Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

Have a look at the export settings that I use when I finish up each MacMost video. I produce one for YouTube and another for the podcast feed. I try to balance quality and file size.

If you wish to represent a number in a cell with leading zeros, such as a zip code that starts with a 0 digit, or an International phone number, then you can do it using the Text cell format which treats the number as a series of characters, rather than a value. You can also use custom cell formatting to display a number with leading zeros, which can help you if you wish to have easy data entry and uniform cell formatting.

You can view and change your Mac's privacy preferences in System Preferences, Security & Privacy. You can see which apps you have installed that requested access to things like Contacts, Photos, Location and other information. You can grant and revoke privacy permissions to these apps. You can also read more about what these apps can access.

While QR codes aren't used as much today as just a few years ago, it is nice to know that when you encounter one you can access the URL using your iPhone's Camera app, without needing to install anything else. If you'd like to create a QR code that links to a specific page on your website, you can use Google's URL shortener as a quick and trustworthy method.

My quest to figure out how to use an iPhone as a webcam on a Mac may be over. On the iPhone, I use an app called CameraVision to send the camera image out as an AirPlay stream. Then on my Mac, I use AirServer to display that AirPlay stream. Then I use CamTwist to take in that AirPlay stream and set it up as a webcam stream that was recognized by both ScreenFlow and Skype!

If you are new to Mac you may not yet be taking full advantage of keyboard shortcuts. You can find almost all shortcuts by simply looking at the command in the menu bar. There are symbols that you will find in the menu bar that map to the Shift, Control, Option and Command keys on the Mac keyboard. You can also find shortcuts in System Preferences, and even assign your own to menu commands that have no shortcut. One difficulty that Windows users often have is that the Control key is used as the primary modifier key in Windows, while the Command key is the equivalent on the Mac.

In iMovie you can force a video clip to more closely resemble another clip by using the Match Color tool. This simply adjusts the color of the first clip to match the colors in the second. You can use this to prevent jarring transitions between very different clips, or to match similar scenes that were shot using different light. You can also use Match Color with images or between video clips and images.

When you are searching the web or Apple's discussion forums for technical information, it is important to only look for recent posts as older posts will contain information that doesn't apply to the current devices and operating systems. You can limit your searches in Google to the last month or year. You can also limit your searches in Apple's user discussion forums.

When you use Time Machine to back up your Mac, you not only get a complete backup of everything, but also a history of files that includes deleted or modified files. You can recover a file you have deleted even if many backups have occurred since you deleted the file. Practice this technique so you know how to use it before you need it.

The HomePod allows you to play music from your Apple Music subscription or through AirPlay from another device. You set up the HomePod using an iOS device, and then can stream audio from a Mac, iPhone or iPad. You can also play music directly from the HomePod using voice commands and Siri. There are some preferences you can set in the Home app on your iOS device.

I grabbed my HomePod from the Apple Store this morning and gave it a try. Overall, finding what others have reported. The sound is great. I tried to get some stereo separation but it sounds nothing like using left and right speakers, although it does separate somewhat. I also tried AirPlay from my Mac and iPhone. There are slight delays in doing so, which isn't a problem for playing music, but is a problem for playing video.Since recording this I've discovered a whole set of controls in the Home app on my iPhone. So I'll be doing a regular video on the HomePod and will go over those. Who else got a HomePod and what do you think so far?

If you are new to Mac, you may not have yet explored or customized the status menus. These are also known as menu bar icons and are links to functionality in System Preferences or third-party extensions. You can rearrange or remove status menus. New status menus can be added by other applications in System Preferences.

Stickies is an app that has been around on the Mac long before Notes, Reminders and iCloud. You can place little notes on your Desktop to refer to while working. You can even have these notes remain on top of other windows. While it doesn't offer some of the advanced functionality of today's apps, it can still be useful as a Mac-only tool for helping you get work done.

Since cells in Numbers are formatted in different ways, it is easy to have two cells appear to be the same, such as a date and the text name of a month. When using formulas to compare cells, the functions will often not match up these values because they are fundamentally different. You can use the bottom bar in Numbers to view the actual values of cells to see which value is actually stored in the cell.

Shell scripts can be created in TextEdit and run in the Terminal app. In this example, we'll create a script that takes a single image and produces multiple versions of that image by looping through a series of sizes. This script can be used again and again to reproduce the image series when changes are made to the original.

You can customize the Dock and Menu Bar to automatically hide unless you need them. This allows you to use every pixel of your screen for apps. You can also take most apps into full screen mode which will get rid of the menu bar and Dock for just that one app.

I haven't thought about the old Mac Stickies app for a long time. But it is still there in High Sierra. Do you use it? If so, what for? Seems handy, but a lot of the functionality can be replaced with Notes, Reminders and other things.

Every Mac user should be backing up the files on their Mac. The easiest way to do this is to use Time Machine, which is part of macOS. You can get a cheap external hard drive and start doing this today. Time Machine is simple and automatic and can save you from disasters, as long as you start using it.