For security purposes, you might want to set OS X Leopard to automatically log you out of your system after a certain amount of minutes.1

1. Open System Preferences under the Finder menu.

2. Under the Personal area, select Security.

3. At the bottom of the window, select Log out after x minutes of activity.

Would you like to stop the message: The application program name quit unexpectedly from appearing when a program crashes? You can do this using the Terminal application.

1. Open Terminal from the Utilites folder.

2. Type:

defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none

and press Enter.

To enable it again in the future, use defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType prompt

How to add a Stack for Recent Things to your Dock in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

1. Launch Terminal from the Utilities folder.

2. Type the following and press Return or Enter on your keyboard.

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’

3. Now you can either restart your Mac or kill and restart the dock by typing the following and pressing Return or Enter after each of these commands.

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled Boolean YES;killall Dock

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled Boolean NO;killall Dock

Now you should have a nice Recent Things Stack added to your dock.

You may want to turn off Spotlight to increase system performance or to prevent it from indexing personal data. Here’s how to do it under Mac OS X Tiger.

Launch Terminal from the Utilites folder.

To disable Spotlight, type the following and press Return:

% sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

To disable it permanently, type this instead:
% sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

To enable Spotlight type the following and press Return:
% sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

To enable it permanently, type this instead:
% sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

For instructions on how to do this in Mac OS X Leopard, see How to completely disable Spotlight.

Some users of OS X 10.5 Leopard don’t seem to be big fans of the transparent menu bar. To disable it, perform the following steps.

1. Check to ensure that you are updated to System 10.5.2.

2. Open System Preferences.

3. Open Desktop & Screen Saver under the Personal section.

4. Uncheck the box for Translucent Menu Bar.

How to enable the OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Time Machine feature to create backups of your system state.

1. Open System Preferences under the Finder menu. Then Time Machine.

2. Open Time Machine preferences.

3. Set the switch to ON.

4. Click Change Disk.

5. Select the disc you want Time Machine to utilize for backups and click Use for Backup.

Now at anytime you can revert back to a previous system state. It’s very useful for when you accidentally delete something and would like to get it back.

It seems that my Mac wants to update itself at the most inopportune times. Prevent the Apple updates from automatically getting software updates.

1. Click the Apple menu and select System Preferences.

2. Click on the Software Update icon.

3. Under the Update Software tab, uncheck the Check for Updates checkbox to disable the automatic updates.