Mac OS

OS X El Capitan is the official name of the next version of Mac OS system software. Versioned as OS X 10.11, El Capitan has two primary focus areas; experience, and performance.

Steam offers many great games for Mac users to enjoy, but if you’re a casual gamer you may not be too excited about having the Steam client open itself automatically when logging in or starting up Mac OS X. Fortunately, if Steam opening itself bothers you, it’s very easy to stop this behavior and only … Read More

Now that you can get movie showtimes right from Spotlight in Mac OS X, did you know that you can also get movie details and showtimes from just about any webpage, document, or elsewhere that displays text just as well? Basically, if you can select and highlight the movie text with the cursor, you can … Read More

If you have downloaded an ISO image of another operating system, say Ubuntu Linux or Windows 10, and you wish to turn that ISO image file into a bootable USB installer drive using a USB flash drive or USB key, you’ll find the most reliable way to copy or ‘burn’ the ISO to that target … Read More

There are some situations where knowing exactly what wireless networks a Mac has connected to and when that connection was last established can be helpful. We’ll demonstrate how to uncover a comprehensive listing of specifics about previously joined wi-fi networks on a Mac, which will include the last connection date and time (to the second!), … Read More

Advanced Mac users may find it useful to know that DNS servers in Mac OS X can be set from the command line, without having to turn to the System Preferences Network control panel. While the GUI Network control panel is undeniably the easiest approach for most Mac users, the command line method offers benefits … Read More

The Mac Photos app defaults to automatically launch whenever an iPhone, digital camera, or SD memory media card connects to the computer. This behavior can be helpful and desired by some users, but for many others, automatically opening the Photos app can be frustrating if not annoying. Fortunately, you can quickly stop the Photos app … Read More

When you’re engaged in a group conversation in Messages for Mac, you’ll notice the ‘To’ section lists the names of people participating in the group chat. While that’s certainly adequate for most situations, if you have a specific group chat going for a specific purpose, you can assign a name to any given group chat … Read More

Modern versions of Mac OS X include a built-in batch file renaming tool that allows Mac users to instantly rename large groups of files, folders, photos, or anything else residing on their file system in a single action. This bulk rename item utility is part of the Finder, meaning there are no add-ons, downloads, or … Read More

If you use Emoji characters often in Mac OS X, you’ll enjoy knowing there is a very fast keystroke to immediately access a special Mac Emoji character panel from anywhere text entry is possible in Mac OS. Additionally, you can navigate within this quick Emoji panel entirely with the keyboard, which makes typing Emoji on … Read More

Apple has released a new version of OS X 10.10.4 beta for those participating in the OS X Yosemite Public Beta program, and for registered Mac Developers. The new build arrives as 14E26a and aims to “improve the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac”.

Need to know what applications are on any Mac? Mac OS offers a variety of ways to list apps that are installed on a Mac, and we’ll cover three different approaches to this: a basic listing of installed Mac apps which is sufficient for most user needs, an intermediate and more thorough listing of apps … Read More

WhatsApp is a popular messaging tool for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows phone users, but it has long been missing desktop clients… until now, anyway. For Mac users, you can now chat through WhatsApp directly from OS X by using a free app called WhatsMac. With WhatsMac you’ll be able to chat in WhatsApp as … Read More

When a user sets up a new Mac, there is a helpful option to use an iCloud ID and Apple ID to login and unlock the Mac. Users can also choose at any time to have their iCloud ID as their login for OS X too. While this is undoubtedly a helpful feature and it … Read More

Want to see a movie tonight? Wondering what the showtime are of a movie playing nearby? You can quickly find local movie showtimes by using the Spotlight search feature in Mac OS X. Yes you read that right, the same Spotlight that works as an app launcher and file search engine, can also uncover movie … Read More

Want to quickly delete a Messages conversation on Mac? The Mac Messages app maintains a transcript of conversations that have been carried out on the computer, thus when you open a message window to a particular sender, you’ll see the prior conversations, pictures, and other sent/received data in the same message thread. If you’d like … Read More

The Mac Photos app works well for most users, but occasionally a variety of hiccups can be encountered when interacting with photo libraries, ranging from crashes, to hanging on Photos app launch, a failed import, thumbnails missing from an image library, pictures missing from a library that was imported, or even a completely empty Photos … Read More

Apple is apparently planning on replacing Helvetica Neue, the current default system font in iOS and OS X, with the ‘San Francisco’ font used on Apple Watch, according to a new report from the well sourced 9to5mac. The font change to “San Francisco” will apparently arrive to OS X 10.11 and iOS 9, but if … Read More