Tips & Tricks

The Mac includes a variety of powerful wireless network tools that offer many features which are helpful for administration and IT purposes, including the ability to sniff packets. Here we will demonstrate how to perform a packet trace in OS X easily by using the built-in Wi-Fi Diagnostics app. Using Wi-Fi Diagnostics Sniffer function is … Read More

The ability to quickly jump to a photo in the Finder file system of Mac OS has changed in the new Photos app. For now, the traditional “Reveal In Finder” option in Photos app for Mac OS X is missing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t show the original file in the Finder or access … Read More

Photos app is a great app to manage and browse large collections of pictures on a Mac, but some users prefer to manually sort their pictures using the file system of OS X, which means that if you add those pictures into Photos app they will be copied into the Photos library. That’s the intended … Read More

By default, the Mac OS X Console app view is quite simple, displaying events and logs in nothing but plain text, which makes it not very different from viewing system logs from the command line on a Mac. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you’re a Mac user who spends a fair amount of … Read More

Mac users can quickly disconnect from a wi-fi network by using the wireless menu in Mac OS X. This simple task is incredibly useful for managing and juggling multiple networks, whether for something as simple as using iPhone Wi-Fi Hotspot or even a more advanced task like packet sniffing. It’s important to note disconnecting is … Read More

New versions of iOS offer an interesting featured called Suggested Apps, which uses your current location to recommend or suggest an app to use or download based on where you are and what you may be doing. For example, if you walk into a Starbucks, the Starbucks app could be recommended on the lock screen … Read More

Mac users coming from iPhoto may wish to move an iPhoto Library to the new Photos app. While importing is an option when first setting up the Photos app in OS X, many users many have skipped the initial setup screens and missed that opportunity to import pictures and images into Photos from apps like … Read More

Some Mac users have experienced a variety of performance issues with OS X El Capitan and Yosemite, ranging from a sluggish and problematic Finder, to WindowServer going crazy pegging the processor, to assorted wi-fi difficulties. While OS X 10.10.3 has helped address some of the trouble, another issue appears to have popped up for a … Read More

When you connect a power source to an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or MacBook, a familiar charging chime sound will trigger from the device, indicating that a cable is attached and the device is getting power. If you like hearing that auditory confirmation that a device is getting power, you can add the exact same … Read More

Apple Pay will default to using the first credit card or credit card added to an iPhone for purchases, even if you have added multiple cards. Your first card may not be the account you want to default charges to however, thus some users may wish to change the default card in Apple Pay.

Now that many of our Emoji characters have various skin tones in iOS and OS X, you may want to access and use the new diverse emoji icon set on the Mac. This is quite simple, but do note that not all Emoji have the diverse skin and hair color options.

The Mac Photos app allows for the creation of entirely new photo libraries, which means it’s easy to make a separate photo library if you want to keep some pictures outside of a primary image collection. This can be helpful for many reasons, whether to differentiate a personal photo library from a work picture library, … Read More

The iPhone Camera app includes a self timer function, a great feature for any camera that allows you to set a countdown timer before a picture is snapped. There’s many uses for the timer function, but it often allows for the photographer or camera owner to be in the picture frame as well, rather than … Read More

Apple has changed the Emoji characters in iOS and OS X to include many new diverse emoji variations. In the process of diversifying our Emoji keyboards, Apple also turned most of the default people emoji icons into curious looking yellow characters, which look a bit like LEGO characters meet The Simpsons. But once you understand … Read More

Some Mac users may occasionally run into issues with Finder, discovering that Finder will misbehave wildly, sometimes becoming very slow and unresponsive, crashing, or using inordinately high CPU. Given that Finder is a critical component of the Mac and nearly all Mac OS users rely on it for file system navigation, Finder trouble can be … Read More

Can’t remember where a file you recently opened was stored on the Mac, or where an MacOS X app you recently used was kept or originated from? Maybe you don’t know where something you recently used went to? No big deal, a simple keystroke modifier trick allows you to jump directly to the containing location … Read More

If you use VirtualBox to run guest operating systems within a virtual machine on the Mac, like Windows 10 or Ubuntu Linux, you may find yourself needing to resize the virtual disk size where the OS resides. This is often the case when you inadequately estimate how much space is required for properly installing in … Read More

The Mac received a great many changes with OS X Yosemite along with a notable visual redesign, but some of those changes and various transparent effects may be taking a toll on some users Mac performance with errant WindowServer behavior. This is typically demonstrated with the WindowServer process spiking into heavy CPU use for seemingly … Read More