How to

How to move Photos library to an external drive

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 1, 2018

In addition to moving your multi-gigabyte iTunes library to an external drive, a significant amount of Mac storage space can be freed up by moving your photo libraries onto a separate drive.

If you take a lot of pictures with a DSLR camera or your iOS devices and import them in Photos, you'll fairly quickly run out of free space on most Macs.

This tutorial will guide you through the process of moving an entire library of photos to an external drive, preferably to a much larger external hard drive, in a way that won't disrupt your photography workflow.

How to view your download history in the Mac App Store

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated April 29, 2019

Heavy Mac App Store users will download, install, and delete apps from their Mac all the time. It may be because you're interested in experimenting with new utility releases, downloading games to get a thrill, or checking out the productivity apps that developers claim to be the "best" out there.

Through all this downloading, installing, and deleting, you may want to check out one of the apps you remember using from a long time ago to see if it got any cool new updates, and sometimes you don't particularly remember what the name of said app might be.

Fortunately, the Mac App Store comes with a way to see your purchase history, allowing you to see all of the apps you've ever downloaded from the Mac App Store whether they were free or paid ones. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to see your Mac App Store's download history.

How to move your iTunes library to an external drive

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated August 17, 2018

You'd be amazed how much of your Mac's storage is wasted on the iTunes library. All those apps and media you have purchased and downloaded over the years pile and clog up your Mac's precious storage.

But with one-terabyte external hard drives retailing for less than $60 on Amazon, there are no excuses not to spring for external storage to move that humongous iTunes library of yours on.

This post takes you step-by-step through the process of consolidating your iTunes library and moving it to an external drive in a way that will preserve your playlists, ratings and other interactions, so you won't miss a beat.

How to use bookmark folders in Safari

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated April 25, 2019

In Safari, you can save websites you visit frequently so you can quickly revisit them later without having to remember their URLs. Saved webpages are accessible in Safari's Bookmarks menu on the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or Mac.

If you save a lot of bookmarks, they will clutter the Bookmarks menu over time so locating that favorite website of yours will begin to feel like finding a needle in the haystack. You can avoid this by creating themed folders for organizing your bookmarks.

This tutorial provides step by step instructions for creating new Safari bookmark folders for iOS and macOS. You will also learn how to rename, reposition and delete these folders and file websites into them, all of which will help you organize your favorite websites to your liking.

How to reset NVRAM on your Mac

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated July 23, 2018

Macs are nice computers, but they're not without their issues that can spur up at random times. Fortunately, troubleshooting problems on a Mac isn't incredibly difficult and there are tons of simple steps you can take as a Mac user before calling AppleCare for support.

One of the easiest troubleshooting steps is resetting your Mac's NVRAM, a step which can solve an array of problems. In this tutorial, we'll explain what the NVRAM is responsible for and how to reset it to fix common problems.

How to measure Mac frame rates and enable HiDPI display modes on older models with Quartz Debug

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated May 2, 2019

Have you ever wanted to benchmark the graphics performance of your favorite Mac apps and games, or measure the refresh rates of macOS's user interface?

If so, you'll be delighted to learn that Apple provides a free application, called Quartz Debug, which has a built-in live frame rate monitoring tool that can measure the refresh rate of the graphics subsystem in frames per second (FPS).

Here's how you can download Quartz Debug to your Mac and use it to display the number of screen updates per second, see the FPS and CPU gauges changing as you perform different actions on your Mac, enable HiDPI display modes on non-Retina Macs and adjust other settings related to the computer's GPU.

How to watch Super Bowl 50 on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and other devices

Cody Lee ∙ Updated May 1, 2018

On Sunday evening, millions of people will gather around their TV sets to watch Super Bowl 50. The game features the Denver Broncos taking on the Carolina Panthers, and kickoff is scheduled for 6:30 (ET).

For those of you who aren't going to be around a television Sunday night, but still want to follow along with the action, we've put together a list of ways you'll be able to do so using an iPhone, iPad, Mac and other devices.

How to disable transparency effects on your Mac

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated April 17, 2019

The release of OS X Yosemite in 2014 gave the Mac's user interface a fresh coat of paint in part through adopting much of the transparency effects that Apple added to iOS 7 in prior year.

Transparency is used throughout macOS and can be observed on the desktop and seen in drop-down menus, title bars, sidebars and toolbars.

This post will teach you how to disable transparency for all user interface elements that have a translucent appearance on your Mac.

Why and how to reset SMC on your Mac

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated May 14, 2025

Learn how to reset the SMC on Intel-based and Apple silicon Macs to troubleshoot and fix various hardware issues with the power, display, webcam, etc.

How to check the timestamp of messages on iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated August 18, 2025

Learn how to check timestamps in Apple's Messages app on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch to see exactly when chats were sent or received.

How to hide device icons on your Mac desktop

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 29, 2018

If you're a minimalist type of person, then you might prefer to keep your Mac's desktop free of any icons.

Yes, you can easily drag documents and other files that have been cluttering your desktop and put them in a folder on your Mac. However, that doesn't change the fact that icons for external hard drives, USB thumb drives and other hardware devices will still pop up on the desktop as soon as they're connected to your Mac.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could do something about that? Thankfully, Apple's engineers though of that, too, because macOS makes it easy to optionally remove desktop icons for different types of devices with just a few clicks.

About OS X System Integrity Protection aka ‘Rootless’ and how to disable it

Anthony Bouchard ∙ February 1, 2016

All Macs with OS X El Capitan installed on them have a new layer of security known as System Integrity Protection, which has been given the nickname 'Rootless' because it closes off a lot of system files to user access to prevent malicious programs and code from causing harmful changes to the core of OS X.

For some, the added security feels like a must for protection of your personal information, but for more advanced users who poke their noses into system files quite often, the feature can get in the way and prevent user modifications to the operating system. In this tutorial, we'll give you an overview of System Integrity Protection and show you a way to disable it.