One of the most used features on my OS X installs is the Quick Look feature, its much easier then launching an app just to check, or to quickly read off its content. However, for as long as I can remember Quick Look has always been known for causing delays in folder navigation, high CPU and high network utilisation. This is generally down to it rendering previews of movie files in the active finder window. Yes – this even includes items on your desktop.
There are a couple of ways to combat this speed delay without loosing functionality of Quick Look on other files.
The easiest is to remove the Quick Look generator from the quick look folder. To do this, click on Go > Go To Folder now type or copy paste /System/Library/QuickLook/ now either delete or if you’d prefer move Movie.qlgenerator to another location.
This will disable the thumbnails for movie files, and speed up finder navigation – especially for media heavy folders.
By default the ‘Library’ folder is a hidden folder in OS X Finder. However, if you need temporary (GUI) access you can use this simple AppleScript below to remove the ‘hidden’ flag from the folder.
tell application "System Events" set libvis to (get visible of folder "~/Library") end tell if libvis = false then --~/Library is currently invisible tell application "System Events" to set visible of folder "~/Library/" to true else --~/Library is visible tell application "System Events" to set visible of folder "~/Library/" to false end if
This script could also be easily amended to show and hide any folder of your choice, simply by replacing the ~/Library/ with the path of the folder you’d like to toggle.
Sometimes theres a need to dig around in the OS X file system without restriction, (which also means without protection) for example should you need access to files or folders, but don’t fancy switching permissions or playing with complex terminal commands.
Using the single lined command below in terminal you can launch an instance of finder which doesn’t hold any of the restrictions that your normal finder window holds.
Bear in mind this will also give you the ability to cause serious damage to your file system, should you go messing with things you shouldn’t.
Copy and paste the following into a terminal window and press return.
sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder
You will be prompted for your password, then a new finder instance should launch. It it doesn’t you should see a second set of icons overlaying your desktop icons. Double click the ‘root’ icon, and it should launch finder as root.
Remember boys and girls.. Be careful in there!
As more an more web browsers pop up offering tab browsing, I always knew tabbed file browsers would never be far behind.. The first one (that I’ve come across) in TotalFinder from BinaryAge.
The clever boffins over at jiwire have recently released an update to their popular iPhone based Wi-Fi hotspot locator. The previous version was close to making it to my top ten list, but just had a little something missing.. This one however, really does seem to tick all the boxes for me!
