Having appropriate DNS settings is essential for a Mac to be able to successfully access internet domains, whether it be a website like https://osxdaily.com or a remote server. DNS, which stands for Domain Name Server, essentially translates numerical IP addresses to the readable domains that most internet users are familiar with, and thus without properly functioning DNS servers you often will encounter DNS lookup errors, or slower than expected access.

While most internet server providers offer their own DNS servers, and most Macs will use DNS from DHCP or a wi-fi router, Mac users sometimes wish to change DNS settings themselves to custom servers, perhaps for better performance, or for troubleshooting purposes. This is easily accomplished in MacOS and Mac OS X as we’ll detail in this walkthrough.

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The latest versions of iOS for iPad include a great multitasking feature called Split View, which, much as it sounds, allows users to split the screen on the iPad between two active apps side-by-side. iPad and iPad Pro users can adjust the size of each app panel or have them take up an equal amount of space, enabling users to essentially use two apps at the same time.

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Have you ever had a contract, agreement, document, or service form emailed to your iPhone or iPad that you need to sign quickly? Perfect, because now you can digitally sign and return a document directly from the Mail app of iOS. The Mail signature feature lets you quickly sign a document attached to an email and send it back on it’s way without ever having to leave the mail app, the entire signing and returning process is very fast and easy thanks to the Markup feature set.

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The Mac Mail app has added inbox swiping gestures to OS X that allow you to quickly delete or archive an email message with a simple left swipe. While this helps to sort through tons of emails rather quickly, it can also lead to some unintentional removal of emails that you may want to keep, as it’s pretty easy to accidentally swipe over an email message when navigating in the Mail app of OS X.

Fortunately, it’s easy to change the swipe left gesture in Mail app to either Trash or Archive emails.
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Apple has started running two three new iPhone 6S commercials, one which focuses on the devices new capabilities available thanks to its powerful internal upgrades offered by the A9 processor, and the second two which emphasize the various abilities of the Hey Siri feature.
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Microsoft Edge is the latest web browser from Microsoft, which aims to replace Internet Explorer in the latest versions of Windows for desktop PC, Surface, and Windows Phone. While most Mac users may not need to access or use the Microsoft Edge web browser, others in Mac OS X may require using Edge to access specific websites, and it’s particularly common for web developers and web designers to need to use a wide variety of web browsers for testing purposes. Thus, we’re going to show Mac users how they can easily run Microsoft Edge directly in Mac OS X, and entirely for free.

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Using AirDrop is one of the easier ways to share files between Macs since its debut some time ago in OS X, but many Mac users have discovered that new Macs can’t seem to find old Macs with AirDrop, and older Macs with older versions of OS X can’t seem to locate new Macs with modern versions of OS X. Additionally, sometimes Macs can’t find iOS devices with AirDrop too. Fortunately, there’s a very easy solution to this, so if you find that AirDrop is not working in OS X between two different OS X versions or between different Mac models, you’ll likely be able to use a little-known compatibility mode to AirDrop files between the Macs regardless of their hardware and OS version.

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Apple has released the fifth beta version of OS X El Capitan 10.11.2 to Mac users in the beta testing programs.

The new beta arrives as build 15C48a and continues to focus on improving reliability and compatibility of OS X El Capitan, with a particular emphasis on networking, wi-fi, Mail, Calendar, Graphics, Notes, USB, Photos app, and Spotlight.
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Safari for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch allows users to clear all caches, website data, and history together in one fell swoop, but sometimes you may want to be more discerning than that.

The modern versions of Safari for iPhone and iPad allow users to delete Safari website data, searches, cookies, cache, and Safari activity from the past hour, today only, or today and yesterday, as well as for all time. This is a great solution if you want to wipe Safari browser data over a recent period of time, rather than everything for all time, though you can continue to do that from iOS Safari too if you wish.

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New versions of Mac OS allow Mac users to hide and show the menu bar at the top of the screen automatically, much like the Dock can be hidden and shown with a mouse over.

Auto-hiding the menu bar is a nice feature for Mac users who are fans of minimalist desktop appearances, as it really eliminates just about everything visible on the screen aside from whatever the applications and windows are actively open on the display.

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If you’ve ever needed to know how late a particular store or restaurant is open, just pull out your iPhone and ask Siri. This should in handy when you’re out and about running errands or need to make a last minute shopping stop, but it’s clearly useful for many purposes. And if you have a new iPhone with Hey Siri enabled for hands free queries, it works great in the car or when you’re out walking around too.

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Enabling Dark menu and Dock mode on the Mac is a subtle user interface change to make which allows both the menu bar and the Mac OS X Dock to appear as black backgrounds with white text or icons overlaid on top. The result is a higher contrast menu bar and Dock, which is also a little less intrusive visually than the default light grey menu bar and Dock, and the dark menu and dark Dock will appeal to some users for a variety of reasons.

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Whether you’re looking at an important email, reading a web page, or doing just about anything else on your iPhone or iPad, perhaps you’d like to be reminded about it again at a later time or date. While Siri has long been able to create reminders for events and based on locations, a new feature available for the latest versions of iOS is the ability for Siri to remind you about what you’re currently looking at on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

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Apple has started to air their annual holiday TV commercial for the 2015 season. This year the advertisement features musical legend Stevie Wonder singing a duet of “Someday At Christmas” with singer Andra Day and a family with their friendly dog, along with subtle but clever displays of various Apple products being put to use.

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Users who have enabled the firewall in Mac OS X may find it useful to be view, read, and monitor the associated logs with the system firewall. As you’d expect, the app firewall logs show you what applications and processes have attempted to connect to the Mac, including accepted and refused connections.

There are several ways to view and watch the firewall in OS X, we’ll show you how to do so with a simple GUI app as well as the command line.

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The latest versions of Mac OS X include a new ability to immediately delete a file or folder from the Mac, bypassing the Trash can. Essentially how the “Delete Immediately” feature works is by circumventing the Trash and rather than waiting for user action to remove the files, it just deletes the file(s) instantaneously from the Mac, making the delete immediately function faster than the typical manner of removing a file in Mac OS X.

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Apple removed the ability to burn disc images from Disk Utility from MacOS High Sierra, Sierra, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, and newer, and while that makes sense for many Macs that no longer have SuperDrives, CDRW, and DVD burners, for those who use an external burner, use disc drive sharing, or who do have hardware with a built-in SuperDrive, may find it frustrating to lose such a feature.

But not to worry, you can still burn disk images and data discs in modern MacOS and Mac OS X releases, and you can start the process either from the Finder or from the command line on the Mac.

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This time around we’re featuring the excellent Mac Pro workstation of director and video editor Joe S., let’s learn more about the hardware and software put to use in this Mac setup!

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