Clean & Organize Your Mac In Under 2 Hours

Your Music Information

The metadata of your music is a portion of information attached to a music file that determines how it will be organized within Folders and how it is displayed within iTunes.

To edit the metadata of your music file, right click a song and select 'Get Info'

Make sure the Track Name, Artist, and Album are all filled in!

Sift through your library to make sure Artist and Album names are spelled properly and match to avoid having unnecessary folders.

Edit The Metadata Of Multiple Files

To edit the metadata of multiple songs at once, sort the songs by Artist or Album and right-clicking them to get to 'Get Info'.

This will open a 'Multiple Item Information' that will allow you to batch edit all songs under this Album/Artist.

Make sure the fields that you want to edit are checked.

Deleting Duplicates From iTunes

To find and erase any duplicate songs you have in iTunes:

1. Go to View and Select 'Show Duplicate Items'
2. Determine which songs you want to keep and which you want to erase
3. When you find a song you want to erase, delete it and make sure you choose 'Move To Trash' to erase it from your iTunes computer folder as well

Adding Missing Song Information

Sometimes you will notice some songs missing Artist and Album names. To better organize our iTunes, we should fill in any missing information.

Using Smart Playlists To Edit Song Information

Smart Playlists have rules that determine which songs are added into this Playlist. We can use these playlists to find and edit songs with missing information.

To do so:

1. Go to File > New > Create Smart Playlist
2. Choose Artist/Album, then choose 'is'
3. Leave the the third section blank

This will create a Smart Playlist with all the songs that are missing Artists/Albums and give you a chance to edit them!

Save Up Space With A Proper File Structure

Sometimes, we have our songs scattered all over our computer. This not only makes them harder to find, but these songs are vulnerable to be lost and deleted at any time. iTunes allows you to create an organized file structure that makes your music easy to find.

1. Choose iTunes and click 'Preferences'
2. Go to the 'Advanced' Section
3. Check the options 'Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized' and 'Copy Files to iTunes Media Folder When Adding To Library'

This will ensure that each song imported to iTunes is neatly organized into folders on your computer by Artist and Album.

This also gives you the ability to safely delete any songs outside of the iTunes folder and clear up some space.

Adding Album Artwork

If your songs are missing artwork and have at least the Name, Artist and Album, iTunes can retrieve album artwork for you.

Go to File > Library > Get Album Artwork

iPhoto

Does opening your iPhoto slow down your computer and give you the rainbow wheel of death? Chances are your events take a while to load and a lot of processing power.

In this section you will learn how to:

• Organize Your Events
• Merge Events
• Split Events
• Use of Keywords
• Albums Vs Events
• Using Smart Albums

Multiple Unrelated Events

iPhoto creates photo Events by days. This results in Events having multiple unrelated photos that have nothing to do with each other. To properly organize photos, you first have to remove them from the Event.

To do so:

1. Select the photo you want to remove from the event
2. Go to Events > Split Event

This removes the photo from an event and creates it's own event.

Remove Multiple Photos From A Single Event

To extract multiple photos from an Event:

1. Hold down Shift and select the range of photos you want to remove
2. Go to Events > Split Event

Now you can merge similar events together for easy search.

Create A New Event With Photos Across Different Events

Sometimes the photos we want to use to create a new event aren't all stored in a single event, but rather scattered across multiple events.

To easily create an event when your photos are scattered across iPhoto:

1. Find all the photos you want to merge
2. At the top left corner of each photo, click the flag
3. Once you have flagged all the photos you want to merge, go to Events > Create Event From Flagged Photos

This extracts the respective photos from their old events and creates a new event with your selected photos.

Add Keywords To Your Photos

Keywords are a great way to easily find photos in iPhoto. Make sure that you have the 'Keyword' option checked so you can add keywords to your photos. (View > Keywords)

To add keywords to photos, albums or events:

1. Select your photo and click 'Info' located at the bottom right
2. Open the Keywords window
3. Add all desired keywords by writing it down and then hitting enter

Merge Similar Events Together

Once you've batched similar events together into mini events and added keywords to all appropriate photos, go ahead and create a single event that hosts all your photos.

To do so, simply drag and drop any event of your choosing into the host event.

Putting It All Together

By this point, you have separated new events and added keywords. Lets put it all together for a neatly organized Library.

The Difference Between Albums & Events

Events are photo collections sorted by time and date, while albums are curated collections created by you.

To create a new album from events:

1. Choose the events or photos you want to add into an album
2. Go to Create > Album

Using Smart Albums To Find Photos

In iPhoto, Smart Albums can identify title, description, keywords, dates, places, faces, rating, type of camera, image info, focal length, flags and much more. You can also have the folder match conditions individually or collectively for different search results.

If you choose for it to obey any, the album will pull in the results of every rule, no matter the order; if you choose for it to obey all the rules, it will check for them one at a time.

Self Contained Applications

Apple makes it easy for us to delete applications by 'bundling' all the necessary folders and masking it as a clickable icon.

To find out whether an application is bundled, Right Click > Show Package Contents

However, even after deletion, application bundles can leave behind preference files and application support files that occupy space on your hard drive.

Preference Files

Preference files contain a list of parameters that the system software uses to define your preferences. In essence, they store your user settings.

Preference files end in .plist

Sometimes, deleting preference files erases the serial number and important application settings, so make sure you really want to erase the application in question before doing so and always back-up the application in case you change your mind.

Why Is The Library Hidden?

The Library folder, which stores the preference files, is located at the root level of your system and contains all the data required to operate your laptop.

Never delete, rename or remove the Library folders as you will lose system files and will be unable to use your Mac!

Since it is deleted for your own safety, I'm gonna show you a safer way to delete preference files and application support files.

To find your Library folder:

1. Go to Finder > Go
2. Hold down Option to reveal the hidden Library

Deleting Application Files Within The Finder

You can access all the application files and additional files straight from the Finder.

To delete additional files:

1. Type in the application name in the search
2. In the second search bar below the first use the rule: System Files are included

This will reveal all preference files, application files and application support files right in the Finder. You can now safely delete the application without having to enter the Library

Reboot Your Computer To Delete File Traces

ONLY DO SO IF YOU HAVE AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE.

To back up your mac:

1. Turn Time Machine On
2. Select Disk > Use Backup Disk

To wipe your mac:

1. Restart the computer while holding down the COMMAND and R keys until the Mac OS X

Utilities window appears.

2. Select Disk Utility from the Mac OS X Utilities window and click on the Continue button.

3. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the left side list. Click

on the Erase tab in the DU main window.

4. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on the Security button

and set the Zero Data option to one-pass.

5. Click on the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.

6. Quit DU and return to the Mac OS X Utilities window.

7. Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Install button.

8. Upon completion shutdown the computer.

The Activity Monitor

The Activity Monitor is located in the Utilities Folder and informs you of all the processes currently running on your computer. This lets you know which applications are taking up the most processing power and how that is affecting your computer.

Do not close any running processes that you do not recognize. To find out whether they are safe to close, Google the name of the process in question to determine what it belongs to and if it needs to currently be opened.

Real Memory & Virtual Memory

These sections inform you on how much memory current applications are taking up. If you find yourself using a lot of Virtual Memory, consider closing applications or increasing your RAM so applications can open faster.

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Thank you for stopping by and I hope I was able to help you clean up your Mac.

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Effective until November 1st, 2013