Miscellaneous stupid Mac tricks, cool Mac tricks, and stupid cool Mac tricks Thread
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I occasionally have an issue where I'll save something to my iCloud Drive on my phone or iPad, but it doesn't show up on my Mac because it has decided to stop syncing iCloud Drive, and the only way I could figure out how to restart it was a reboot, which is annoying. Today I discovered that "killall bird" in a terminal unclogs whatever wasn't working, and my iCloud Drive instantly synced!
That's a bit... nuclear, nuking the cloud daemon like that (even if it works for you). You may want to try Howard's suggestions or tools first.
How to fix problems with iCloud and iCloud Drive
When should you turn iCloud off to try to solve syncing problems? What use is a Content Caching server? What tools can help diagnose and fix problems?
eclecticlight.co
Just
Don't send SIGQUIT; that will usually trigger a core dump and make the crash reporter dialog pop up, and whatever you're terminating might not clean up after itself (or may not clean up as completely).
killall bird by itself (without a -9) is going to send a SIGTERM; that's a perfectly fine way to cleanly kill a process (and is how launchd is going to terminate it if you reboot or stop the service with launchctl).Don't send SIGQUIT; that will usually trigger a core dump and make the crash reporter dialog pop up, and whatever you're terminating might not clean up after itself (or may not clean up as completely).
Ah, sorry. I mixed them up, my bad. Should teach me not to post before the morning coffee...
Very long story short, my CITI AA credit card likes to cry fraud when I use Apple Pay for select, annoying, transactions.
You have to call them so they can text you a code to verify it’s you, but not to your phone number on file, some other number you have to give them.
I realized this morning my Apple Watch Ultra has a unique phone number. And yes, you can text it directly!
You have to call them so they can text you a code to verify it’s you, but not to your phone number on file, some other number you have to give them.
I realized this morning my Apple Watch Ultra has a unique phone number. And yes, you can text it directly!
I finally found the extra options for Reader mode (which I use a lot) in Safari on macOS. These features (e.g. font choice, background colour, etc.) are exposed directly in Safari on my iPad, but on desktop Safari, they’re hidden behind that vile pox of a UI invention, the three dots. No more boring old San Francisco for me!
I'm assuming that this is only for cellular watches that have been provisioned, right? I have a cellular Series 6 (A2294), but I never provisioned it, and I don't see a phone number anywhere in the Settings.
Not sure if it's just a unique number, but in regards to uniqueness when it comes to credit cards, every card you add to apple wallet has a unique number between physical card, iPhone and Apple Watch, so if you have to initiate a return and they require to present the payment method, you might have to try all three if you don't remember when one you used! </derail>
BONUS: if you are moving icons around between folders and homescreen, you can swipe up to turn off jiggle mode instead of clicking on the done button in the upper right. Seems trivial but it's SO much better, particularly if you're moving a bunch of stuff around.
Before this for me it was the home button, and then when the home button went away I thought you had to use the done button ;_;
Edit more bonsu: (also are iOS tricks welcome, before I post others?) Apple showed off retroactively changing the focal point using the new camera on the iPhone 15, but this works all the way back to iPhone 12 (I think) in iOS 17. You can pop open an old portrait photo and tap different parts of the scene to change the focus - not just the focal length, but what the image subject is - it’s pretty snazzy!
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This one has been around forever and might be obvious: You can set a different wallpaper for each space/desktop by switching to that space, right-clicking on a picture, and selecting Services > Set Desktop Picture. Whatever wallpaper you have for Desktop 1 will be used when adding a new space, so if you rearrange them, that wallpaper becomes the default for new spaces.
Safari 17 in Ventura and Sonoma added Favicons to the Favourites bar.
I just discovered that you can customise them two ways by renaming the bookmark:
I just discovered that you can customise them two ways by renaming the bookmark:
- if you want just the Favicon without any text, you can use some "invisible" Unicode characters instead of the bookmark name. INVISIBLE TIMES, INVISIBLE SEPARATOR and INVISIBLE PLUS all seem to work. Then it shows you just the favicon and a very short space next to it.
- if you want just the Favicon, but customise it, you can use Emoji instead. Then it shows only the emoji, without the favicon. Works for me for Google Maps –
or 
is way better than Google's generic favicon anyway.
I'm trying to hang a bunch of external HDDs off of a hub. I have 6 or 7 planned for it. 4 would be powered external hard drives, 2 SSD drives, and 1 pocket HDD drive. I don't need a ton of speed across it, as it's bulk media storage, but reliability is a definite must. Does anyone have recommendations or warnings for this? Looking at this hub, open to recommendations:
View: https://www.amazon.com/ORICO-Ultra-Slim-Splitter-Transfer-MacBook/dp/B0BZ3F42JG
View: https://www.amazon.com/ORICO-Ultra-Slim-Splitter-Transfer-MacBook/dp/B0BZ3F42JG
Darn, you’re half-right: it’s not exclusive to the iPhone 15, but requires an iPhone 13 or later. I got excited thinking that it would work on my iPhone 12 Pro, but no dice.
Still, that’s pretty cool that they extended that feature back by a few models! According to that article, it works for photos you’ve taken previously too, as long as they were taken with an iPhone 13 or later running iOS 16 or later. So presumably there’s some additional depth data captured with that combination of hardware and software, which would explain why the iPhone 12 and earlier don’t support it even though they can run iOS 17.
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Yup. I’m able to edit the focal point of photos my wife took using her 13 Pro on my iPhone 12. So there’s a hardware difference. Still pretty awesome that other models can still make the change even if their cameras can’t capture it.
The family library is a game changer by the way.
The family library is a game changer by the way.
When capturing text from several sources to paste into one document, I found it annoying to have different sizs/style texts showing up and later having to go and make everything my preferred font and size. HOWEVER, there is a menu item -- "Edit" > "Paste and match style" -- which makes the pasted text look like I just typed it! The keystroke is -- SHIFT-CONTROL-CMD-v
Not actually hidden, but often overlooked.
Not actually hidden, but often overlooked.
Works just about everywhere except MS Word, which often (but not always) insists that it knows better than you what you want to do, and often (but not always) preserves some (but not all) of the original formatting. The workaround is Edit: Paste Special: Unformatted text (not available from Right-Click: Paste Special
, as this has a greater likelihood (but no guarantee) of stripping all original formatting.The ultimate workaround is to paste into a plain-text-only app like Text Edit and then copy/paste into the actual destination.
These extra steps can be circumvented as follows. Paste your text into Word, then click the little clipboard icon that appears just after the pasted content:Works just about everywhere except MS Word, which often (but not always) insists that it knows better than you what you want to do, and often (but not always) preserves some (but not all) of the original formatting. The workaround is Edit: Paste Special: Unformatted text (not available from Right-Click: Paste Special
The ultimate workaround is to paste into a plain-text-only app like Text Edit and then copy/paste into the actual destination.
Choose ”Keep Text Only” for great victory.
Interesting. I'll have to try this and see if it works
The Windows Word version of that popup menu has a "Set default paste..." option that takes you to the appropriate section of Word's settings to tell it what to do by default:
Mac Word doesn't have the menu item, and Word Preferences only has the last two options (and the Settings button that lets you change some behavior for smart cut and paste-- that takes you to the same dialog in both Mac and Windows). Just another of those missed details that makes me wonder if anyone on the Mac Office team ever actually talks to anyone on the Windows Office team, or ever uses any of the Windows Office apps. Because being able to set those defaults on Mac would be nice...
Mac Word doesn't have the menu item, and Word Preferences only has the last two options (and the Settings button that lets you change some behavior for smart cut and paste-- that takes you to the same dialog in both Mac and Windows). Just another of those missed details that makes me wonder if anyone on the Mac Office team ever actually talks to anyone on the Windows Office team, or ever uses any of the Windows Office apps. Because being able to set those defaults on Mac would be nice...
It works as advertised. I use it all day, every day.Interesting. I'll have to try this and see if it worksas expected. "Do X. No, really, do X. Yes, I'm sure."
I'm not 100% sure this is the right thread, but it is both cool and very stupid: Flappy Bird implemented in Finder.
So did anyone else all these years never realize you could select and then drag/drop multiple tabs in a browser just by using command and shift like normal, but for tabs?? Just me?
I just checked, Firefox and Chromium at least look to have had it awhile ago. It works for me on an old system in those, and hell for all I know browsers like OmniWeb might have supported it like 15 years ago. I've used every single one of those browsers, and long gone stuff like Internet Explorer for Mac back when that was the best around, what was it, 10.1? 10.2? Gods when did Apple even launch Safari anyway? /me looks it up it was in 2003 with Panther and it feels like the whole KHTML drama and so on was much later in the 2000s. Anyway in all that time I somehow never thought to check that, or if I did only tried it once and if it didn't work never thought of it again.
Yeah, I was shocked to see that Safari JUST added this, but I'm a Firefox evangelist and everything else is either banned from my system or a back up, so guess I can't be surprised that I missed when the feature hit Safari. I'm glad webkit exists, though. Fucking chromium... sheeeeeeit. sigh
WHAT IS THIS SORCERY.
I was at the grocery store listening to music on my 13 Pro via my APP2's. My wife and I were having a conversation via text with me dictating my replies to Siri and Siri speaking my wife's replies back to me. No looking at the screen. No big deal, do this all the time.
But then, my wife sends me a photo of something she's looking at in a store... and Siri described the photo to me. "Kathrine sent you a message with a photo of a gray sectional couch with a table beside it."
I know that iOS has been able to identify people, then objects, with more and more granularity (like how you can use the Photos.app to identify flowers, etc.) but connecting that ability to Siri to allow it to proactively identify objects in a photo that it has determined you cannot see at the moment is clever and useful. And maybe that connection has been there a while and I just never experienced it, but... still cool.
I was at the grocery store listening to music on my 13 Pro via my APP2's. My wife and I were having a conversation via text with me dictating my replies to Siri and Siri speaking my wife's replies back to me. No looking at the screen. No big deal, do this all the time.
But then, my wife sends me a photo of something she's looking at in a store... and Siri described the photo to me. "Kathrine sent you a message with a photo of a gray sectional couch with a table beside it."
I know that iOS has been able to identify people, then objects, with more and more granularity (like how you can use the Photos.app to identify flowers, etc.) but connecting that ability to Siri to allow it to proactively identify objects in a photo that it has determined you cannot see at the moment is clever and useful. And maybe that connection has been there a while and I just never experienced it, but... still cool.
Seems like it's new in 17.2. I often have an AirPod in listening to a podcast, and I'm getting the picture description now as well.
We're at dinner last night, and my college age son points out there is a tip calculator built into the calculator on the Apple Watch. Enter the bill, hit the obvious button labeled "TIP" and you can spin the crown to adjust the percentage there is a field that you can split the bill a specified number of ways.
Never knew that was hiding in there.
Never knew that was hiding in there.
Dunno if this is a trick as such, but I just found this on my bookshelves:
NGL, am tempted to start looking on eBay for an appropriate contemporary Mac to run 10.4 on with this.
NGL, am tempted to start looking on eBay for an appropriate contemporary Mac to run 10.4 on with this.