Tips & Tricks

Some Mac users have recently stumbled upon a “Thunderbolt Bridge” alert dialog that shows up when they visit the Mac OS X Network preference panel, the full text of the message box says: “New Interface Detected   A new network has been detected:   Thunderbolt Bridge   Please verify that it is configured correctly, then … Read More

The Finder smiling face Dock icon has been with Mac OS X since the very beginning, and the Finder face itself has been in Mac OS from it’s earliest origins as well. Some users may want to change the Dock Finder icon to something else for customization purposes, but the process is a bit more … Read More

While the concept behind AMBER Alerts is fantastic, being startled by the iPhone belting out an extremely loud and terrifyingly blaring alarm sound in the middle of the night is not exactly a pleasant experience. This can be made even more frustrating for users who don’t know what the alert is for, and exacerbated by … Read More

Many advanced Mac users spend a lot of time at the command line of OS X, accessed through the Terminal app. While generally the Terminal is fast and efficient, sometimes it can slow down over time, or suffer from some performance degradation due to user preference settings. If you feel that Terminal app is being … Read More

Anyone who works with the web likely knows that it can be a challenge to take a full web page screenshot. While the traditional go-to options for many web designers and developers is to print a page as a PDF or use the Mac standard screen shot keyboard shortcuts in OS X, for longer pages … Read More

FaceTime makes video chat and audio calls easier than ever, or at least, it does when FaceTime works. While FaceTime used to be one of the most reliable ways to initiate a video conversation between any Macs, iPhones, or iPads, sometimes it just doesn’t work. More recently, a bug has been identified that has completely … Read More

Most of us have an email account or two, and likewise most of us have an increasingly growing number of unread mail messages accumulating slowly (or quickly) in our inboxes. Features like VIP tagging and inbox can help to tame some of the email clutter, but there’s simply no denying that some of our inboxes … Read More

Push Notifications sent to Safari in Mac OS X are generally thought of as really great or really annoying, depending on user opinion. If you’re in the latter crowd that finds Safari Push Notifications to be a nuisance, you can now set Safari in Mac OS X to never allow websites to ask for permission … Read More

“Do Not Track” is an effort to increase privacy on the web, when enabled it sends a ‘do not track’ (DNT for short) request along with your web browsing, basically asking the web sites and services to not follow activity across the web. Because it’s entirely optional right now, not every website or service respects … Read More

Those of us who regularly use AirDrop on the iPhone or iPad and leave the function frequently turned on for share requests may want to take a moment to adjust a simple privacy setting for the feature, allowing your iOS device to be only discoverable by Contacts. This prevents AirDrop requests coming in from random … Read More

A fair amount of Mac users have encountered an issue where their Mac will immediately disconnect from wi-fi networks after waking from sleep, forcing users to rejoin a wireless network constantly. This is obviously pretty frustrating, but it’s usually easily remedied with a few adjustments to the Network Preferences in OS X. If your Mac … Read More

Twitter integration is pretty deep throughout OS X and iOS with the sharing abilities and various uses of Siri, but another often overlooked Twitter feature is part of Safari and called “Shared Links”. Put simply, Shared Links can be thought of as an extension of the handy Reading List feature of iOS and OS X, … Read More

The Photos app of on the iPhone and iPad is lacking a direct resize tool for now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t resize pictures from iOS. While there are a variety of third party apps out there to complete the task, another simple option is to just rely on the photo reducing tools that … Read More

Most users who want to see another day, week, or month in the Calendar app of OS X rely on using the mouse cursor to click the forward and backwards buttons, but that’s actually slower than relying on the lesser known continuous scrolling feature that’s built into the Mac Calendar app, which behaves much like … Read More

The Maps app in Mac OS X makes it simple to share locations with others, even if the location isn’t defined and just in the middle of nowhere. This is a great trick for many reasons, whether to share a nice spot you found in the city, share with your partner where you left the … Read More

Many of us Mac users forget to update our installed apps to the latest versions, missing out on everything from newly added features, bug fixes, to important security improvements. Sure there are plenty of reasons for forgetting to update applications, whether because we’re too busy to remember, don’t know how to update, or simply don’t … Read More

Some Mac users may wish to disable IPv6 networking support on their machines. This may be desirable to avoid certain networking conflicts, or to increase security for users in higher threat environments, since IPv6 has been found by researchers to be potentially vulnerable to man-in-the-middle and other network attacks. Though most users don’t use IPv6 … Read More

Many users know that Siri can interact with the standard iOS music app, but did you know that Siri can also play and manage iTunes Radio stations for you? That’s right, among the huge variety of Siri abilities, the virtual assistance can also command your iTunes Radio music stations. This is particularly helpful with Siri’s … Read More