How to Enable Flash Plugin for Specific Web Sites Only in Safari for Mac OS X

Safari 7 now provides finely tuned controls over what websites can use which browser plugins, and there are few better uses for such a feature than selectively limiting the Adobe Flash Player plugin to only be enabled for specifically approved websites. Basically this means you can have the Flash player installed on your Mac, but blocked for your wider web experience, while still being allowed on a few select sites that you trust the plugin to run on. This serves as a perfectly reasonable alternative to uninstalling the plugin in it’s entirety, and it’s easy to configure for all websites and selective websites in Safari for OS X:

1. Open Safari and then go to “Preferences”, accessible from the Safari menu


2. Choose the “Security” tab and look for “Internet plug-ins”, then click the “Manage Website Settings…” button
   

   

   
   


3. Select “Adobe Flash Player” from the left side to gather a list of websites that have used or attempted to use the Flash plug-in


4. Pull down the menu alongside each URL to fine-tune Flash for that website, choosing one of five options:
   
   
   
   • Ask – Safari will ask permission to run Flash if it is encountered
   
   
   • Block – blocks all Flash for the website from automatically loading, this is essentially like Click-To-Play and can be overruled by selecting a Flash object and choosing to run
   
   
   • Allow – Flash will always run when encountered for that specific website
   
   
   • Allow Always – Flash will always run when encountered for specific websites, even if the Flash plugin has been disabled due to being outdated or insecure
   
   
   • Run in Unsafe Mode – not recommended, overrides any security preferences within Safari to give Flash free reign to run
   
   
   
   


5. Optional but recommended is to adjust a universal setting for all websites at the bottom of the panel by pulling down the menu next to “When visiting other websites:” – the five available options are the same as listed above. Generally, either “Ask” or “Block” are the safest universal options to use, but user preference varies

This type of fine-tuning of the Flash plugin used to require third party extensions or tools like ClickToFlash, but now the feature is built directly into Safari Preferences and no longer requires any extension or plugin. Users who have selectively the enabled Java plugin before will find this is now part of the same general Security settings panel.

My preferred preferences are to to have Flash Player set to “Block” for all websites, and only selectively allowed on sites I approve. This also has a side effect of basically functioning as an ad blocker for Safari (minus the specific plugin) for many animated banners and videos, though unobtrusive stationary ads still come through.

Also notable with new versions of Safari is how older versions of plugins, like Flash Player, will be automatically disabled if they are found to contain known security issues. This happens automatically, unless the user specifies otherwise with the “Allow Always” or “Run in Unsafe Mode” options described earlier. It is highly recommended to not override that settings as it may prevent a variety of potential security problems. Whenever possible, the best thing to do is simply update Flash Player to the latest version of the plug-in instead.

Yes, this works with all other plugins, but Flash is easily the most hated/loved and generally controversial, thus the emphasis.

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Turn Off the iPhone Flashlight with a Quick Camera Tap

Maybe I’m just a total boring square, but the newly built-in iPhone flashlight is probably my most used feature of iOS 7, and the Control Center in general is really my favorite feature of all the changes brought to the iPhone software. I use the flashlight setting just about every evening, whether just for unlocking the front door at night or serving as a basic flashlight on a nighttime walk (it seems to last about 1 minute per percentage point of battery life, for those who are wondering how long they can rely on the light). With something that gets so much use, it sure is nice to find a quicker way to use the feature, and here is a super simple trick to quickly switch the flashlight back off again:

• Use Control Center to turn the iPhone flashlight on as usual, exit out of Control Center or hit the power button to lock the screen


• Hit the Home button to show the lock screen, then tap the Camera icon to turn off the flashlight instantly (no need to slide on Camera to access it, just touch the icon)

With a simple tap, the Camera icon hops up slightly, which will indicate the camera has been turned off. So simple, and it really is faster even if by just a few seconds – but hey, it can add up over time right?

Presumably this works because the Camera app wants to gain access to the flashlight for use as the standard camera flash function, which is it’s original intention anyway. Thus, by tapping on the Camera button, the flashlight turns off, without having to go back to Control Center and tapping the other button again. If you’re a regular flashlight user, give it a try.

Heads up to CultOfMac for finding this great little trick.

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Generate Secure Passwords in Safari with iCloud Keychain in Mac OS X

iCloud Keychain is a password management feature that arrived to the Mac with OS X Mavericks, and to the mobile Apple world with iOS 7. Basically it stores encrypted passwords securely within iCloud, which can then be accessed securely through your Mac or iOS device, allowing you to never have to enter a password again. That’s convenient enough, but another great feature is iCloud Keychains ability to randomly generate secure passwords directly in Safari, which are then stored in the keychain service as part of the AutoFill service, then accessible from any of your other Macs or iOS devices.

Many users don’t have this feature turned on by default though, so let’s cover enabling iCloud Keychain, and then using the function to generate a secure password directly in Safari during the familiar ‘new account’ signup process that is ubiquitous throughout the web.

Enable iCloud Keychain Support for OS X

First you’ll want to enable iCloud Keychain, or at least confirm that you have it enabled. This is simple:

1. Head to the  Apple menu and open System Preferences


2. Open the “iCloud” preference panel – if you somehow do not yet have an iCloud account you will need one to access any iCloud features


3. Scroll through the list and locate “Keychain” and be sure the box next to it is checked, then exit out of System Preferences

Note that if you haven’t used iCloud Keychain before you will be asked to setup an iCloud Security Code, this is used to authorize other devices to use the iCloud Keychain, and to verify your identity. Do not forget that security code, it’s important.

Generate a Secure Password in Safari & Store in iCloud Keychain

Now that iCloud Keychain support is on, we can use it to generate and, more importantly, store secure passwords. Followers of OSXDaily probably already know that Keychain can generate strong passwords on the Mac, the difference here is storing them in the cloud which provides for easy access. If you had Safari open when you enabled iCloud Keychain, quit and relaunch the app before beginning:

1. Open Safari and go to any website signup page, we’ll use Facebook as an example but anything with a “New Password” field works


2. Create the account as usual, and when you click or tab into the “New Password” field, note the pop-up surfaces saying “Use Safari suggested password:” – this is the randomly generated password


3. Select that password to use it, which then gets encrypted and stored in iCloud, and complete the web signup process as usual

This is so easy, and accessing that secure password is now done as part of AutoFill for all devices that also use iCloud Keychain, regardless of either being on OS X or iOS. The only requirement is that the feature is also enabled on that device, and that the same iCloud account is used. Remember, setting up new devices with iCloud Keychain will require the entry of the iCloud Security Code to be entered as an additional security precaution.

You’ll notice the password suggested is usually a string of gibberish with special characters, which is exactly what you want if you’re looking for a secure password. They are not meant to be easy to remember, or easy to read, because with iCloud Keychain the user is not meant to ever know the password since it’s accessible via iCloud as needed. This is in contrast to asking Siri to generate a random password, which are secure, but you’d obviously have to either try to remember it yourself, or write down.

How Secure are Passwords Stored in iCloud Keychain?

With any online service it’s natural to wonder about security these days, and thankfully Apple is very open about what encryption strength it uses to secure saved password data stored in iCloud Keychain:

[iCloud Keychain] uses 256-bit AES encryption to store and transmit passwords and credit card information. Also uses elliptic curve asymmetric cryptography and key wrapping.

In a short summary, that’s very secure. You can read more on Apple’s iCloud security page. For some additional background, AES is the standard used by the US Government, and AES 256 is used by the NSA to protect against (currently theoretical) quantum computing, those interested in the details of these can read more on Wikipedia and on the NSA’s cryptography page.

Overall I’m very comfortable with iCloud Keychain, particularly for the infinite amount of fairly mundane logins out there for seemingly every website in the world. If you’re only half-convinced, perhaps considering using iCloud Keychain in limited situations, for sites that you don’t really care much about anyway. And if you’re a security buff, don’t miss our ongoing security series for iOS and OSX, with tips ranging from simple to complex.

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Apple Now Airing Annual Holiday TV Commercial: “Misunderstood”

Apple has started airing their annual holiday TV commercial for this season, now running on most popular TV networks, the video has also been embedded below for easy viewing. This years focus is on the iPhone and it’s ability to make and edit a movie on the go, which can then be shared with others using the wireless AirPlay service.

The advertisement, titled “Misunderstood”, follows a story theme, told indirectly through a teenage boy who looks glued to his iPhone and generally disinterested in family holiday festivities going on around him. A variety of seasonal activities are going on ranging from Christmas greetings to snowman building, tree decorating, sledding, and walks in the snow, while “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is playing in the background. About halfway through the commercial, the assumed to be bored teenager takes center stage to share with the family what he’s been actually doing – not staring into another world on his phone, but instead crafting a touching family holiday movie, made entirely on his iPhone. The ad ends with “Happy Holidays” and the Apple logo.

Apple has run holiday-themed commercials for several years in a row now, last year the focus was on using the iPad with FaceTime, the 2011 spot was my personal favorite, Santa using Siri, while 2010 featured Santa using FaceTime. Despite those older videos being posted to Apple’s official YouTube channel, they currently show as “private” and are no longer viewable.

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Improve the iOS Define Function by Adding a New Dictionary

The tap-to-define a word trick in iOS can dramatically help reading comprehension and with learning new words when an unfamiliar word comes up in an article or book. This quick Define feature isn’t just useful for students with an iPad or iPod touch, it’s helpful for the rest of us too, long out of school and just reading the daily news on our iPhones.

While the standard Apple Dictionary that ships with iOS is pretty good, it’s not perfect and doesn’t have definitions for every single word. Also, and perhaps more relevant to most “Define” function users, you may notice a “No definition found” error when trying to define a word that you know for certain is a word, often just because the tense is different. Not to get too off topic, but that means changing an infinite (the basic form of a word) to a past tense version (adding “ed”) or a present participle (like adding “ing”). If you’re wondering where this is going, stay with me just a moment longer… because what this means to the Apple Dictionary function in iOS is that a word like “tuck” may be given a definition, but that word in past tense like “tucked” won’t be defined, simply due to that minor tense change.

This is frustrating for obvious reasons, and to those learning new words, it may lead to a misunderstanding or assumption that the word isn’t a real word at all, when it is. That is exactly what we’re looking to fix here by adding an additional dictionary with expanded word recognition, which will add more definitions for more terms, but also add better tense recognition.

Improve the iOS Dictionary

We’re going to improve the iOS dictionaries breadth by adding an additional dictionary with increased word recognition. In this case, it will be adding a new English dictionary, but this should work the same with other languages too.

1. Open the “Notes” app and create a new blank note


2. Type out a version of a word that the Apple Dictionary will not define by default, like “tucked”


3. Tap and hold on that word until the contextual menu appears, and choose “Define”


4. When the “No definition found.” error pops up, look to the corner and tap on “Manage”


5. Look for “English – New Oxford American Dictionary” and tap the download button, it looks like a little cloud with a downward pointing arrow coming out of it

If you really want to expand the dictionary, download “English – Oxford Dictionary of English” as well while you’re at this screen, and if you’re looking to be able to define foreign words, go ahead and grab those dictionaries as well. Each dictionary is a raw text file that can be fairly large (anywhere from 500k to 70MB) so let the entire file download before attempting to redefine a word, how long that takes is going to depend on the internet connection speed of the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.

When it is completed, you’ll know because the dictionary gets an (x) button next to it, signifying it can be deleted. More importantly, you’ll now have improved dictionary comprehension that understands past and present tense much better, doing away with the “No definition found” message and actually providing the word in question. Again, using the example for the word “tucked”, which now shows a definition:

The expanded dictionary will also turn up many more definitions for more obscure terms across a wide array of technological, scientific, and medical words too.

This is so helpful that it should probably be included by default in the iOS dictionary, but at the very least, this edtech tip deserves a spot on every iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch used out there in the education world.

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6 Abstract Wallpapers to Make Your Backgrounds Beautiful

It has been a little while since we have done a wallpaper roundup, but for those who are bored with their existing device backgrounds we’ve got six beautiful high resolution choices to pick from to spruce things up. They’re all following a loosely abstract focused theme, which makes them particularly good for iOS 7 devices, one of which is a new wallpaper that arrived in the recent iOS 7.1 beta 2 build, and two are nebula shots from NASA, which are so out of this world they are basically abstractions to us Earth dwellers anyway. Each of the images are large enough resolution to be appropriate wallpaper or desktop backgrounds for just about any screen size, whether you have a retina iPad, Retina MacBook Pro, a 27″ iMac, 11″ MacBook Air, or anything in between.

As usual, click on any large thumbnail pic below to open the full-sized wallpaper image.

(Quick side note for iOS 7 users who are annoyed with the wallpaper automatically resizing itself; you can stop that behavior by resizing the wallpaper yourself to the precise screen resolution, turning off parallax, or using a screen shot trick for an instant perfect size capture, each of these methods is described here.

Horsehead & Orion Nebulas

Square abstractions

New iOS 7.1 Beta wallpaper from 9to5mac

Snowflakes from iDownloadBlog

Emission Nebula

Shapes & Abstractions from 2048px

Are none of these to your liking? We’ve got many more wallpaper posts that may better suit your fancy, check them out!

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