the shared folder. The proposed method of sharing a folder has no such deficiencies. It works in 10.5 and 10.6.

The trick is to mount a local folder on the same computer via NFS.

The old Bonjour Browser hint for Screen Sharing was disabled in a 10.5 security update, and was missing completely in 10.6. However, a new workaround seems to have been built into 10.6, and it might even better than a browser window.

When you connect to any system via Screen Sharing in 10.6, a .vncloc file is automatically created within your user's Library/Application Support/Screen Sharing folder. (Copying this folder to any 10.5 system will also work, but you'll need to manually update it.) Clicking on any of these .vncloc files immediately launches Screen Sharing and connects to the selected system.

To make these shortcuts really easy to use, drag that Screen Sharing folder to your Dock, and now you've got an instant shortcut to any one of your stored Screen Sharing connections. New systems you connect to via the Finder are automatically added to this folder. Just pop up the folder from the Dock, then click the icon for the system you wish to connect to. Screen Sharing will launch and connect, assuming you saved the login info to your Keychain from the last time you connected.

[robg adds: I dragged the folder into Butler's configuration window, assigned it a hot key, and set it to display a menu near the mouse. Now I've got screen sharing connections available via a keyboard shortcut and pop-up menu - nice!]

Here's a way of mounting Samba shares in Snow Leopard that does not depend on the login process. This method auto-mounts a share when it is accessed. You need to have an administrator password to edit and create the needed files. First, edit /etc/auto_master (as root) and add a line:

/-     auto_smb

I use the free version of TextWrangler for this; it will prompt you for your admin password. This tells autofs to look in the file /etc/auto_smb for the mount info. The /- means the the full mount path will be specified in auto_smb.

Next, create a file called /etc/auto_smb which is owned by root:wheel. One way to do this is to type the following command in Terminal:

sudo touch /etc/auto_smb

Now edit this new file to put the share info into it.

Unfortunately, a bug in Snow Leopard may mean you're not seeing all the Services you should see in the contextual menu that appears when you right-click on a document or a text selection. You can, however, make those Services appear in the contextual menu:

1. Open the Keyboard System Preferences panel, and select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab.
2. Select Services in left-hand column.
3. Deselect and reselect the Services you wish to appear in the contextual menu.

After toggling, the selected Services now appear at the bottom of the contextual menu. Credit isn't mine -- I found the details of this bug in Rob Griffiths' write-up on Snow Leopard's Services.

[robg adds: I had totally forgotten I'd written about this bug, and it seems it's still present in 10.6.2 (as tested on a new install here). It's also a bit more complex than I originally stated -- there are some Services that, even though they'll show in the Services menu, won't show in the contextual menu even after the above trick. It's not clear what the logic is for what will or will not show up, so you'll need to experiment a bit.

To demonstrate the problem, select some text in TextEdit, and then Control-click on the selection. Any relevant Services should appear at the very bottom of the menu, including two Mail-related entries (New Note With Selection, New Email With Selection) and one for Stickies (Make New Sticky Note). If you don't see them, perform the above toggle trick, and they'll miraculously appear.]

I use the following method to automatically clean, at shut down time, the entries in the Finder's Go » Recent Folders menu entry. It cost me some work, but eventually it worked. Open Terminal and do the following:

$ cd /etc/
$ sudo nano rc.shutdown.local

When prompted, enter your admin password. In the nano editor, add the following lines (assuming the file doesn't yet exist): And now some explanation. your_user is obviously the short name of the user whose Finder preference file you want to edit. your_group is the group your user belongs to -- this is usually staff.

The chown command is needed because these commands are executed by the script as root. So the defaults delete command changes the ownership of the com.apple.finder.plist file, resulting in the loss of your Finder's preferences at reboot. For the same reason, the commands specify the full path to files, because the script isn't running as your user.

The rc.shutdown.local file does not need to be set as executable. It works like it is, but please remember to reboot twice after any change in order to see the effects.

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one. To confirm your user's group membership, you can use groups (which has technically been replaced by the less-obvious id -Gn, but still works in 10.6).]

Here are two problems that have frustrated me with iTunes for the longest time:

1. My iTunes library contains a few entries that are not really music (e.g., comedy or spoken word), and I don't like them cluttering up my "Music" library.
2. I have a few streaming radio stations that I listen to often and are listed in my Music library as well. Unfortunately, each radio station has its own special genre (e.g. "Eclectic, Alternative, NPR, Public, News") that doesn't correspond with my own classification scheme. True, you can change the meta-information of a stream, but it reverts back the next time you play it. I've seen this problem described in numerous Mac forums, but without a satisfactory resolution.

My solution (and it's a bit of a hack) is to select these items (streams, comedy, etc.) in iTunes and classify them as Audiobooks (by selecting the items, choosing File » Get Info, selecting the Options tab, and changing Media Kind to Audiobook).

Now, when I browse my Music library, it is no longer cluttered with non-music or genres that only apply to a single radio stream. And when I want comedy or radio, I just open up my Audiobooks library. This works nicely for me because I don't have any audiobooks. Presumably, you can also use the other Media Kinds (Podcasts, iTunesU, or Voice Memo) instead, depending on which of those you don't use.