YouTube has countless hours of entertainment, videos, and TV shows to keep you and your kids entertained, but there is some content on YouTube you might not want your kids or even yourself to see. YouTube offers what is basically a parental control feature called Restricted Mode, which effectively avoids most inappropriate and offensive video content on the YouTube service by filtering it out.

We’ll show you how to easily enable Restricted Mode on YouTube, this will filter out most of what parents and many adults don’t want to be seen and greatly help to avoid inappropriate videos on the service.

Read more »

Mac uses with multiple email addresses and email accounts configured in the Mail app will likely find themselves wanting to change the email address that a particular email is sent from. This is different from changing the default email account on a Mac, as this approach allows the Sent From address to be changed anytime on a per-email basis without setting the default email to something else.

Read more »

Need to know what version of Gatekeeper and Xprotect are installed on a Mac? You can find this information through the command line of Mac OS. GateKeeper, MRT (Malware Removal Tool), and XProtect are all built-in features of Mac OS designed to prevent malware threats and other nefarious software from being installed or used on a Mac. These security features exist in the background and are updated with regular system software updates to Mac OS, but Apple will also push quiet updates to xprotect or MRT to add new definitions and block newfound threats.

Advanced users may wish to know what version of Xprotect definitions is installed on a Mac. We’ll show you how you can check which Xprotect version is on a Mac via the command line, this can be particularly useful for remote administration tasks using the ssh client, but it can be just as helpful to check XProtect versions on a local machine as well.

Read more »

Apple has released the fifth beta version of MacOS 10.12.5 Sierra, and iOS 10.3.2 beta 5 is also available. No new features are expected to be revealed in these beta versions, as the small point releases likely focus on bug fixes and security enhancements.

Read more »

Keynote presentations are saved as .key files by default, but because Keynote runs only on Apple system software and iCloud you can’t always open a .key presentation on PowerPoint. The simplest solution to this is to save a Keynote .key presentation as a PowerPoint .pptx presentation, which can then be opened in Microsoft Office, Google Slides Docs, Keynote, OpenOffice, or just about any other presentation app regardless of the platform it runs on, whether it’s Windows, Linux, another Mac, or even iPad.

Read more »

Did you know the Mac has a native SSH client built directly into the command line? This ssh client allows for secured connections and remote logins into other machines. Unlike Windows, you won’t need a third party app to utilize SSH for connections into remote computers and devices, because ssh is built directly into Mac OS and Mac OS X – perfect!

Let’s walk through how to make an SSH connection into another computer using the native ssh client in Mac OS.

Read more »

The Podcasts app on iPhone allows users to adjust playback speed, making the podcast play faster or slower. If you’re wondering why it’d be helpful to adjust the speed of podcasts, there are several reasons; increased comprehension or understanding, speeding through uninteresting parts of a podcast, or perhaps my favorite use which is to listen to more podcasts in less time by increasing the playback speed.

Think you don’t have time to listen to a podcast because it’s too long? Think again, just speed it up. Can’t understand what some rapid-fire speaker is saying? No propel, slow it down.

Adjusting the playback speed of podcasts on iPhone is easy and can be toggled directly within the Podcasts app at anytime, similar to how you can skip sections. Let’s review how this works.

Read more »

For iPhone and iPad users with multiple email accounts in iOS Mail, you may want to change the “From” address when sending a specific email. This does exactly what it sounds like; it changes the email address you are sending an email from, but rather than changing the setting universally to set a new default, you can adjust the sent from address on an individual email basis.

Read more »

Just about every Mac has screen brightness adjustment buttons on their keyboard, but for Macs with Siri enabled you can also adjust and change screen brightness on a Mac display easily with Siri voice commands instead.

This can offer a quicker option to adjust display dimness and brightness for some Mac users, and voice commands offer an alternative approach to the keyboard adjustments and Display preference panel adjustment options.

Read more »

Every time you plug an iPhone or iPad in to charge, it sounds a fairly loud chiming sound effect (unless it’s not charging anyway). One strategy to make the iPhone or iPad hush when plugged in is to place the device into silent mode by muting it with the physical mute switch, but that will still cause the iPhone or iPad to buzz.

What if you want to completely silence the iPhone or iPad when it’s initially plugged in to charge? What if you want no buzz, and no sound effect when it’s plugged-in? That’s what we’ll show you how to do here, and it’s surprisingly easy with a simple trick.

Read more »

Apple has released the fourth beta versions of macOS 10.12.5, iOS 10.3.2, watchOS 3.2.2, and tvOS 10.2.1.

No major new changes are expected in the beta releases, as the builds likely continue to focus on bug fixes and security enhancements.

Read more »

Do you remember Starcraft, the science fiction real-time strategy game for Mac and PC? The original Starcraft debuted in the land of the digital dinosaurs of 1998, and it was widely loved and enjoyed by many for it’s single player campaign and multi-player matches set in a futuristic space world of wars and resource gathering. Now Blizzard has made the original Starcraft free for Mac OS and Windows, so anyone can download and play it on modern computers.

If you’re looking for a little retro gaming fun, Starcraft will deliver. Whether you used to play the original version or not, it’s a legitimately fun real-time strategy game where you will pick a species (Terran humans, Protoss, Zerg), build a sprawling base of structures, gather resources, create and man an army, and battle in a sci-fi world with mysterious aliens, futuristic technology, and robotics. Good fun!

Read more »

NASA consistently produces stunning and inspiring imagery of our Earth, solar system, and universe, many of which make for exceptional wallpapers for our desktops and home screens, and these new images of our home planet at night are no exception.

From NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, these four high resolution images show Earth and the major habitation sights of humans glowing from light pollution, showing where the cities and population centers are on the planet. The images focus on several regions but here we are focusing on four primary compositions: North America and the USA, Europe and Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Read more »

Did you now that QuickTime on the Mac can join movie clips together into a single combined movie file?

The same QuickTime that is used for viewing videos on the Mac includes some basic editing functions, including the ability to combine multiple video files into one.

Read more »

Many Mac users sort their files by name and type, but one of the most useful ways to sort files is by date. The Mac Finder allows for various different date based sorting options for files, documents, applications, and folders, and they’re all typically best utilized in the Finder List view.

Using date based sorting in Mac OS, you can sort files by “Date Modified”, “Date Created”, “Date Last Opened”, and “Date Added”. If you’ve never used these features before, or perhaps just forget they exist, this tutorial will walk through how you can use date based file system sorting on your Mac.

Read more »

Most iPhone and iPad users already have one email account setup on their iOS device, but you can easily add a new email address to the iPhone or iPad, or even multiple new email addresses to the same device, all to be managed in the same Mail app of iOS. This is nice for those of us who juggle multiple email accounts for personal, work, and other purposes.

This tutorial will walk through adding and setting up new email accounts or additional email addresses on the iPhone or iPad. After a new email account is setup and configured in iOS, you can check emails, send, receive, reply, forward, and perform any other email functions from all of the addresses on the device.

Read more »

Some Mac users may want to clear caches and clean out temporary files from Mac OS. Caches and temporary files can include things like web browser cache and history, messaging cache, app specific temp files and caches, partially completed downloads, and much more. While most apps will handle cache management on their own, and Mac OS will handle some other cache type files directly too, more advanced users can manually intervene and clear out their own cache and temporary files from a Mac as well.

This walkthrough will show you how to manually clear and clean out caches and temporary files from the active user on a Mac. There are no downloads or third party tools required.

Read more »

Beta testers of Apple system software will find new versions of the software updates available to eligible Macs, iOS devices, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

MacOS 10.12.5 beta 3, iOS 10.3.2 beta 3, tvOS 10.2.1 beta 3, and watchOS 3.2.2 beta 3 are all available through their respective software update mechanisms.

Read more »