MacMost: Video Podcast

If you have trouble typing quickly on your iPhone, maybe you haven't tried some of the other options available. Instead of typing each letter, you can use predictive text and swiping to pick up the pace. Or, you can just dictate. The best way is probably to combine these methods as needed.

Your Mac can speak announcements, read selected text out loud and repeat back to you what you type. Check out these Accessibility features can be useful to anyone.

The Ken Burns effects adds movement to your still images in your video projects. But picking a start and end crop area inside the photo, iMovie will move the photo over the duration of the clip. You can use more then one Ken Burns effect in consecutive clips in creative ways.

When dealing with image files on your Mac, it is useful to know the difference between JPEG and GIF files, what HEIC or HEIF files are, what RAW means, and when to use a PNG file.

Setting up email signatures in Mac Mail can be confusing as signatures you create may not seem to be available after you create them. Learn how to create and manage your signatures, set default signatures, and choose alternatives.

The Files app on your iPhone or iPad is like the Finder on a Mac. You can use it to find, open, and organize your files. You can also preview documents and perform other functions. If you are looking to get work done on your iPhone or iPad, it is important that you know your way around the Files app.

There are many ways to move and resize windows on a Mac without requiring third-party apps. Learn how to set up your windows like you want them, and even a method for saving windows positions.

Navigating around on your Mac while you get things done can be tricky. But you have a wide variety of tools to help you, like Mission Control, the App Switcher, the Dock and App Expose. You can control some of these with the pointer, and others with the keyboard.

You can use QuickTime Player to select a portion of a long video and save only that portion to a smaller file. This comes in handy when you want to only use a small section of a video in iMovie or Final Cut Pro.

The Color Picker tool appears in many Apple Mac apps and third-party apps. You can save a color you want to use again with the color chip slots at the bottom. You can use them in any app where you can bring up the color picker.

You can build a simple Shortcut to access the things you use your iPhone for the most. Then you can use back tap, a Home screen icon or Siri to activate it and choose the function. Great for productivity or for helping someone who needs easier access to some things.

There are many different types of desktop backgrounds, also called wallpapers, you can use on your Mac. Dynamic backgrounds change throughout the day, Light and Dark backgrounds switch between two versions, you can also choose a solid color, Apple's pictures, your own, or a whole set of pictures and rotate between them.

When you save a file, the dialog that appears allows you to choose the name and location of the new file. There's a lot of hidden functionality in the File Save dialog that you can use to improve your productivity.

When replying to an email message, don't just quote the entire message and write a response at the top or the bottom. Instead quote the previous message thoughtfully, pay attention to details, and create a better result.

Learn the basics of using formulas to perform calculations in the Numbers spreadsheet app. You can perform basic arithmetic, copy and paste formulas to multiple rows, and use functions to get the sum of a column.

You can track things like cryptocurrencies, metals, commodities, market funds and other things in the macOS Stocks app and in Numbers. The trick is to realize that the values come from Yahoo Finance and to use the same symbols.

Perhaps the most creative tool in the Photos app is the ability to use Markup tools directly on photos. You can add text, shapes and draw. Here ate 10 creative ways to use Markup on your photos.

If you have recently switched from Windows, you may be confused about some things on the Mac keyboard such as the Command key, Option key or Globe key. Learn about the modifier keys, and also what is meant by key names like brackets, backslash and tilde.

Notes has added a lot of new features over the past few years. Here are some tips to help you get the most from the Mac Notes app.

When you add a photo to an iMovie project, the photo will rarely fit right into the video frame but will instead be cropped, removing some of the top and bottom of the photo. Understand why that happens and learn how you can adjust the cropping or switch to make the whole image fit in the video with black bars to either side. Also learn about alternatives to black bars.