Posts

Create Links to Selected Text in Long Web Pages

If you have Control- or right-clicked on text in a Web browser in the last year or two, you may have seen an oddly named command: Copy Link to Highlight. When you choose it, it puts a URL on your clipboard, not just to that page, as Copy Link Address would, but also to the selected text. You can use this URL to make a link or share it directly, and when someone follows it, their browser scrolls to the selected text, simplifying navigation on a long page. For example, compare this link to Apple’s long Apple Watch faces page with this one that points directly to the Unity watch face most of the way down. All Web browsers can follow these links, but Google Chrome was the first to let you make them, and you’ll also find the feature in Arc, Microsoft Edge, and Vivaldi. Apple recently got on board with Safari 18’s Copy Link with Highlight command. The Link to Text Fragment extension adds the feature to other Chromium browsers and Firefox.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Arkadiusz Warguła)


Social Media: You can now create a link directly to text anywhere on a Web page with the handy Copy Link to Highlight command in many Web browsers. Here’s how to invoke the command and an example of why it’s so useful.

Apple Updates Mac Studio with M4 Max and M3 Ultra Chips

In the first update to the Mac Studio since 2023, Apple has refreshed its professional powerhouse with new chip options and support for speedy Thunderbolt 5 peripherals. Previously, the Mac Studio was powered by the M2 Max and M2 Ultra; Apple has now replaced them with the M4 Max, which debuted last year in the MacBook Pro line, and the new M3 Ultra, which melds two M3 Max chips for the ultimate performance. According to Apple, the M3 Ultra version of the Mac Studio ($3,999) is up to 2.6 times faster than the initial M1 Ultra version and nearly twice as fast as the M4 Max configuration ($1,999) for workloads that take advantage of high CPU and GPU core counts. The M3 Ultra Mac Studio starts with 96 GB of unified memory and can be configured with up to 512 GB, plus up to 16 TB of storage, both more than ever before. If you need the fastest Mac possible, look no further.

(Featured image by Apple)


Social Media: Apple has updated the Mac Studio by swapping the M2 Max and M2 Ultra chips for the M4 Max and new M3 Ultra. The M3 Ultra version also offers a new memory ceiling of 512 GB and a new storage max of 16 TB. It’s a monster machine.

Never Save Your Work in These Locations

In every job that involves interaction with the public, amusing “Can you believe…” stories about customers abound. They’re often triggered by seemingly reasonable behaviors that experts recognize as problematic. A well-known example from the early days of personal computing is a college student who kept track of his floppy disk by attaching it to his fridge with a magnet, not realizing that magnetic fields could disrupt the disk’s magnetic patterns and corrupt files. The advice from tech support? “Don’t do that.”

No one is sticking floppies to their fridge anymore, but we still occasionally see the modern equivalent: saving data or documents in places that are likely to disappear. Just as you shouldn’t write the only copy of essential information on an easily erased whiteboard, you shouldn’t store important data in any of these locations:

  • Unsaved documents: While autosave is becoming more common, it isn’t universal and often doesn’t activate until a document has been saved for the first time. When you create a new document, always save it right away, before you do anything else. Otherwise, you risk losing all your work if the app crashes, the Mac kernel panics, or the power goes out.
  • Trash: We know, we know! Who would put something in the Trash that they want to keep? But it happens. Don’t do that! On the other hand, there’s also no reason to empty your Trash regularly unless you’re low on space. A good compromise is to choose Finder > Settings > Advanced and select “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.” This way, you’ll always have a 30-day grace period to recover mistakenly deleted items.
  • Clipboard: Most people know that the clipboard serves as a temporary holding place, overwritten with each new Copy or Cut. However, if you’re unaware of this, you might write something lengthy, use Cut to place it on the clipboard with the intention of pasting it elsewhere, and then forget to do so right away, resulting in data loss on the next use of Copy or Cut. Always paste anything you cut immediately. Many utilities (such as Copy ‘Em, Keyboard Maestro, LaunchBar, Pastebot, and Raycast) provide clipboard history so you don’t lose clipboard data immediately, but you still shouldn’t rely on it persisting indefinitely.
  • Email Drafts mailbox: There’s nothing wrong with starting an email and coming back to it later to finish—that’s the point of the Drafts mailbox. It’s also a sensible way to begin a message on one device and complete it on another. However, avoid storing anything in Drafts for an extended period, and be aware that items there may disappear without warning. (And never, ever store anything in your email Trash mailbox—it will be deleted eventually.)
  • Temporary folders: Thanks to its Unix roots, macOS includes several temporary folders, one located at /tmp and others specific to each user. These folders are cleared regularly, such as when the Mac is restarted, left idle for a long time, or when drive space is low. Storing important data in a temporary folder is a digital version of Russian roulette.
  • Downloads folder: Although the Downloads folder isn’t inherently volatile, it’s unwise to store anything important there. You might forget about that document while tidying up and accidentally delete it, or you might use a cleanup tool in the future that does it for you.
  • USB flash drives: There is nothing wrong with putting files on a USB flash drive. However, avoid storing the only copy of an important file on one, as it is too easy for the drive to be lost or damaged.
  • Public computers, virtual machines, and sandboxed environments: This scenario is unlikely but not impossible. Imagine you’re working on a public computer in a lab and save a file on the desktop. When that computer reboots, it will likely delete all data to return to a fresh state for the next user. The same could apply to a virtual machine used for testing or a sandboxed environment that you log in to remotely.

There are also a few locations that generally aren’t problematic but deserve extra attention due to the higher likelihood of losing data:

  • Third-party app folders in ~/Library: Some apps store their data in folders they maintain within your user account’s Library folder. While this is acceptable for data managed by those apps, we advise against putting anything else in these folders since it’s impossible to know how the app might deal with data it doesn’t recognize during a cleanup or major update.
  • Desktop: It’s fine to work on documents stored on the desktop, but we recommend filing them away carefully when you’re finished. If you frequently move files in and out of your desktop, it’s all too easy to delete something important accidentally. Additionally, if you have iCloud Drive’s Desktop & Documents folder syncing enabled, you might unintentionally delete files from another Mac due to being in a different context.
  • Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive: Cloud storage services are entirely acceptable locations for important data, but they all offer options that store files only online, downloading them only when necessary. These options may prevent online-only files from being accessible when you’re offline or from being backed up locally. Worse, if you share cloud storage with others for collaboration, they could accidentally delete your data. Be sure to enable any available version history options and ensure everything is backed up locally.
  • External drives or network storage: Many individuals and organizations store essential files and data on external drives and network storage. This approach is perfectly valid, provided that these locations are backed up. When designing your backup system, remember to include your external drives, network servers, and NAS devices. Lastly, if an external drive is encrypted, ensure that you have a backup of both its data and the decryption key.

If you want to avoid all these issues, save your files in your Documents folder and make sure you have a solid backup strategy.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/shutjane)


Social Media: We won’t name names, but we’ve seen too many people saving important data in locations that are likely or even guaranteed to disappear. Here’s a list of places to avoid and another of spots that warrant caution.

Text Replacements Not Working on the Mac? Check This Setting

Apple provides a handy ecosystem-wide feature that replaces a typed abbreviation—say “eml”—with text you specify, like your email address. (Seriously, copy that one so you don’t have to type your email address repeatedly.) These automatic text replacements sync via iCloud so you can use them on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Find them on the Mac in System Settings > Keyboard > Text Replacements and on the iPhone and iPad in Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement. They’re great, but it can be mysterious when they stop working on the Mac. The culprit? A menu item being turned off. So, if text replacements aren’t working in a particular app, choose Edit > Substitutions > Text Replacement to turn them back on.

(Featured image by iStock.com/tookitook)


Social Media: Apple’s built-in text replacement feature expands a short abbreviation you type into something longer, but a simple menu option can prevent it from working in a Mac app. Here’s how to fix it.

Add Weather to Your Mac’s Menu Bar with This Sequoia Tip

In macOS 15.2 Sequoia, Apple added the option to display the current weather conditions in the menu bar but hid the switch deep in the bowels of System Settings. To turn this option on, open System Settings > Control Center, scroll to the bottom, and in the Menu Bar Only section, for Weather, choose Show in Menu Bar. A new item with the current conditions at your location will appear in the menu bar; click it to see the forecast and access other locations in Apple’s Weather app.

(Featured image by iStock.com/trangiap)


Social Media: In macOS 15.2 Sequoia, you can display the current weather conditions in your Mac’s menu bar. Here’s how to enable that feature.

How to Convince Microsoft Office Apps to Save Files on Your Mac

By default, Microsoft Office apps—Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—try to save files on Microsoft OneDrive as a way of promoting the company’s cloud storage. If that’s undesirable, you can easily keep your files locally on your Mac or in a different cloud storage location. In the Save dialog, click the On My Mac button to switch to a standard Save dialog showing all your other storage options. There’s no way to set On My Mac as the default location, but the Save dialog automatically remembers your last saved location. That should be sufficient most of the time, although it’s not unheard of for an Office update to flip the Save dialog back to OneDrive.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/pzAxe)


Social Media: Microsoft Office apps save documents in the cloud-based OneDrive by default, but you can easily switch to saving files elsewhere. The apps generally remember your change but may forget after an update.

Control Window Tiling in macOS 15 Sequoia

One of macOS 15 Sequoia’s most noticeable additions is a new form of window tiling. Drag a window to the menu bar to expand it to fill the screen, to the left or right edge to resize it to half the screen, or to a corner to resize it to that quarter of the screen. As you drag, a white outline shows what will happen when you drop the window. Unfortunately, accidentally invoking window tiling can be surprising and disruptive. The easiest way to ensure that dragging windows tiles them only when you want is to open System Settings > Desktop & Dock, scroll down to the Windows section, and turn off “Drag windows to screen edges to tile” and “Drag windows to menu bar to fill screen.” The important setting to leave turned on is “Hold Option key while dragging windows to tile” because from now on, your windows will tile only when you Option-drag them.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/Jakob Berg)


Social Media: Those who are disconcerted by dragged windows suddenly resizing accidentally in macOS 15 Sequoia, take note: you can tweak settings to make Sequoia’s new window tiling feature activate only when you want.

Don’t Listen to Anyone Who Tells You to Drag a Text File into Terminal

In macOS 15 Sequoia, Apple made it more difficult to bypass Gatekeeper to run apps that aren’t notarized. (Notarization is one of the ways Apple ensures that apps distributed outside the Mac App Store are unmodified and free from malware.) Cybercriminals have responded to this increase in security with a new social engineering attack. They provide the victim with a disk image, ostensibly to install some desired piece of software, instructing the user to drag a text file into Terminal. Doing so executes a malicious script that installs an “infostealer” designed to exfiltrate a wide variety of data from your Mac. The simple advice here is to treat any guidance to drop a file into Terminal with extreme suspicion—no legitimate software or developer will ever ask you to do that.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/Farion_O)


Social Media: Thing #17 to never do: Follow instructions to drop a text file into Terminal. It’s a great way to install malware and let cybercriminals steal your passwords, financial information, and more.

Apple’s Tips App Provides Extensive User Guides and Helpful How-Tos

Apple has included the Tips app with the iPhone and iPad since iOS 8 in 2014 and on the Mac since macOS 10.14 Mojave in 2018. Initially, it didn’t contain much useful content, and many longtime users ignored it. However, Apple has significantly increased the amount of information in Tips over time, adding device-specific tips, full device and app user guides, highlights of new features, and more. Many tips even include short demonstration videos. Tips is worth exploring or referring to the next time you have a question. Be sure to encourage anyone you know who’s new to the iPhone, iPad, or Mac to take a look—it even helps them practice key gestures!

(Featured image by Adam Engst)


Social Media: If you haven’t explored Apple’s Tips app on the iPhone, iPad, or Mac recently, check it out. Apple has added a lot more content, including device and app user guides, highlights of new features, and interactive practice guides.

Reveal Mac Window Proxy Icons Permanently with This Setting

We’re big fans of the Mac’s window proxy icons, those little icons that appear in window title bars next to the filename. They’re not just cosmetic—you can use them just like the Finder icon for the open document. You can drag one to Mail to attach the document to a message, to a Web browser to upload it, or to any other location you can drag a document’s icon in the Finder. You can also drag a proxy icon for a folder from the title bar of its Finder window to Open and Save dialogs to navigate to the folder. In macOS 11 Big Sur, Apple hid the proxy icon until you moused over the filename, but starting in macOS 12 Monterey, the company provided an option to show them all the time. To enable it, select System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Show window title icons.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)


Social Media: People who like using the Mac’s window proxy icons (and if you don’t know about them, you should!) can make them visible at all times with an option deep within System Settings. Here’s how to find it and what you can do with proxy icons.