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Energy Saver Can Shut Down Your UPS-Equipped Mac in a Power Outage

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An uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, provides essential protection from power surges, spikes, brownouts, and outages. But if you’re not at your Mac when the power goes out, the UPS may run out of battery before you (or the power) return. Happily, if you connect your Mac to your UPS with a USB cable, macOS can detect the outage and shut your Mac down safely, regardless of what else is happening. Make sure open documents are saved whenever you step away from your Mac, or you could lose changes. In System Settings > Energy Saver > UPS Options, you can trigger the shutdown in three ways: after using the UPS battery for a specified amount of time, when the time remaining on the UPS battery hits a specific number, or when the UPS battery level drops below a particular percentage. There’s no harm in setting all three. Remember that it can take a minute or two for your Mac to shut down, so err on the short side for safety’s sake. Apple supports most UPS models from major manufacturers such as APC, CyberPower, and Tripp Lite.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: If you connect your Mac to your UPS with a USB cable, you can use Energy Saver to shut your Mac down automatically in the event of a power failure… before the UPS battery runs out.

Missed an Alert? Check Notification Center

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iOS, iPadOS, and macOS all let you specify whether any given app should show no notifications, temporary banners, or persistent alerts: look in Settings > Notifications and System Settings > Notifications. Temporary banners appear briefly and then automatically disappear, which is appropriate for notifications requiring no acknowledgment. But what if you see a temporary banner only as it’s disappearing and can’t read it in time? You can find a historical list of notifications in Notification Center. To open it from the Lock Screen on an iPhone or iPad, swipe up from the middle of the screen. From any other screen, swipe down from the center of the top of the screen. On the Mac, click the date and time in the upper right corner. If your Mac has a trackpad, you can also swipe with two fingers from the right edge.

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

Social Media: If a temporary banner disappears from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac before you have a chance to read it, you can find it in Notification Center.

Protect Domains That Don’t Send Email from Email Spoofing

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We recently wrote an article for those who manage their own Internet domain names about using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to prevent your domains from being used in phishing attacks and enhance the deliverability of legitimate email. But what about other domains you own but don’t use for email? To make phishing attacks more believable, spammers sometimes forge email so it appears to come from parked domains that aren’t protected. You can use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to ensure that forged email that seems to come from your unused domains isn’t accepted. The details are too specific to go into here, but Cloudflare has an excellent article outlining what you need to do.

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

Social Media: If you have parked domains that never send email, it’s important to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC so scammers can’t forge legitimate-looking email from those domains.

Having Trouble with a Public Wi-Fi Network’s Captive Portal Login Page?

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When you connect to a public Wi-Fi network at an airport, hotel, coffee shop, or school, you may need to interact with a captive portal login page to be granted access to the network. It might require you to enter login credentials, ask for your name, or make you agree to terms of service. But what if that login page doesn’t appear, or something kicks you off the network and you can’t reconnect? In Safari, navigate to captive.apple.com, which should force the captive portal to display its login page again. If that doesn’t work, remove any custom DNS servers and restart. On the Mac, find custom DNS servers in System Settings > Network > Wi-Fi > Details > DNS. On an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > Wi-Fi > Network Name > Configure DNS and choose Automatic.

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

Social Media: When you connect to a public Wi-Fi network, you often must authenticate or agree to terms on a captive portal login page. Here’s the solution if that page doesn’t appear.

Find Some Ham Amidst Your Email Spam

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Spam filters work pretty well—99% of the messages in your spam mailbox are probably spam. But it’s frustrating to miss an important message that was caught by an overeager spam filter. Here’s an easy way to find many good messages, also known as “ham,” amidst all the spam. Think of keywords that might appear in legitimate email to you: the name of your city, major employers in your area, nearby colleges, companies whose products you use, their products, and so on. Then search for those terms inside your spam mailbox, either one at a time or, if your email app supports it, as a single search with OR statements for each keyword, like this Gmail search (use your actual town name and so forth): in:spam townName OR employerName OR clubName OR companyName. Of course, your keywords will appear in some spam messages, but if the searches reveal ham messages you would otherwise have missed, they’re worthwhile. Be extra cautious around any message that wants you to click a link, log in, or provide private information. The fact that your spam filter caught a message is a red flag.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Igor Kutyaev)

Social Media: Rather than frequently skimming your entire spam mailbox for incorrectly captured messages, try searching for specific keywords that are likely to appear in legitimate email.

How to Avoid Head-Tracked Spatial Audio for FaceTime Audio Calls

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If you listen to a FaceTime Audio call using AirPods and hear the other person’s voice moving annoyingly from side to side as you turn your head, the problem is likely head-tracked spatial audio. In general, spatial audio attempts to make sounds seem to come from all around you, and its dynamic head-tracking option adjusts the audio for each ear to simulate how the sound would change as your head moves. Dynamic head tracking may be desirable for music or movies, but with a FaceTime Audio call, having the other person flip back and forth between your ears can be highly disconcerting. To stop this behavior on an iPhone or iPad, open Control Center, touch and hold the volume control, and tap either Off or Fixed instead of Head Tracked. Spatial audio isn’t an option on Mac FaceTime calls.

(Featured image by iStock.com/1550539)

Social Media: If you’ve ever experienced a weird situation where sound on a FaceTime Audio call moves back and forth between your AirPods, it’s because of spatial audio’s dynamic head tracking. Learn how to turn it off.

Annoyed by Inline Predictive Text Suggestions? Here’s How to Turn Them Off

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In a slight nod to the hype surrounding generative AI, Apple added inline text prediction capabilities to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. They can be helpful, particularly on the iPhone and iPad, where it’s often much easier to tap the Space bar than to finish typing a word or sentence. But that’s less true on the Mac, where a fast typist can be slowed down or derailed by the suggestions, and some people dislike having an AI finish their thoughts. The feature is easily turned off. On the iPhone and iPad running at least iOS/iPadOS 17.2, go to Settings > General > Keyboard and switch off Show Predictions Inline. (Leave Predictive Text on to continue to get suggestions above the keyboard.) On the Mac running macOS 14.2 Sonoma or later, open System Settings > Keyboard, click Edit under the Text Input header, turn off “Show inline predictive text,” and click Done.

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

Social Media: If you’re not a fan of the new inline text predictions on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you can easily turn them off and get back to typing only the words you want to appear.

If Mail Fails to Send, Try, Try Again (Instead of Changing Servers)

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Sometimes, something goes wrong, causing Mail on the Mac to have trouble sending a message. When it does, you may see an error like the one below, encouraging you with a default button to try another configured server. Don’t do it! Always click Try Later. If that still doesn’t work, contact your favorite tech support professional to troubleshoot the problem with the SMTP server associated with the account from which you’re sending. Attempting to send through another SMTP server is a recipe for trouble because various anti-spam checks may fail, causing your message to be filtered as spam or bounced back to you. Worse, if you select a different server and click Try With Selected Server, Mail remembers that choice going forward, so you will have to reset it manually later.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Marut Khobtakhob)

Social Media: If Mail on your Mac throws an error about being unable to send a message, always have it try again later rather than switching to a different server. Otherwise, your messages may look like spam and be blocked.

Keep a USB Keyboard and Mouse for Troubleshooting

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Steve Jobs famously railed against cable clutter, and it’s now easy to use a desktop Mac with a wireless keyboard and mouse, either from Apple or another manufacturer. That’s fine for regular usage, but Bluetooth keyboards and mice aren’t always sufficient. Batteries wear out, pairing can fail, and wireless interference can cause lags or spurious inputs. Plus, if you need to boot into macOS Recovery, wireless input devices may not work. We recommend keeping an extra USB keyboard and mouse—preferably from Apple, but any brand will work—to use in case you have problems with your wireless versions. If you don’t have a keyboard and mouse left over from an old Mac, a friend or family member may be happy to give you theirs, or you can probably find them for next to nothing at a local reuse store.

(Images by iStock.com/Jeffrey Glas and RafalStachura)

Social Media: The minimalist approach with a wireless keyboard and mouse is good most of the time, but if things go wrong, it can be handy to have a wired USB keyboard and mouse available for troubleshooting.

Mac Keyboard Shortcuts Performing Unexpected Actions? Check These Settings

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Keyboard shortcuts are a productivity win, but they can cause confusion if something unexpected happens when you inadvertently press some system-wide key combination. For instance, you might be taken aback if you accidentally press Control-Option-Command-8 and all the colors on your Mac screen suddenly invert. Although Apple has pages listing shortcuts and the KeyCue utility can list them all for any app, a good way to see—and manage—what’s active on any Mac is to open System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts (look in the same place in System Preferences in macOS 12 Monterey and earlier) and scan the categories. Disable shortcuts you’ll never use by deselecting their checkboxes, and redefine others so you’ll remember them.

(Featured image by iStock.com/spaxiax)

Social Media: Do strange things sometimes happen on your Mac when you inadvertently press certain key combinations? Take a trip through the macOS keyboard shortcuts and turn off those you’ll never use intentionally.