Mac OS X

Desktop clutter, in fact most clutter, is something that everyone on a computer struggles with. For most people, the desktop is a good place to put files that need to be accessed often but you can only put so many items on your desktop before it turns into a mess. …

MacBooks, and Macs in general, have only one headphone jack. You can connect a headphone/mic combo device to it, and it will work just fine. You can also use an external device though it will normally still be detected as a combo device. If you want to use an external …

The great thing about Apple’s products is how well they work with each other. It can build apps that communicate perfectly so that you have a seamless experience on all devices. A lot of this works via iCloud which can sync data from Messages, Notes, and other apps between your …

There’s a consensus that too much screen time is bad for you but it’s hard to get away from screens. If you aren’t looking at your phone, you’re probably on your desktop and not everyone has the option to simply turn it off and take a break. One recent method …

We spend too much time in front of screens. Some would argue that it’s a necessity given the nature of work for many people but that doesn’t mean all time spent in front of a screen is productive, or healthy. iOS 12 introduced a new feature called Screen Time which …

External drives sometimes need to be formatted and this is something fairly basic. Desktop operating systems can do this out of the box and macOS is no exception. If you want to format a drive on macOS, you can do so with the built-in Disk Utility. When you format a …

Macs, and macOS in general, is far less restrictive in nature than iOS. That’s not to say macOS is exceptionally easy to customize or that Apple doesn’t lock parts of it down that, given it were a different OS, users and developers alike, would have easy access to. One such …

File extensions are normally hidden on macOS. Ordinarily, you don’t need to know the extension of a file however, it’s pretty easy to show file extensions on macOS. In fact, you can choose to show extensions for all files, or you can show them for just select files. Show file …

Screenshots on macOS are great; they’re a built-in feature that covers most basic screenshot needs, and the screenshots themselves are excellent in quality. If you have a retina display, the screenshots you take will not downgrade it. macOS also has the Preview app which can open most common file types. …

It’s hard to work without a mouse on a desktop. You can stick to using just the keyboard if you’re inside one app but a mouse or trackpad makes it easier to navigate between apps, select files, and customize the desktop. In some cases, e.g., when you’re watching a video, …