MacMost: Archives

When you triple-click the iPhone's Home button, a variety of things can happen. This can trigger the magnifier, screen zoom, a type of dark mode, other screen filters and a few of types of touch assistance. You can have a single function activate instantly, or choose from a menu of more than one function.

In System Preferences you can select from a variety of voices that are used when you have text read aloud to you on your Mac. You can also set a keyboard shortcut to read selected text. Another option will automatically read alerts out loud after a delay. This can be handy for recognizing when there is a problem or warning.

Spam robocalls are getting more and more common. They can be quite a nuisance. Some of the methods that people use to deal with these, such as blocking and reporting, are ineffective because the caller ID is fake. However, ignoring them, using custom ringtones, or using services from your mobile network can help alleviate the problem.

When you are browsing web pages you are using either HTTP or HTTPS. The latter is the more secure way to view websites. HTTPS uses TLS and certificates to insure security, privacy and integrity.

There are many functions in System Preferences, Accessibility, Display that any Mac user may find useful. You can enlarge the cursor, change the contrast of your screen and reduce the motion effects and transparency of elements.

While it isn't possible to create dynamic Pop-Up Menus in Numbers alone, you can use an AppleScript service to pull data from one table, present it in a list that will then populate the value of a cell. You can set this service up with a keyboard shortcut to make data entry easier. The list will automatically update as you update the second table.

A point of frustration with Numbers users is that Pop-Up Menu cells must be populated with a list of typed values. Often it is useful to get these values from another table instead. While there is no easy solution, you can simulate a dynamic pop-up with a special technique that involves creating the Pop-Up Menu in the second table and pasting it into the first. This method requires a manual update of the Pop-Up Menus when the selections change, but can handle large lists.

Instead of placing every file in a specific folder, you can tag your files for greater flexibility. Files can have more than one tag, so you can include a file with more than one project, task or collection. You can rename and assign colors to tags. You can easily view all of the files that have a tag, search for files by tag, or even create smart folders for a single tag or set of tags.

Apple is using the term Augmented Reality to describe the combination of camera, 3D graphics and motion detection to view the world through your iPhone and see additional added elements. This can be used for practical purposes or entertainment.

Dark Mode is coming in macOS Mojave, but it doesn't give you a way to write in that kind of environment. You can get that now in Pages if you simply set the background of your document to black and the text to white. Doing this requires the use of Section Masters, a shape, and changing the style for the text. You can then revert to regular colors, or copy and paste text from a dark mode document to a normal one.