Safari on the Mac has the ability to run third party plug-ins, some of which may perform additional services and bring additional functionality to the web experience. Plug-ins include things like Flash Player, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and other similar multimedia tools that are added into the browser. While some web sites may require these plug-ins, they are generally not needed for most modern web experiences, and old plugins can lead to security issues or other problems with web browsing and app stability. For that reason, troubleshooting, and others, it can be helpful to disable plug-ins in Safari on the Mac.

We’ll focus on disabling all Safari plug-ins on the Mac by turning them off completely, irrespective of which are installed or running. This is a blunt approach as it turns off all plug-ins in the Safari browser entirely.

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Command line users may find it helpful to change and rename the file extension of a group of files in a directory. For example, let’s say you have a batch of files with the file extension “.txt” but you want all of those the file extensions to be “.py” instead. That’s what we’re going to demonstrate here by relying on simple bash scripting to change a group of file extensions at the command line of Mac OS / OS X, but this will also work in linux and other unix flavors too.

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Many of us rely on iPhone as our primary camera, but no matter how great (or not) you are at photography, who couldn’t use some advice on taking even better pictures? That’s why it’s worth checking out a “how to shoot” web series that Apple has created, which includes a helpful series of 20 short video clips which demonstrate various pointers for taking better pictures with the iPhone 7 camera. Sure the focus is on iPhone 7, but most of the tips will apply to other iPhone camera users as well however, so if you don’t have the latest and great iPhone don’t feel too left out.

A broad variety of photography tips are covered in the how-to series from Apple, some of which you’ll have read within our many photography tips, and many of which are great general advice about using lighting, angles, and compositions to capture better images.

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You can disable third party Safari extensions on the Mac without completely uninstalling them. This can be helpful for troubleshooting purposes, various testing scenarios, and many other situations, whether you’re a developer, trying to determine if and which particular extension is causing an issue with Safari, or even maybe just giving a trial run to a similar extension.

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Can’t remember how to spell a word? You can ask Siri to spell the word for you! That’s right, good old Siri on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad has no problem helping you spell words if you can’t think of where to begin and when autocorrect is off or otherwise failing you, is this Siri feature supercalifragilisticexpialidocious or what? You’ll think it’s great too.

Here’s how you can stop fumbling with a confusing word and use this great Siri spelling trick on any iPhone, Mac, or iPad that has Siri enabled.

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Have you ever sent an email to or from an address at the wrong domain? Maybe you accidentally sent a personal email from your work account? The Mail app on iPhone and iPad includes a feature which can help you avoid that situation by marking any address outside of a specified domain as you compose or reply to an email message in iOS Mail. The great thing about marking addresses with domain specificity is applies to both addresses being sent to and your send from email address too, so it can help prevent you emailing the wrong person or from accidentally sending an email from the wrong From address in iOS too.

This is kind of a pro iOS email trick, and it’s most obviously useful for business and work related iOS devices, or for users who have added multiple email accounts on their iPhone or iPad with a mix of both personal and work or business email accounts on the same device. This feature is really easy to setup, let’s review how it works.

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Mac OS has an elaborate application level logging system that monitors and logs various system level and app level functionality, including app crashes, problems, and internal errors within apps. Most of this logging information is only relevant to debugging and developer usage and has little practical usage to the average Mac user, but when you submit a bug report for a crashed app these are the types of logs that are generally gathered and included in that crash report or bug report.

We’ll show you how to access the raw log files and clear these user level logs from a Mac. This is really aimed at advanced Mac users who know what they’re doing with these log files and why they might want to delete them, it is not aimed at the average or novice user at all.

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While plenty of wi-fi networks use obvious passwords that aren’t complex, if you’ve ever joined a wi-fi network with a wildly complex wireless router password you know it’s easy to fumble and erroneously enter a character or two. Of course while you’re typing the password it appears as little bullet points that are indecipherable, this is a security feature designed to obfuscate a password from preying eyes. A wise feature, but this can lead to an inability to join a network due to typos or to a delay as you correct them, so sometimes it’s nice to make the password field visible as you input it and join a network.

A simple solution to this scenario is to show the wi-fi password as you are typing it, an overlooked option that is available to you when you are joining wi-fi networks from a Mac.

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Ever wondered how to force quit apps using the Touch Bar Macs? While there are many different ways to force quit Mac apps that aren’t responding, perhaps the most commonly used force quit method involves the Option + Command + Escape key sequence. But that Touch Bar Escape key is software… see the potential for a problem?

If an app isn’t responding, the software Escape key on the Mac Touch Bar is often inaccessible and unusable as well, so that deeply engrained keystroke isn’t always going to work to force quit stuck apps on Touch Bar Macs.

Not to worry, if you have a Touch Bar Mac without a hardware Escape key you can use other methods to force quit Mac apps, as we’ll discuss here.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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