Deleting files in your USB flash drive. Is it empty, yet?

Well, when you delete files in your USB flash drive using Commad + Delete or drag them to the Trash, the file is actually not being deleted, but instead it is being hidden. Wow, but that’s true. So from now on, if you really want to erase data from the USB flash drive, make sure you empty the Trash as well, or someone can see your hidden files when they plug it in to a PC.

Or for the paranoids (and it is recommended once in a while), go to Disk Utility (Press Command + Spacebar and type disk utility + enter). Select the USB flash drive on the left side of the panel, and click on the Erase tab and choose ‘Erase Free Space…” You can select which method to erase (reclaim) the “empty space”.

Remember that the ‘Erase’ button on your Disk Utility window is a whole different kind of story, so do not press that one, unless you want to reformat and erase the whole data.

And remember that your Volume Format will probably be MS-DOS (FAT) file system which is fine since you might bring this thing into a friend’s PC :). So my suggestion is that don’t use this ‘Erase’ button if you don’t know what you’re doing. (I learned the hard way, I reformatted the USB flash drive to MS-DOS (FAT) using my Mac on the other day, and now the PC won’t recognize it and it needs to be reformatted under PC :()

No bounching icon

If you find a bit disturbing by a bounching icon when it’s starting up, go to  menu > Dock > Dock Preferences… In the Dock Preferences uncheck ‘Animate Opening Application’.

Now you have a pulse spot underneath the icon as the application opens.

Hide applications

You can hide the application that is running by clicking Command + h. This is very handy when for example the iTunes application. You can still listen to the music and hide the iTunes out of your desktop.

But what about if you just want to see only 1 application that you’re working on, while you want to hide all others in second? Some application will have the ‘Hide others’ feature. Right click the icon on the dock and press Option, you’ll see the ‘Hide’ menu will change to ‘Hide Others’.

And when you want to go to other application and keep the desktop clean, just press Option + click the icon on the Dock Now you have a very clean desktop.

Drag a file out of the stack

In Leopard, stack will come in handy for managing files. When you set the stack as a grid or a fan, you can drag the file out of the stack directly.

Just click the icon in Stack and select the file and drag it to any folder, Mail.app, desktop, etc.

As a bonus while you are at stack, click the stack icon and press Command + a to highlight the application beginning with an A, Command + s for file beginning with S, and so on. You can also move around the stack by the arrow keys and press Return/Enter to open it.

Secure empty trash and bye bye files

When you empty the trash, the trash icon surely looks like it is empty. Is it really gone? Well, not really. By using an application that is specially design to recover the deleted files from a hard drive, it can be restored.

That notion is not accepted by a certain group of people especially the paranoid or the FBI, CIA, etc. But thanks to Mac OS X to include the feature to erase those files out of your machine forever. So when you absolutely, positively 100% sure that you want to erase these files forever, just go to Finder menu > Secure Empty Trash…

Thi process will take a little bit longer than usual, though

Use electronic sticky note from any application

Stickies.app in Leopard can become very handy if you know how to activate it within any application. for example, if you’re on Safari.app, just highlight any text and press Shift + Command + Y.

You can drag any image, song, application or even a movie to this Stickies.app. For me it is best to arrange it on top of the Desktop Click Windows > Collapse (or Command + M), and make it run on start up.