Font Smoothing is a longstanding feature in MacOS that aims to make rendered screen text more legible, and it works by subtly blending the edges of display fonts with the background by using anti-aliasing. The idea is to reduce the jaggedness of screen text, but in practice nowadays it basically makes screen fonts on the Mac look slightly more bold if enabled, and less bold or even thin if disabled. Some users may prefer the look of one or the other, depending on the type of displays they’re using with their Mac, and some users may prefer to manually adjust font smoothing, or even turn it off completely. In modern versions of MacOS there is no longer a simple preferences toggle within System Settings to disable or enable font smoothing, however.
If you’re running macOS Sequoia, MacOS Ventura, macOS Sonoma, MacOS Big Sur, or macOS Monterey, and you want to disable font smoothing (or enable it), you can do so with the help of a super easy to use free app called “Font Smoothing Adjuster”.
iCloud Private Relay is a fantastic privacy feature that is part of the iCloud+ subscription that helps to protect your internet activity and browsing by obfuscating your IP address (via using a temporary IP address) and encrypting your DNS lookups, so that third parties can’t see what websites you’re visiting. The end result is that you gain some additional privacy on the internet, as it makes it more difficult for trackers and data miners to build a profile on you. If you’re an iCloud subscriber and Safari user, you should certainly consider using iCloud Private Relay, and it’s quite easy to enable on the Mac (for what it’s worth, enabling and using iCloud Private Relay on iPhone and iPad is also easy, and recommended).
We’re going to walkthrough how you can enable iCloud Private Relay on the Mac to better protect your online privacy.
Amazon isn’t letting up on the great deals, with the M4 Macbook Air 13″ model now being offered at just $812 for the base 13″ model with 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and Midnight color. You can also get great deals on other colors, but the cheapest by far is the dark Midnight color at the moment. Similarly, the upgraded 15″ 24GB/512GB model in Starlight at a $273 discount for just $1326!
And if the MacBook Air is not enough power for you, the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro 16″ model with M4 Max chip, 48GB RAM, and 1TB SSD is discounted by $559 for just $3,440, down from $3999.
If you’re a Mac user and you’ve ever opened Activity Monitor to explore why your Mac might be feeling slow, it’s likely that you’ve seen a few processes running that could be using a lot of CPU, energy, or memory, in particular cloudd, cloudphotod, photolibraryd, and nsurlsessiond. So what the heck are these processes that are running anyway?
If you’re just looking for some quick info; cloudd, cloudphotod, photolibraryd, and nsurlsessiond are basically background processes that are part of the MacOS experience for users who rely on iCloud, iCloud Photos, and other cloud-related features on the Mac. These processes will typically become active after installing a new system software update, or sometimes after simply rebooting a Mac, but you can also see them running during iCloud syncing, after enabling iCloud Photos, if a shared iCloud Photo Library is updating, and when performing other syncing activity related to iCloud.
Let’s go ahead and dive into each of these MacOS procesess to better understand what they are, why they might be running, and whether or not you should be concerned about their behavior.
The M4 MacBook Air is available at some all-time lowest prices from Amazon, with a whopper of a deal taking $160 off the base model 13″ 16GB/256GB and $260 off the 15″ 24GB/512GB models. If you’ve been thinking about getting a new MacBook Air in either 13″ or 15″ screen sizes, these deals are fantastic and available right now.
The M4 MacBook Air features the super-fast M4 chip that supports Apple Intelligence, easy-on-the-eyes LCD display in 13″ or 15″, dual external display support, 12MP camera with Center Stage, MagSafe charging, two USB-C ports, Touch ID, backlit keyboard, all-day battery life, and is available in multiple color options including Sky Blue, Midnight, Starlight, Silver. You’ll find the biggest discounts available on select configuration and color options, so toy around on the Amazon options until you find what you want.
Apple Watch Series 10 is a fantastic smart watch, with excellent fitness tracking features, heart rate monitor, ECG, crash detection with emergency SOS, fall detection with Emergency SOS, activity tracking, ovulation tracking, GPS, pinch gestures, water and sweat resistance, voice control, Siri commands, all-day battery life, and more. The Apple Watch Series 10 features a 42mm always-on display as well, making it a perfect choice for most people seeking out an Apple Watch.
AirPods Pro 2 with Hearing Aid Functionality – $199 (down from $249)
AirPods Pro 2 are not only widlly popular wireless earbuds, but these headphones offer advanced features like hearing aid functionality, active noise cancellation, high fidelity sound, water and sweat resistance, Spatial Audio, custom fit, transparency mode, ear detection, a USB-C charging case, and more.
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Gamers everywhere are happy that Fortnite is back for iPhone and iPad users, but there’s no Mac client in sight (yet anyway). That doesn’t mean you can’t play Fortnite on the Mac though, because if you have an Apple Silicon Mac, and you’re comfortable running some mods and tweaks, you can get the iOS/iPadOS version of Fortnite running on MacOS with the help of two free tools, FnMacAssistant and Sideloadly.
FnMacAssistant is an app that basically patches the Fortnite IPA file (for iOS and iPadOS) so that it can run in MacOS. Sideloadly is an app that basically lets you sideload apps onto a Mac, and in this case, you’d be sideloading Fortnite. Thus, by combining the two apps, and being comfortable with performing a tweak or two, you’ll have Fortnite running on the Mac.
One of the more curious features of Apple Watch is how the Compass Backtrack feature automatically activates and takes over the Apple Watch screen during workouts, seemingly at random, or even every time a “Hiking” workout or sometimes any outdoor workout of any sort is selected or initiated. Given that the vast majority of hikers, trail runners, joggers, and walkers will typically be on an obvious path or trail, and that trails are fairly obvious to follow, it’s a little unnecessary for Nanny Watch to kick in automatically with a retracing system that takes over your Apple Watch face. Additionally, what nearly every Apple Watch owner wants to see during a workout and probably why they bought an Apple Watch in the first place, is to view typical workout stats, like duration of workout, distance covered, and heart rate information. Nonetheless, Apple Watch does not want you getting lost while walking at your local dog park, and so the Compass will automatically activate with the Backtrack feature and your entire Apple Watch screen is suddenly displaying mostly useless information that is irrelevant to your workout.
The Backtrack feature is probably pretty useful if you routinely go hiking in the backcountry off trails, or if you’re navigating a complex maze of a trail system network where everything looks the same, but both of those are fairly rare for most leisurely hikers, who typically hike on obvious trails that are typically out-and-backs or loops.
macOS Sequoia is a pretty solid operating system with some great features like iPhone Mirroring, and while performance is fantastic for most, not all users are experiencing the speediest of experiences. If you feel like macOS Sequoia is running slower than your Mac was on prior operating system versions, you might appreciate some of these tips to speed up the MacOS experience, and make macOS Sequoia feel a bit faster.
These tips can be relevant to any Mac user, whether running an M4 chip or M1 chip, but may be of particular value on older Macs, where performance concerns are typically more relevant compared to the latest and greatest hardware.
Amazon is continuing to offer some great discounts on MacBook Air models, but by far the best deal is on the upper end 24GB RAM and 512GB SSD model with 15″ display, where you can save $235 off the retail price, bringing the price down to $1364 down from $1599. If you’re been shopping for a top-of-the-line 15″ MacBook Air and don’t want to pay full price, enjoy this 15% discount from Amazon. Other display sizes, memory configurations, and color options are also discounted, though not necessarily at the same rate as the best deal on the upper-end 15″ model.
M4 MacBook Air features the speedy and energy efficient M4 chip with Apple Intelligence support, LCD display in 13″ or 15″ size options, dual display support, 12MP camera with Center Stage, Touch ID, backlit keyboard, all-day battery life, MagSafe charging, two USB-C ports, and is available in various RAM and storage options, as well as in Sky Blue, Midnight, Starlight, Silver color options.
AirPods Pro 2 with Hearing Aid Functionality – $199 (down from $249)
AirPods Pro 2 offer advanced features like hearing aid functionality, active noise cancellation, high fidelity sound, water and sweat resistance, Spatial Audio, custom fit, transparency mode, ear detection, a USB-C charging case, and more.
FTC: OSXDaily is an affiliate partner with Amazon, meaning if you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment which goes towards keeping the site running.
For the majority of existence for iPhone, anytime that music, podcasts, audiobooks, or media was being played on the device but the screen was locked, a volume slider was visible on the iPhone Lock Screen.
The volume slider made it easy to see what volume something was playing at, and also made it very easy to control the volume precisely of whatever was playing, without having to use the volume up or down buttons.
Strangely, Apple removed the constantly visible volume slider from iPhone Lock Screen a while back, but now the feature has quietly returned, albeit it is disabled by default and now appears as a setting in a curious location, Accessibility.
We’re going to show you how to get the volume slider back on your iPhone Lock Screen again.
Amazon is offering nice discounts on the M4 MacBook Air series, in either the 13″ or 15″ screen sizes. You’ll find the best deal on the 24GB RAM models ($198 off the 24GB / 512GB model in 13″!), but there are discounts available on all memory/storage configurations and color options (Sky Blue, Midnight, Starlight, Silver).
M4 MacBook Air features the speedy and energy efficient M4 chip with Apple Intelligence support, LCD display in 13″ or 15″ size options, dual display support, 12MP camera with Center Stage, Touch ID, backlit keyboard, all-day battery life, MagSafe charging, two USB-C ports, and more.
If you’re shopping for a MacBook Air, these are great discounts off the retail price, and cheaper than even the educational discount offered by Apple.
FTC: OSXDaily is an affiliate partner with Amazon, meaning if you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment which goes towards keeping the site running.
The “Hide My Email” feature on iPhone is incredibly useful, allowing you to create random unique email addresses that forward to your real email address inbox. This feature can help protect your privacy by allowing you to sign up for apps or services without sharing your real email address, while enhancing security from phishing attempts, and also reducing spam.
Hide My Email is a very useful feature, but for some users, they may be aware of the feature but have no idea how to use it, and trying to find or access the feature is a challenge in and of itself. That’s what we’re going to address here.
Amazon is offering some really great deals for Memorial Day Weekend, so whether you want a big discount on the iPad mini 7, Apple Watch Series 10, or a MacBook Air M4 model, don’t miss out on these deals.
Apple Watch Series 10 – $299 (down from $399)
Apple Watch Series 10 has excellent activity and fitness tracking, heart rate monitor, ECG, crash detection with emergency SOS, fall detection with Emergency SOS, ovulation tracking, GPS, pinch gestures, water and sweat resistance, voice control, Siri commands, all-day battery life, and more, and features a 42mm always-on display.
If you’re running macOS Sequoia or macOS Sonoma, you might occasionally find yourself in a situation where you need to flush the DNS cache on your Mac. This can be necessary to fix DNS related issues or errors, to clear out outdated DNS settings or records, to resolve issues with certain websites, or even to have the results of a modified hosts file or some other networking component to take effect. Knowing how to flush DNS cache on MacOS can be helpful for troubleshooting some network issues without needing to reboot the entire Mac too.
While flushing DNS cache is perhaps most relevant for more advanced Mac users, it’s fairly easy to accomplish with the execution of a simple Terminal command string.
Fortnite, the wildly popular online action game, is back on the App Store for iPhone and iPad users to download and play. The app has returned after Apple removed the popular game roughly five years ago while Apple and Epic engaged in an expensive drawn out legal squabble, which ultimately ended up disappointing and irritating consumers, gamers, kids, and parents who spent a lot of money with in-app purchases, more than anything else. If you have any interest in the legal aspects of the Epic v Apple case (I don’t!) you can bore yourself to sleep on Wikipedia, but if you, your family, or your kids are just interested in playing the popular game, you can download it again right now from the App Store.
For the unfamiliar, Fortnite is an incredibly popular online game that blends competitive action, shooting, building, and general mayhem in a large interactive environment. Up to 100 players engage in battle royale while they wander around a map that is ever-changing and full of silliness and entertainment, complete with fun cartoony graphics and a unique social component. It’s not unusual to have Fornite players jump on a game with a friend, or even group of their friends, and hang out in a digital space while they play the games, and it’s particularly popular with kids and parents for a reason.
Fortnite is currently available for iPhone and iPad only, but there used to be a Mac application for the game as well, though it remains to be seen if Mac users will get to enjoy the game again on their computers.
If you have a gaming console or controller nearby, don’t forget to connect your Xbox One controller to iPhone or iPad so that you can use it to control Fortnite, as external controllers work really well with the game and typically improve players performance.
Did you know that your internet service provider default DNS servers almost certainly track and log your online activity? Basically this means that every time you visit a website or use an internet-connected application from your Mac, iPhone or iPad, your ISP is aware of that. Many ISP’s will not only log and track your online activity gathered through DNS lookups, but some will sell that data and share it with partners and data brokers too.
One way to get around this is to use a privacy focused DNS service, like Surfshark DNS, which is a free DNS offering that emphasizes privacy and does not track or log your online activity. There are other free DNS services like this out there too, including Cloudflare DNS, and Apple’s own iCloud Private Relay offering also uses a custom DNS with privacy protections, but having more options is always a good thing, so let’s review how you can setup the privacy protecting Surfshark DNS on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad
Continuity is a broad set of features for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, that make using all three of the devices together as seamless and easy as possible. Many of the Continuity features also will undoubtedly improve your workflow, making using MacOS, iOS, and iPadOS even better together.
We’re going to focus on six of the most useful Continuity features available for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. For some of you, these will be familiar, while for others they might be new to you. Either way, they’re worth trying out and checking how these fantastic Continuity features can fit into your workflow and device usage.
iPad mini 7 is a powerful miniature tablet that features the A17 processor with Apple Intelligence support, 8″ LCD display, a 12mp front and rear camera, 128 GB storage, USB-C charging, and support for optional Apple Pencil Pro. iPad mini is offered in multiple color options at this 20% discount price, taking $100 off the retail price. Score a great deal while you can!
Amazon is cutting up to $170 off the retail price of the M4 MacBook Air, with deals offered on both 13″ and 15″ display sizes. The 13″ MacBook Air now starts at $849, while the higher-end 15″ model is at $1428. Choose your display size, the color of your choice, and the RAM / storage configuration you’d like, and enjoy a great discount. The MacBook Air features an M4 chip with Apple Intelligence support, LCD display in 13″ or 15″ size, 12MP camera with Center Stage, Touch ID, backlit keyboard, all-day battery life, dual display support, MagSafe charging, two USB-C ports, and more.
FTC: OSXDaily is an affiliate partner with Amazon, meaning if you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment which goes towards keeping the site running.
