MacMost: MacMost Now

A seemingly simple thing to do is GarageBand is have your track or song fade in or out. But finding the method for doing this can be difficult. A fade is an automation. To fade, you need to show automations and then edit the automation line to change the volume over time. You can do this on a single track, or on the master track to fade the entire song.

Is your MacBook battery draining at night? This is probably due to a piece of software on your Mac that is misbehaving and waking it while it should be sleeping. There are several ways to figure out which could be the culprit. You can use various tools to compile a list of suspects and then quit those before putting your MacBook to sleep to test them. You can also try things like reseting parts of the system and trying safe mode. You may be able to figure out the problem on your own, or you may need to take it to an expert.

If you need to focus on part of an image during a presentation, you can use a magnifying glass to zoom in on the area in a fun way. You can build this effect using and shape and three transitions. This also creates a nice element to use in iMovie or other video projects.

Hot Corners are shortcuts that you can set so an action is performed when you move the cursor to one of the four corners of your screen. You can set these up in System Preferences if you know where to look. You can use them to instantly put your Mac to sleep, trigger Mission Control and other actions. You can also set them to work only with modifier keys. There is a trick to knowing which corners work in a multi-screen setup.

In school and at work, the Notes app on the iPad has gained status as being even better than third-party notes apps. In addition to syncing over iCloud, you can type, write, draw, take pictures, record video, and scan paper. Text can include styles, lists, tables, and checklists. If you write out notes by hand with an Apple Pencil, you can even search for text in your writing.

You don't need to use complex graphics or video motion tools to create backgrounds for YouTube end screens. Instead, you can simply use Keynote and build a single-slide presentation with animation. It is fairly easy to get elements lined up with placeholders and then to play around with various animations to make your end screen look great. Then you can export as a movie and add it to the end of your YouTube videos as you finish editing them.

With minimalism getting a lot of attention today, how would you customize your Mac to make it minimalist? You can stop using the Desktop as a storage location and use a simple background. You can virtually get rid of the Dock and menu bar. You can practice minimalism when storing, archiving and backing up your files too. Safari and Spotlight also have options that should appeal to minimalists. Choosing the perfect minimalist Mac is tough, as they all are appealing.

Most Mac users avoid Launchpad and instead use Spotlight, the Dock or some other method to launch apps. However, with a change and some tips, Launchpad can be a decent app launcher. First, you'll want to assign a keyboard shortcut. Then, you'll want to organize your Launchpad screens so you can find apps easily. You can also use the keyboard to easily search for apps and get more refined results than in Spotlight.

There are many ways to customize how files and folders appear on your desktop. You can manually arrange them, or have them sorted automatically. You can change the size of the icons, the text, and the grid spacing. A new feature in macOS Mojave is to have similar files organized into stacks. You can also select what other icons, such as hard drives, appear on the Desktop.

If you do a lot of writing on your Mac, here are a bunch of tips to help you type and manipulate text more efficiently. You can use the arrow keys along with modifiers to move around and select text without taking your fingers off the keyboard. You can also quickly delete words and lines without using your mouse or trackpad. You can complete and correct spelling, substitute a few keystrokes for longer pieces of text, and type accent marks and symbols quickly.

When you filter rows in Numbers, any totals or other footer calculations will still be based on all of the rows, not just the ones visible. You can change that by using functions like SUMIF that match the filter. But then you need to adjust your formulas and filters every time so they are the same. However, you can use a hidden column and a single-cell separate table to make this quick, easy and useful.

Often people ask about the best anti-virus software, sometimes because they feel they need to have something installed, or they are required to do so by their company or school. But macOS already comes with anti-malware software, built-in as part of the operating system. There are three parts to this: Gatekeeper, XProtect and the Malware Removal Tool. Learn about them and find out how to make sure they are up-to-date.

A handy feature built in to your Mac is the ability to zoom in and magnify the part of your screen under the cursor. You can choose to have the entire display show the zoomed area, or frame the zoomed area in a rectangle or along the side of the screen. There are lots of customization options such how to trigger and adjust the zoom area andhow it follows the cursor. You can change the keyboard shortcuts and other features too.

Photos has a decent set of adjustment tools that you can use to change the mood of a photo. It is popular now to apply a bluish dark moody effect to photos and here are two ways to accomplish that. You can use light and color adjustments, or you can start with a filter and add some adjustments.

When looking for useful Mac keyboard shortcuts you'll come across the same ones over and over. Here are 10 that haven't gotten as much attention, but can seriously increase your productivity. Learn how to quickly switch between windows, get typing suggestions, access app preferences and menu items, rename files and more.

You have two main options for speaking to your Mac and having it take dictation. There is the built-in macOS Dictation function which works almost everywhere on your Mac. If you use Google Docs and Chrome, you can also dictate using Google's Voice Typing feature. Google's option seems to work better for typing, but macOS allows you to dictate in other apps and is highly customizable.

You can change the background color on all or some of your pages in Mac Pages. The technique is different depending on whether you are working with a page layout document or a word processing document. It is fairly simple with page layout, and each page has its own background. With word processing, each section can have a section master with a full-page rectangle in the background.

Some apps and Final Cut Pro allow you to add a camcorder overlay to make video look like it was recorded on an old video camera. You can do the same in iMovie using an overlay created in Keynote. With this approach, you can highly customize the camcorder overlay. Once you create your Keynote template, you can continue to customize and adjust it for future use.

There are three main places you can find, buy and download games for your Mac. The Mac App store is the obvious place, but there are also two well-established sites that sell a variety of top titles. In addition, we may soon have a fourth option when Apple launches the Apple Arcade.

Apple News+ is the new service from Apple where you can get the contents of about 300 magazines and other publications for $10 per month. But is Apple News+ worth it for you? A critical look finds it lacking in many areas: design, functions, and content. But there are some reasons you may still want to consider giving it a try.