Mac OS

Connecting to wireless networks is pretty much mandatory these days, particularly now that most Macs only have wi-fi cards and no built-in ethernet, and so it can be incredibly frustrating to be unable to join a wi-fi network. Typically when you can’t connect to a particular wi-fi router on a Mac, you’ll see the error … Read More

Since many of us spend significant portions of the day sitting at a desk and working on a Mac, it can be nice to know for just how long you have been working at the computer for. Sure you can keep track of this yourself by watching the clock or using a stopwatch, and there … Read More

Have you ever restored the Safari browser only to have dozens of tabs and browser windows open, one or several of which are playing audio, and you then need to hunt down which browser tab is playing sound? This scenario happens fairly often to those of us who spend a lot of time in web … Read More

While enabling and using FileVault disk encryption is highly recommended for security-conscious Mac users with modern hardware and SSD volumes, some users may decide they do not need to use FileVault for a variety of reasons, or perhaps they just want to disable it for another purpose. That’s what we’re going to demonstrate here, disabling … Read More

Longtime Mac users likely recall that Mac OS used to log in automatically when a computer was booted up or restarted. For security purposes this has changed over time, and for the most part Macs now request a login and password in order to successfully access a Mac and whatever documents and apps are contained … Read More

Rarely, Mac users may notice their clock is displaying the wrong system time. This typically occurs after a Mac has been shut down for an extended amount of time and hasn’t connected to the internet in a while, but it can also happen with traveling across date lines, between regions with daylight savings time observations, … Read More

Want to disguise your Mac a bit and make it look like it’s running Windows? Maybe throw someone off or prank a coworker? Or perhaps you’re just feeling nostalgic for those beautiful Windows logo screen savers of yesteryear? You can relive the Windows screen saving experience this with a goofy .saver file called FoolSaver for … Read More

Advanced users who spend a fair amount of time in the command line may wish to adjust their sudo password expiration to be more secure (or less secure, by extending the password grace period timeout). Typically this means removing any password timeout so that the default five minute password cache is abandoned, thus requiring the … Read More

If you’re a Safari user on the Mac, you’ve likely noticed that when you click into the address bar and start typing something to search for, you’ll quickly see suggestions of various things based on what you’re typing. These search engine suggestions can be undeniably useful for some cases, but they can also be completely … Read More

It’s often only a matter of time before Mac users wind up seeing the dreaded “startup disk almost full” warning message in Mac OS X, which often leads to a frantic dash around the Downloads folder as users trash unnecessary files to attempt to free up disk space. While there’s nothing wrong with going on … Read More

Many Mac users running a modern version of OS X El Capitan have noticed the Secure Erase Free Space feature has gone missing from Disk Utility. What the “Erase Free Space” feature did (and still does in prior versions of Mac OS X) was overwrite the free space on a drive to prevent file recovery, … Read More

Nearly all Mac users run Mac OS in their primary language and mother tongue, but for polyglots and those aiming to be bilingual or trilingual, adding multiple new languages to Mac OS X can have obvious benefits. We’ll show you how to add a new language and how to change to that new language, which … Read More

Have you ever been watching a YouTube video on a Mac and wished you could send it to your Apple TV to view on a bigger screen? You can do exactly that with the help of AirPlay and the latest versions of Mac OS X, which make sending a YouTube video from the Mac to … Read More

Find My Friends is available as a widget on the Mac within Notification Center, allowing users to see a list and location of their friends and family who have chosen to share their location with them. This has many practical applications, but parents, close friends, and partners will likely find it to be most useful.

Many Mac Mail users who send and receive emails with their Windows counterparts using a mail client like Outlook or Microsoft Exchange will discover a “winmail.dat” file attached to those emails. If you try to open a winmail.dat file on Mac OS X, you’ll usually find there is nothing available to open the attachment, or … Read More

It’s well known that all Mac users should set up Time Machine to automate backups of their computer, and while most Mac users let OS X go about backing up to Time Machine at it’s own pace, which sometimes borderlines on glacial, some users may wish to speed the backup process up a bit. With … Read More

Mac users with Retina displays may have noticed that gaming performance is sometimes reduced on these machines. The reason is quite simple; if you’re running the game at native resolution, then the Mac has to drive the game at full resolution of the display at 2880 x 1440 or greater. A common solution to this … Read More

Mac users may encounter DOCX files from time to time, often sent from a Windows user as an email attachment or otherwise, as the .docx file types are standard document files created in newer versions of Microsoft Office. But what if you don’t have Office on the Mac? That’s ok too, even if you don’t … Read More