Miscellaneous stupid Mac tricks, cool Mac tricks, and stupid cool Mac tricks Thread
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Another one, Option-clicking the clock (in Big Sur or Monterey) or the little Notification Centre icon (in earlier versions) will turn on Do Not Disturb. And holding down Option while in the Apple menu changes "About This Mac" to "System Information" which will immediately open up System
Plenty of people have multiple email addresses, and the other day a coworker once again sent an email CC'ing someone at the wrong address. Which reminded me that there is a somewhat obtuse way to change the default email used. Open the Contacts application, then Edit > Edit Distribution List... and pull up a contact. Then you can click an email/phone/address to make it the default (bold) option.
Option dragging the edge or corner of a window to expand in multiple directions, anchored to the center of the window.
Holy crap how long has this been around? I've used that forever in graphics apps and such and never thought to use it on windows. Shift to maintain aspect ratio also works as (now) expected.
I think that was introduced at the same time as the other feature I mentioned. You can also option-double-click and edge or a corner.
I just noticed that shift dragging an edge expands/contracts a window in both dimensions.
I'm not sure how useful it is. It's much less precise than corner-dragging.
You can try option-shift drag for extra fun.
I just noticed that shift dragging an edge expands/contracts a window in both dimensions.
I'm not sure how useful it is. It's much less precise than corner-dragging.
You can try option-shift drag for extra fun.
Just like in Illustrator and Photoshop! Shift-drag also works the same way as shift-drag in AI/PS.
Making some notes to myself as I go through the process of setting up a my own new system for the first time in a very long time (with Monterey). First, it's still possible to change system-wide icons which means I get to keep my nice colorful good Folder ones from back in the day rather than Apple's modern shitty flat monochrome ones. Manually one can disable SIP, mount the read-only volume and modify "/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources" .icns like in the good old days. I didn't end up playing with that too much though because it turns out there is now an application called "IconChamp" which makes it easy and takes the place of dearly departed theming software of old like CandyBar.
If you use FileVault but have multiple users and don't want to auto-login, that's still possible with the same old
Useful when a delay is desirable for one reason or another (my main account lives on the network for example), not all users should have boot capability, or authenticating to a network from the login window.
Another two aren't necessarily entirely "Mac" per se, but still some command line stuff I just needed again for the first time in years and remains darn useful. First, trying to eject an external volume and can't, classic "volume is in use" thing except there is no clear culprit. Took me a bit to remember
will do the trick.
For networking,
If you use FileVault but have multiple users and don't want to auto-login, that's still possible with the same old
Code:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DisableFDEAutoLogin -bool YESAnother two aren't necessarily entirely "Mac" per se, but still some command line stuff I just needed again for the first time in years and remains darn useful. First, trying to eject an external volume and can't, classic "volume is in use" thing except there is no clear culprit. Took me a bit to remember
lsof which lists open files, you can just use that and grep for the volume name and it'll tell you what's causing the hold up. So for a volume "ExternalDrive"
Code:
% sudo lsof | grep ExternalDriveFor networking,
tcpdump remains a powerful way to do some light troubleshooting. I was having issues getting my new Mac Mini talking through a Wireguard link to my NAS management earlier this week, with a few different moving parts in the mix. tcpdump -n proto \\icmp quickly and easily let me see whether pings were going through or not from each direction, which let me eliminate the Mac, routing, VPN or firewall as issues (TrueNAS needed a static route).I loved that feature, but it’s gone now. I still try it sometimes hoping they’ll bring it back in a random update. It’s like a fidget toy for me
You can hide specific individual applications from Spotlight by adding them to its privacy pane, even though it says "Prevent Spotlight from searching these locations" as if you can only stop searching entire folders/drives. This is handy for if you regularly launch something via cmd-space and it keeps popping up something you don't want as default. Ie., I want to pull up System Preferences but it's decided that Simulator is what I wanted instead.
I don't know of any way to specifically control the order in a deterministic fashion, it seems instead to interpret continued typing beyond the first suggestion as meaning one didn't want it. So if I type "C" and that goes to "Contacts" but then I rapidly touch type out "Con" (which feels more natural) it starts at Contacts and by the time I hit enter has switched to "Console" instead. Shaving down the search list is brute force but can be handy particularly for applications that are slow to launch or trigger a bunch of other activity and you don't want them being launched accidentally.
I don't know of any way to specifically control the order in a deterministic fashion, it seems instead to interpret continued typing beyond the first suggestion as meaning one didn't want it. So if I type "C" and that goes to "Contacts" but then I rapidly touch type out "Con" (which feels more natural) it starts at Contacts and by the time I hit enter has switched to "Console" instead. Shaving down the search list is brute force but can be handy particularly for applications that are slow to launch or trigger a bunch of other activity and you don't want them being launched accidentally.
I may be the last one to know, but Photos seems to have recently learned a new trick. I was looking at pictures of our cats and noticed an tiny icon with what looks like a paw print in it.
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7622 ... 10+PM.jpeg
I clicked the icon and up popped a dictionary style dialog with info about the breed of cat in the picture.
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7623 ... 48+PM.jpeg
Note in the first picture the little Plus sign with the info icon on the upper right. I went looking for other photos that had that Plus sign and found that this also works for plants.
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7623 ... 46+PM.jpeg
Along the way I did find some instances where it's obviously wrong about plants and cats. I don't have any dog pictures and haven't found any other category that Photos will try to identify, but I assume this is just a beginning. I like it! In the long run this will be more useful to me than facial recognition.
And example of a bad ID. This is not marijuana.
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7623 ... 47+PM.jpeg
Anyone know about any other categories it'll ID?
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7622 ... 10+PM.jpeg
I clicked the icon and up popped a dictionary style dialog with info about the breed of cat in the picture.
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7623 ... 48+PM.jpeg
Note in the first picture the little Plus sign with the info icon on the upper right. I went looking for other photos that had that Plus sign and found that this also works for plants.
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7623 ... 46+PM.jpeg
Along the way I did find some instances where it's obviously wrong about plants and cats. I don't have any dog pictures and haven't found any other category that Photos will try to identify, but I assume this is just a beginning. I like it! In the long run this will be more useful to me than facial recognition.
And example of a bad ID. This is not marijuana.
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7623 ... 47+PM.jpeg
Anyone know about any other categories it'll ID?
THAT MOST CERTAINLY IS THE DEVIL'S LETTUCE YOU FILTHY HIPPIE.
I want to say it works on a small set of physical locations as well, but I'm not sure what the trigger is (buildings? landforms? etc.)
As far as accuracy... yeah, it's a little hit or miss. I've found with plants it's reasonably accurate, getting at least close enough that using its identification as a starting point, Google can get you the rest of the way there. Pets, however... for some reason it thinks our Australian Labradoodle is a Golden Retriever (she looks nothing like a Golden). It correctly identifies our cat as a siamese, but not the correct sub-breed (Blue Point).
So, I found 3 more types of things it tries to ID.
First, a little icon that I'm guessing is supposed to be a book. It got this one hilariously wrong, though.
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7623 ... 53+PM.jpeg
Then, a little picture frame icon which, I guess, identifies a picture frame. Kind of weird that it drew a blank on the description, though, as all 3 people in the picture are featured prominently in my Photos library.
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7624 ... 02+PM.jpeg
And last, the location thing mentioned by cateye above is probably this. The weird thing about this is that it only appears on this one picture even though I took a half dozen shots of that sign. It has to have used the GPS information from the phone, there's no way in hell it knows where that is just based on the picture (it's not the Eiffel Tower, fer cry'n out loud) so why just that one picture and why bother at all?
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7624 ... 18+PM.jpeg
First, a little icon that I'm guessing is supposed to be a book. It got this one hilariously wrong, though.
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7623 ... 53+PM.jpeg
Then, a little picture frame icon which, I guess, identifies a picture frame. Kind of weird that it drew a blank on the description, though, as all 3 people in the picture are featured prominently in my Photos library.
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7624 ... 02+PM.jpeg
And last, the location thing mentioned by cateye above is probably this. The weird thing about this is that it only appears on this one picture even though I took a half dozen shots of that sign. It has to have used the GPS information from the phone, there's no way in hell it knows where that is just based on the picture (it's not the Eiffel Tower, fer cry'n out loud) so why just that one picture and why bother at all?
http://techquarium.com/gallery2z/d/7624 ... 18+PM.jpeg
Eventually, if it can ever get out of the "The best use for machine learning is comic relief" page.
This is how it classifies the 'dog' pictures in my library.
First? Yup, OK. Second, we're still pretty good here; she's got some lab mixed in there but she's a hound. It goes downhill quickly from there.
this one genuinely freaked me out.
if you open a jpeg containing text in finder quickview... the text is selectable and you can copy it to the clipboard.
if you open a jpeg containing text in finder quickview... the text is selectable and you can copy it to the clipboard.
Yes, Apple advertised the text recognition features of Monterey.this one genuinely freaked me out.
if you open a jpeg containing text in finder quickview... the text is selectable and you can copy it to the clipboard.
Haha, came and opened this thread back up just to post this too! Surprisingly it's not in TinkerTool yet even, which I've tended to rely on a bit for discovering GUI related
defaults type capabilities in macOS.
I guess this kind of counts as a stupid Mac trick. And boy, do I really classify it as "stupid" because it really shouldn't be this way.
Read the how to page for Apple's MagSafe battery pack and you'll see that it has quietly released a firmware update to enable higher wattage charging from the battery pack. How do you get this update? Apparently, leave the pack attached to your iPhone for a week, or just plug it into a Mac for 5 minutes and silent processes will silently update the battery pack.
I imagine the missing info from that should be "recent Mac" because even though my iPhone on iOS 15.4.1 can sync to iTunes under High Sierra, this update never appeared.
I know the AirPods work the same way (just wait and eventually you get it) but it's really frustrating to not hae a way to initiate updates, or to never be informed of these kinds of updates that improve the accessory!
So, there you go. That's my trick. Can't update your Apple branded accessory? Plug it into your Mac, it may or may not update said accessory.
Read the how to page for Apple's MagSafe battery pack and you'll see that it has quietly released a firmware update to enable higher wattage charging from the battery pack. How do you get this update? Apparently, leave the pack attached to your iPhone for a week, or just plug it into a Mac for 5 minutes and silent processes will silently update the battery pack.
I imagine the missing info from that should be "recent Mac" because even though my iPhone on iOS 15.4.1 can sync to iTunes under High Sierra, this update never appeared.
I know the AirPods work the same way (just wait and eventually you get it) but it's really frustrating to not hae a way to initiate updates, or to never be informed of these kinds of updates that improve the accessory!
So, there you go. That's my trick. Can't update your Apple branded accessory? Plug it into your Mac, it may or may not update said accessory.
Shift-Control-Command-4 takes a screenshot, but COPIES IT TO THE CLIPBOARD instead of saving it to disk, so now you can just switch over to your Messages or Mail or whatever and just paste and send without having the crap cluttering up your filesystem somewhere.
Thanks, maxplanar, you've belatedly solved a problem that was bedeviling me early last week. I was having an e-mail exchange with ShipStation—Pay Pal's new pre-paid shipping label contractor—about the Customs Harmonized System code needed for creating labels for shipments to an Australian customer. I kept trying to make a paste-able screenshot—using Shift-Command-4—of the Customs declaration form I had generated for test purposes, but the screenshots weren't in the clipboard after the "camera click" sound. When I later minimized my Mac Mail window (I use side-by-side Firefox and Mac Mail windows on my 2011 27-inch LED Cinema Display), I found columns of .png screenshots on my desktop. I had used Mac Help from Firefox to find the proper keyboard combination, but it doesn't—at least in High Sierra—say anything about Shift-Control-Command-4 for putting the screenshot into the clipboard.
As a public service, I'll summarize what I eventually found out about Harmonized Systems codes. You must follow the first 4 digits (chapter and category) of the HS code with a decimal point followed by a 2-digit sub-category, or you'll confuse the heck out of foreign Customs clerks who won't recognize a 4 digit code as a legit HS code. My little legacy business sells guitar method books written by my late guitar teacher, for which the HS code then shown on ShipStation's HS code Info lookup was 4904 for "Music, printed or in manuscript, whether or not bound or illustrated". I entered 4904—without any trailing sub-category—for 3 separate packages shipped to a customer in the state of Western Australia, and tracking showed each of these packages was held up by Customs in Brisbane or Sydney for 8 days before being shipped onward to Perth. Customs in Sydney even sent one package on a round trip to JFK Airport in NYC, evidently for (non-existent) better Customs info. The ShipStation Info lookup now shows 4904.00, indicating a null sub-category. ShipStation's User Support didn't "have a clue", and lied.
You can set it to the clipboard by default in the cmd-shift-5 options, and then it'll always use the clipboard for cmd-shift-3 or 4.
One you're in Shift-Command-4 or Shift-Control-Command-4 (i.e., when the cursor is a reticle), if you hit space you can select a window and it will take a screenshot of just that window, with transparent background and drop shadow.
Apple has been amazing at keeping these weird little keyboard shortcuts things exactly the same since the days of OS6.x, and I was sad when Apple finally got rid of Command-Shift-4 (or was it 5?), which used to send a screenshot directly to the printer. But, hey, such is life, and it wouldn't make sense now since we tend to want more granularity in our toolsets.
You're not wrong. Printers are the spawn of Satan.
Yes, I found that out from Mac Help in High Sierra; that's what I was using repeatedly on my test Customs Declaration (addressed to the current business of one of the two Australians who were my direct bosses when I worked in Teaneck NJ 1999-2004) when I got the "camera clicks"—but nothing in the clipboard. I eventually found out from Mac Help about Apple's Grab utility, which gave me a .PDF—instead of a .PNG— on the desktop.
I have not yet attached this test .PDF in an e-mail to ShipStation, because I'm not sure whether their User Success Specialist Mia G. knows how to open an e-mail attachment. Kari G., the Mgr. User Support who is Mia G.'s boss, replied to my last e-mail to Mia G.
ShipStation is a software company with many "partners" besides PayPal; my impression is that they hire their User Success Specialists straight from the Midwestern cornfields and strictly choreograph their interactions.
Therefore I don't believe Mia G. when she wrote
For one thing, I had previously sent 3 packages to my customer in Western Australia, and the Harmonization code I entered was 4904. It's always possible that ShipStation's developers have very recently added an error message, but the requirement should be 7–13 characters—because the 5th through 7th characters should be a decimal point followed by a 2-digit sub-category such as .00 . For another thing, early on 22 May I received an unrelated order from a customer in Yorkshire UK; when I immediately ordered the pre-paid label through ShipStation's application, I successfully entered the Harmonization code 4904.00.00.00 to be on the safe side. That implies a test is no longer necessary.
I have not yet informed ShipStation that I created a label for this unrelated order, because of a discovered workflow that is unparalleled in my 40 years as a (now-retired) commercial applications programmer. When a label for an international order is created, ShipStation gives it a South Hackensack NJ address and a USPS tracking code—but prints a Customs tracking code and the order's ultimate destination at the bottom under "Electronic Customs Service" and the logo of sub-contractor GlobalPost. USPS tracking shows that GlobalPost picks up the package in South Hackensack and transports it to Lyndhurst NJ—where it prints a new label with the ultimate destination and Customs number and pastes it over the existing label. The package is then transported back to South Hackensack, and from there to JFK Airport in Queens NYC.
(For those of you unfamiliar with NYC-area geography, New Jersey is West of NYC's Hudson River boundary, but Queens is the farthest-East borough of NYC across a Long Island Bay estuary mis-named the East River.) I don't want ShipStation messing with the progress of this package until it has safely passed through UK Customs, because I think ShipStation's capable of interference merely to make me a liar.Sorry for the digression in the preceding 3 paragraphs, but IMHO it's generally-useful public information. I'll drop the subject now, unless my latest package is rejected by UK Customs.
Edit: Clarifications in next-to-last paragraph.
No, and being an American I had never heard of him. I can't tell from the Wikipedia article whether that's a compliment.
If it's a comment—complimentary or derisive—on my text style, I confess to having taken enthusiastically to semicolons and em-dashes after I encountered them in 8th grade (second form to Brits) English class. I'm trying unsuccessfully to kick the habit. Being a programmer for 40 years didn't help.
Hah! I'm American as well, but one of the very first long series I ever had read to me as a child and then reread myself starting in 7th grade or so was Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series of sea novels. We also had an active subscription to the Economist. Some of the British-isms have stuck with me like a bloody barnacle forevermore!I'm trying unsuccessfully to kick the habit. Being a programmer for 40 years didn't help.
I was trying to give someone an easy way to get the full path to go directly to a folder/file on a network share, not just the server but also picking a share and then the rest. Then I found the Finder actually has this functionality built right in. If you click on foobar, the regular
cmd-c is Copy "foobar", option-cmd-c is Copy "foobar" as Pathname which will then get you ie "/Volumes/ABC share/foobar", and then finally adding control for ctl-option-cmd-c gets Copy "foobar" as Link. That gets you a URL normalized (spaces to %20 etc) full link ala "smb://server-fqdn/ABC%20share/foobar". Handy for a number of things including stuff like Time Machine restores from network drives.
I couldn't find anything which worked to do this, so ended up installing an ancient Steelseries application which overwrites mouse acceleration. Still works even on the M1 Mac in the latest macOS.
But on this subject, is there any way to change mouse scroll wheel acceleration/scaling without affecting the trackpad?
Maybe overkill for just adjusting the scroll wheel curves, but I've used SteerMouse to control every possible facet of how my mice work for years. It's a great piece of software for absolute fine-grained control and well worth the nominal cost. It has a 30 day free trial.
via: https://it.digitaino.com/use-touchid-to ... -on-macos/
add "auth sufficient pam_tid.so" to /etc/pam.d/sudo (below the pam_smartcard.so line) to allow using TouchID to authenticate to sudo.
add "auth sufficient pam_tid.so" to /etc/pam.d/sudo (below the pam_smartcard.so line) to allow using TouchID to authenticate to sudo.
I''m maybe having a slow brain day but if I select multiple files in finder where should I be looking for this rename?
I''m maybe having a slow brain day but if I select multiple files in finder where should I be looking for this rename?
Highlight all, right-click. It's just under 'Get Info'.
To be fair, that feature wasn’t always there! From what I can find, it was added in Yosemite, which came out in 2014. So you wouldn’t have been able to do it 20 years ago anyway
I''m maybe having a slow brain day but if I select multiple files in finder where should I be looking for this rename?
Highlight all, right-click. It's just under 'Get Info'.