To display graphics on your screen, your Mac uses a graphics card, often called a Graphics Processing Unit (or GPU), which can be integrated into your Mac or on a discrete card. The GPU determines how quickly your Mac can ren…
When you need support for your Mac—or you’d like to install some kind of upgrade—you usually need to know the exact model and year of the Mac you’re using. Here’s how to quickly find out.
Renewing your IP address often fixes minor glitches and connectivity issues. Your Mac will ask your DHCP server—often your Wi-Fi router—for a new IP address and connect using either the same one or a new one, depending on…
If you use a Mac, you’ve probably configured your machine with System Preferences, which includes individual configuration sections called “preference panes.” But few people know that you can easily hide or even remove those …
Your Mac hijacking your cursor and asking you to wait around is never welcome. People call it different things, including the spinning wheel, beachball, or pinwheel of death.
In 2020, Apple started selling Macs with its own Apple Silicon chips. But from the outside, the Macs look the same as the old ones. How can you tell if the Mac you’re using runs on an Intel or Apple Silicon processor?…
The macOS Recovery Mode is the only way to fix a dead Mac. If you want to reinstall the operating system or format the drive, this is where you go. Here’s how to enter Recovery Mode on Macs with Apple Silicon….
The battery percentage on your Mac is one statistic you end up checking quite often. But the little default battery icon in the menu bar only shows you a vague picture. Here’s how to show your Mac’s battery percentage in the …
The Notification Center on the Mac is a one-stop destination for all the notifications from your installed apps. But sometimes, it can get a bit too much. Here’s how to quickly clear them all on Mac.
The widgets in the Notification Center on your Mac are malleable. You can shrink them to the smallest size, or go all the way up to the large size. Here’s how you quickly resize widgets in the Notification Center on Mac….
It’s very easy to get distracted when an app starts sending you annoying notifications. Right after you get an app notification, use the Notification Center on Mac to disable notifications for each app….
Widgets are a big part of the Mac’s Notification Center (if you’re running macOS 11 Big Sur or newer). They are right there, in the bottom half of the menu. Want to see a widget without scrolling? Here’s how to rearrange widg…
Widgets sit in the bottom half of the Notification Center. While some widgets are quite useful, you might want to get rid of others for a cleaner look. Here’s how to remove widgets from the Notification Center on Mac….
If you recently upgraded to an Apple Silicon Mac and you’ve downloaded or transferred apps from an older machine, you might want to see which apps are optimized for Apple Silicon and which are Intel apps running under the Ros…
The Notification Center on the Mac houses all your app notifications and widgets. You can use the Notification Center to interact with notifications or use widgets. Here’s how to view the Notification Center on Mac….
By default, a Mac with Apple Silicon will always run the ARM version of a universal binary app if available. But sometimes, older plug-ins you rely on may not have been upgraded to support Apple Silicon yet. Luckily, it’s eas…
Sometimes you need to take a breather from an app’s notifications. Instead of turning off app notifications only to forget about them later, here’s how you can quickly mute or unmute annoying notifications on Mac using the De…
Apple’s ARM Macs include a machine translation solution named Rosetta 2. This lets those Macs run existing software designed for Intel Macs. But it’s not perfect. Here’s how to check whether your software is compatible before…
The Mac menu bar is constant. It’s always available at the top of the screen, with menus, Control Center, and utilities. But it doesn’t have to be. Here’s how to automatically hide or show the menu bar on Mac….
Do you install the latest macOS upgrade on day one? Keeping your machine up to date is important, but there are some good reasons to delay a big upgrade, especially on your “daily driver” Mac.
Introduced in macOS Big Sur, Apple’s design language includes transparent menus and tinted windows that show a bit of the color from the wallpaper. Find this annoying? Here’s how to disable wallpaper tinting in windows on Ma…
The customizable widgets that you know and love on the iPhone and iPad are also available on your Mac. Here’s how to add, customize, and use the new widgets on your Mac running macOS Big Sur and higher….
The first Macs with Apple Silicon are very impressive machines. But, in the shift from Intel chips to Apple’s own ARM processors, what happens to Windows software on a Mac? Does Boot Camp still work? Here’s everything you nee…
By default, the Mac menu bar displays the time in a simple hour and minute digital format. However, you can customize it and add the day of the week, date, or even a second hand.
Unlike Windows, there’s not a lot of customization you can do to make your Mac’s software look different from everyone else’s. But you can add some personality by changing the accent and highlight colors on your Mac. Here’s h…
