Apple released developer beta 2 for iOS 11, watchOS 4, tvOS 11, and macOS High Sierra Wednesday afternoon.
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macOS: Revoking FileVault Access for Individual Accounts
Here’s how to block individual administrator accounts on your Mac, like those you set up for testing, from unlocking FileVault.
Here are the Macs that can Run macOS High Sierra
Read on to see if your Mac makes the cut for macOS High Sierra.
macOS Mail: Making a "Not Replied To" Smart Mailbox
This Quick Tip is about a special feature of Mail’s smart mailboxes that’ll let you view only messages you haven’t replied to—great for making sure you aren’t missing anything! Melissa Holt’s gonna give us the details in this article.
macOS: Linking Contact Cards Together
If your contacts list contains duplicated data because you’re using more than one account to sync (like, say, both a Google one and your iCloud one), Melissa Holt has a fix to link them together.
Starting June 15, iCloud Will Require App Specific Passwords
Starting on June 15, Apple will require third-party apps that use iCloud to use app specific passwords that the user sets up. This also means that you must be using two-factor authentication for your Apple ID. Andrew Orr tells us what this means for you.
Apple Squashes 30 Security Holes in macOS Sierra, Plus Standalone Updates for El Cap and Yosemite
Apple squashed 30 security holes in macOS Sierra with the release of macOS 10.12.5 on Monday. The company’s security notes indicate the update addressed a wide variety of issues in its Mac operating system, many of which are serious. Apple included the same fixes in separate security updates for El Capitan and Yosemite.
macOS: How To Use Apple Watch to Auto Unlock Your Mac
Andrew Orr recently bought his first Apple Watch, and wanted to set up auto unlock for his MacBook. He shows us how to do it so you can have a password on your Mac without having to type it in.
macOS: Recover Lost Tabs and Windows in Safari
In this Quick Tip, Melissa Holt’s gonna go over how to restore tabs or windows you accidentally closed in Safari. So if you’re one of those folks who keeps 75 tabs open and would be devastated if they went away, this trick’s for you!
macOS: Make Your Spotlight Searches Better with the Kind Operator
When you are looking for something specific on your Mac with Spotlight, you might get overwhelmed with the search results. Jeff Butts has become a Spotlight search pro thanks to a simple operator. Read along as he shows you how it works and some of what you can do with it.
macOS: Automatically Format Reminders With Date And Time
This tip comes from Reddit, where user pralux found a handy shortcut. If you use the Reminders app on macOS, there is a way to automatically format reminders with the date and time. This saves you several clicks by doing it manually. Here’s how to do it.
Evade the macOS 'Too Many Open Files' Error by Pushing the Limits
Here at Mac Observer, we’re penultimate geeks. We push our Macs to the limits, and then find ways to surpass those limits. macOS has limits put in place that result in occasional error messages about “too many open files,” which one of the team ran afoul of. Jeff Butts dove deep into the core of macOS and found out how to increase the limits Apple has imposed upon us.
macOS: How to Copy Files as Pathnames
If you need to reference a file or a folder with a really long pathname, then don’t waste your time typing out the whole thing when there’s a shortcut to help you! Today’s Quick Tip is about a better, faster way to point people toward items on their Macs, and Melissa Holt’s got the scoop.
macOS: How to Roll Back the Firmware on Your AirPort
If you update your Time Capsule or AirPort Extreme and your network starts having issues, then just go and roll back the version you installed! This little-known feature will let you revert the firmware on your Apple network devices in case you run into trouble, and Melissa Holt’s gonna tell us how in today’s Quick Tip.
NVIDIA's Pascal Drivers for macOS Available, but Still Beta
NVIDIA made Mac users happy on Tuesday when it released a macOS-compatible version of its Pascal graphics processors. The company promised they were coming, and while still in beta, they let Mac owners get a taste of the company’s more powerful GPU offering.
macOS: Reduce PDF File Size in Preview
This Quick Tip is about a little-known feature of Preview that’ll let you shrink the file size of large PDFs, so you could use this when you’re bumping up against uploading limitations, for example. Come read about how to do it (and why you should pay attention to how your file looks afterward!).
macOS: Putting a Recovery Partition on Your Mac (Without Reinstalling macOS)
When Jeff Butts was mucking about with his trusty Mac Mini, he managed to mangle his recovery partition. Normally, this would mean a complete reinstall of the operating system, but Jeff found another way. Read on to learn how to get your recovery partition back without resorting to a complete reinstall.
How To Delete Old File Versions in macOS
Learn how to delete old software files in several ways and optimize your Mac’s storage without compromising stability.
macOS: Creating an App-Specific Password for iCloud
When you first enable two-factor authentication in iCloud, you might notice some of your apps appear broken. This is because those apps don’t support 2FA, and require app-specific passwords. Follow along with Jeff Butts as he demonstrates how to generate and manage your app-specific passwords.
Customizing the Services Menu Helps You Optimize macOS
Hidden within macOS is an often-ignored item that can really speed things up. In this Quick Tip, Jeff Butts explores the Services menu and how it can help you really optimize macOS.
macOS: Create Apple Notes Subfolders With Ease
Did you know it’s possible to create Apple Notes subfolders? Andrew didn’t, until he stumbled upon this by accident. Creating subfolders lets you organize your notes in more detailed ways that make sense to you. Here’s how to do it on macOS.
macOS: Move Multiple Events Between Calendars
Today’s Quick Tip is about switching a group of events from one color-coded calendar to another. This is handy if, for example, you’ve got five or ten events on your “Work” calendar that need to move to “Home.” Melissa Holt’s gonna tell us all about it!
macOS: How to See the Hierarchy of Your File Locations
Melissa Holt’s Quick Tip for today is about using the title bar within different applications—Mail, Finder, and Pages, for example—to find out the hierarchical locations of files and folders. Need a trail of breadcrumbs to show where your stuff lives? She’s gonna tell you how to get it!
macOS: Using "Open With," "Always Open With," and "Change All"
Today’s Quick Tip is all about opening files with certain programs. If you want to open a file in Pages rather than Word (or if you want to switch ALL of your .docx files to doing so!), we’ve got your bases covered.