ERASING FILES FOR GOOD!

ERASING FILES FOR GOOD!

People are getting pretty freaky about the security of the files on their drives.  Especially since they learned that even though they “trashed” some of their most personal and sensitive files and thought they were gone forever, they’re still recoverable.  And not just recoverable by the FBI lab, but by your average junior-high student.  That’s why Apple created a secure version of the Empty Trash command called – big surprised- Security Empty Trash. Without going into too much techno-geek-speak, it deletes your file and writes over the drive space where it once lived so many times that agents from top-secret government agencies that we’re not even supposed to know exist couldn’t resurrect those files.  In short, use Secure Empty Trash when you really want your files gone for good.

LOOKING INSIDE MULTIPLE FOLDERS AUTOMATICALLY

Need to see what’s inside more than one folder while in List view? Do it the fast way – Command –click on all the folders you want to expand, then press Command Right Arrow.  All the folders expand at once.  If the file you’re looking for isn’t there, just press Command- Left Arrow (you can do that, because your folders are still highlighted) to quickly collapse them all.  

BETTER THAN THE OLD CONTROL STRIP- IT’S MENU EXTRAS

The Control Strip, thankfully, is gone and has been replaced by something infinitely better- Menu Extras.  These tiny black icons appear in the menu bar, just to the left of your menu clock; and not only do they tell what’s going on, they actually work (at least if you click on them, anyway) kind of similar to how the  Control Strip worked, but without the annoyance of the Control Strip.  (Are you getting the feeling that I didn’t like the Control Strip?) Just click on the Menu Extras to access their controls.  For example, click on the one that look like a speaker, and a volume-control slider pops down, just like a menu, where you can control your system volume.  You add Menu Extras in the System Preferences of each control you want to add.  For example, you can add the Display Menu Extra by going to the Displays preferences and choosing the Show Displays in Menu Bar checkbox.