Most users connect a Mac to a wi-fi network and don’t think too much about which 802.11 wi-fi band protocol is in use, but many advanced users and network administrators do want to know which 802.11 wireless standard is in use. Typically someone would want to know which wi-fi PHY standard is in use to insure speed optimization and coverage range, as each wireless standard is different, with differing ranges and offering different WLAN connection speeds.

This article will show you how to determine if a Mac is currently using 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, or 802.11ac to connect to a particular router. Additionally, we’ll show you how to check which wifi modes a Mac wireless card supports, and also show you how to check which version protocol of 802.11 is in use on other nearby routers.

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Do you have a great picture on your Mac within Photos app that you want to share? Photos for Mac makes sharing pictures, videos, and other images very easy, and you share a picture from the Mac directly to another user through messages, email, iCloud, social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr, or locally to another nearby Mac or iOS user through AirDrop.

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Many newer cars have Bluetooth stereo systems that sync wirelessly with an iPhone. One common and prominent feature of this experience is that music will automatically start playing from the iPhone through the Bluetooth speakers when you get into the car, sometimes autoplaying from a local music library or sometimes from a streamed music service.

If you don’t want your music to start playing automatically from iPhone over a Bluetooth car stereo every time you get into the car, read on to learn how you can try to stop it.

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Netflix is the increasingly popular video streaming service with a great collection of original shows and movies. But you no longer need to stream every episode or video you wish to watch, as Netflix offers an ability to download any Netflix video to be able to watch it offline directly on an iPhone, iPad, Android, or even a computer.

Downloading Netflix video for offline viewing is a great solution for if you’re planning on being out of data or wi-fi service for a while, or if you’re going into a region that is known to be of lesser quality internet service. Perhaps you’ll be boarding a plane and want to binge watch Stranger Things, or you’re going on a long car ride and want to entertain passengers, or maybe you’re going to a remote cabin somewhere and you still want to be able to watch your favorite shows. This tutorial will show you how to watch Netflix offline by downloading shows and movies to a local device.

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Are you looking for a specific note on the Notes app of your iPhone or iPad, but you can’t quite remember which note it was or where to find it? Maybe you have a bunch of notes and you want to quickly get to one about a particular topic? No problem, you can search through Notes in iOS by keywords or search terms instead, and the search will offer matching notes to whatever phrase or word you’re looking for.

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If you have ever downloaded an installer for Mac OS from the Mac App Store, you may have wondered which exact system software version of Mac OS the installer corresponds to. While the installers file name will reveal the major system software release (for example, “Install macOS High Sierra” or “Install OS X El Capitan”) it will not tell you the precise version number that will be installed (for example, 10.13.1 or 10.12.6).

Fortunately there is a pretty easy way to determine exactly which system version number of Mac OS will be installed by a particular macOS installer application, and you can access the data from the command line or via the Finder with Quick Look.

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If your Mac menu bar is looking increasingly cluttered with various menu bar icons, you may be interested in a nice little free utility called Vanilla. Vanilla allows you to hide Mac menu bar icons by placing them into a collapsible and expandable shelf of sorts contained within the menu bar.

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Apple has released the third public beta builds of macOS High Sierra 10.13, iOS 11, and tvOS 11. This comes a day after the developer builds of iOS 11 beta 4 and macOS High Sierra beta 4 were released to testers in the developer preview program.

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Some Mac users may find the Siri button on Touch Bar to be less than useful, and some may accidentally hit the Siri button and inadvertently trigger Siri when trying to hit another key on the MacBook Pro Touch Bar keyboard. If you don’t want Siri so readily available on your Pro Mac for whatever reason, you can remove Siri from the Touch Bar on a Mac.

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Apple has released the fourth beta version of iOS 11, macOS High Sierra 10.13, tvOS 11, and watchOS 4 to users enrolled in the developer beta testing programs.

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Want to get iMessage on a PC? You’re not alone, because iMessage is the wonderful messaging platform for iPhone, iPad, and Mac users that allows for free and easy messaging between other iMessage users. Not surprising then that one common question regarding iMessage is if there is a way to run iMessage on a Windows PC.

The answer is a big complicated, but in short, yes you can get iMessages on a Windows PC from a technical standpoint, but how it is accomplished is probably not quite what you expect. Read on to learn how to get access to iMessage on a PC with Windows or even Linux.

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If you’re frequently adding Reminders to your iPhone or iPad through Siri or to return phone calls, you may quickly arrive at having dozens if not hundreds of reminders stored in the iOS app. Rather than wade through them all one by one, the Reminders app has a nice feature that allows you to search for a specific reminder directly, making it much easier to locate or retrieve an old mental note or any other digital nudge you have created.

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The Mac Photos app has a set of simple drawing tools called Markup which can be used to draw, doodle, sketch, and otherwise markup or write on any picture. Markup in Photos can offer a fun way to scribble on an image, put a remark on a picture, add a blurb, or just to draw a little creative addition to any photo found within the Photos app.

The Markup editing toolkit in Photos on Mac is great, but like many other features, it’s a bit hidden and it’s easy to overlook this feature. This tutorial will show you how to access Markup in Photos for Mac and how to draw on a picture using the tool set.

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Many pictures taken with an iPhone, Android phone, or digital camera include location data with the picture, which gives anyone who has the image file the ability to see exactly where the photo was taken. Additionally, the Photos app for Mac allows users to add a location to any picture as well.

If you don’t want a picture to include a physical location, you can easily remove the location from the image by using the Photos app for Mac.

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Apple has released the final version of macOS Sierra 10.12.6 for Mac users running the Sierra operating system.

The update includes bug fixes and security enhancements, but does not provide any new features or major changes to the operating system.

Separately, Mac users running El Capitan and Yosemite will find security updates available as well.

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Apple has released the final version of iOS 10.3.3 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The update is said to include bug fixes and security enhancements for iOS, and no new features are included in the software update.

Links to download iOS 10.3.3 IPSW are included below, though the majority of users are best served by installing iOS 10.3.3 through the Software Update feature or from iTunes.

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Apple puts a limit on how many computers you can use with some of your owned iTunes and App Store content, including music, movies, apps, TV shows, books, iBooks, this process is known as iTunes authorization. Most users don’t pay much attention to this, but if you own multiple Macs or PCs concurrently or over the years, you’ll eventually hit the 5 computer authorization limit in iTunes, often when trying to access iTunes content or restore an iPhone, which then prevents you from accessing that iTunes Store and App Store content until another computer has been deauthorized, and then the current computer authorized.

The solution to this is to deauthorize a computer from iTunes, a process which can be necessary in both Mac OS and Windows.

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An administrator account has full access to everything on the Mac, it can install software updates, uninstall and install applications, access and delete system files, access other user files on the same computer, and perform any other administrative type of task. Sometimes it can be helpful to create a new separate administrator account on a Mac, usually for a different person to use, or for troubleshooting purposes, or to differentiate a designated admin account from the primary user account. This walkthrough will show you who to make a new admin account in Mac OS.

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