Setting your desktop background picture to an image of your choice is an easy and fun way to customize your desktop Mac experience. With MacOS Sonoma and Ventura, how you change the Mac desktop wallpaper has changed a bit, which has led to some confusion for some longtime Mac users. Long gone is the familiar “Desktop & Screen Saver” control panel preferences, instead that preference panel has been split up and renamed to “Wallpaper”, and it’s not immediately visible when opening the text list of System Settings.

Let’s walk through how you can find the appropriate settings panel, and how to change the wallpaper image on the desktop of a Mac running MacOS Ventura 13 or later.

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Many Mac users rely on Activity Monitor to quickly terminate processes and monitor system resources on their Macs. Creating a keyboard shortcut for quick access to Activity Monitor can be a beneficial trick to more easily access the task manager in MacOS.

This article will demonstrate how to use the Shortcuts app to make a keyboard shortcut for launching Activity Monitor in MacOS.

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If you’re shopping for AirPods, Apple Watch, or iPad Air, don’t miss these great discounts available right now from Amazon.

AirPods 2nd generation at 38% Off

Starting off with the 2nd generation AirPods at $99, a $30 discount.

• AirPods for $99 (down from $129)

Apple Watch Series 8 for $50 Off

Next up is the Apple Watch Series 8 for $349, a nice $50 discount.

• Apple Watch Series 8 for $349 (down from $399)

M1 iPad Air at 17% Off

And the M1 iPad Air for $499, a discount of $100.

• M1 iPad Air for $499 (down from $599)

FTC: OSXDaily is an affiliate partner with Amazon, meaning if you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment which goes towards keeping the site running and available for free.

Do you have a Mac running an earlier version of MacOS that you’d like to upgrade to a newer version, but you don’t want to run MacOS Ventura? For example, let’s say you’re running MacOS Catalina, Mojave, or Big Sur on a Mac, and you want to upgrade that Mac to MacOS Monterey 12 specifically, rather than MacOS Ventura 13 (a situation found in this question from our comments).

This is a particular scenario that some Mac users find themselves in, so we’re going to cover the process of upgrading an older MacOS version to MacOS Monterey directly, while avoiding installing the latest release of MacOS Ventura.

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You may find yourself needing to determine the file system type of a drive connected to a Mac, whether it’s an external hard drive, a USB flash drive, external SSD or HDD, an SD card, or similar. File system types are important because they can help to determine if a drive is fully Mac compatible with a native file system, or if a drive or disk can be read by both Windows and Mac, amongst many other situations. Examples of file systems you may encounter include FAT, FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, APFS, Ext, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, JFS, ReiserFS, XFS, and HFS+.

So, how do you determine what the file system is of a drive connected to a Mac? That’s what we’ll show you how to do, using two different methods; with Disk Utility, and with the Finder.

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Apple uses a system of authorization and deauthorization that allows yoour computers to have access to music, books, iTunes Store purchases, apps, and more. You can only have up to five computers authorized to access your content at a time, so if you have 5 devices and want to authorize a new Mac or PC, you’ll have to deauthorize another one to authorize a new one. Additionally, before you send a Mac in for repair, you’ll want to deauthorize the Mac, just in case some major component gets replaced. And since you can not remotely deauthorize another computer (you can only deauthorize all of them…), you’ll want to take care of this process on the actual device itself.

While the authorization and deauthorization system for Apple Music, iTunes content, Books, and other purchases is a little goofy and confusing, and feels like something from a paranoid PC manufacturer from the late 1990’s, it persists with us today in the Apple world.

Let’s review how you can authorize and deauthorize a Mac by using the Apple Music app, meaning for all modern Macs running macOS Mojave, Monterey, Big Sur, Ventura, and newer. This contrasts to older Macs that deauthorize with iTunes.

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The iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Mini, and iPhone 13 Pro Max can all be turned off, and turned back on again, at any time. You may think that turning off the iPhone 13 series is just a matter of pressing the power button, but it turns out there’s a little trick that is required to complete the process, and unless you learn what that is, you won’t be successful in powering off the device.

Read along and we’ll show you exactly how to turn off the iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPhone 13 Mini, and iPhone 13, and how to turn it back on again. Turning the device off and back on is also referred to as a soft restart, and can be helpful for some troubleshooting purposes.

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Some iPhone users have found the feature which allows you to return a missed phone call from the iPhone Lock Screen can result in unintentionally dialing a number or returning a call when you don’t intend to. This usually happens if someone swipes or taps on the notification of a missed call, which then calls the person back automatically.

If you don’t want the ability to automatically return a missed call from the iPhone lock screen, and you’d rather return calls manually, you can turn off the ability to return missed calls from the iPhone Lock Screen.

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Many of us rely on external USB drives and storage devices, whether hard drives or flash drives, to transfer large files and to serve as backups for things like Time Machine. Typically when you buy a new hard drive or USB drive, even if for a Mac, it comes pre-formatted in a Windows friendly format like exFAT or FAT32, rather than Mac file system like HFS+. This isn’t a problem however, as you can easily format a USB drive to be fully Mac compatible.

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Amazon is offering a rare significant discount on the Apple Studio Display, priced at $1299, down from the regular retail price of $1599.

The 27″ 5K display comes with an adjustable tilt stand, six built-in speakers, studio-quality microphones, 3 USB-C ports, 1 Thunderbolt port, and has a whopping 5120 x 2880 pixel resolution.

• Get the Apple Studio Display for $1299 from Amazon.com

FTC: OSXDaily is an affiliate partner with Amazon, meaning if you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment which goes towards keeping the site running and available for free.

One of the more fun ways to customize an iPhone is to set the lock screen wallpaper to shuffle between a collection of photos. Maybe you’d like to rotate through a variety of your favorite wallpapers on your lock screen, or perhaps you’ve got a collection of vacation photos, favorite pictures, or fancy wallpapers that you’d like to cycle through. That’s exactly what this feature is designed for.

You can now easily set your iPhone to rotate through a series of photos as your wallpaper, so let’s check out how this works.

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Apple has released macOS Monterey 12.6.3 and macOS Big Sur 11.7.3, along with Safari 16.3, for Mac users who are not yet running the MacOS Ventura 13 operating system.

These updates are available separately from the MacOS Ventura 13.2 update that was released concurrently.

The software updates are focused on security fixes, and contain no new features for macOS Monterey or Big Sur.

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Apple has released iOS 15.7.3 for iPhone, iPadOS 15.7.3 for iPad, and iOS 12.5.7 for older iPhone and iPad models. These updates are available for devices that are not running iOS 16.3 or iPadOS 16.3, either because they have not updated, or because they are unable to run the latest iOS/iPadOS versions.

Each of these system software updates contain important security fixes and are recommended for all users of older devices to install.

Separately, Apple also released iOS 16.3, iPadOS 16.3, macOS Ventura 13.2, macOS Monterey 12.6.3, macOS Big Sur 11.7.3, and updates to watchOS and tvOS

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Apple has released iOS 16.3 for iPhone. The iOS 16.3 update includes support for physical security keys, a Black History Month celebratory wallpaper, support for the second generation HomePod, and a variety of other smaller changes, along with bug fixes and security enhancements. The update is recommended for all eligible iPhone users to install.

Separately, Apple released iPadOS 16.3 for iPad, macOS Ventura 13.2 for Mac, macOS Monterey 12.6.3, macOS Big Sur 11.7.3, tvOS 16.3 for Apple TV, watchOS 9.3 for Apple Watch, and a series of software updates for older iPhone and iPad models including iOS 15.7.3, iPadOS 15.7.3, and iOS 12.5.7.

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Apple has released MacOS Ventura 13.2 as a software update for Mac users running the Ventura operating system. MacOS Ventura 13.2 includes bug fixes and security enhancements, and is therefore recommended for all Mac users running the latest OS release.

Separately, other updates including macOS Monterey 12.6.3, macOS Big Sur 11.7.3, iOS 16.3 for iPhone, iPadOS 16.3 for iPad, iOS 15.7.3, iPadOS 15.7.3, and iOS 12.5.7, and updates to tvOS and watchOS are also available.

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Apple has released iPadOS 16.3 update for iPad users with compatible devices.

iPadOS 16.3 includes support for Security Keys, and otherwise focuses on bug fixes and security enhancements, and is therefore recommended for all iPad users to install on their devices.

Separately, Apple also released iOS 16.3 for iPhone, macOS Ventura 13.2, macOS Monterey 12.6.3, macOS Big Sur 11.7.3, updates to watchOS and tvOS, and iOS 15.7.3, iPadOS 15.7.3, and iOS 12.5.7 for older iPhone and iPad models.

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If you’re new to the iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Pro series, you may be unfamiliar with how to turn the new phone off, and how to turn it back on again too.

Fortunately all new model iPhones follow the same procedure for powering off and powering on, so once you master the concepts on an iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone 14, you’ll be able to apply the same techniques to other newer model iPhone and iPad devices as well.

We’re going to show you how you can turn off an iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone 14, including the iPhone 14 Pro Max and iPhone 14 Plus, as well as how to turn them back on again.

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Apple’s newest M2 MacBook Pro lineup feature some shiny new wallpapers of some sort of abstract colorful rectangular shapes.

You don’t need to spend thousands on a brand new Mac just to appreciate the new wallpapers however, since you can download the full resolution images and use them on any device, whether it’s a Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, or Android.

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