Catalina Articles

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 03-02-2020

We can all use a break from our digital devices, and Apple’s solution is Screen Time. Although Screen Time includes the parental controls that used to appear in the Parental Controls System Preferences pane, this new feature is about policing your own screen time behavior as well as the behavior of others in your family (if you so desire). If you have an iDevice, you’re probably familiar with Screen Time, which provides insight into how you spend your time on your iPhone or other iDevices, including which apps you used and websites you visited and for how long you. On the Mac, Screen Time is a System Preferences pane (choose the Apple icon→System Preferences or click the System Preferences Dock icon). Today’s date appears at the top of the pane by default. Use the arrows on either side of the Today button near the upper-right corner to view days before or after the day being displayed, or click the Today button to return to your stats for today. If you have other devices using Screen Time, you’ll see a pop-up menu at the bottom of the window; click it and choose what you see in Screen Time: All Devices or any individual device. And if you're using Family Sharing, click your name below your picture to set Screen Time options for other family members. All Screen Time actions takes place in the seven tabs in your Mac’s sidebar on the left, namely: App Usage: Displays details about the apps you used and how long you used them. Notifications: Displays the number of notifications you received on this day and the time you received them. Pickups: Shows you how many times you picked up your devices. Downtime: Sets a schedule for times when only apps you have specifically allowed during downtime are available. A reminder appears 5 minutes before downtime starts. App Limits: Sets time limits for apps and app categories. Always Allowed: Enables the check box for apps you want to remain available during downtime. Content & Privacy: Replaces the Parental Controls options in earlier versions of macOS. Enable or disable content by type, Apple online store, or specific app, as well as allow or disallow passcode changes, account changes, and other options for which you may want to restrict changes. Finally, the Options button at the bottom of the sidebar offers two choices. Share Across Devices enables reporting for this Mac to be shared with your other devices. Screen Time Passcode lets you secure your Screen Time settings with a passcode and allow more time when limits expire. Want to use the awesome Screen Time app on your iPhone? Use this guide to set downtime and restrictions.

Article / Updated 01-29-2020

Podcasts are like radio or television shows, except when you subscribe to them, you can listen to or watch them at any time you like. Podcasts have been growing in popularity. As a result, thousands of podcasts are available and many (or most) are free. There are podcasts on a vast variety of topics so there is something for everyone. If you want to listen to podcasts on your Mac, you’ll want to check out the new Podcasts app that comes with macOS Catalina. Let’s give it a try by checking out a podcast for Mac enthusiasts. To find podcasts, launch the Podcasts app and follow these steps: Click Browse or Top Charts in the sidebar. Click a link in the content pane on the right or type a keyword or phrase in the Search field at the top of the sidebar. When you find a podcast that appeals to you, do one of the following: Double-click it to listen to a preview. Click the + button to download the current episode of that podcast. Click the Subscribe button to receive all future episodes of that podcast automatically. Click the ellipsis (…) for additional options. The image below shows all these things for the Mac Geek Gab audio podcast from The Mac Observer. For more information on most podcasts, just click the little more link (below the Subscribe button). Subscribing to a podcast is a cool deal. You can configure how often the Podcast app checks for new episodes (hourly, daily, weekly, or manually), what to do when new episodes become available (download the most recent one, download all episodes, or do nothing), and how many episodes to keep in your library (all, all unplayed, or a specific number between 2 and 10). To specify these settings, click a podcast you’ve subscribed to in your library, click the ellipsis (…), and choose Settings from the shortcut menu. When you start listening to a subscribed podcast on your Mac in the Podcast app and switch to an iDevice, such as your iPhone, and the podcast will pick up where it left off on your Mac. Or at least that’s what’s supposed to happen — and it usually does.

Article / Updated 01-28-2020

The folks at Apple want to make your life easier. That includes multiple ways to adjust your Mac’s brightness with Dark mode. Have you ever thought that the white background in most windows on your Mac was far too bright? Have you ever fiddled with brightness hoping to take it down a notch? Some Mac users go to extreme lengths to see their screen better. You can go far as changing the background color of Finder windows to a dark shade of gray (View →Show View Options), even though it works only on windows using icon view. In mac OS Catalina, such machinations are a thing of the past. Now it’s easy to reduce your screen's brightness by enabling Dark mode. As you can see below (top), Dark mode affects the appearance of windows, buttons, menus, and other interface elements. To choose Dark (or Light) mode, open System Preferences and click General. The first item you see — Appearance — is where you pick your mode. If you are one of those Mac user’s who like to automate things that work well, try out macOS Catalina’s new Auto mode feature. Catalina’s Auto mode, which switches between dark and light automatically based on the time of day. Check out these other new macOS Catalina features. Try changing the accent and highlight colors while in Dark mode — they look slightly different than in Light mode. And that’s all there is to Dark mode. Try using it for a while. Many Mac users didn’t use it much in Mojave (too much trouble to switch back and forth); in Catalina, the new Auto mode makes using this feature much easier. Want to check out other handy Mac hacks? Check out this article to learn how you can speed up your Mac experience.

Article / Updated 01-27-2020

This information is for speed demons only. At some time in their Mac lives, most users have wished that their machines would work faster — even if their Macs have multiple cores or processors. While these tips won’t actually speed up your Mac, here are some ways to make your Mac at least seem faster. Better still, at least some of these tips won’t cost you one red cent. Use keyboard shortcuts on your Mac Keyboard shortcuts can make navigating your Mac a much faster experience compared with constantly using the mouse, offering these benefits: If you use keyboard shortcuts, your hands stay focused on the keyboard, reducing the amount of time that you remove your hand from the keyboard to fiddle with the mouse or trackpad. If you memorize keyboard shortcuts with your head, your fingers will memorize them, too. The more keyboard shortcuts you use, the faster you can do what you’re doing. Using the keyboard shortcuts for commands you use often can save you a ton of effort and hours upon hours of time. Make a list of keyboard shortcuts you want to memorize, and tape it to your monitor or where you’ll see it all the time when using your Mac. Improve your typing skills One way to make your Mac seem faster is to move your fingers faster. The quicker you finish a task, the quicker you’re on to something else. Keyboard shortcuts are nifty tools, but improving your typing speed and accuracy will save you even more time. As a bonus, the more your typing skills improve, the less time you’ll spend correcting errors. So you’ll finish everything even faster! The speed and accuracy that you gain have another bonus: When you’re a touch typist, your fingers fly even faster when you use those nifty keyboard shortcuts. The best and easiest way to improve your keyboarding skills is a typing training app for your Mac such as Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor ($25.95), any of the myriad typing-instruction apps in the Mac App Store (search for typing), or a free typing-instruction website such as TypingTest (free). Change the resolution on your Mac A setting that you can change to potentially improve your Mac’s performance is the resolution of your monitor. Most modern monitors and video cards (or onboard video circuitry, depending on which Mac model you use) can display multiple degrees of screen resolution. You change your monitor’s display resolution in the Displays System Preferences pane. First, click the Display tab and then click the Scaled button, which makes a list of resolutions appear. Select the resolution you want to try from the list below the Scaled button. You see many more items on the screen at native resolution, but you can make everything bigger by switching to lower resolutions. Here’s the deal on display resolution: The first number is the number of pixels (color dots) that run horizontally, and the second number is the number of lines running vertically. It used to be that fewer pixels refreshed faster. But with LCD and LED (flat-panel) monitors and notebooks, this usually isn’t true — or if it is true, it’s almost unnoticeable. Furthermore, because you can see more onscreen at higher resolutions, a higher resolution reduces the amount of scrolling that you have to do and lets you have more open windows on the screen. Finally, the highest resolution is almost always the native resolution of that display, which means it will usually look the sharpest. So you could just as easily say that higher resolutions can speed up your Mac experience as well. On the other hand, if you can’t discern icons in toolbars and other program components, using a lower resolution may actually enhance your work speed. Choose a resolution based on what looks best and works best for you. If things on the screen are too big or too small at your current resolution, try a higher or lower resolution until you find one that feels “just right.” And, if you have a Retina display, try all available resolutions to see which you prefer. The highest resolution on a Retina display will make everything on the screen appear very, very small, which may or may not be desirable. Finally, check out the Accessibility System Preferences pane’s Zoom tab, where you can enable keyboard shortcuts to zoom in and out instantly, and Hover Text, a highly configurable mode that enlarges only what’s under your pointer. Purchase a faster Mac Apple keeps putting out faster and faster Macs at lower and lower prices, and all current Macs now ship with at least 8GB of RAM. Although 4GB is officially enough RAM to run Catalina, if you like to keep more than one or two apps running all the time, it’s not enough to run it at its best. Check out the latest iMacs and Mac minis — they’re excellent values. Or if you crave portability, MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro models are rocking good computers and have never been less expensive. You might even consider a used Mac that’s faster than yours. eBay has hundreds of used Macs up for auction at any given time. Shopping on eBay might just get you a better Mac at an outstanding price. Or try Craigslist if you prefer to see and touch the Mac before you commit. Another excellent option is to visit the Apple website’s refurbished and clearance section. You can frequently save hundreds of dollars by purchasing a slightly used Mac that has been refurbished to factory specifications by Apple. Another advantage to Apple refurbs is that they come with an Apple warranty. If you’re on a tight budget, definitely check it out. Add RAM to your Mac You get a lot of bang for your buck when you upgrade your Mac’s RAM. Get an additional 4GB, 8GB, or even 16GB; you can never have too much. Your Mac will run better with at least 8GB of RAM, which will cost you less than $100 in most cases and can be installed by anyone. Yes, anyone — the instructions are right there in your User Guide booklet, or you can find them at the Apple Technical Support pages (search for RAM upgrade and your Mac model). Unless, that is, you own one of the many late-model Macs that aren’t user-upgradeable. These models are exceedingly difficult to open, and Apple frowns upon users opening some models these days. Plus, some Macs have RAM soldered to the motherboard and can’t be upgraded at all. If your Mac is upgradeable and you're uncomfortable with upgrading RAM yourself, opt for the services of an authorized, certified Mac cracker-opener. The bottom line is that it’s best to order your Mac with as much RAM as you can in the first place. Add a second display to your Mac Almost all Macs today support a second monitor, and screen real estate is among the biggest productivity enhancers — right up there with typing faster. Screen real estate is the holy grail when working in multi-windowed or multi-paletted apps such as Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, GarageBand, and iMovie. Two monitors are also great when you’re working with two or more programs at the same time. With sufficient screen real estate, you can arrange all the windows and palettes for all programs in the way that’s most expedient to the way you work. You don’t need an expensive 4K or 5K monitor. For a couple of hundred bucks, you can find a second display that will double your screen real estate. Or, if you have an iPad of recent vintage, read the Many Macs support three or more displays, as long as you have the proper cables and available ports. Use your iPad as a second display for your Mac Catalina introduces a new feature known as Sidecar, which allows you to use a late-model iPad as a second screen for your late-model Mac. The official list of supported hardware was unavailable at press time, but here’s how to see whether your Mac and iPad qualify: Connect your iPad to your Mac with the USB cable and then open System Preferences. If you see an icon named Sidecar, your gear is new enough; if you don’t, it’s not. If you have an iPad handy, give it a try; if your Mac and iPad are up to the task, enable the Show Sidebar check box. If applicable, enable the Show TouchBar and Enable Double Tap on Apple Pencil check boxes as well. Then use the Displays System Preferences pane to arrange the iPad’s position relative to your other screen (or screens) — and you’re done. Hope you enjoy all that extra screen real estate! Upgrade your Mac to a solid-state drive (SSD) The latest and greatest storage device to appear is the solid-state drive (SSD). It uses flash memory in place of a mechanical hard drive’s spinning platters, which means, among other things, that it has no moving parts. Another benefit is that an SSD performs most operations at up to twice the speed of mechanical drives. The bad news is that an SSD is more expensive — three or more times the price per gigabyte — of a mechanical hard drive or a hybrid drive with the same capacity. That said, most users report that it’s the best money they ever spent on an upgrade. Currently, you can get a 500GB external USB 3 SSD (a Samsung T5) on sale at Fry’s Electronics for $90. For those of you still booting from a hard disk, you can replace the SSD for under $100 and speed up your Mac in a major way. Honestly, folks, if you’re only going to do one thing to make your old Mac faster, this is what you should do: Replace your hard drive with an SSD. Or, at the least, get an SSD and use it as your startup disk. If your Mac can’t be upgraded, consider using an external SSD as your boot disk. After switching to an SSD startup drive — internal or external — your old Mac will feel almost new again. Get more storage for your Mac Your Mac will run slower and slower as its startup disk gets fuller and fuller. If you can’t afford to replace your startup disk with a bigger SSD or purchase a bigger SSD to use as a boot disk, another option is to get a big external hard disk (much less expensive per megabyte than an SSD) and move some of your data off your startup disk and onto the external disk. You can connect external hard disks (or SSDs) via USB 3 or Thunderbolt (or, to a lesser extent, FireWire). All three can be used to connect devices that require high-speed communication with your Mac — hard drives, SSDs, CD/DVD burners, scanners, camcorders, and such. Thunderbolt is today’s speed champ, but FireWire is often the fastest bus that an older Mac will support natively. The most recent Mac models that had FireWire used the type called FireWire 800, which has a different type of connector than does FireWire 400, which was available on older Macs. If you get a device that has only FireWire 400, and your Mac has only FireWire 800 (or vice versa), everything will work as long as you get a FireWire 400–to–FireWire 800 adapter cable, available at the Apple Store and many other places. Thunderbolt, which is available on Mac models introduced since 2012, is the fastest bus around by far. That said, there are still relatively few Thunderbolt peripherals you can get. Furthermore, the Thunderbolt devices that are out there are somewhat more expensive than their USB 3 counterparts. Although Thunderbolt shows tons of promise for the future, at present, Thunderbolt hard drives are significantly more expensive than either FireWire or USB 3 drives. And just to confuse things, all new Macs since 2014 use USB 3 (Universal Serial Bus 3), which is many times faster than the previous generations of USB (and FireWire). If you’re buying an external USB drive, get one with USB 3. It isn’t much more expensive than a USB 2 drive these days and is speedy on Macs with USB 3 ports. If your Mac doesn’t have USB 3, you should get a USB 3 drive anyway. It’ll run at the same speed as a USB 2 drive on your current Mac — and will run a lot faster on your new Mac when you upgrade. If you’re not sure what generation of USB your Mac has, choose the Apple logo icon, then select About This Mac, click the System Report button to launch the System Information application, and then click USB in the hardware list on the left. The good news is that whatever connection you choose for your new disk — USB 2, USB 3, Thunderbolt, FireWire 400 or 800 — you can usually just plug it in and start using it. Unless the disk is preformatted for a PC and requires reformatting, there’s nothing more you have to do! Speaking of which, don’t buy an external drive that's advertised as “for the Mac” or “formatted for the Mac.” You can often save $20 or more by purchasing the generic (read: Windows) version of the disk and reformatting it as HFS+ by using Disk Utility. Almost every Mac sold today has at least one USB-C port, which is a new kind of hybrid USB/Thunderbolt port doesn't appear on Macs prior to 2018. To make things even more confusing, the same USB-C port also supports Thunderbolt 3 (the latest and greatest connection technology for storage and other devices requiring fast transfer speeds) and recharging. Because the port is incompatible with every other type of USB cable ever made, you’ll probably need a USB-C adapter (or USB-C hub or dock) to connect your USB devices to your new computer’s USB-C/Thunderbolt port. Whew. Now that you know all you need to know about your new external disk, the last step is to move some data from your startup disk to the new external disk. So copy the files or folders (your large files and folders are likely contained in your Pictures, Music, and Documents folders) to the new external disk; confirm that the files have been copied properly; make sure you have a backup, just in case; and then delete the files from your startup disk. Subscribe to a free Mac newsletter Subscribe to a once-a-week newsletter. Working Smarter Insiders email list offers hints, tips, techniques, humor, and advice on using your Mac better, faster, and more elegantly. Becoming an insider is free. Check out these other resources for Mac freaks.

Article / Updated 01-27-2020

Even if you’ve read the book on Macs you have a lot more to discover about using your Mac, and new tools and products come out every single day. The best way to gather more information than you could ever possibly soak up about all things Mac is to hop onto the web. There you can find news, freeware and shareware (try-before-you-buy software) to download, troubleshooting sites, tons of news and information about your new favorite OS, and lots of places to shop. The sites you find here are the best, most chock-full-o’-stuff places on the web for Mac users. By the time you finish checking out these websites, you’ll know so much about your Mac and macOS Catalina that you’ll feel like your brain is in danger of exploding On the other hand, you might just feel a whole lot smarter. Happy surfing! The Mac Observer The Mac Observer gives you Apple news, views, reviews, and much more. The Mac Observer is known for insightful opinion pieces in addition to Apple news and product reviews. The quality and depth of the writing by the TMO staff is superior to most other sites covering the Apple beat. Check out the weekly column called “Dr. Mac’s Rants & Raves”. Macworld Although the print publication ceased to exist years ago, this site still describes itself as: “Your best source for all things Apple.” And it’s still true, more or less. Macworld is perhaps the best and most comprehensive source of product information for Apple products. It’s especially strong for reviews of Mac, iPhone, and iPad products. For example, when you want to know which inkjet printer or digital camera is the best in its price class, Macworld can almost certainly offer guidance, feature comparison charts, and real-world test results. And you won’t merely find product information here — you’ll find it accompanied by expert opinions and professional editing and fact checking. TidBITS TidBITS is an online newsletter and website with the motto: “Thoughtful, detailed coverage of everything Apple for 29 years.” With some of the richest and most insightful writing on the web, TidBITS is another must-read. The latest issue comes out every Monday and new articles posted regularly throughout the week. This publication has prospered and grown for nearly 25 years because the founders and contributors to TidBITS are as passionate about sharing information about Apple products and services today as they were in 1990. You can subscribe to the email newsletter so that you get a new issue every Monday. But even if you don’t choose to subscribe, you should check out the site. iMore If you live the Apple lifestyle, iMore is your go-to website. With in-depth articles on all Apple products and operating systems, and tons of tips, hints, and tutorials as well, it’s one of the sites you can visit daily. AppleWorld.Today For the latest in Mac news, updated every single day, check out AppleWorld.Today, which arose from the ashes of The Unofficial Apple weblog (TUAW) after its untimely demise. With a small staff of Apple newshounds, this site keeps you on the bleeding edge of Mac news — including software updates, virus alerts, and Apple happenings. It also offers extensive and unbiased reviews of many products soon after their release. The Wirecutter If you want to see what others consider the best peripherals, tech tools, and toys, visit The Wirecutter. Now a New York Times company, Wirecutter has the resources to objectively evaluate many products and declare one of them “the best.” You might take the reviews with a grain of salt, and look instead at the Electronics and Office sections. You can also use it to research purchases as diverse as sunscreen, an insulated water bottle, and Bluetooth headsets. Apple Support Do you have a technical question about any version of Mac OS or any Apple product — including macOS Catalina? March your question right over to the Apple Support page, where you can find searchable archives of tech notes, software update information, and documentation. The Support pages are especially useful if you need info about your old Mac; Apple archives all its info here. Choose among a preset list of topics or products, and type a keyword to research. You’re rewarded with a list of helpful documents. Clicking any one of these entries (they’re all links) takes you right to the info you seek. The site even has tools that can help narrow your search. The site also offers a section with user discussions of Apple-related topics. Although not officially sanctioned or monitored by Apple, it’s often the best place to gain insights, especially on slightly esoteric or obscure issues not covered in other sections of the site. Other World Computing Other World Computing is the go-to place for Mac peripherals and upgrades, RAM, hard drives, SSDs, optical drives, video cards, processor upgrades, cables, discs, docks, or anything else you can think of. If it enhances your Mac, Other World Computing probably has it at a reasonable price. And, if it’s memory or internal storage, you’ll usually get a comprehensive illustrated installation manual and (often) an installation video as well. Because of its inexpensive and reliable delivery and a solid guarantee on every item it sells, you can’t go wrong doing business with OWC. dealmac/dealnews Although now part of the larger dealnews site, dealmac is still a great place to find deals on software, hardware, training, and more. Shopping for Mac stuff? Go to dealmac first to discover sale prices, rebates, and other bargain opportunities on upgrades, software, peripherals, and more. “How to go broke saving money,” this site boasts, and if you’re a bargain hunter, it’s not far from the truth. If you love a bargain, look here first. Working Smarter for Mac Users Once you know a bit more about macOS Catalina, you can use this site as an opportunity to become more productive using your Mac. If you’re obsessed with productivity, check out the website and email list called Working Smarter for Mac Users. The mission is to help Mac users learn to do more work in less time so they have more time for things they love. Sign up for the Insiders email list today and you’ll receive tips, hints, techniques, tutorials, videos, and more around once a week. Oh yeah, and it’s free! Bottom line: If you want to take your Mac skills to the next level and become a raging thunder lizard of productivity, join the free Insiders email list today. You have nothing to lose and much to gain. Pick your favorites and geek out on all things Mac!