Looking for solutions to TWO annoying Macbook Pro problems
February 20, 2014 8:49 AM Subscribe
1. Is there a way to lock the bookmark bar in Safari? I keep accidentally deleting bookmarks by dragging them into the screen and then they disappear into a puff of air. It's annoying because sometimes I don't notice I have done it and then when I go into Safari the next time I find my bookmark is gone.
2. Is there a shortcut to close all your program and shut down at the same time? I always have to Command +Q each program before I shut down which is annoying.
Thanks! Any other unknown secrets or shortcuts for Mac also appreciated!
1. Is there a way to lock the bookmark bar in Safari?
Not that I know of, but if you use the sidebar for bookmarks (in safari 7) instead of putting them in the toolbar they are much more difficult to lose. One extra click to get to them, though.
2. Is there a shortcut to close all your program and shut down at the same time?
'sudo shutdown -h now' in Terminal will do it.
But the only programs you should need to explicitly quit before shutting down are the ones that need to ask you if you want to save a file or something like that before they quit, which is a Good Thing -- it has saved my bacon on at least two bacon occasions. Is this what you're talking about or is there some other reason you're quitting every application by hand first? Are you trying to avoid the "reopen windows when logging back in" behavior? (in which case you can just untick the ticky box in the shutdown dialog?)
posted by ook at 9:27 AM on February 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
Not that I know of, but if you use the sidebar for bookmarks (in safari 7) instead of putting them in the toolbar they are much more difficult to lose. One extra click to get to them, though.
2. Is there a shortcut to close all your program and shut down at the same time?
'sudo shutdown -h now' in Terminal will do it.
But the only programs you should need to explicitly quit before shutting down are the ones that need to ask you if you want to save a file or something like that before they quit, which is a Good Thing -- it has saved my bacon on at least two bacon occasions. Is this what you're talking about or is there some other reason you're quitting every application by hand first? Are you trying to avoid the "reopen windows when logging back in" behavior? (in which case you can just untick the ticky box in the shutdown dialog?)
posted by ook at 9:27 AM on February 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
Safari stores its bookmarks under your home directory in the path /Library/Safari in a file named Bookmarks.plist -- you can copy this file any time you make a change and have a safe backup of your bookmarks. To restore, just copy the file back to the same location. If you wanted to prevent changes, you could probably set that file to read-only, but it would prevent adding new bookmarks as well.
posted by Lame_username at 10:06 AM on February 20, 2014
posted by Lame_username at 10:06 AM on February 20, 2014
Shutting down without closing apps first works pretty terribly. It sometimes times out and cancels the logout, especially with bloatware like Office or Adobe software. Simultaneously quitting everything can really slow everything down to a crawl as applications generally write to disk as you close them. Quitting with keyboard shortcut such as command Q is good, but it can be even easier with the Command Tab application switcher. Hold down on Command and tap Tab to move to the next application on the list. If you tap Q you'll quit the highlighted application, so all you have to do is hold down command and then cycle tab - Q - tab - Q through all your apps. This also lets you kill a bunch of lightweight apps easily and then give the bloatware enough time to close one at a time.
posted by ridogi at 11:20 AM on February 20, 2014
posted by ridogi at 11:20 AM on February 20, 2014
Is there a shortcut to close all your program and shut down at the same time?
cmd+shift+Q will log you out of your account and close all running apps. No shutdown, though.
Simply selecting Shut Down... from the Apple menu will quit everything and shut your down.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:21 AM on February 20, 2014
cmd+shift+Q will log you out of your account and close all running apps. No shutdown, though.
Simply selecting Shut Down... from the Apple menu will quit everything and shut your down.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:21 AM on February 20, 2014
Just as an aside, why are you shutting down anyway? Why not just put it to sleep? Or are you asking about the rare times when you install Software Updates? It's not like you gain anything by shutting it down repeatedly.
On my Macbook Air right now,
$ uptime
15:15 up 70 days, 1:35, 1 user, load averages: 0.29 0.35 0.37
(Huh. Rebooted over the Christmas break, I guess?)
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:19 PM on February 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
On my Macbook Air right now,
$ uptime
15:15 up 70 days, 1:35, 1 user, load averages: 0.29 0.35 0.37
(Huh. Rebooted over the Christmas break, I guess?)
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:19 PM on February 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: I'm a PC user that's converted to Mac so I'm used to shutting down all my programs before shutting down. So are you guys saying I don't really need to do that before shutting down?
posted by grak88 at 1:40 PM on February 20, 2014
posted by grak88 at 1:40 PM on February 20, 2014
>Are you guys saying I don't really need to [shut down all my programs] before shutting down?
No, no, before shutting down your computer, it is always good practice to shut down each of your open applications. Give them a chance to gracefully clean up their scratch stuff and exit, give them a chance to remind you to save open stuff, etc.
OS X is definitely pushing towards a situation where such a courtesy is no longer required, and every app has to live with the prospect of sudden termination with no/minimal notice (as on iOS) but most applications are not there yet.
What I was saying above is that there's no particular reason why you need to shut down your computer routinely in the first place, aside from updates to the OS. Applications might have memory leaks (hello, previous versions of Firefox) and make your system slow if too much is open for too long, but quitting those applications once in a while should fix that issue. The OS itself is based on BSD Unix, which routinely allowed uptimes measured in months or years. Reboots should be rare.
(If you have a spinning disk, it's obviously good practice to give the heads time to park when going to sleep before you move the laptop.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:19 PM on February 20, 2014
No, no, before shutting down your computer, it is always good practice to shut down each of your open applications. Give them a chance to gracefully clean up their scratch stuff and exit, give them a chance to remind you to save open stuff, etc.
OS X is definitely pushing towards a situation where such a courtesy is no longer required, and every app has to live with the prospect of sudden termination with no/minimal notice (as on iOS) but most applications are not there yet.
What I was saying above is that there's no particular reason why you need to shut down your computer routinely in the first place, aside from updates to the OS. Applications might have memory leaks (hello, previous versions of Firefox) and make your system slow if too much is open for too long, but quitting those applications once in a while should fix that issue. The OS itself is based on BSD Unix, which routinely allowed uptimes measured in months or years. Reboots should be rare.
(If you have a spinning disk, it's obviously good practice to give the heads time to park when going to sleep before you move the laptop.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:19 PM on February 20, 2014
I'm in the middle. I leave my Mac running for many days at a time, but I will shut down or restart every 2-3 weeks or so. I would not keep going for months.
posted by yclipse at 6:22 PM on February 20, 2014
posted by yclipse at 6:22 PM on February 20, 2014
before shutting down your computer, it is always good practice to shut down each of your open applications.
Nah, totally unnecessary. When you shut down your computer, it shuts down each of your open applications for you, then itself -- that's what shutting down is. Try it. You can watch the dock and see your applications quitting themselves one by one. Applications receive the same signal from the OS on shutdown as they do when you hit ⌘-Q. I've done this pretty much daily (I'm a bootcamp user) for years; the only time it's a problem is when I forget to save changes to a file first, so it stops to asks me it I want to save them.
(As far as I know, this isn't mac-specific; Windows will do this for you too. Or else I've been unknowingly courting danger every time I switch back from bootcamp to OSX...)
Now, it is a bad idea to yank the plug out or force-kill it by holding down the power key -- that doesn't give the OS or the applications time to tidy things up and can (sometimes) cause lasting problems. But for a regular shutdown you don't need to go in there and quit every application by hand, no more than you need to defrag the hard drive or terminate your SCSI chains or do whatever other arcane maintenance tasks old-school people are used to needing to do -- if you want to turn off the computer just hit shut down and let the computer do the work. (Or hit sleep. Or just close the laptop and walk away, which is what most people do.)
posted by ook at 6:22 PM on February 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
Nah, totally unnecessary. When you shut down your computer, it shuts down each of your open applications for you, then itself -- that's what shutting down is. Try it. You can watch the dock and see your applications quitting themselves one by one. Applications receive the same signal from the OS on shutdown as they do when you hit ⌘-Q. I've done this pretty much daily (I'm a bootcamp user) for years; the only time it's a problem is when I forget to save changes to a file first, so it stops to asks me it I want to save them.
(As far as I know, this isn't mac-specific; Windows will do this for you too. Or else I've been unknowingly courting danger every time I switch back from bootcamp to OSX...)
Now, it is a bad idea to yank the plug out or force-kill it by holding down the power key -- that doesn't give the OS or the applications time to tidy things up and can (sometimes) cause lasting problems. But for a regular shutdown you don't need to go in there and quit every application by hand, no more than you need to defrag the hard drive or terminate your SCSI chains or do whatever other arcane maintenance tasks old-school people are used to needing to do -- if you want to turn off the computer just hit shut down and let the computer do the work. (Or hit sleep. Or just close the laptop and walk away, which is what most people do.)
posted by ook at 6:22 PM on February 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
(Er... it was probably clear but just in case: instead of "yank the plug out" I should've said "pull the battery out"; obviously on a laptop you can pull the plug whenever... )
posted by ook at 6:32 PM on February 20, 2014
posted by ook at 6:32 PM on February 20, 2014
Re: Safari bookmark bar.
If you've just dragged one of the bookmarks off the bar, you can quickly undo (cmd-z), and it will return. I do that all the time!
posted by derbs at 12:41 AM on February 21, 2014
If you've just dragged one of the bookmarks off the bar, you can quickly undo (cmd-z), and it will return. I do that all the time!
posted by derbs at 12:41 AM on February 21, 2014
Hold the power button down until the dialog box pops up. "Shut Down" is the default button. Press Enter/Return. You're good to go. You can choose to have the Mac remember which apps and windows are open, and to pop right back into them the next time you log in.
posted by emelenjr at 6:58 AM on February 21, 2014
posted by emelenjr at 6:58 AM on February 21, 2014
This thread is closed to new comments.
I shut down with ctrl-opt-cmd-eject - (perhaps with fn as well, it's muscle memory and I don't want to shut down.)
At some point I may have disabled some settings from the command-line that re-load app state on boot, I'm not sure. I know I tried, I don't remember if I succeeded.
posted by TravellingDen at 9:02 AM on February 20, 2014