Archive for the ‘Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/10/12
I wanted to use my old 9.7 inch iPad Pro 1st generation (yes – really old) as an Apple Sidecar external screen (iPad confusingly names this Continuity, but that OS X Yosemite feature does not fully support Sidecar), so needed the resolution to get a rough idea on what kind of settings would get the lease pixel scaling.
This was useful, but lacks the Apple model numbers: [Wayback/Archive] iOS Resolution // Display properties of every iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Apple Watch Apple ever made
It meant I had to:
- get my iPad model number (iPad -> Settings -> About -> Model Number -> click on the “MLMN2NF/A” -> “A1673”)
- map the model number to a model name via [Wayback/Archive] Identify your iPad model – Apple Support: A1673 on the iPad Pro -> iPad Pro (9.7-inch)
- find the native resolution: iPad Pro (9.7-inch) -> [Wayback/Archive] iOS Resolution // iPad Pro (1st gen 9.7”)
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Posted in Apple, Apple Silicon, ARM Mac, iOS, iPad, M1 Mac, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, MacBook, MacBook-Pro, macOS 10.14 Mojave., macOS 10.15 Catalina, macOS 11 Big Sur, macOS 12 Monterey, macOS 13 Ventura, macOS 14 Sonoma, macOS 15 Sequoia, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/10/06
I started experimenting with [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – DanielStormApps/Fanny: Monitor your Mac’s fan speed and CPU/GPU temperature from your Notification Center. · GitHub and [Wayback/Archive] Fanny Widget for macOS.
For homebrew users (aren’t all MacOS users using this great package manager)
brew install --cask fanny
[Wayback/Archive] fanny — Homebrew Formulae
Soon I found out this does not work for M1 MacBook machines (no matter if it is regular, Air, or Pro): no temperatures are read and fan speeds fluctuate heavily. I’m not alone in this, M1 support is not there and won’t be there – there have not been any updates to the repository since 20200502 and issues like these are still open:
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Posted in Apple, Development, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, ObjectiveC, Power User, Software Development, Swift | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/10/05
On my list of things to try on MacOS: [Wayback/Archive] DaisyDisk | Home
Find out what’s taking up your disk space and recover it in the most efficient and easy way.
At USD ~10 for use on 5 Apple MacOS machines, it is dead cheap especially since it can also scan cloud storage for some vendors.
Via [WaybackSave/Archive] anna on X: “Cool, I’ve just freed up 21.4 GB on my disk. Thanks to @DaisyDisk …”
--jeroen
Posted in Apple, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/09/24
Despite, or maybe thanks to, being a duplicate I like this [Wayback/Archive] command line – How can I view all Wi-Fi network names (SSIDs) in my area in the terminal? – Ask Different (thanks [Wayback/Archive] Jandroid and [Wayback/Archive] Ray de Groat)
The reason is that unlike similar questions it has a single answer that works on more recent MacOS versions:
system_profiler SPAirPortDataType
I usually amend it with | less for easier browsing.
It means this question skips all kinds of answers with commands that over the course of time Apple has decided to kill and now no longer work or only work as admin:
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Posted in Development, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, WiFi | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/08/28
Preview on MacOS has a great set of zoom keyboard shortcuts. They all feel very natural, and unlike Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader, include shortcuts for one-page view and two-page view.
The screenshot on the right shows all of them in the menu, as somehow a simple Google Search did only reveal a page documenting a limited set of them. So further below, I will document the list.
The same holds for Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat: it’s hard to find a good list of all view related keyboard shortcuts even when trying multiple times.
I did find a few pages though with partial lists of keyboard shortcuts, so I gobbled them together below in another table.
Preview View menu keyboard shortcuts
(I removed all entries that did not have a keyboard shortcut)
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Posted in Adobe, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Reader, Apple, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Preview | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/26
Somehow the default dpi setting on my ARM MacBook Pro was 300dpi.
This caused all the specific printer settings saves (mostly permutations of N-up and single/double-sided) to have become 300dpi. Fine for scalable output (vector graphics and fonts), but awful for bitmap images.
[Wayback/Archive] How to change default printing dpi – Apple Community explains how to set the default:
- Print something to bring up the print dialog box.
- Make sure the Presets menu shows “Standard”.
- Change the dpi.
- Now from the Presets menu, choose “Save”.
- That should change the “Standard” settings.
But it fails to explain that the default is not retroactively applied to saved settings.
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Posted in Apple, Apple Silicon, ARM Mac, LifeHacker, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, MacBook, MacBook-Pro, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/04
Seems this is not an easily accessible built-in feature of MacOS: [Wayback/Archive] macos change brightness of external monitor at DuckDuckGo
Basically there seem to be two apps that are most popular:
Lunar is free, but has a fee for some features. MonitorControl is free derived from Lunar, but has less features than the paid Lunar license has and is less often updated.
Both have been developed in Swift and are on GitHub:
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Posted in Apple, Development, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Software Development, Swift | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/05/08
Boy have I been living under a stone, I wish I had known Little Snitch 2 decades ago (:
Little Snitch – Wikipedia:
Little Snitch is a host-based application firewall for macOS. It can be used to monitor applications, preventing or permitting them to connect to attached networks through advanced rules. It is produced and maintained by the Austrian firm Objective Development Software GmbH.
At the time of writing, it was at version 5.x, and it was introduced early this century.
Site and other links:
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Posted in Apple, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/03
[Wayback/Archive] keyboard – Shortcut to apply header style 4 (and 5, 6…) – Ask Different (thanks [Wayback/Archive] bouke!):
Found it, although I did not expect the solution to be this simple. To do this, follow these steps:
- Right-click the Heading 4 style in the ribbon and choose ‘Modify’ (Or through Layout > Styles > Heading 4 > Modify
- In the left hand bottom corner, select ‘Shortcut’
- Assign shortcut ⌘⌥4
- Repeat for Heading 5, 6…
- Done!
Query: [Wayback/Archive] macos microsoft word shortcut for heading levels – Google Suche
More: [Wayback/Archive] Keyboard shortcuts in Word – Microsoft Support: MacOS
--jeroen
Posted in Apple, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Office, Office 2021, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/11
I had to remove all text files including a -bar.txt from the current directory using bash, so I automatically typed rm *txt resulting in this nice error:
rm: illegal option -- b
usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dPRrvW] file ...
unlink file
When there was just a file named -foo.txt in the directory, the error became more interesting:
rm: illegal option -- o
usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dPRrvW] file ...
unlink file
Then it struck me: rm is one of those old tools where you can smack all options together. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, bash, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User | Leave a Comment »
