MacMost: Archives

There are many things you may need to remember to do before starting an online or in-person presentation on your Mac. But creating your own custom Shortcut, you can avoid forgetting to do something like quit apps, set the volume, turn on a Focus mode and change your wallpaper. You can also have it launch your presentation or website automatically.

You can easily create one-page signs in Mac Pages using Page Layout mode. Add text, symbols, arrows, shapes, borders and more. Save them and reuse them by changing text later on.

In the Edit menu under Substitutions you can control some automatic behavior that happens when you type on your Mac, such as two dashes being replaced by a long dash or quotes converting to curly quotes automatically.

You can easily create a simple labels template to print a list of addresses to labels in Pages. The list can come from text or a Number spreadsheet. You can also modify pre-made labels templates to work better.

Learn how to use the Shortcuts app to make photo collages from the Photos app or files. You can also build animated GIFs for sharing, or videos.

When you open a new Finder window, it can be confusing as to why the new window is at a specific location, size and view settings. Understanding the difference between Finder windows and folder locations is key, as well as knowing the difference between browsing and opening new windows, and what is remembered by the Finder.

Sometimes you need to create PDF documents that are small enough to upload or submit with a size restriction. You can use Preview to compress the images in a PDF file, but you get better results with more control if you work with the images in the original document.

When you browse the web Safari will save data as cookies, cache and history. Learn what these are and how to control them.

While Notes has become a robust system on the Mac, using TextEdit has some advantages such as recovering deleted information, restoring from Time Machine, and being able to store information alongside other files in a project.

You can use the Shortcuts app to make QR codes that link to web pages. Once you have a Shortcut, you can easily reuse it to share a QR code, save it as an image, or even just copy to the clipboard to paste into a document you are working on.

Learn some Shortcuts programming by following along and building a Shortcut that adds a border and caption to a photo file and saves it as a new file.

You can create groups in the Contacts app on your Mac and use them to quickly send emails to several people without needing to select each contact. Groups can be used for organization too, and can help in other apps like Messages and Calendar in some situations.

There doesn't appear to be a way to view your Mac Calendar events as a list, but it can be done if you know one trick. You can use the list to easily select items, and then copy and paste them in a variety of ways. You can also print or save a PDF list of events.

You can set your iPhone up so it can read the text of an article, webpage or other content to you using Siri or another voice. Use this if you have a vision issue or just want to listen to some content instead of read it.

Badges are the red dots with numbers in them you see in the Dock on your Mac and over App icons on your iPhone or iPad. You can hide them on an app-by-app basis and something customize what they represent.

If you need to find the ranking of rows in Numbers, you can sort, use COUNTIF or use RANK. It gets a little more complex if you have to use multiple values for tie-breakers or rank within groups.

If you are looking to buy a new MacBook soon, it can be confusing to decide which one is right for you and which options to get. See this guide to deciding between the MacBook Air, the 14-Inch MacBook Pro and the 16-Inch MacBook Pro.

If you are looking to buy a new Mac soon, it can be confusing to decide which one is right for you and which options to get. See this guide to deciding between the Mac mini, iMac and Mac Studio.

Learn how to get random numbers on your Mac using the Calculator app, the Numbers app, Siri, the Terminal and a custom Shortcut.

Learn the various ways you can export files from the Photos app on your Mac. You can do a simple drag-and-drop, but you'll get more options if you use File, Export. You can also export directly to another app, or save as a PDF.