Mac

Stay up-to-date on the latest Mac news, and tutorials. Get expert tips and tricks to optimize your Mac’s performance and learn about the latest Apple products and software updates. Discover the best Mac apps and accessories to enhance your user experience.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Everything you need to know about the location services built into your Mac

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated April 23, 2019

Not long ago, we took you through an overview of the location services settings that come with your iOS device and told you all about how you can increase your privacy by configuring your location services wisely.

It's worth noting, however, that even your Mac uses your location for certain things; and with that in mind, you may want to look at your location services settings on your Mac to make sure you're limiting what you need to limit and are only allowing location services for the things you actually use.

In this walk-through, we'll explain the location services settings that come with macOS and tell you all about what might be using your location in the background.

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Sound issues when connecting your Mac to a TV with HDMI? Try this

Anthony Bouchard ∙ January 26, 2016

On the right side of all modern MacBook Pro models is an HDMI port used for digital video and sound. It's a great way to take in all of your favorite movies on the big screen.

On the other hand, if you wanted to use external speakers or headphones, it can cause issues if your sound settings aren't configured just right because HDMI itself is also an audio out port in addition to video out.

In this piece, we'll walk you through how to make sure your audio out is going to the right place.

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