Saginaw Macintosh Users Group

Change the Desktop Background directly from the Desktop
~Terry White, MacGroup.org
When I want to change the Desktop Background the fastest and easiest way to do it is to just Right Click on it in the Finder and choose Change Desktop Background from the Contextual Menu. This will take you right to the spot you need to be in in System Preferences.

In Address Book, Highlight Groups to which a Contact belongs
~MacGroup.org
In Address Book, select a Contact and hold down Option key.
All the Groups that the Contact is a member of will highlight in yellow.

Merge two Contacts in Address Book
~MacGroup.org
If you end up with two entries for the same person, they can be merged into one card. Select the two > From the Card menu select “Merged Selected Cards”

Want to see more information from your Menu Extras?
~MacGroup.org
Option-Click on them in your menubar at the top of your computer screen. Here are a few of my favorites.

10.6: Copy URLs from downloaded files
~MacOSXHints
If you download a file with Safari or certain other programs, you may be able to copy its download URL from its Get Info window.Select the file in the Downloads folder (or elsewhere) and press command-I. Find the Where From ntry in the More Info section of the Get Info window. Hold down the mouse button and drag across the URL listed there to select it, then choose Copy from the Edit menu (or press Command-C).

[robg adds: This will only work in 10.6; 10.5 won’t let you select the text in that field. I’m not sure which browsers/apps other than Safari record this data; Firefox does not.]

How to Remove Unwanted Software Update Agents
~The Mac Observer
When installing desirable software for good, it’s nice to be kept advised of updates. One way to do that is through a Mac OS X mechanism called launch agents. They activate a request to check for updates.  However, after you’ve deleted experimental software, those update checks can linger and consume system resources. Here’s how to delete them.Sometimes those software update agents are innocuous. But other times, they’ll leave behind remnants of themselves, for example Menu Bar items. Or they’ll constantly pop up in Little Snitch, if you use that, begging for permission. It can get a little annoying. At the very least, it’s messy to leave these persistent messengers around (that phone home) after you’ve deleted experimental software.

The first place to look for remnant agents in in System Preferences -> Accounts -> Login Items to see if any agents are still being launched at login. If you don’t see anything suspicious there, look in: ~/Library/LaunchAgents(local)/Library/LaunchAgents (global) In the case of Google’s Chrome, it installed a launch agent on my system in my local Library (Google’s Chrome Launch Agent).

If you see something like this, and know you don’t want it around anymore, you can just delete the file. In this case: com.google.keystone.agent.plist. Then, at your convenience, restart to reset the tasks for launchd.

In general, when a new application comes with a .pkg installer, one must be on guard because an installer will often install other files, in addition to the app in /Applications. One tip: it asks for an admin password. If you want to be extra cautious, you can inspect all the files that will be installed by looking at the installer’s File menu -> Show files.

However, some apps, simply dragged to /Applications, when launched, can also sneakily insert files into other locations in your system, for example, Chrome. Vigilance (and a tool like Little Snitch) can smoke out these unwanted tidbits of code in your system after you’ve deleted the primary app.