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Articles by Mac tips
The Mac’s Magic Shortcut to Trashing Files and Photos Quickly
by Austin MacWorks | Aug 19, 2021 | Mac OS Tips | Sure, you could select a file in the Finder and choose File > Move to Trash or drag it to the Trash in the Dock. Similarly, you can trash selected photos in Apple’s Photos app by choosing Image > Delete X Photos, or by pressing the Delete key, but both of those methods result in a dialog asking if you’re sure. The easiest way of trashing a file in the Finder or a picture in Photos is to select it and press Command-Delete.
You should check your Apple Watch trends now [Cult of Mac Magazine 335]
News Top stories Find out how to decipher the data hiding behind the Activity app's new tab. Cover: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac A new feature in the Activity app offers deep insights into progress you’re making on your personal fitness goals. Find out how to check your Activity Trends and decipher all that delicious workout data your Apple Watch is squirreling away. You’ll find that how-to, along with new tips for Mac power users, in this week’s free issue of Cult of Mac Magazine.
This Command key shortcut will change how you use your Mac
How-To Top stories Take command. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac There are two kinds of Mac users. The sad, harried folks who don’t know how to use this easy, essential, life-changing Command key trick. And the happy, efficient, relaxed people who learned it years ago. If you’ve seen the movie Back to the Future, it’s like the difference between the two 2015 versions of George McFly, before and after Marty screws around with the 1950s. This trick will change your life. Are you ready?
Check out these secret (and super-useful) settings for your Mac
How-To Top stories Dust off your Terminal to use these great hacks. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac By using commands in your Mac’s built-in Terminal app, you can quickly change settings you probably didn’t even know existed. Some of these Mac settings are just shortcuts — you can enable them in the usual way, using the mouse. But Terminal makes things simple.
How to switch on Mojave’s Dynamic Desktop
How-To Top stories Imagine this, only more dynamic. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac The Dynamic Desktop is a great macOS Mojave feature. It changes the desktop image throughout the day, so your wallpaper always matches the time of day — nighttime images at night, shadowless glare at noon, and so on. Today we’ll see how to switch it on, and where to find new Dynamic Desktop images to add to the defaults. Dynamic Desktops on Mojave First off, Dynamic Desktops require macOS Mojave.
How to recover previous versions of your files on Mac
How-To Top stories There's no need to keep a zillion different versions of a file on the Mac. Photo: Phil Roeder/Flickr CC What happens if you’re working on a document and you realize you screwed it up? Maybe you deleted a few paragraphs without realizing. Or you’ve just been writing a bunch of nonsense for the past half-hour and wish you could go back to where you were before? On the Mac, you can easily do just that. It’s called versions, and it’s automatic.
40 top MacBook Pro Touch Bar tips [Cult of Mac Magazine No. 280]
News Top stories These 40 tips will make you love the Touch Bar (if you don't already). Cover: Graham Bower/Marty Cortinas/Cult of Mac Some people love the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar. Other people absolutely hate it. Bottom line is that the thin OLED strip can work wonders — if you use it right! Get our top 40 tips for making the most of the Touch Bar in this week’s free issue of Cult of Mac Magazine.
How to make a Group FaceTime call on Mac or iOS
With the new Group FaceTime feature in iOS 12.1 and macOS Mojave 10.14.1, you can call up to 32 people and chat with them all at the same time. AdvertisementApple took some extra time getting this feature working perfectly. Now that’s it’s here, let’s see how to use Group FaceTime on iOS devices and Mac to get in on those massive group chats. You can start a Group FaceTime in a couple of ways, using either the FaceTime app or the Messages app.
How to get Low Power Mode on your Mac right now
The iOS Low Power Mode is fantastic, letting you squeeze the most possible uptime from your iPhone or iPad. But what about the Mac? Why isn’t there a Low Power Mode for MacBooks? After all, they’re just as likely to be used away from power as an iPad. Well, here’s some good news. Using third-party software, it’s easy to put your Mac into Low Power Mode whenever you like. You can get around a third more battery life using an app called Turbo Boost Switcher.
How to add AirDrop to your Mac's Dock
AirDrop is a fantastic Apple feature. You can use it to share files of pretty much any size with anyone nearby, even in the middle of a desert with no Wi-Fi and no cellular. It Just Works, and once you get used to it, any other way of sharing files seems primitive. AirDrop is an app, like any other, but it doesn’t live in the Applications folder, nor in the Utilities subfolder. The AirDrop app is hidden away deep in a system folder that is usually best left untouched.
How to use the Mac's secret emoji panel
Finding emoji on the iPhone and iPad is easy — you just tap the little emoji key in the corner of your keyboard, and there they are. Emoji are fully supported on the Mac, too, but where do you find them? If you don’t already know, then this trick is going to blow your mind, because it’s just as easy to get to the emoji panel on the Mac as it is on the iPhone. Well, maybe “blow your mind” was a bit strong. This is just an emoji viewer after all.
How to give your Finder window superpowers
The Finder has been with the Mac since day one, way back in 1984. But just because it’s old, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some new tricks. Did you know, for instance, that you can add a path bar to the bottom of the window to show the path of the current folder on your Mac? Or that you can add a status bar in the same spot so you always know how full your drive is? Or that you can add a permanent preview pane over on the right side of a Finder window, even in icon and list views?
How and why to redirect email instead of forwarding it
We all know about forwarding email. It’s the electronic equivalent of putting a received letter in a new envelope and sending it on to someone else. But did you know that you can also redirect emails so that it seems like they arrived from the original sender? You could, for instance: Unless the final recipient is really brain-dead, then this will never work as a scam to trick them into doing all the work your boss assigned to you, but it’s a very practical alternative to just forwarding emails.
Pro Tip: How to use Safari's super-quick pop-up tab history shortcut
When you want to get back to a previously viewed page in Safari on your iPhone, what do you do? Do you keep tapping the back button until you find the page you want? To quickly pop open a list of your recently viewed pages, just long-press on the Back arrow in Safari. This trick works on both the iPhone and the iPad, and you can even use it on the Mac. On the iPad you see a popover panel, while on the iPhone the list slides up to take over the entire screen. On Mac, you’ll see a simple list.
Pro Tip: See full-screen Quick Look slideshows in macOS Finder
Quick Look is one of the Finder’s best features. Whenever you have a file selected in the Finder, just hit the space bar and you’ll see a preview of that file. It’s a great way to quickly view photos, or read the contents of a document, without opening it in an app. But did you know you can pull up full-screen Quick Look slideshows just as easily? To get a full-screen slideshow in the Finder, select the photos you want to see, then hit the option (?) key while tapping the space bar.
Fine-tune your music with Visual EQ in GarageBand for iPad | Cult of Mac
One great recent addition to GarageBand for iOS is the Visual EQ, an equalizer that is about as far away from the 1980s-style bank of sliders as it’s possible to get. The Visual EQ also shows you a waveform of the actual sound you’re adjusting, so you can see as well as hear the effects immediately. This visual element, combined with a clever three-“band” EQ, makes this a very powerful tool for shaping your music.
How to make the Mac's Launchpad useful again | Cult of Mac
Try this: If you’re reading on a Mac, go ahead and pinch in on your trackpad with all five fingers. If it’s enabled, then you’ll see a grid of apps. lots of apps. That’s Launchpad, which is kind of like an iOS home screen for your Mac. The problem is, it shows all your apps, in seemingly random order. There’s a search bar to narrow things down, but by the time you’ve got that far, you may as well have used Spotlight to launch your app. Happily, the Launchpad is quite customizable.
9 ways to strengthen your Apple products | Cult of Mac
This post is brought to you by TheBestVPN.com. Think you’ll never fall victim to a cybercrime? Think again. Recent data shows individuals have a one in 10 chance of becoming a victim of cybercrime each year. In fact, people are 20 times more likely to experience fraud than robbery. It’s time to start taking your data security seriously by ensuring your smartphone, computer and online accounts are safe from hackers. Luckily, Apple products are pretty secure on their own.
How to speed up your iPhone if the Spectre patch slows it down | Cult of Mac
Spectre is the worst kind of security flaw. Not only do the partial fixes not even protect against attacks, but they also slow down your iPhone, or other device. But things aren’t quite as bad as they seem. You can take steps to speed up your iPhone once again, and one of the fixes not only makes the web faster, but also fixes Spectre’s biggest attack vector. Spectre is caused by a flaw in the design of the chips that run pretty much all computers, from Mac to PC, Android to iOS.
How to get the best battery life from your MacBook | Cult of Mac
Did you know that leaving your MacBook plugged in all the time is a sure way to ruin its battery? That instead you should use your notebook computer on battery power for an hour or two each day? That’s the advice from battery health app FruitJuice, which will help you to keep your battery in tip-top condition. Just like you, your MacBook battery needs to take breaks throughout the work day.
How to find and use the custom spelling dictionary on your Mac | Cult of Mac
Your Mac has a built-in dictionary and spellchecker. You knew that. You also know that you can add and remove words from that dictionary as you go, teaching the dictionary on the fly. But did you know that there’s also a text document on your Mac that contains your entire personal custom spelling dictionary? And that you can use this to move your spelling preferences between computers? First, a quick recap on adding and removing words from the dictionary.
How to reopen a recently closed tab in Safari on iOS | Cult of Mac
You’ve done it. We’ve all done it. You’ve closed a tab in Safari and instantly realized that it was the wrong one. It’s not the end of the world. You can open a fresh tab and schlep over to the history panel to hunt down that URL. Or, if you remember something about the title of the page, you can start typing it into Safari’s URL bar and watch for suggestions that match. But there’s a much easier way to access all your recently closed Safari tabs — and it’s just one long-press away.
iOS Mail filters quickly tame overflowing mailboxes | Cult of Mac
The iOS Mail app gets overlooked by power users, but it’s still the default for most people, unless they’re using Gmail in the browser. And that’s not a bad thing, because Apple’s Mail app has gotten pretty great in recent years, from smart mailboxes, to swipe gestures, to iOS 11’s drag-and-drop. Today we’re going to take a look at a feature so hidden you may never have seen it before.
High Sierra 'Content Caching' turns your Mac into a local iCloud server
When iOS update time rolls round, you probably run through all the devices in your home, downloading those multi-gigabyte updates over and over. If you have a few iPhones, plus a couple of iPads, it all adds to a lot of data, and a lot of waiting. New in macOS 10.13 High Sierra is Content Caching, which stores these downloads on a Mac, so they only have to be downloaded once. This doesn’t only save on internet data usage. It also makes it way faster to update several devices.
Slow iPhone? Here's how to check the health of your battery | Cult of Mac
With all the fuss about old, depleted batteries slowing down your iPhones, it might be a good idea to at least check the health of your iPhone’s battery. To do this, you can use a free tool called coconutBattery, an app that digs into your iOS and Mac devices to tell you how old they are, and how strong your battery is compared to when it was new.
How to search Safari tabs across all your devices, instantly | Cult of Mac
You’re going to love this one if you’re a keyboard-shortcut user. And if you’re not, then this tip might be the thing that finally converts you. Did you know that you can quickly search across all open Safari tabs on all your devices, just by hitting a key-combo and then typing? This tip has two parts, although that makes it sound way more complex than it actually is. The first part is Safari’s Tab Overview, the cool grid-like view of thumbnails showing all the open tabs in the current window.
DropStream: Drag-and-drop movie streaming for Apple TV | Cult of Mac
You can snap photos of your iPhone, edit them on your iPad, and view them on your giant-screen iMac, with everything almost instantaneously in sync. But what if you have a video clip that you want to watch on your Apple TV? Oh man, maybe it’s best not to even ask. Now, though, there’s an app that lets you do just that: DropStream. DropStream’s function is right there in its name. You drop a movie onto its Mac window, and the movie starts playing on your Apple TV (or Chromecast).
How to add a fancy email signature on iPhone and Mac | Cult of Mac
You already know that you can add a signature to your outgoing emails in the Mail app on iOS and macOS, but did you know that you can make that signature fancy? And I mean, really fancy. You don’t just have to put your email address or phone number in there in regular text. You can add any kind of text you like, complete with colors, and cool fonts, and you can even add an image. First off, lets see where you add your signature.
Force Dropbox to download your shared links directly | Cult of Mac
If you send somebody a Dropbox link, then they don’t just get the file you meant to send them. They are given an opportunity to go through the whole Dropbox Experience. Images may be presented in a folder or a gallery, a PDF will be rendered in the browser, perhaps with its images scaled so your amazing presentation looks like pixelated crap. And all the while your client/friend/boss will see Dropbox’s corporate chrome surrounding your content. Dropbox likes to show previews of the files you share.
How to design and print your own business card using Pages | Cult of Mac
Today, almost everyone carries a smartphone, and that’s where we keep our contacts lists. And yet we still exchange business cards. Why? They’re easy to use, they don’t require you to mess withAirDrop, or any other convoluted way to share, and — perhaps most important — they’re customary. We’re used to handing over our details on card. So today we’re going to see how to make and print a business card in Pages, for Mac or iOS. The good news is, it’s super easy. The bad news? Think of the trees.
How to shorten text with the Mac's built-in TL;DR tool | Cult of Mac
The Mac has a great built-in tool named Summarize, which does just that. If you have a chunk of text that is too long, then you can shorten it using the Mac’s very own TL;DR generator, a system service which will take any text and shrink it, keeping only the important bits. The Summarize service has been on the Mac since forever, at least as far back as the early OS X, and perhaps before.
How to add quick keyboard shortcuts for emojis on Mac and iOS | Cult of Mac
If you use emojis, the iOS keyboard is fantastic. It suggests emojis for you as you type words, and you can insert them into your messages with a tap. But what about the Mac? How can you add emojis with the keyboard on the desktop? And how can you force iOS to remember shortcuts for your favorite emoji on the iPhone and iPad? The answer to both is Text Replacement, which is built into both macOS and iOS. Text Replacement is usually used to avoid typing long phrases over and over.
How to use Spark's amazing advanced email features | Cult of Mac
Apple’s own Mail app is pretty amazing in iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, and is more than good enough for most people. But Cult of Mac readers aren’t “most people,” and that’s where Readdle’s Spark comes in. If you’re looking for more features, like scheduled sending, automatic follow-ups, and integrations with third-party apps and services, then Spark is the place to look. Today we’ll look at how to use these great new features. Spark just added these two new features to its Mac and iOS versions.
How to find your custom ringtones after iTunes dumped them
The latest version of iTunes — 12.7 — removes the App Store. That’s bad news for folks who like to keep backups of old iOS apps around, but good news for people who have bloat and clutter. But the update also removes all your custom ringtones, so you can’t manage them from your Mac. Don’t despair. You can still download purchased ringtones, and copy your own tones across from the Mac. It’s just not obvious how to do it any more.
How to find your custom ringtones after iTunes dumped them | Cult of Mac
The latest version of iTunes — 12.7 — removes the App Store. That’s bad news for folks who like to keep backups of old iOS apps around, but good news for people who have bloat and clutter. But the update also removes all your custom ringtones, so you can’t manage them from your Mac. Don’t despair. You can still download purchased ringtones, and copy your own tones across from the Mac. It’s just not obvious how to do it any more.
How to use the most useful Finder keyboard shortcuts | Cult of Mac
You probably spend a lot of time in the macOS Finder. Much of it is likely spent pointing and clicking, using the trackpad pointer to duplicate files, or to click back to the folder you were in a moment ago. Today, we’ll look at the most useful day-to-day Finder keyboard shortcuts. Most of what you do in the Finder is a) finding, looking at, and moving files, and b) changing the layout of the workspace to make a) easier.
How to make JPEG screenshots the default on your Mac | Cult of Mac
By default, any screenshots you take on your Mac, iPad or iPhone get saved as PNG files. That’s great, because PNG files are pixel-perfect, and they support transparency (for those neat floating-window shadows). But they’re not JPEGs, which means they’re not universally supported. Luckily, you can easily make JPEG screenshots the default, at least on the Mac. Why would you want JPEG screenshots? They’re usually smaller, so they’re easier to post to Twitter, etc. They’re also universal.
How to use the Universal Clipboard on iOS | Cult of Mac
Since last fall, your Mac and your iOS devices have shared a Universal Clipboard. That is, you can copy on one device and paste on another. It’s seamless, and incredibly useful. For instance, you could copy a shipment tracking number in Mail on your Mac, then paste it into the tracking app on your iPhone. Or you could take a screenshot on your iPhone, then paste it into a blog post you’re writing on your iPad. Universal Clipboard is so easy to use, you might have already used it without realizing.
How to kill pesky sharing popups in Safari on Mac and iOS | Cult of Mac
You know those supper-annoying bars that so often hover over a web page on your iPhone? The ones that offer sharing popups for social media sites that you never use? The ones that cover up half the text you’re trying to read? The ones that you hate so much you’d rather just close the browser tab than try to read the page through this aggressive frame of junk? Well, there’s good news for you all, because software engineer Alisdair McDiarmid hates them too.
iOS 11 Dock makes Handoff worth using again | Cult of Mac
Handoff is one of those iOS/Mac features that seems great, but is limited in use. But a simple tweak has made Handoff waaaay better in iOS 11. Now, instead of having a tiny app icon appear in the corner of your lock screen, Handoff apps show up right there in the new iOS 11 Dock. This simple change has gotten me using Handoff again, instead of ignoring it like I have for the past however many years. Handoff is a great technology, hindered (until now) by bad implementation on iOS.
5 ways to boost your MacBook battery life | Cult of Mac
Despite the MacBook’s svelte design, their batteries last a long time because Apple put a lot of thought into how the hardware and software work together. Still, if you find yourself running out of juice, some simple changes can help you extend your MacBook battery life. Apple designs its laptops to maximize user productivity and minimize extra work, but following these simple tips will boost MacBook battery life considerably.
How To always open a website in Persistent Reader View in iOS 11 | Cult of Mac
Do you have any websites you read regularly in Reader view? Maybe they’re covered in popovers that keep distracting you? Or perhaps the design hurts your sensitive eyes, or the otherwise smart author insists on using Comic Sans for the text body? Well, there’s good news: Safari on iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra now let you activate Persistent Reader View, which automatically switches the clean Reader view in as the page loads. For this demo, I’ve picked one of the busiest websites on the web.
How to manipulate iOS text using the keyboard | Cult of Mac
Because iOS is a variant of macOS, it has a lot in common with the Mac. One of the things that iOS shares with the Mac is the keyboard. Not the on-screen keyboard, but the real, physical, clackety-buttoned keyboard. Thanks to its OS X heritage, the iPad (and iPhone) can use all the same keyboard tricks to manipulate text that Mac users have been enjoying for years. It even carries some, but not all, of the shortcuts over from the ancient text editor Emacs. What? Don’t worry, it’s not too dorky.
How to quickly search settings in iOS | Cult of Mac
The iOS Settings app is more like a chaotic junk drawer that a neatly-organized filing cabinet. Back when the iPhone launched, it was tidy, with only a few items, all methodically arranged. Then, as more and more features were added to iOS, their settings were tossed in there like you toss spare keys into that kitchen drawer with the rubber bands and spare fuses.
How to automatically import new music into iTunes | Cult of Mac
So, say you have a Dropbox folder that keeps your media files synced across all your machines. Wouldn’t it be super-convenient to have iTunes import music from the Dropbox folder automatically? Also, just double-clicking the media files to import them to iTunes doesn’t sound too much work at first, but, what if your files are scattered all over the disk? For instance, some of you might have organized your media files into different folders by artist name, or by download source.
How to make an A+ term paper in PDF Expert | Cult of Mac
This post is brought to you by PDF Expert Students take heed: The winter semester is off and running, and it’s going to be time to turn in term papers before you know it. If you’re stressing out about getting through your reams of writing in a timely fashion, we’ve got a suggestion you might not have considered — writing with PDFs. PDFs not only produce a great looking final document, they also offer a versatile and flexible format for the writing and research process itself.
How to activate Photos' hidden 3D Flyover view | Cult of Mac
The iOS Photos app might just look like a simple grid-like list, but it has a ton of hidden power. For instance, you can see your photos on a full-screen, 3-D Flyover map. And with one simple swipe on a photograph, you can see where it was taken, see other photos taken nearby, and collections photos that your iPhone figures are related to the one you’re looking at. It’s a fantastic way both to find out more about your pictures, and to browse.
How to print files remotely on your Mac | Cult of Mac
Picture this scenario: You’ve multiple computers at your office and only one of them (which is a Mac) is connected to the printer. Every time you need to print a document stored on these “other” computers, you have to manually transfer the file to the Mac and start the printing process from there. Wouldn’t it be super-convenient if you could just send a document wirelessly and instantly initiate the process of printing files remotely?
Activate Night Shift mode on your Mac and spare your eyes | Cult of Mac
If you use your computer before going to bed, you owe it to your eyes to turn on Night Shift on your Mac. The feature, which adjusts the color of your display to the warmer end of the light spectrum after sundown, eases eye strain and can make falling asleep easier. After introducing Night Shift for iPhone and iPad a year ago, Apple is finally bringing the feature to the Mac.
How to use Apple Pay on your Mac with macOS Sierra | Cult of Mac
With macOS Sierra, Apple Pay finally comes to Macs so you can use the mobile payment service to buy stuff online. The feature works best on the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, but don’t worry Pad f you own an older Apple computer: You can still use Apple Pay if you’ve got a 2012 or newer Mac, as long as you have the latest software and an iPhone or Apple Watch with Apple Pay enabled. To get started, just follow our handy guide on how to use Apple Pay on Mac.
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