Gatekeeper is a security feature built into Mac OS X which helps to prevent unauthorized applications and code from executing on a Mac. Most users have encountered Gatekeeper before when they go to open an application downloaded from the internet, where you see an “App can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer” error message. Because Gatekeeper is a worthwhile security feature, almost all Mac users should leave it enabled, but some advanced OS X users, developers, and systems administrators may need to disable Gatekeeper. While you can do that, users will find that Gatekeeper re-enables itself after a 30 day period has lapsed, basically meaning that Gatekeeper will turn itself back on even if it has been turned off.

This is a security feature called ‘Auto Rearm’ and it’s a new addition to Gatekeeper in MacOS Sierra, OS X El Capitan and Yosemite, but with a little effort the auto-enable feature can be disabled too.

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Advanced Mac users who need frequent access to a files complete path in macOS and Mac OS X may find themselves turning to the drag & drop Terminal trick or performing a variety of other tricks to copy an items path, but with Mac OS X 10.11 and later, there’s a new native Copy Pathname option built directly into the Finder. Just as it sounds, it will copy the complete pathname of a file or folder directly to the clipboard.

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Notification Center on iPhone and iPad includes an optional widget that allows users to check the battery life of other devices connected through Bluetooth. Essentially this means you can quickly see what the remaining battery percentage of not just the device in hand, but also of an Apple Watch from an iPhone, or keyboard battery life from an iPad, all without having to access the device itself.

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The Disk Utility app has long contained the ability to verify and repair disk permissions on a Mac, but in the latest versions of OS X this ability has been removed. That doesn’t mean you can’t verify permissions and repair permissions in OS X El Capitan 10.11 and later however, you just need to turn to the command line to do so.

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The latest versions of iOS allow iPhone users to save, share, and forward voicemails. This means you can easily share an important voicemail message with a colleague or friend, or save a specific voicemail to the iPhone to store it locally for later access and listening.

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A new beta version of OS X El Capitan 10.11.2 has been released for Mac users participating in the beta testing programs.

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Apple has released the second beta version of iOS 9.2 to users participating in the developer beta testing program. Additionally, Apple has release the first beta version of tvOS 9.1 for the new 4th generation Apple TV. Both betas appear to focus on bug fixes and feature refinements.

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You can copy photos to an Apple Watch to enjoy them on the devices beautiful OLED display. While the screen size is on the small side, that doesn’t mean Apple Watch isn’t a great place to store some pictures and have a few of your favorite memories right on your wrist, so let’s learn how to copy whatever photos you want over to your Apple Watch.

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You can easily change the login screen wallpaper in OS X El Capitan to any image of your choice. This will impact the appearance of the login window when you boot a Mac, and also when you are using fast user switching to change user accounts. The wallpaper image that is replaced is what sits behind those login locked screens, which by default is a blurry version of the active desktop picture wallpaper. The replaced customized wallpaper will be your picture without any blurred effects.

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One of the most frightening iTunes messages an iPhone, iPad, or iPod user may see when they connect a device to a computer is the “The iPhone (Name) is synced with another iTunes Library on (Computer). Do you want to erase this iPhone and sync with this iTunes Library?” message, which gives you two options, to Cancel, or to “Erase and Sync” – this sounds like you’re about to erase everything on the iPhone or iPod touch completely, right? Well, it doesn’t quite work like that.

Let’s examine this iTunes alert message and understand what it means and what the resulting “Erase and Sync” action actually does.

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This week we’re featuring the workstation of Vlad K., a professional music producer who has a really great pro setup, let’s get to it and learn a bit more:

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The new Apple TV arrives with an incredibly gorgeous array of screen savers, and now you can get those amazing screen savers on the Mac too. There are tons of different screen savers in total, with daytime and evening views of beautiful footage taken from flying over Hawaii, New York City, San Francisco, London, and the Great Wall of China.

From footage of cityscapes to landscapes, these screensaver are truly impressive and terrific quality, and they’ll look great on your Mac screens. Here’s how to get the incredible screen savers from Apple TV in MacOS and Mac OS X right now:

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The Mac Mail app has gained tab support in the latest versions of Mac OS X, making it easier to juggle multiple emails on screen at once.

There’s a catch with using Mail Tabs in MacOS X, however, and that is you must be using full screen mode to gain access to the tab feature. Perhaps because of this, email tabs are particularly useful for laptop users with smaller screens, but this could also appeal to users who like to minimize distraction.

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For Mac users who utilize third party SSD volumes, the new trimforce command allows OS X to forcibly enable the TRIM function on those drives. trimforce is built directly into newer releases of OS X and is really quite easy to enable (or disable), requiring a quick visit to the command line and a reboot of the Mac to complete.

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Mac users who are interested in jailbreaking their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 9, iOS 9.0.1, or iOS 9.0.2 will now find a version of the Pangu tool available for OS X. Previously, the Pangu utility was only available for Windows. Aside from the Windows vs oS X compatibility difference, all else with the jailbreak remains the same, including supported devices and iOS versions.

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The Dictation feature of OS X has let Mac users speak to their computers and have the speech converted accurately into text for quite some time, and now with the newest versions of OS X you can improve Dictation even further by starting the speech to text conversion with a voice command.

You can think of this as a Mac specific speech to text version of “Hey Siri” on the iPhone, except that you issue a voice command to start the Dictation speech translations rather than making requests through a virtual assistant. It works quite well, we’ll show you how to enable the feature, and how to activate it by voice.

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Apple is running a new iPhone 6s advertisement featuring actor Bill Hader with an amusing focus on the “Hey Siri” feature and the type of whacky junkmail you usually find in your email spam folder.

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Apple has released the first beta version of OS X El Capitan 10.11.2 for Mac users participating in the developer and public beta software testing programs. The first pre-release build of OS X 10.11.2 arrives as 15C27e and appears to focus primarily on improvements and bug fixes to OS X El Capitan.

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