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.

What to do when iTunes can’t locate your music files

Have you ever had the problem where an exclamation point appears next to a song in iTunes when you try and play it? This is the last thing you want to deal with when you're in the mood to listen to your jam, but fortunately, it's usually a pretty easy thing to fix. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to get around this problem and get iTunes to play your music once again.

You could soon be able to unlock your Mac using Touch ID on your iPhone

Apple engineers are designing a remote unlock function that would allow an iPhone to unlock a Mac when in close proximity, reports MacRumors. The feature would use the handset's Touch ID hardware, and is slated for the upcoming OS X 10.12 update.

The site notes that this will use Bluetooth LE frameworks, and will likely work similar to the solution found in the Apple Watch. Passcodes on the Apple Watch can be bypassed by entering your iPhone passcode or using Touch ID on the connected iPhone.

Tweetbot for Mac updated with new Topics feature, Collections support and more

The Tapbots on Thursday issued an update for Tweetbot for Mac, bringing the popular Twitter client to version 2.4. The release brings the new Topics feature over from the recent iOS update, Collections support and other enhancements.

As you'll recall, A Topic is a way to let you quickly Tweet a group of related Tweets without having to manually reply to yourself. You can activate Topics by tapping the gear menu in the Compose screen, and they sync across devices via iCloud.

Infuse 4.2 adds Library view on tvOS, trakt ratings sync, Spotlight search on iOS and more

The versatile Infuse media player for the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV by aTV Flash Black developer FireCore today got bumped to version 4.2, bringing dozens of new features, enhancements and refinements to both the iOS and tvOS edition of the software.

Infuse 4.2 now surfaces your content in Spotlight search, lets you sync ratings for rate content on trakt.tv and has new Continuous Playback options.

On the fourth-generation Apple TV, Infuse gained a new Library mode and Smart Filters, an artwork picker for your Favorites and lots of other improvements. Plus, audiophiles will be pleased to learn that Infuse for Apple TV is now capable of reproducing 7.1 content.

OWC’s new driver adds Boot Camp support to all of its aftermarket SSD upgrades

In March, Other World Computing (OWC) launched the world's first SSD upgrade for 2013 and later MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina display computers. The storage upgrades came in 480GB and 1TB flavors, and we recently showed you the install process of the 1TB OWC Aura SSD upgrade.

There was unfortunately a caveat that disallowed you to use Apple's Boot Camp feature with the drives, which meant you were limited to installing one operating system on it at a time, or using a virtual machine instead of partitioning the drive and dual-booting your Mac.

As of today, OWC has fixed this problem with a new universal driver that enables Boot Camp on all of OWC's SSD upgrades to date.

Alfred 3 for Mac is here with cool new features to boost your productivity

Alfred, a productivity app used and loved by millions of people, today received a major update, bringing it to version 3.0. Alfred boosts your efficiency and productivity with time-saving features like hotkeys, keywords, text expansion, search and more.

Workflows in Alfred are now more flexible and come with some additional objects. Built-in clipboard now accepts multimedia files, a new snippet-expanding feature is an instant productivity boost, theming has been improved and the app runs faster thanks to under-the-hood improvements.

Clearing your Apple Music search history from iTunes on Mac

Not long ago, we showed you how you can delete your Apple Music search history on your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad to protect your song-searching privacy, but this capability can also be achieved on your Mac.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how you can clear your search history from Apple Music on your Mac directly from the iTunes app itself.

Siri for Mac icon leaks ahead of WWDC

9to5Mac claimed back in January that Siri would be finally coming to the Mac via the forthcoming OS X 10.12 software update this fall. Today, MacRumors published a genuine looking image that purportedly shows a colorful Siri icon sitting in OS X's Dock, adding fuel to the Siri for Mac rumors.

Another screenshot appears to show a Siri icon sitting in the Mac's menu bar at the top. The publication says that these screenshots were sent to them by a source “who has provided us with reliable information about Apple's software plans in the past”.

New Mac extension simplifies opening and switching Terminal to the current folder

A new OS X extension from Hasbrang Productions, the prominent jailbreak community development team, makes it easy to open and switch a new Terminal window to the current working directory, right from the Finder's contextual menu.

Available at no charge on the Mac App Store, the aptly named TermHere installs itself as a Finder file extension, readily accessible from the right-click menu. It works as advertised and is pretty convenient, more so if you use Terminal frequently.

Manually checking for Java updates for your Mac or PC

Java, just like Adobe Flash, is often a major security flaw waiting to happen for both Mac and PC owners.

Although Apple takes security very seriously and just about forces Mac users with Java to check for Java updates automatically, it's still never a bad idea to check on your own from time to time.

Since we recently showed you how to check for Flash updates manually, it only made sense to follow up with a similar guide for Java, which is also a commonly-used web plugin.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to see if you have the latest version of Java installed on your computer or not.

Tip: this secret Safari shortcut quickly loads your last search results

SnapBack, a long-standing and very easily overlooked Safari for Mac feature, can save you a ton of clicks if you search a lot, and most of us do. With SnapBack, you can go right back to the last full search results page, even after traveling multiple pages in from your search results.

Part of the reason most users aren't familiar with SnapBack has to do with Apple's decision to remove the little orange SnapBack icon from Safari's address bar and bury the feature  in the menus.

Here's that secret SnapBack shortcut that everyone should start using right now.