It’s been a pain-point for some Mac users for a while now: the inability to rearrange third-party menu bar extras. Sure, it’s been possible to move around stock menu bar extras by simply holding the Command key while dragging the icon, but third-party icons are no longer off limits.
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If you’re running OS X El Capitan, it’s possible to hide the menu bar on your primary display. Hiding the menu bar works very much like a hidden Dock in OS X, in that when you move your cursor to the edge of the screen, the menu bar reappears from its hidden state. In this post we’ll show you how to hide your menu bar, and why you might consider doing so.
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If you have multiple audio inputs or outputs connected to your Mac, then you’re probably aware that you can visit System Preferences to manage and switch between interfaces at will. But wouldn’t it be nice if there was a quicker way to switch to a set of speakers or a microphone without venturing all the way into the Sound panel of System Preferences? In this post, we’ll share with you a handy shortcut that we use every day to do just that.
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After spending about a month and a half in the beta channel, Chrome is rolling out Google Now notifications to all users. To activate the feature, Google says to sign in with the same Google account used on iOS.
There have been indications for a long time that Google Now was eventually coming to the Chrome browser. Via the Google Operating System Blog, the service has finally surfaced in the most recent release of Chrome Canary (Google’s name for the app’s ‘alpha’ channel builds).
As expected, Google Now in Chrome closely mirrors Google Now on Android. The contextually-relevant cards (which show information such as weather, news or upcoming flights) appear in Chrome’s Notification Center on the desktop. The notification area can be accessed in the menubar, represented by a bell icon.
Switching resolutions on a Retina MacBook Pro usually requires going through System Preferences, but an app called QuickRes is designed to mitigate that annoying process.
QuickRes puts an icon in your Mac’s menu bar that allows you to quickly jump between a variety of preset display resolutions, even beyond supported by Apple, all the way up to 3840×2400. QuickRes can also enable HiDPI mode on non-Retina Macs, effectively doubling the resolution and giving a clearer (albeit bigger) picture.
To switch resolutions, you can right-click the app’s menu bar icon to select which display you want to change (if you have more than one), then select a resolution from a list of presets. You can also setup anywhere from two to eight of your favorite resolutions and switch between them quickly by clicking on the menu bar icon.
QuickRes is available in two flavors. The paid version is available for a 9to5Mac-exclusive price of $.99 (regularly $1.99) through this discount link. The free version, which supports fewer resolutions and does not include a quick HiDPI toggle for non-Retina, is available on the Mac App Store.
