Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

Look back at 40 years of Mac computers.

There are a lot of hidden functions in the Mac App Switcher. You can quit and hide apps using it, switch to a specific window, and use it to drag and drop.

Here's a handy Shortcut that will grab the last file downloaded in the Downloads folder and move it to the folder where you need it.

Instead of looking at the same wallpaper on your iPhone every day, you can use Shortcuts or Focus modes to have them change automatically. You can look at specific wallpapers at specific times of the day, or have a random wallpaper or photo show each day.

Pages has a pretty basic text search function, but with a few hidden tricks. TextEdit has a more robust pattern matching system and can even reorder text using replacements.

Don't use your phone's camera to take a picture of your Mac's screen. Instead, use the built-in screen capture tool to take a clean detailed screenshot.

A new feature in macOS Sonoma is the ability to see which email a downloaded attachment came from and to reply from the file itself.

Here are some useful ways to customize your Finder toolbar with new buttons. You can add Finder commands, folders, files, and even Shortcuts that do various things.

A new feature in Pages lets you create and play animated drawings. But Keynote already has some interesting functionality where you can draw on your iPad or iPhone and then export that drawing sequence as a video to use in iMovie or elsewhere.

You can use a simple spreadsheet in Numbers to track your home or personal expenses. No formulas or calculations are required. Just record your expenses and then use a simple Pivot Table to see a summary of your expenses by category over months or years. Follow this step-by-step tutorial.

There are a lot of hidden functions in the Mac App Switcher. You can quit and hide apps using it, switch to a specific window, and use it to drag and drop.

When it is time to focus on getting work done you have to fight many distractions that will show up on your Mac. Learn how to focus on one app, minimize notifications, use Reminders and Notes to help you focus and much more.

I often mention that I use the free CotEditor app for text files. Here are some things it can do that TextEdit cannot.

You can do more than just basic calculations with Spotlight on a Mac. You can use parenthesis, exponents, trig functions, include units and much more.

Check out what is new in macOS 14.2. There are new features in the Clock, Music, Weather and Messages apps. Plus new PDF autofill and music recognition functions.

A new feature in macOS 14.2 is the ability to set more than one timer in the Clock app. You can name the timers and also reuse recent ones without needing to recreate them from scratch.

You can use a simple spreadsheet in Numbers to track your home or personal expenses. No formulas or calculations are required. Just record your expenses and then use a simple Pivot Table to see a summary of your expenses by category over months or years. Follow this step-by-step tutorial.

If you want to change your default browser from Safari and your default email app from Mail, you need to go to unlikely places to find the right settings.

You can create simple Shortcuts to resize windows on your Mac to fit into precise sections of your screen. Even a two-action Shortcut can do a lot.

Both new and current Mac users often ask me how they should organize their files on their Mac. Here is my advice for how to do it.