MacOS Articles

Cheat Sheet / Updated 01-13-2025

So you’re using a Mac running macOS Sequoia? Good move! This Cheat Sheet warns you about six moves to avoid at all costs, gives you a handy reference of keyboard shortcuts that can save you time, teaches you how to navigate the Save As dialog using the Tab key, explains a straightforward protocol for backups, and tells you how to burn CDs from the Music app.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 11-01-2023

So, you’re using a Mac running macOS Sonoma? Good job! This Cheat Sheet gives you a handy reference of keyboard shortcuts that can save you time, teaches you how to navigate the "Save As" dialog using the Tab key, explains a straightforward protocol for backups, tells you how to burn CDs from the Music app, and warns you about six moves to avoid at all costs.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 05-08-2023

Whether you’ve purchased a new Mac with macOS Ventura pre-installed or you’ve upgraded from a previous version of macOS, you’ll find that Ventura makes your computer easier to use and offers myriad improvements to make you more productive. This Cheat Sheet includes information on things you should never do to your Mac; a compendium of useful and timesaving keyboard shortcuts; recommendations for backing up data; and website recommendations for smart Ventura users.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 11-15-2022

Whether you’ve purchased a new Mac with macOS Monterey pre-installed or you’ve upgraded from a previous version of macOS, you’ll find that Monterey makes your Mac easier to use and offers myriad improvements to make you more productive. This Cheat Sheet includes information on things you should never do to your Mac; a compendium of useful and timesaving keyboard shortcuts; a discussion of when folders are too full and when (and when not) to create subfolders; recommendations for backing up data; and a short discussion of iDevices and Continuity.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-05-2022

Whether you've purchased a new Mac with macOS High Sierra preinstalled or you've upgraded from a previous version of macOS, you'll find that macOS High Sierra makes your Mac easier to use and offers myriad improvements to make you more productive. Get additional information on things you should never do to your Mac, a compendium of useful and timesaving keyboard shortcuts, a discussion of when folders are too full and when (and when not) to create subfolders, recommendations for backing up data, and a short discussion of iDevices and Continuity.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-25-2022

Whether you’ve purchased a new Mac with macOS Catalina pre-installed or you’ve upgraded from a previous version of macOS, you’ll find that Catalina makes your Mac easier to use and offers myriad improvements to make you more productive. Get additional information on things you should never do to your Mac, a list of useful and timesaving keyboard shortcuts, a discussion of when folders are too full and when (and when not) to create subfolders, recommendations for backing up data, and a short discussion of Apple devices and continuity between them.

Article / Updated 03-22-2021

macOS Big Sur includes several enhancements, such as a nifty mechanism for capturing still and video images from your Mac screen, desktop pictures that change to reflect the time of day, the recently used apps section of the dock, and using Gallery view as a photo browser. Shooting screens If you’ve used a Mac for long, you probably know that you can grab a picture of what’s on your screen by using the shortcuts Command  +Shift+3 for the whole screen or Command  +Shift+4 to select a window or part of the screen. Those shortcuts and features have been around since time immemorial. When you take a screenshot using your old-school shortcuts — Command  +Shift+3 or Command  +Shift+4 — a thumbnail of the screenshot appears in the lower-right corner of the screen. If you do nothing, the thumbnail disappears after about 5 seconds, and then the screenshot is saved on your desktop. To see additional options, right- or Control-click the thumbnail and choose from the shortcut menu, as shown. Or just single-click the thumbnail before it disappears and the image opens in a window with Markup tools so you can annotate the image before you save it. When you have finished annotating, click Done to save the screenshot and annotations to the desktop, or click Revert to close the overlay without saving your annotations. If you don’t want to save a file at all, add the Control key to the keyboard shortcut (Command+Shift+Control+3 or Command+Shift+Control+3). Instead of saving the screenshot to a file, it will be sent to the clipboard, so you can paste it into any document that will accept an image from the clipboard. But it gets even better with one more fabulous screen-shooting shortcut that provides even more control over screenshots and adds the capability to record screen movies. This magical shortcut is Command  +Shift+5, and it’s the only shortcut you really have to memorize because its floating toolbar, shown, includes all the functionality of the Command  +Shift+3 and Command  +Shift+4 shortcuts and more. Notice the Options pop-up menu, which lets you do the following: Change the destination for screenshots from Desktop (the default) to Documents, Clipboard, Mail, Messages, Preview, or Other Location Set a timer for shots Turn on and off the floating thumbnail Remember the last selection you made (or not) Show or hide the mouse pointer After configuring the options, you capture screenshots by clicking the Capture icon. If you’ve chosen one of the movie options — Record Entire Screen or Record Selected Portion — the Capture icon becomes the Record icon; click it to begin recording. When you do, the Stop Recording icon appears in the menu bar. Click it to end your recording. Bottom line: Memorize Big Sur’s one keyboard shortcut to rule them all — Command  +Shift+5 — and use it for all of your screen-capturing needs. Dynamic desktop images When you choose your desktop picture, you’ll find a pair of dynamic desktop options above all the normal desktop pictures in the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preferences pane. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, take a gander at this figure, which explains it all. Recently used apps in the dock A relatively new feature to the dock is the Recently Used Apps section, which displays icons for the last three apps you’ve launched, regardless of whether their icons are in the dock permanently. Mentions of Gallery view Gallery view is great for browsing folders full of images. Click an image and then use the arrow keys to see the next or previous image; click the Markup, Rotate, or More icon to edit the current image. And that retires the side, at least as far as features in Big Sur’s Finder are concerned. Onward!

Article / Updated 03-22-2021

With VoiceOver and Text to Speech, your Mac, running macOS Big Sur, can both narrate what's happening on your screen and read documents to you. The camera pans back. A voice tells you what you’ve just seen. And suddenly it all makes sense. Return with me now to those thrilling days of the off-camera narrator … . Wouldn’t it be nice if your Mac had a narrator to provide a blow-by-blow account of what’s happening on your screen? Or your eyes are tired from a long day staring at the monitor, but you still have a lengthy document to read. Wouldn’t it be sweet if you could sit back, close your eyes, and let your Mac read the document to you in a (somewhat) natural voice? Both are possible with macOS Big Sur: the first scenario with VoiceOver, and the second with Text to Speech. VoiceOver Big Sur’s VoiceOver technology is designed primarily for the visually impaired, but you might find it useful even if your vision is 20/20. VoiceOver not only reads what’s on the screen to you but also integrates with your keyboard so you can navigate around the screen until you hear the item you’re looking for. When you’re there, you can use Keyboard Access to select list items, select check boxes and radio buttons, move scroll bars and sliders, resize windows, and so on — all with just a simple key press or two. To check it out, launch the System Preferences application (from Launchpad, the Applications folder, the Apple menu, or the dock), click the Accessibility icon and then click VoiceOver or press Command  +Fn+F5 on MacBook models and most Apple keyboards (or try Command  +F5). After VoiceOver is enabled, you can turn it on and off in the Accessibility System Preferences pane or by pressing Command  +Fn+F5 or Command  +F5. While VoiceOver is on, your Mac talks to you about what is on your screen. For example, if you click the desktop, your Mac might say something along the lines of “Application, Finder; Column View; selected folder, Desktop, contains 8 items.” It’s quite slick. Here’s another example: When you click a menu or item on a menu, you hear its name spoken at once, and when you close a menu, you hear the words “Closing menu.” You even hear the spoken feedback in the Print, Open, and Save (and other) dialogs. VoiceOver is kind of cool (talking alerts are fun), but having dialogs actually produce spoken text becomes annoying fast for most folks who aren’t visually impaired. (Those who are visually impaired, however, rave about VoiceOver and say it lets them do things they couldn’t easily do in the past.) In any case, I urge you to check it out. You might like it and find times when you want your Mac to narrate the action onscreen for you. The VoiceOver Utility The VoiceOver Utility lets you specify almost every possible option the VoiceOver technology uses. You can adjust its verbosity; specify how it deals with your mouse and keyboard; change its voice, rate, pitch, and/or volume; and more. You can open the VoiceOver Utility by clicking the Open VoiceOver Utility button in the Accessibility System Preferences pane or in the usual way: by double-clicking its icon (which you find in your Utilities folder). Of course, you might get the machines-are-taking-over willies when your Mac starts to talk to you or make sounds — but if you give it a try, it could change your mind. I wish I had the space to explain further, but I don’t. That’s the bad news. The good news is that VoiceOver Help is extensive and clear, and it helps you harness all the power of VoiceOver and the VoiceOver Utility. Text to Speech The second way your Mac can speak to you is via Text to Speech, which converts onscreen text to spoken words. If you’ve used Text to Speech in earlier versions of macOS, you’ll find that it’s pretty much unchanged. Why might you need Text to Speech? Because sometimes hearing is better than reading. For example, I sometimes use Text to Speech to read aloud to me a column or page I’ve written before I submit it. If something doesn’t sound quite right, I give it another polish before sending it off to my editor. You can configure this feature in the Accessibility System Preferences pane: Open System Preferences (from Launchpad or the Applications folder, dock, or Apple menu), click the Accessibility icon, and then click Spoken Content in the list on the left. In the System Voice pop-up menu, choose one of the voices to set the voice your Mac uses when it reads to you. Click the Play button to hear a sample of the voice you selected. Use the Speaking Rate slider to speed up or slow down the voice. Click the Play button to hear the voice at its new speed. I really like Alex, who says, “Most people recognize me by my voice.” My second favorite is Fred, who sounds like the Talking Moose and says, “I sure like being inside this fancy computer.” (Optional) To make your Mac speak the text in alert boxes and dialogs, select the Speak Announcements check box. You might hear such alerts as “The application Microsoft Word has quit unexpectedly” or “Paper out or not loaded correctly.” (Optional) To make your Mac speak text you’ve selected in a document, select the Speak Selection check box. The default keyboard shortcut for Speak Selection is Option+Esc, but you can assign any key combo you like by clicking the Options button and typing a different keyboard shortcut. (Optional) To make your Mac describe whatever is below the pointer, select the Speak Items Under Pointer check box. (Optional) To make your Mac speak whatever you type, select the Speak Typing Feedback check box. (Optional) To explore additional options for the previous four items, click its Options button. Now, to use Text to Speech to read text to you, copy the text to the Clipboard, launch any app that supports it (I usually choose TextEdit or Pages), paste the text into the empty untitled document, click where you want your Mac to begin reading to you, and then choose Edit → Speech → Start Speaking. To make it stop, choose Edit → Speech → Stop Speaking. Another great place Text to Speech is available is in the Safari web browser. It works the same as TextEdit but you don’t have to paste — just select the text you want to hear and choose Edit → Speech → Start Speaking. If you don’t care for the sound of the default voice, choose a different one in the Accessibility System Preferences pane. First click Spoken Content in the list on the left, and then choose a new voice from the System Voice drop-down menu or choose Customize to download additional voices.

Article / Updated 03-22-2021

Voice Control enables your Mac to recognize and respond to human speech. The only thing you need to use it is a microphone, which most of you have built right into your Mac (unless it’s a Mac Mini or Mac Pro as noted previously). Voice Control lets you issue verbal commands such as “Get my mail!” to your Mac (running macOS Big Sur) and have it actually get your email. You can also create AppleScripts and Automator workflows, and Finder Quick Actions, and trigger them by voice. If you’ve enabled Voice Control, you can use speech commands to instruct your Mac. To see a list of commands your Mac will understand if you speak them, open the Accessibility System Preferences pane, click the Voice Control tab, and then click the Commands button. A sheet appears, in which you can enable or disable the available dictation commands, as shown. If you have a laptop or an iMac, you may get better results from just about any third-party microphone or (better still) a headset with a microphone. The mic built into your Mac is okay, but it’s not great. To select a third-party microphone, first connect the mic to your Mac. Then open the Sound System Preferences pane and select it from the list of sound input devices in the Input tab. Below the list is an input volume control (not available with some third-party mics) and a level meter, as shown. Adjust the Input Volume so that most of the dots in the Input Level meter darken (11 of 15 in the figure). You can also choose an external mic in the drop-down menu below the microphone in the Dictation tab of the Keyboard System Preferences pane. However, you’ll need to use the Sound System Preferences pane if you want to adjust your input levels. To give Voice Control a try, press Fn twice (or whatever shortcut you set earlier) and speak one of the items from the list of Voice Control commands, such as “Open TextEdit.” If the command is recognized, it will appear in text above the microphone icon, as shown. This technology is clever and kind of fun, but it can also be frustrating when it doesn’t recognize what you say, which occurs too often, if you ask me. And it requires a decent microphone even though the mic built into most Macs works okay. The bottom line is that I’ve never been able to get Voice Control to work well enough to continue using it beyond a few minutes at best. Still, it’s kind of cool (and it’s a freebie), and I’ve heard more than one user profess love for it — which is why it’s included here.

Article / Updated 03-22-2021

Views are part of what makes your Mac feel like your Mac. Big Sur offers four views so you can select the best one for any occasion. Some people like one view so much that they rarely (or never) use others. Other people memorize the keyboard shortcuts to switch views instantly without reaching for the mouse. Try ’em all, and use the one(s) you prefer. Moving through folders fast in Column view Column view is a darn handy way to quickly look through a lot of folders at once, and it’s especially useful when those folders are filled with graphics files. The Column view is my favorite way to display windows in Finder. To display a window in Column view, shown, click the Column view icon on the toolbar (as shown in the margin), choose View → As Columns from Finder’s menu bar, or press Command  +3. Here’s how I clicked around in Column view to see the list of folders and files you see in the figure: When I clicked the Documents icon in the sidebar, its contents appeared in the column to the right. When I clicked the folder titled A Folder Full of Pictures in this column, its contents appeared in the second column. When I clicked A & J.jpg in the second column, the contents of that file appeared in the third column along with information about the file, such as its size (159KB) and the date and time it was created, modified, and last opened. The third column is displaying a Preview, a feature available in all views by choosing View→ Show/Hide Preview. You can modify the information you see in the Preview by choosing View → Show Preview Options and enabling the items you want displayed in the Preview column. Here are some helpful tips when you’re poking around Column view: You can have as many columns in a Column view window as your screen can handle. Just drag any edge or corner of the window to enlarge it so new columns have room to open. You can also click the green Zoom (Maximize) button to make the window fill the screen. (Hint: To get out of full-screen mode, press Esc or move your cursor to the top of the screen and click the green Zoom button that appears near the top-left corner.) If you Option-click the green Zoom button, the window will expand just enough to display all columns with content in them. You can use the little column divider lines at the bottom of every column to resize the column width. You’ll see the resizer cursor when your mouse pointer is directly over a column divider line, as shown. To be specific: If you drag the resizer left or right, the column to its left resizes. If you hold down the Option key when you drag a divider line, all columns resize at the same time. If you double-click a divider line, the column to its left expands to the Right Size, which is the width of the widest item in the column. If you right- or Control-click a divider line, you see a pop-up menu with four or five options: Right Size This Column, Right Size All Columns Individually, Right Size All Columns Equally, and Set Desktop Picture. You’ll see the fifth option, Import from iPhone or iPad, only if an iPhone or iPad is connected to your Mac. The preview column displays information about the highlighted item to its left, but only if that item isn’t a folder or disk. Why? Well, if it were a folder or disk, its contents would be in this column. For many items, the picture you see in the preview column is an enlarged view of the file’s icon. You only see a preview when the selected item is saved in a format that Quick Look can interpret (which is to say, most image file formats, including TIFF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, and PDF to name a few, as well as many other file formats, including Microsoft Word and Pages). If you don’t like having the preview displayed in Column view (but want it to remain in all other views), choose View → Show View Options and deselect the check box for Show Preview Column. You can do the same for any other view, or turn the preview off in all views by choosing View → Hide Preview. Perusing in Icon view Icon view is a free-form view that allows you to move your icons around within a window to your heart’s content. To display a window in Icon view, click the Icon view icon in the toolbar, choose View → As Icons from Finder’s menu bar, or press Command  +1. The best part of Icon view, at least in my humble opinion, is the Icon Size slider in the lower-right corner of Icon view windows (or in the top-right corner if the sidebar and toolbar are hidden). Listless? Try touring folders in List view Now I come to my second-favorite view, List view (shown). I like it so much because of the little angle bracket to the left of each folder. These angle brackets, which were called disclosure triangles in earlier macOS releases, let you see the contents of a folder without actually opening it. This view also allows you to select items from multiple folders at once and move or copy items between folders in a single window. Finally, it’s the view used to present Spotlight search results. To display a window in List view, click the List view icon on the toolbar, choose View→ As List from the Finder menu bar, or press Command  +2. When you’re in List view, the following tips can help you breeze through your folders to find what you’re looking for: To disclose a folder’s contents, click the angle bracket to its left or, if it’s selected, press the right-arrow key. The figure shows the result of either clicking the angle bracket to the left of the Novels folder or selecting (highlighting) the Novels folder and pressing the right-arrow key. I pressed Option+→ in the figure, so all the Novels folder’s subfolders (the Finished Novels and Unfinished Novels folders in this case) also expanded. And if either of these subfolders (or any other subfolder in the Novels folder) had subfolders, they too would have been expanded when I pressed Option+→. To close an open folder, click the angle bracket again or select the folder and press left-arrow. To close all open folders in a List view window, choose Edit → Select All (or press Command  +A) and then press Option+←. The angle brackets don’t appear if you’re using groups. To see the angle brackets, choose View→Use Groups or the keyboard shortcut Command+Control+0 (zero). These are toggles, and will turn groups off if they’re enabled or on if they’re disabled. You could also choose None from the Group icon/menu in the toolbar. Disclosure angle brackets and groups are an either/or situation—you either have disclosure angle brackets or groups but not both at the same time (in the same window). Click the column header to sort items in List view. Note the little upside-down v at the right edge of the selected column (the Name column in the figure). That’s the column’s sorting indicator. If the v points upward, as it does in the figure, the items in the corresponding column are sorted in alphabetical order; if you click the header (Name) again, the triangle will flip upside down and point downward and the items will be listed in the opposite (reverse alphabetical) order. This behavior is true for all columns in List view windows. You can change the order in which columns appear in a window. To do so, press and hold down on a column’s name, and then drag it to the left or right until it’s where you want it. Release the mouse button, and the column moves. The exception (isn’t there always an exception?) is that the Name column always appears first in List view windows; you can move all other columns about at will. In fact, you can even hide and show columns other than Name if you like using the View Options window. It’s even easier to hide or show columns by right- or Control-clicking anywhere on any column header (as shown below the Date Modified column in the preceding figure). Column names with check marks are displayed; column names that are unchecked are hidden. You can fine-tune all four views and the desktop by using the View Options window. Just choose View→ Show View Options or press Command  +J. The options you see apply to the active window or the desktop. Click the Use as Defaults button to apply these options to all windows in that view (that is, Icon, List, Column, or Gallery). To widen or shrink a column, hover the cursor over the dividing line between that column and drag left or right. When your cursor is over the dividing line in the header, it changes to a double-headed resizer. Hangin’ in the Gallery (view) Gallery view is the latest iteration of Cover Flow view in High Sierra and earlier. To display a window in Gallery view, click the Gallery view icon on the toolbar, choose View→ As Gallery from Finder’s menu bar, or press Command  +4. This figure shows Gallery view. Although Gallery view is useful only for folders with documents or images, it does offer at least three cool features: The selected item (Writers Write Pen.png in the figure) appears in a preview in the top part of the window. The Preview column displays additional information about the selected item. You can quickly flip through the previews by clicking the images to the left or right of the current preview image or by pressing the left- or right-arrow keys. What’s next on the (View) menu? The Finder View menu offers several commands in addition to the four views. These commands might help you peruse your icons more easily: Use Groups: Active window only. When enabled, it subdivides the items in the active window into groups, as shown, which is grouped by Date Last Opened. Group By: This submenu offers nine options for grouping items in the active window: Name (shortcut: Command  +Control+1) Kind (shortcut: Command  +Control+2) Application (strangely, there’s no shortcut for this command) Date Last Opened (shortcut: Command  +Control+3) Date Added (shortcut: Command  +Control+4) Date Modified (shortcut: Command  +Control+5) Date Created (strangely, there’s no shortcut for this command either) Size (shortcut: Command  +Control+6) Tags (shortcut: Command  +Control+7) Clean Up: Clean Up is available only in Icon view or on the desktop when no windows are active. Choose this command to align icons to an invisible grid; you use it to keep your windows and desktop neat and tidy. (If you like this invisible grid, don’t forget that you can turn it on or off for the desktop and individual windows by using View Options.) If no windows are active, the command instead cleans up your desktop. (To deactivate all open windows, just click anywhere on the desktop or close all open windows.) If any icons are selected (highlighted) when you pull down the View menu, you see Clean Up Selection rather than Clean Up. If you choose this command, it moves only the icons that are currently selected. Clean Up By: This command combines the tidiness of the Clean Up command with the organizational yumminess of the Sort By command,. This command sorts the icons by your choice of criteria, namely: Name (shortcut: Command  +Option+1) Kind (shortcut: Command  +Option+2) Date Modified (shortcut: Command  +Option+5) Date Created (no shortcut) Size (shortcut: Command  +Option+6) Tags (shortcut: Command  +Option+7) Clean Up By is similar to the Sort By command, but unlike Sort By, Clean Up By is a one-time affair. After you’ve used it, you can once again move icons around and reorganize them any way you like. Sort By: This command rearranges the icons in the active window in your choice from among nine ways, which happen to be the same nine options (ten, if you count None) in the Sort By pop-up menu. Unlike Clean Up By, which is a one-shot command, Sort By is persistent and will continue to reorganize your icons automatically. In other words, you can’t move icons around manually in an arranged window. One last thing: The Clean Up and Clean Up By commands are available only for windows viewed as icons. The Sort By command is available in all four views and remains in effect if you switch to a different view or close the window. To stop Finder from arranging icons in a window, choose None from the View→Sort By submenu or Option + click the toolbar’s Group pop-up menu and choose None. If you’re like me, you’ve taken great pains to place icons carefully in specific places on your desktop. If so, the Clean Up By and Sort By commands will mess up your perfectly arranged desktop icons. And alas, cleaning up your desktop is still not something macOS lets you undo.