Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

You know how you can't spell out out a word using Mac dictation? Well, you can create your own dictation commands. And you can simply assign a command to just paste in a letter. So if you create 26 of those, now you have an alphabet you can use in dictation. It doesn't work as well as it might, but it does give you something you can use.

You can't resize or position an overlay and also apply a green screen effect in iMovie at the same time. However, you can do the scaling positioning over a green background, export, and then use the resulting video in another project to get the same result.

Some people like to put web location files on the Desktop or in the Dock as an alternative to using browser bookmarks. A better idea may be to create a folder to hold web location files and then add that to the Dock. You can set it to List mode and then use file names and folders to further organize your Dock bookmarks.

Saw a post about someone who was trying to figure out how to do a "complex" file rename. But it turns out it was simple, just using the Finder.

In an unexpected move, Apple announced that it will soon make iTunes content available through an app on Samsung, LG, Vizio and other smart TVs. These TVs already have apps for accessing Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and so on. But Movies and TV shows available through iTunes have only been available on Apple TV boxes and other Apple devices. (more...)

You can do a lot more than just simple addition and multiplication in Spotlight. You can use parenthesis to set the order of operations. You can use functions and symbols to do trigonometry and logarithms. You can use powers and roots, and even scientific notation. You can even do factorials, percentages and trig functions using degrees instead of radians.

You can create professional-looking video end credits with Keynote using only a single simple animation on a single slide. You can incorporate a long list of names, and add shapes, photos or other elements into a group. The result is easily modified and exported as a video to bring into iMovie, Final Cut or any other video editing app.

While private browsing windows do not really give you privacy, they are useful for a variety of things. You can use them to log into the same site as multiple users, or to view your own site or accounts as someone who is not logged in at all. You can search and shop without building up a history that can haunt you later on. It is also useful for giving presentations and getting around soft paywalls.

It is easy to adjust the volume on your Mac by clicking on the speaker icon in the menu bar. But setting it to something exact is impossible with this slider control. You can ask Siri to simply “Set volume to 37 percent” to set it to an exact amount. If you are at a setting you like now, you can ask “What is my volume?” to get that amount so you know what to use later. You can also say things like “Turn down the volume 3 percent.”

You can create a photo collage using any number of apps and techniques on your Mac. But the quickest, but still very versatile, method is to use Keynote. You can easily drag and drop images from Photos onto a slide and arrange them with lines, borders, text and other elements. You can then export as an image.

You can animate charts in Keynote, with 2D and 3D charts having different types of animations. With 3D charts, you can rotate the chart, watch it grow, and even have it come in from in front of the screen. You can choose whether to have the entire chart come in at once, or build piece by piece. Once you are done, you can use the animation to punch up your presentation, or export to a video file to use in iMovie or Final Cut.

Here's an improvement to a one-line script I talked about a while back. This new script will prompt you to choose one of the running apps, and then one of the windows of that app. Then it will resize and position that window. I use this to resize windows perfectly before doing tutorials. You could do the same, or maybe you have another reason to want to tame your windows. I suppose you could expand the script more with variations on the position and size that you could choose from a list. Here is the code: var app = Application.currentApplication(); app.includeStandardAdditions = true; var system = Application("System Events"); var appList = Application("System Events").applicationProcesses.whose({ visible: true}).name(); var whichAppName = app.chooseFromList(appList, {withPrompt: "Select App:", defaultItems: ["Safari"]}); var whichApp = Application(whichAppName[0]); var windowList = whichApp.windows.name(); var whichWindowName = app.chooseFromList(windowList, {withPrompt: "Select Window:", defaultItems: windowList[0]}); if (whichWindowName != false) {     whichApp.windows[whichWindowName[0]].bounds = {"x":0, "y":0, "width":1280, "height":697}; }

You can work with other people on a Pages document in real-time or at separate times. All you need to do is to share the document with them using the Collaborate feature inside Pages. This relies on iCloud, though the other person can use the Web-based version of Pages if they don't have Pages or even a Mac.

I’m putting my Mac courses on sale for the end of the year. Get any of these courses for only $12 (US) each before 2018 ends. Once you sign up for a course at Udemy, you can start it whenever you want, take your time, and refer back to it later on as well. Click on any of the links below to read more about each course and apply the discount. — Gary

When you click and drag a title bar of a window to move it, the window pops to the front, ahead of other windows. If you want to move a window without brining it to the front, just hold the Command key down and click and drag the window. Then you can slide to behind other windows.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It has been reported that Night Owl has since changed ownership and now includes malware-like behavior, contacting Internet servers and possibly using your Mac as a market research tool. Its own terms of service seems to confirm this. I will leave this video here, for now, for historical reference but do not recommend installing this app on your Mac any longer.

Dark Mode in macOS Mojave is a great new feature, but Apple didn't give us a way to quickly switch between light and dark modes. The little donation-ware app NightOwl gives you that control in your menu bar. You can also set a keyboard shortcut, select apps to stay in light mode, and set specific times to switch between modes.

While your apps like News and Stocks have moved from iOS to the Mac, there is no default Weather app for the Mac. But you can get weather information quickly and easily using Spotlight, Safari, the Dashboard, Notifications Center and Siri. You can also bookmark or create a shortcut to your favorite weather source or get a third-party app.

Storing your passwords in Safari is a good idea as it allows you to use strong unique passwords for each site you visit. But if you still have some old passwords that are used at more than one site, you need to change that. Safari will show you if you are using a password at more than one site. You can use these warnings to fix these before they become a problem.

I was looking for a new text editor to use to write code. I found the CodeRunner app, which not only lets you write code, but you can also run code. I feel like I'm on an Apple II again, where you could just write BASIC code and run it without compiling or uploading to a server. This is a great way to learn a programming language, test code, or get some work done with coding.

If you are running out of storage space on your iPhone, you may think that removing some photos is a good way to free up space. But using iCloud Photo Library means that deleting a photo will delete it from all of your devices. The solution is not to try to delete a photo at all. You simply need to turn on Optimize iPhone Storage in your Photos settings. This will allow your iPhone to manage your photos so that only small thumbnails are stored for most photos. The original high-resolution photos will always be in iCloud, and can also be stored on your Mac. Optimizing allows you to get a lot of storage space back, while still having all of your photos available to you. You can do the same for your Mac or second Mac to save space.