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 repair disk permissions on Mac

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated June 14, 2023

Some Mac hiccups and startup issues can be resolved by repairing disk permissions in macOS. Disk permissions allow your Mac to control what users have access to files and folders on your Mac.

Unfortunately, it's quite easy to unintentionally mess up disk permissions. In fact, the very act of installing and uninstalling apps on your Mac can over time result in broken permissions.

And when file permissions break, your apps might be allowed to alter each other's files or even modify read-only system files, which in turn can lead to various permission errors and erroneous behavior in macOS. It is therefore essential that disk permission in macOS are as they are supposed to be.

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to verify and fix disk permissions in macOS, which is typically a basic troubleshooting step to fix any software issues your Mac might be plagued with.

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How to boot your Mac in Target Disk Mode

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated June 14, 2023

Our tutorial series dealing with the many ways you can start up your Mac continues with Target Disk Mode, a feature Apple conceived to allow your Mac to act as an external disk for another Mac.

It's not surprising that the vast majority of average Mac owners are totally oblivious to the existence of Target Disk Mode, and who could blame them? After all, Target Disk Mode isn't exactly front and center on macOS.

In this tutorial, you're going to be taught how to activate Target Disk Mode through the System Preferences application, or enter it directly at boot time with a simple keystroke. I'm also going to explain in layman's terms why, when and how Target Disk Mode should be used.

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How to create animated GIFs on Mac

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

From time to time, I like to include GIF animations in my posts on iDB. I usually use GIFs when I want to demonstrate some functionality without making a full blown video to do so. GIFs are great for quick demonstrations where videos aren't necessarily needed.

Whenever I include a GIF animation on a post, there's usually at least one comment inquiring about how I went about making the GIF. Although there are many options out there for creating GIFs, including using Photoshop, I personally prefer GIFBrewery ($4.99 on the Mac App Store) from the folks over at Hello, Resolven Apps.  GIFBrewery is solely focused on creating GIFs, and thus, it's fairly straightforward and easy to use.

In this post, I'll show you my GIFBrewery workflow, and how I use this awesome Mac app to quickly create great-looking GIF animations from videos.

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How to use Time Machine on your Mac – the full roundup

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

Over the last several months, we've revisited Time Machine, the backup utility present in OS X. We've showed you everything from performing an initial Time Machine setup, to encrypting Time Machine backups, to restoring specific files from those backups.

Time Machine is a great tool that every OS X user should become intimately familiar with, and in this roundup, we'll revisit each of the topics covered over the last couple of months.

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VMware updates Fusion for Mac with support for El Capitan and Windows 10 with Cortana

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated July 24, 2017

VMware today released Fusion 8 and Fusion 8 Pro with support for running Windows 10 with Cortana on OS X 10.11 El Capitan Macs.

A virtualization solution, VMware allows you to run OS X and Windows 10 side-by-side as opposed to dual-booting between the two operating systems.

Fusion 8 and Fusion 8 Pro also support native display resolution of the iMac with 5K Retina display, the USB-C port and Force Touch trackpad of Apple's 12-inch MacBook and sport other enhancements.

The company said existing Fusion 6 or Fusion 7 customers can upgrade to Fusion 8 for $49.99 or Fusion 8 Pro for $119.99. And if you're a Parallels Desktop for Mac user, VMware will treat you to a cool forty percent discount on Fusion 8 and Fusion 8 Pro.

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OS X El Capitan Recovery Update now available

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 21, 2015

Apple on Friday seeded a small update to OS X's Recovery feature to users running a pre-release version of OS X 10.11 El Capitan. The OS X El Capitan Recovery Update includes improvements to the operating system's Recovery partition. Like in prior OS X editions, this feature can be invoked at boot time by pressing the Command - R combo.

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Parallels Desktop 11 with support for El Capitan and Windows 10 now available

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 16, 2018

In addition to running newly-released Windows 10 natively on your Mac in dual-boot mode through Boot Camp 6, you can now enjoy Microsoft's latest and greatest operating system alongside OS X using the popular virtualization solution, Parallels Desktop.

In its latest incarnation that was released earlier today, Parallels Desktop 11 brings full support for Windows 10 features like Cortana and experimental support for Macs running OS X El Capitan.

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Stay away from new Mailbox for Mac update: it’s full of bugs and breaks support for Mavericks

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 29, 2018

It's been more than two years since cloud-storage startup Dropbox acquired the popular iOS email client Mailbox, and a full twelve months have passed since a public beta of Dropbox for Mac launched, and the software still hasn't dropped the beta flag.

As a matter of fact, those among you who use Mailbox as your daily driver should hold on upgrading to the most recent release as it breaks compatibility with Macs running OS X Mavericks while introducing a host of new problems, as first reported by The Next Web.

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Review: BatteryBox – a good charging solution for your MacBook?

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

I’ve been using Gbatteries’ BatteryBox ($219 on Amazon) portable MacBook-enabled battery charger for several months, and now I’d like to share my thoughts on the device.

The BatteryBox is a dense, yet small compact box that’s almost exactly as wide as of pack of playing cards, and about as tall as two and a half packs of playing cards.

Needless to say it’s a very small device, but it’s also extremely dense and a little awkward to travel with. It’s essentially like carrying around a power brick from your favorite game console in the mid-90’s.

The BatteryBox is dense because it packs in a whopping 60 Wh rechargeable li-ion battery. That’s a lot of juice, and as such, it can power a MacBook Air for 13 hours straight. As a user of a MacBook Pro, the amount of time I get from the BatteryBox is obviously reduced, but I still came away fairly impressed with the results.

The BatteryBox can also charge other items, like iPhone and iPads, via a standard USB connection. In fact, it can fully recharge an iPhone up to 11 times, which makes it great for traveling where you power outlet access may be limited.

But what makes the BatteryBox stand out is the fact that it can connect directly to a MacBook’s charging port via a specially designed connector. Since Apple owns the patents to MagSafe connectors, Gbatteries had to come up with a different method for connecting to the MacBook. The BatteryBox is the result of its efforts, and it works well from my experience.

If you’re a MacBook user who’s often on the go, should you consider supplementing your MacBook’s battery with a BatteryBox? Find out inside…

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How to boot your Mac in Verbose Mode

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated June 14, 2023

We previously discussed how booting your Mac into macOS' Safe Mode can help troubleshoot various issues with your computer. In more obscure situations and borderline cases, however, Safe Mode may not be enough to understand why your Mac freezes or crashes during the system boot process.

Enter macOS Verbose Mode.

Not only does Verbose Mode makes it easy to access detailed status messages as your Mac is starting up, but also lets you see what's really going on behind the scenes and watch as macOS loads kernel extensions and other startup items.

In this tutorial, we're going to cover booting your Mac in macOS' Verbose Mode, explain in which situations it might come in handy and give you some handy tips related to using Verbose Mode.

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