Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

I've been playing around with Automator Print Plugins and made a simple process that will produce a watermarked PDF. Could be useful for work projects and the like.

In the Contacts app you can set a contact to be a company rather than a person. This is helpful for customer service lines or other company main numbers. You can use the company name with Siri, and also add images for the contact just like with a person.

Using the Zoom function in Safari can make text easier to read, but it also enlarges image and the entire page layout, often breaking the design of the page and making it impossible to see everything. By holding down the Option key, you can change zoom to text-only zoom and only enlarge the text size, while keeping images and other elements the same.

While restarting your Mac may help solve some problems, restarting while holding down specific keys will also clear out NVRAM, sometimes called PRAM, which can also help clear out some issues. Give this a try if you can't seem to fix a problem with just a regular restart.

Use the Burst Photo feature on your iPhone to get otherwise improbable shots. By taking a series of photos you can then select the perfect one instead of relying on pressing the shutter button at just the right moment. It is easy to choose the photo or photos you want to keep from the series.

The Retouch tool in the Mac Photos app makes it easy to remove spots and blemishes from your photos. You can simply click and drag to remove spots, or pull colors from another area of the photo.

When I need to post the new MacMost episode to four different social media networks, I use the Open In New Tabs function in Safari to open four webpages at once. This way I am quickly able to post the new episode without much hassle.

You can use the Finder or the System About window to quickly and easily figure out which files are taking up the most space on your drive. Either method allows you to find the files and where they are located. You can use this to find files crowding your drive that you may no longer be using.

If you need a quick random number there are at least three ways to do this on your Mac. You can do it in the Calculator app, but you'll need to perform some extra steps to get a useful value. You can use the RANDBETWEEN function in a temporary Numbers spreadsheet. You can also just ask Siri.

When you have computer problems, experts often tell you to restart your computer. And often that fixes the problem. Why does this work? Is it really the best technique for dealing with computer issues? If you need to restart often, does that mean you should have an expert take a look at your computer?

Use the iTunes Up Next list to pick which songs will play next without needing to create an entire temporary playlist. You can add to the list at the top or the bottom, clear it or reorder it all while you music is playing. You an view he Up Next list from the iTunes toolbar, or the mini player.

You can find your MacBook's battery cycle count in System Information. A cycle is a complete charge of the battery and will not count partial charges as a full charge. So you can feel free to use your battery as needed. Do not be afraid to charge your battery after only using a fraction of the power. Apple maintains a page with expected battery cycle counts for different MacBook models.

You can use the Open With feature to open a file with something other than the default app on your Mac. You can also use Always Open With to change the default for that one file, and the Get Info window to change the default for all files of the same type.

Each video at MacMost has that special poster frame image that you can see on the website and YouTube. It includes a title and two screen grabs from the video. Watch how I create those using a simple template I made in Acorn.

You can use CONVERT to convert numbers from one unit to another. Convert distances from meters to feet, temperatures from Fahrenheit to Celsius, and so on. You can also use cell formatting to attach unit symbols to numbers.

If you need a transparent image, like a circle, arrow or piece of text, you would usually create it in a graphics app. However, there is a way to create transparent images quickly using only Keynote. You can then use these as overlays on other images in Preview or in iMovie.

It is relatively easy to use a VPN service on your Mac. Simply install the software that the service provides, and then set some preferences. From there it is usually automatic. Some services let you pick a server location and set some networks to be trusted at all times.

A simple Terminal command can be used to keep your Mac from sleeping.