If you’re a long time Mac user, you might recall the Slow Motion effect that could be applied by holding the Shift key while minimizing and maximizing windows, as well as for other animations like opening Launchpad or using Mission Control. Some of the fun eye-candy effects on Mac go way the early days of … Read More
Are you tired of seeing the “Upgrade to macOS Sonoma” notifications on your Mac running Ventura or Monterey? If so, you can hide those notifications and stop the “Upgrade to macOS Sonoma” nagging on your Mac. It’s not unusual for Mac users to continue running older versions of system software, well after a new version … Read More
A subtle way that you can tweak MacOS to make it feel a little faster is to speed up the auto-hiding and auto-showing time of the Dock. This obviously only applies to Mac users who hide their Dock by default, and the emphasis needs to be on feel faster because while this is removing a … Read More
MacOS Monterey and MacOS Big Sur introduced a new style to the MacOS alert dialog boxes, which look more like something you’d see in iOS than MacOS. In the new design style for MacOS alert dialog windows, everything is centered with the app icon on the top and the alert messages below, whereas the older … Read More
Are you noticing blurry text on your Mac’s display while navigating through the menu and across apps? More specifically, has this been an issue ever since you updated to macOS Monterey or Big Sur, and on a non-retina display? If so, chances are, font smoothing is enabled by default, and for some users they feel … Read More
The Default Dock on macOS shows off many of the apps that come bundled with your Mac out of the box. Many users customize it right away by adding apps they use on a regular basis, and removing those they don’t. However, some people may prefer to have a cleaner Dock, and to minimize the … Read More
Enabling Dark Mode in macOS Mojave tranforms the entire user interface appearance into an all-dark look, and while it’s very popular with many users, some other Mac users may not want a full dark mode appearance on their Mac. Instead, some Mac users may prefer a more limited Dark theme experience that only applies to … Read More
Do you think fonts and screen text looks fuzzy, blurry, or excessively thin in macOS Mojave? If so, it may be due to changes in anti-aliasing in Mojave, particularly for users with non-retina displays. If you are running macOS Mojave on a Mac without a retina display, or with an external monitor that does not … Read More
Mac OS has long had a dark menu and dark Dock option, and macOS Mojave 10.14 has a true Dark Mode theme that shifts the entire visual appearance to a pleasing dark interface scheme. But if you’re running macOS High Sierra 10.13.x, you can use a defaults command entered into the terminal to enable a … Read More
Do you frequently access the detailed printing options when printing from a Mac? If so, you’ll really appreciate this trick to always show the expanded print dialog window and settings screen.
One of the most subtle animations found in Mac OS X and macOS is known as the “focus ring animation”, which is a sort of zooming highlight around where ever the cursor focus goes in a text book. Many users likely haven’t even noticed it, it’s that subtle. If you have no idea what the … Read More
Hot Corners are a feature of Mac OS that allows a user to point the cursor into one of the far corners of the display to summon a set feature, like triggering Mission Control, Launchpad, Dashboard, Notification Center, revealing the desktop, start or disable a screen saver, or put the display to sleep. Many Mac … Read More
All Mac users should setup Time Machine backups with an external hard drive, Time Capsule, or network drive to insure they have regular automatic backups made of their stuff and MacOS X installation. But once you have a backup drive established with Time Machine, or if you use a different backup approach entirely, you may … Read More
Launchpad is the quick application launcher available from the Mac OS X Dock and a keystroke that looks quite a bit like the Homescreen of iOS. By default, the Launchpad app grid usually displays icons in 7 rows and 5 columns of apps, but with a little adjustment from the command line of OS X … Read More
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” … Read More
Advanced Mac users who are either in development or another field which experiences frequent app crashing may find the persistent Crash Reporter windows with the ‘App quit unexpectedly’ message to be a nuisance, interfering with their workflow in Mac OS X. While one longstanding option is to disable the Crash Reporter dialog completely in MacOS … Read More
There are some situations where knowing exactly what wireless networks a Mac has connected to and when that connection was last established can be helpful. We’ll demonstrate how to uncover a comprehensive listing of specifics about previously joined wi-fi networks on a Mac, which will include the last connection date and time (to the second!), … Read More
The first time you login to a new user account, boot a fresh Mac, or a clean Mac OS X install, you’ll be presented with a default Dock selection without any customizations, which includes a variety of apps depending on the Mac hardware and what software is installed. A common default Mac OS X Dock … Read More
