In Depth: 20 Snow Leopard annoyances solved: "
All new operating systems have their little bugbears.
Snow Leopard has had its problems, but it's the tiny everyday annoyances that can really grate.
So here are 20 of the most common issues, together with ways to get around them.
1. 'Exposé leaves windows in the background'
The Application Window mode of Exposé is designed to let you switch between multiple document windows open in just the current application, rather than between every single open window.
In 10.5, selecting a document would bring this one to the foreground, but it would also bring all the other open windows for that application to the front as well (right behind the one you selected).
This was changed in Snow Leopard so that only the document you choose moves forward and the others stay where they are. If you want to bring the whole application to the foreground, the simplest way to do it is to use Command+Tab to switch to that application, rather than going anywhere near Exposé.
2. 'Can I stop the screensaver from closing?'
If your screensaver cuts out as soon as it begins, check to see if you're running Caffeine. This menu bar utility will let you temporarily prevent your Mac from going to sleep or starting up the screensaver. But a small incompatibility with 10.6 was preventing the screensaver from running, even when Caffeine was clicked off. Download the latest version of Caffeine to fix this.
3. 'I can't log in as root user when using Terminal'
The root account is now disabled by default. It is possible to enable it using the Directory Utility application (which now lives in System/Library/CoreServices) but there's good reason not to.
The fact is that there's virtually nothing you can do when logged in as root, that you cannot do more safely using the sudo command in Terminal.
4. 'My Time Machine backups are broken'
If you're using Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) shares to back up to a network disk, you may find that Time Machine can't find the network volume. This is because Snow Leopard checks that the volume is writing journaling data all the way to the disk, to preserve data integrity.
You can fool it into accepting your volume by using a script here but network outages could corrupt your backup volume.
A safer solution is to use AFP-compatible network disks, or attach a backup drive directly to your Mac.
5. 'Files don't open in the right application'
Snow Leopard changes the way that OS X decides which app to run when you double-click a file. In 10.5 and earlier, files opened in the app used to create them, via a code stored in the file's metadata – unless you overrode this using the Open With menu. Snow Leopard now uses the information in Get Info.
This means that TXT files will open in TextEdit, even if they were created in a different text editor. To change this, edit the Get Info window for that file.
6. 'How can I change the Stacks display?'
As well as the Grid and List views for Stacks in the Dock, there's a hidden third view that's a mix between the two. To enable it, open Terminal and type:
defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool
list- stack -bool yes
killall Dock
7. 'How do I get a Stack's items to be highlighted on mouseover?'
In Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, there was a hidden preference key that caused Stack items to automatically highlight as you moused over them. This is also possible in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, but the preference key has changed name (possibly because the original key contained a typo).
It also works in Stacks' Fan view, which the previous version did not. To enable this feature, open Terminal and type:
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilite-stack -boolean yes
killall Dock
8. 'Can keyboard shortcuts open applications?'
Some third-party utilities let you launch applications with keyboard shortcuts. But Snow Leopard now lets you do this directly, using the revamped Automator.
Use the Service template and you'll find that Launch Application is now an action. Set Service receives to no input and save it. Set a shortcut to this workflow using the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard System Preferences panel.
9. 'Address Book and Mail crash at the same time!'
Many of you have reported Address Book showing no Contacts in its list and then immediately freezing, requiring a Force Quit. Subsequently, Mail may appear to start correctly but then crash as soon as it needs to access the Address Book.
The problem lies with Smart Groups in Address Book. If you have a Smart Group that includes a negative condition (such as 'Card is not a member of any group'), the Address Book database can become corrupted during the upgrade to 10.6.
If you have a full backup taken from before the move to Snow Leopard, you could restore it, delete the Smart Group and reinstall. But there's a quicker solution that doesn't require you to remove Snow Leopard.
Delete Library/Application Support/Address Book/AddressBook-V22.abcddb and then search through the MetaData subfolder for filenames containing the word 'smart'. Delete any that relate to groups with negative conditions and restart Address Book.
10. 'Exposé doesn't work on the Dock when I'm using Spaces'
New to Snow Leopard is the ability to activate Application Window mode in Exposé by holding the mouse down on an application's icon in the Dock. However, some people have found that this doesn't work terribly well when combined with Spaces.
If you click on a window that's on a different space, it doesn't always move you across to that space. This seems to be related to a corrupted Dock preference file.
So drag Library\Preferences\com.apple.dock.plist to the Trash and then restart the Dock by typing killall Dock in Terminal.
Alternatively, it may just be that you have a box unchecked in your System Preferences, called When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application.
11. 'Where have some of the preferences gone?'
Snow Leopard rearranged a lot of the System Preferences panes and in particular the Archives, Disk Images and Processors panels were removed. The Disk Images pane isn't needed at all, but the other two are in Developer/Extras/PreferencePanes/Processor.prefPane and System/Library/CoreServices/Archive Utility.app/Contents/Resources/Archives.prefPane.
If you double-click these files to reinstall them, Snow Leopard will insist they are already there, so delete everything from Library/PreferencePanes first.
12. 'How can I find and open a single hidden file?'
Previous versions of OS X would hide any hidden files on your system unless you changed the preference key in Terminal to display them. However, doing this makes all hidden files visible in all folders until you change the preference key back again. If all you want to do is open a single hidden file, that's a bit excessive.
Alternatively, you can make them temporarily visible from within the Open dialog itself. Press Command+Shift+. to toggle hidden files on and off. This only works in the Open and Save dialogs, not in ordinary Finder windows.
13. 'How do I get rid of the blue glow in Exposé?'
There's no preference pane option to control this aspect of Exposé, but you can hack it. Navigate to System\ Library\Core services and right-click Dock. Choose Show Package Contents from the context menu and navigate through to Contents\Resources.
The two files you're interested in are expose-window-selection-big.png and expose-window-selection-small.png. The second one is just for windows minimised to the Dock.
Use an image editor such as Seashore to change the colour of these image files without altering the transparency, then save the result. Be warned, however: doing this will mean the Dock's digital signature no longer matches the reference value used by Apple, meaning it will be denied access to the keychain.
If ever it needs access, you may need to reinstall the Dock or restore from backup.
14. 'The icons from the menu bar have vanished'
If you use any utilities that modify the menu bar, such as iStat Menus, occasionally other menu icons may randomly appear and disappear. This is caused by incompatibilities in those menu extensions; you should upgrade or uninstall the utilities concerned to correct the problem.
15. 'Snow Leopard won't install on the hard disk'
If you've experimented with Boot Camp in the past and subsequently removed Windows, the installer may refuse to put Snow Leopard on your internal hard disk. This is because the partition map for your hard disk doesn't always get properly updated when Boot Camp is removed.
You can fix this in Disk Utility, accessed from the Utilities menu of the installer. Select the hard disk, click the Partition tab and move the partition line away and then back again. Click Apply to rewrite the partition map.
Alternatively, provided there's nothing important on it, you could delete and recreate the partition.
16. 'Can line breaks be added in Text Substitution?'
The Language & Text System Preferences pane has a list of auto-replace sequences, so that (c) gets replaced with © and so on.
You can also add your own. If you include \n in the replacement text, this will be expanded to a line break when the substitution is made. This is useful for adding your address to the top of a letter, for example.
You can also enter the text in TextEdit and then paste it into the Language & Text pane as the replacement text.
17. 'I can't change application icons'
The old technique of copying and pasting icons from one file to another in the Get Info panel doesn't work anymore in Snow Leopard for all the Apple applications. This is because the file permissions for these files are set to read-only for all users except root.
There are two ways around this: you can just set the Permissions to read-write for that file (you'll obviously need to supply the administrator password for this); or you can quit Finder and relaunch it as root from Terminal. Type sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/ Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder.
18. 'QuickTime X won't auto-play'
Snow Leopard has removed the preferences pane for the new QuickTime player but the preference keys still exist – use Terminal to set QuickTime to automatically play a movie when it opens, without you having to click the play button first.
Type the following: defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX MGPlayMovieOnOpen 1.
19. 'I can't run Windows apps via Parallels'
If you're still using an old version of Parallels Desktop (2.5 or earlier), Snow Leopard's installer moves it to an Incompatible Software folder on your hard drive. The latest version of Parallels (4.0) is fully compatible with Snow Leopard, however it costs £25 to upgrade.
You can find a list of other incompatible software here.
20. 'QuickTime videos simply refuse to play'
The new QuickTime X may report for certain video files that 'The document cannot be opened'. This appears to be a problem with the reading of AC3 soundtracks.
Just switching to the stereo version of the track doesn't help, but you can open the file in QuickTime 7 and remove the AC3 soundtrack completely. Of course, you could just play the file in QuickTime 7 instead.
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