Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

If a Mac user in your household forgets their password, they can be locked out of their account and data. But there are three easy ways to protect against this. You can set up a backup administrator account on their Mac, enable a back-door by allowing them to change their password with their Apple ID, or set a master password to use for all accounts on their Mac.

When you view files in the Finder, you have a choice between four views: icon, list, column and cover flow. Each one can be useful in different situations, so it is best to know how to use all four. Find out the differences between them and the basics of each.

Safari bookmarks seem straight-forward. But you can do some creative things to get more use from them. You can use emoji in bookmark names, create folders and subfolders, and even add descriptions to bookmarks to make research easier.

You know you can use Edit, Undo (Command+z) while typing, moving files and other tasks. But you can also use it in Safari to reopen a closed tab. You can close multiple tabs and then use Command+z multiple times to reopen them all. You can also use History, Reopen Last Closed Window to reopen a whole window you may have accidentally closed.

A quick look at what's to come in High Sierra. You'll be able to share files directly in iCloud Drive. I mean with another person, not just another Mac you own.

If you need to insert similar text into documents often, you may want to create a JavaScript (JXA) task in Automator that makes it easier. In this example, we'll look at inserting a piece of text that contains two variables, such as: (Refer to page X or report Y). The script will prompt you for the page and report, and then insert the test into the document you are working on.

You can quickly and easily record voice memos on your Mac with the built-in QuickTime Player app. Once you launch QuickTime Player, you can use keyboard shortcuts to create a new audio recording and start recording. Then you can stop and save the recording in a format that will work in most places.

In Preview you can open multiple images at the same time and export them all at once in a new format. You can also resize all of the open images at once, forcing them images to scale to a specific percentage or fit into a specific size. You can also do some other things in batches, such as rotations.

In the 80s, the video game industry was booming. And then it fell, and fell hard and fast. Too many games flooded the market, prices dropped, profits disappeared, and companies failed. The industry basically died and was restarted a few years later by completely different companies.

The Reminders app is handy for keeping track of to-do lists, creating alerts, and building idea lists. As a cloud service it syncs with your iPhone and iPad. You can easily add items to Reminders by just typing, or you can use Siri to add items.

The clock that appears on the right side of your menubar can be customized to suit your needs. You can choose what to display and even switch to a compact analog clock. In System Preferences, you can set the time to be spoken aloud at regular intervals. There are many third-party apps in the App Store that offer even more options.

If you have a large screen (or screens) with a lot going on, it can be easy to lose your cursor after typing with the keyboard for a while. You can find it by moving the cursor quickly back and forth with your trackpad or mouse. The cursor will enlarge to catch your attention.

If you have a folder you need to access all the time, you can give yourself easy access to it in a number of ways. You can use the Dock, the Finder sidebar, the Finder Toolbar and an alias on the Desktop. You can also create an Automator task to open the folder and then a keyboard shortcut for that. Mission Control is another way to keep that folder easily available.

Many people make the mistake of splitting Numbers data across multiple spreadsheets when it should be kept in one long table. You can use formulas and filters to keep your data in a single table and still easily show only a subset of the data, such as a monthly expense report.

Smart Folders allow you to view collections of files that share something in common, even if they are not all stored in the same folder. You create a Smart Folder just as you would perform a Finder search. But the Smart Folder will live on as a saved search in any location you specify, or nearly the Finder sidebar. Smart Folders update automatically to include new files that meet the same criteria.

I like trying out new iPhone keyboards. Anything that can give me the potential to type faster on that little screen. Google has a free one called Gboard. It allows you to swipe-type. See the video for a demo. I also like that you can search for emoji. I can never remember which emoji to use, so being able to search for keywords to narrow it down helps. There are some other useful features as well.

In case you haven’t been paying attention to what is coming in iOS 11, the big story is that the iPad is about to gain a lot of pro-level features. Many of these will be iPad-specific features, not available on the iPhone. In fact, an iPad running iOS 11 will be halfway between an iPhone and a Mac.

The desktop background is the large image that appears behind everything you do on your Mac. You can change it in System Preferences. You can select from many provided images, choose a solid color, or use any of your own photos as a desktop background. You can also have the desktop background automatically change from a selection of images on a regular basis.

Apple's Workflow app allows you to create a variety of automations on your iPhone or iPad. An example is a workflow that takes a video from your library and creates an animated GIF from it. You can store this in your Photos app even though Photos doesn't display the animation. You can then share it online instead of the video.

Do you find that you always need to change the zoom on a webpage every time you visit a new site? With Safari in Sierra, you can set a default zoom amount in Safari, Preferences, Advanced, Page Zoom. So now you can set 125% as the default zoom and all pages will open like that. Individual pages will still remember your last zoom setting. Also, using View, Actual Size will use this default zoom setting, not 100%.