11 Hidden Mac Settings You Can Unlock With the Defaults Command

Many macOS apps have a Preferences menu that allows you to change their settings. You can also change Mac options in the System Preferences panel.

But not all settings are available in the Preferences or Settings dialog boxes. That’s why you need to know about the defaults Terminal command. This allows you to change hidden settings for apps and the Mac system using the command line.

Change the Location and File Format for Mac Screenshots

The Mac has the ability to take screenshots with just a keyboard shortcut or two. If you want a few more advanced capabilities, you can use the built-in Grab application (located at /Applications/Utilities) to take screenshots.

But neither of these screenshot options provides an easy way for you to specify your preferred graphics file format JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, or PDF for screenshots. Luckily, you can use Terminal, an application included with your Mac, to change the default graphics format.

APFS Bootable Clone With Command Line

After multiple trial and error attempts, we finally mastered APFS and are ready to share the knowledge on creating APFS bootable backup with macOS command line. Having such copy on an external drive is rather useful in case something disastrous happens to your local disk, you will have an exact copy of the disk that can be connected externally to your Mac and boot it up. Clone copy of your disk will protect you against any physical or software damage to your computer and system disk, by preserving all the essential files and data.

How to Install Mac Apps in Terminal Using Homebrew

After you’ve configure a new Mac from scratch or reloaded macOS, installing a dozen or more apps is an overwhelming job. Visiting all the right websites and setting the apps up according to your needs is a hassle.

You can solve this problem with a package manager. Homebrew is a package manager for macOS that simplifies the installation of free Unix tools and GUI apps. We’ll show you how to install apps with Homebrew and keep them up-to-date without any trouble.

How to Read a Mac Formatted Drive in Windows: 6 Methods

Do you need to read a Mac drive on Windows? Unfortunately, it’s not a straightforward process; you can’t just connect the Mac drive and expect it to work. Here’s everything you need to know to get it working.

How to Enable the Light Theme in Mac OS

If you’re currently using the Dark mode theme in Mac OS, you may wish to change to the Light visual theme.

The Light theme in Mac OS was the default visual option on the Mac for ages, but with MacOS Mojave came the new visual option for enabling the Dark mode theme for the Mac interface. Many users may have chosen the Dark mode theme during the initial setup of MacOS, or another time, but later may want to set their Mac to use the brighter Light mode theme instead. The process of changing from the Dark to Light appearance is quite simple, as you’ll see.

How to Format an SD Card on Mac

Formatting an SD card from a Mac is simple and quick thanks to the Disk Utility application. This is a commonly required task before an SD card or Micro SD card can be used as a storage medium for another electronic device, or even to remove any data stored on the SD card.

This tutorial will show you how to format an SD card or Micro SD card in MacOS with the Disk Utility app.

The first 11 apps to install on your new Mac

Apple’s macOS operating system has matured to the point where, out of the box, your new Mac laptop or desktop pretty much has the bases covered when it comes to email, calendar management, and some basic productivity tools. But there’s a whole world of better and more powerful Mac software out there that can make everything from GIF-making to photo editing to window organization a whole lot easier.

How to Use BBEdit Dark Mode Color Schemes on Mac

BBEdit, the excellent text editor for Mac, includes some very nice Dark Mode favorable color schemes, each of which compliment the Mac Dark Mode theme quite well.

If you spend a considerable amount of time in a text editor for scripting, programming, development, code review, or writing and editing with a markup language, and you also work on a Mac at night, or in dimly lit areas, or even if you just prefer darker color themes and darker themed syntax highlighting for your text editing, then you’ll almost certainly want to explore and use the various BBEdit dark color schemes.

How to Clear Space On Your Mac

Cleaning up space on your Mac is generally considered a good thing. Your Mac will run better with more free space on its drive, and you (as well as the system and various apps) can utilize the extra space as needed.

Install Git on macOS Mojave and earlier, and Update to latest version

Install Git on macOS Mojave, Sierra, or an older Mac OSX version by getting the latest git version from the Git home page or from the direct macOS latest link.

Installing Gulp on macOS Mojave and macOS Sierra 10.12

Installing Gulp on macOS Mojave, macOS Sierra and earlier OS versions requires Nodejs and npm (Node Package Manager), so get that installed first following the linked guide. Gulp is an easier and slightly more modern javascript task runner than its sibling Grunt, which helps you automate numerous tasks in your workflow.

How to Ping on a Mac

You can use Ping on your Mac to test the quality of your internet speed and figure out why streaming services and games are running slowly. Here are three different ways to test ping on your Mac, including using Terminal and Network Utilities.

Flush DNS cache locally in macOS Mojave, Sierra, OSX, Linux and Windows

When URLs are just not resolving the way you want, to time to clear or flush the DNS nameserver local cache – enter the relevant command in the Terminal/command line for the operating system you are on.

Install Apache, MySQL, PHP on macOS Mojave 10.14

With Apples’ new macOS Mojave 10.14 available for download, here is how to get the AMP stack up and running on the new macOS. This tutorial will go through the process of getting Apache, MySQL, PHP (or otherwise known as the ‘AMP’ stack) and phpMyAdmin running on the new mac OS Mojave.