It's easy to load up your Mac's menu bar with useful add-ons that give you quick access to settings, information, and fast data entry, but it's also easy to quickly fill up and turn into an unmanageable mess. Apple lets you rearrange the items in your menu bar, which is a nice start, but if you need more control over how you see everything you packed in, it's time to turn to third-party apps.

Spotlight is a great tool for sifting through the files on your Mac's drives to find exactly what you need. It isn't so great, however, when its Index file get corrupted and you don't see all of your files -- or your Mac's fans start spinning incessantly.

Apple's MacBook Pro and MacBook Air charger is great because it includes a built-in way to wind up its MagSafe cord. The problem is that it's kind of easy to bend and fray the cord over time where it goes into the power supply, even with the extra reinforcement Apple added. Thanks to a quick winding technique, however, you don't have to worry about frayed cords and potential electrical hazards.

Sometimes I'm surprised when someone asks me a tech question that I just assumed everyone knew the answer to, like recently when I was asked about changing the default Internet search engine on the iPhone. It's an easy switch, and as I was reminded, if you don't ask you won't learn.

There are some great options available right from your iPhone's recent calls list, like adding the number that called to your contacts or your favorites. But there are a couple of things you may not have known that you can do with your recent calls. Things that may make life easier. Things that may save the world! OK, not that. But they're fun and handy to know anyhow.

Control-clicking a document to see the Open With contextual menu is a handy way to choose exactly which app you use to open a PDF, JPG, or any other file. OS X has a problem, however, where duplicate apps can show up and make the list grow longer and longer. You can fix that issue when it crops up as long as you don't mind a quick trip to Terminal.

Emoji are the smiley-face characters you can add to text and chat messages, and those symbols are included with OS X and iOS. All you need to know is where to look. All we ask is that you use your Emoji responsibly.

If you routinely need to use the same settings when printing documents from your Mac it quickly becomes a pain to make those changes every time. Turns out OS X has had a feature to save your custom print settings for a long time, and it's hiding in plain sight.

Sometimes you need to add special information into your Contacts program, such as a person's job title, his spouse's name, or his anniversary date. You can put that kind of stuff into the notes, sure, but you can also add new fields into your cards as you need them (and even customize them!). After all, nothing says "totally NOT creepy" quite like remembering every little detail about the people around you, right? On that note, we're going to be sending your niece a birthday card this coming Tuesday.

Photographers can be a picky bunch. "The lighting's all wrong!" "My images have a bluish cast!" "I didn't capture the true essence of my burrito!" OK, that last one may only apply on Twitter. In any case, iPhoto has a nifty way to copy the adjustments you've made to one picture—such as exposure level, saturation, and temperature—and paste them onto other images, so you don't have to click through the same options 47 times. We'll tell you how, but only if you promise not to tweet pictures of your lunch anymore.