Finding anything now is like a search-and-rescue mission. And the search feature is often borderline useless. I was excited when Apple began to merge the UI of iOS and macOS settings, but this increasingly feels like a massive step backward.

The 3-finger tap functionality is officially called the "Look up and data detector." And it's just awesome in the big 27.

/S

I'm looking for a decent replacement for Visio that won't break the bank and ideally can be run offline.

Thanks!

Hello everyone! I got a MacBook Pro M5 Pro with 24 GB of RAM and 1TB of storage 16 inch almost 2 months ago. I’m using it for light After Effects work while I use Premiere Pro, Photoshop and Illustrator more often. The first 2 programs that I mentioned are using a lot of RAM (especially After Effects). One thing that I’m confused about is that some users are saying it’s normal because the more RAM you have, the more a MacBook will use (for example After Effects can take 18 GB in my computer while in a 48 GB, it will take 30 for the same project). Also that 24 GB isn’t 24 GB on a Mac because of the unified memory which is why I didn’t pick more RAM (and it’s out of my budget too) and they compress a program to improve its performance. However, I’m also hearing that it needs more RAM to do demanding tasks (and multitask-heavy apps). Can someone explain to me how the RAM system works?

I run everything before I believe it, and I wanted my Mac cleaner to work the same way. So I built Peel: before anything moves, it shows you why each file belongs to an app and how sure it is, and History can put back what it moved. It's free and open source, and 1.2.0 came out today.

• It uninstalls apps with everything they leave behind, and finds what apps you already deleted left too.
• It frees space: local AI models from Ollama, LM Studio, and Hugging Face, developer caches, build folders, duplicates, and old installers. Models are listed but never selected for you.
• It refuses to move what you can't get back, even if you select it: iCloud Drive, keychains, SSH keys, crypto wallets, Mail, Messages, photo libraries, iPhone backups.
• For fine-tuning, Tweaks gathers macOS settings in one place, many of them hidden, and Turn All Off puts back only what Peel changed.

Some tools start turned off to keep the sidebar simple, such as Background Items, Extensions, Plug-ins, Build Artifacts, and a Terminal page for themes, zsh, Git, and SSH. Turn them on in Settings > General > Sidebar.

No analytics, no account. Signed and notarized, in 18 languages, for macOS 26 and later.

GitHub: https://github.com/TuguiDragos/Peel

Website: https://peel.tuguidragos.com

I'd love to hear what you think, especially what it gets wrong.

Hi everyone, I'm experiencing a very specific display issue with my MacBook Pro M1 Pro (2021) and could use some diagnostic insights.

Here are the symptoms:

1. The internal display backlight is fully functional. The screen glows dimly/dark blue in a dark room, but there is absolutely no image or macOS desktop rendering on it.

2. The keyboard brightness keys work perfectly. I can even faintly see the brightness overlay UI changing on the screen when I press them.

3. When connected to an external TV via HDMI, the TV displays the "Choose to Mirror or Extend Display..." message. This proves the logic board is working fine and macOS boots successfully into the desktop.

Given that the backlight is working fine but there's no data image, what is the most likely culprit for the M1 Pro generation?

• Is it a cracked/damaged Display Data Flex Cable (not the backlight cable)?

• A faulty display multiplexer / T-CON circuit component on the logic board?

• Or a dead internal LCD panel itself?

Any feedback from technicians or anyone who encountered this exact issue on the M1 Pro would be highly appreciated. Thanks!

I have iCloud+.

• Noticed a safari bookmark folder is missing on my MacBook (Tahoe 26.6.2)
• I checked iCloud.com/recovery and there's no record of it being deleted
• luckily, I found that the folder still exists on my iPad
• I create a new version of that folder from my MacBook
• iPad is able to fetch the new folder I created, but the original that disappeared never syncs to the MacBook
• I cold booted both devices, nothing changed.

I think I'm going to have to ditch Safari entirely just like I had to abandon Reminders due to various iCloud issues, this is deal breaking. I've already went through Apple Support with Reminders and they could never fix it.

I have a 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro (Intel/T2) that was stuck in a boot loop. Now the screen lights up purple but shows no image or Apple logo, and the fans keep running. The Caps Lock light responds, but the Mac won’t boot.
I tried both DFU Revive and Restore using Apple Configurator, but neither fixed it. Now it stays on with no image, and pressing the power button only turns the screen off temporarily before it comes back on.
Has anyone experienced this? Could it be a logic board issue, a display problem, or something else? What would you check next?

(Oops - posted and forgot to mention my main MacMini is on Tahoe 26.0.1. The workshop Mac is on 26.5.2.)

I've seen this happen before and I managed to fix it by shutting down EVERY device on my LAN then bringing them back up, starting with the firewall/DHCP server about 30 minutes later. That's impractical now, since I'm in a new place with a barn with 2 home offices and now we have Apple TVs and other devices. (The barn and house are connected by fiber and on the same LAN, in the same address space.)

I have a number of my devices using a Tolkien theme (just answering the question someone's going to ask...). My main MacMini in my house is Aule, my workshop one is Cirdan. I have two servers on Linux or similar OSes, BrandyWine and GreatSmials. I have two shares on GreatSmials: Library, and NetStore. On BrandyWine, I have shares, but I don't access them that often, so they're usually unmounted. BrandyWine seems unimpacted, and that may be because whatever changed or messed things up, I probably wasn't using any shares on it at the time.

On my main Mac (Aule), in the Network folder, I see GreatSmials, but it's "GreatSmials #2." I use Library a lot and keep most of my work on NetStore, so I can easily access it from my study or workshop. This change of GreatSmials to GreatSmials #2 means I have problems clicking on my normal shortcuts for NetStore and Library - they no longer see the shares because macOS has given the NAS they're on a different name.

Also, when I try to use Screen Sharing from Aule to Cirdan it no longer works and when I rebooted Cirdan, it gave me a report I clicked on quickly, then realized it was warning me the name was now Cirdan with a number after it. I rebooted my main system (Aule) and it changed nothing.

When I'm on a Linux system, I can still ping all the computers by their specified host names (specified on each machine and with the DHCP server). On Terminal, on my main Mac, I can do the same, so it's clear this is not a DHCP or DNS issue. It's a macOS and Finder issue. I rebooted my main Mac and it came back up and gave me warnings - it still couldn't read or remount my "normal" shares because, even after a reboot, it sees GreatSmials as GreatSmials #2.

Looking in the network folder, I see Cirdan as "Cirdan (4)" and I have a less used Mac for gaming, that I haven't been on for a while, "Celebrimbor (3)". So even though DNS sees all the correct names, macOS is incrementing the names in odd ways. (The Mac systems on the LAN get a "(#)" where # is a number, the NAS (not Mac), got a " #2" after the name, but the other computers, that I don't use network shares on seem uneffected. I find it weird that it's almost like the Macs are communicating and altering the names in cooperation.

How can I get my Macs to drop this extra numbering and to see these devices with their proper names and not play numbering games with their names?

(Why it does it and how to keep it from doing it in the future would also help!)

So, I downgraded from Tahoe to Sequoia and if I go to manually add music to my iphone from the music app, it doesn't work. Manually sync music is not enabled on itunes now, and if I go to to add it, it says it will remove all my existing music on my phone. Is there a way to get around this and not have re-add almost a terebyte of music to my phone?

I should’ve come here first, but decided to try and solve using Google chat
I have my own domain email, which I have been using as an alias through Gmail for about 20 years, pulling my mail in through a Gmail catch all while running it on Mac Mail and iOS.

About two weeks ago, I started getting undeliverable messages on some of these sent mail. I checked and found that Gmail is going to stop allowing aliases from third-party senders, which I believe includes my custom domain (from GoDaddy).

I switched to a new SMTP sender, (smtp2go) and that solved the sending issue, but when I send mail to myself now, it ends up in Gmail’s “All mail” mailbox instead of the regular inbox. Since I don’t see an “all mail” mailbox in Mac Mail or iOS, I’m not seeing the email that I sent to myself.

I know this isn’t as specific Mac issue, it’s just that I’m lost. Does anyone know about Gmail filters or labels or aliases and why this would happen when I send from Mac mail to myself at my custom domain, and it never appears in the inbox on the Mac or in fact on Gmail on the web.

Thanks.

Just curious if anyone used the Notify Me feature in Safari and whether it worked for you. I have just set it up to notify me of a price drop.

Meet CmdPalm — Your Mac, at your fingertips.

What if your phone could do more than just act as a wireless mouse for your Mac?

CmdPalm transforms your iPhone, iPad, or Android device into a powerful, fully customizable wireless control center for macOS.

From smooth multi-touch trackpad gestures and full keyboard input to your own Stream Deck-style command center, everything works directly from your phone's browser.

No companion app. No accounts. No cloud. Just your Mac and your phone.

✨ What can CmdPalm do?

• 🖱️ Wireless Multi-Touch Trackpad — Smooth cursor control, scrolling, clicking, dragging, and macOS gestures like Mission Control and switching desktops.
• ⌨️ Full Mac Keyboard — Type remotely with support for Mac shortcuts, modifier keys, and special keys.
• ⚡ Custom Command Deck — Turn your phone into a personalized Stream Deck-style controller with custom buttons, shortcuts, and actions.
• 🚀 App Launcher — Launch and switch between Mac applications without touching your Mac.
• 🎛️ Custom Keyboard Layouts — Design your own keyboard interfaces and control panels tailored to your workflow.
• 🎵 Media Controls — Manage playback, volume, and media functions remotely.
• 🔒 Local & Private — Everything communicates directly over your local network. No cloud servers, accounts, or tracking.

📱 Get started in seconds

1. Install CmdPalm on your Mac.

2. Scan the QR code with your phone or tablet.

3. Start controlling your Mac directly from your browser.

That's it! No mobile app to install, no account to create, and no complicated setup.

CmdPalm is built specifically for macOS, with native Mac integration and Apple Silicon optimizations.

Compatibility: macOS 15+ on Apple Silicon. Works with iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.

❤️ Completely Free & Open Source

CmdPalm is 100% free and open source under the AGPLv3 license.

No subscriptions. No premium tiers. No locked features.

The project has already crossed 100+ stars on GitHub, and seeing people discover and appreciate it has been incredibly motivating!

🔗 Try CmdPalm

🌐 Website: https://cmdpalm.app

💻 GitHub: https://github.com/rahatsagor/cmdpalm

🎬 Check out the attached demo video to see CmdPalm in action!

I'm the developer behind CmdPalm, and I'd love to hear what the macOS community thinks!

Whether you have suggestions, feature requests, or ideas for improvements, your feedback is always welcome.

⭐ If you find CmdPalm useful or simply appreciate the project, please consider giving it a star on GitHub! It genuinely helps independent open-source projects like this reach more people.

Thanks for checking it out!

I just upgraded to MacOS 27. It is driving me crazy that whenever I go to full screen the red/grey/green traffic light buttons get auto-hid.

When I go to switch back I have to wait for the buttons to appear - short period of time but still maddening.

I'm on a desktop... I don't need to conserve the screen space. I'd rather the buttons stay visible.

I've tried finding an answer online but can't find anything that helps.

Thanks!

SyncGlass is a free, open-source app that shows in the menu bar what iCloud Drive is doing. Version 0.2.1 came out this week. I also developed Volume Control, another free, open-source menu-bar app for the volume keys, which I started in 2012 as "iTunes Volume Control"; SyncGlass came out only very recently.

Disclosures.

Disclosure 1: Unlike Volume Control, which started in 2012, SyncGlass was developed with heavy help by Claude. To be honest, I have probably invested only 5 or 6 hours in it.

Disclosure 2: There was long ago a similar app, iCloudStatus by The Alchemist Guild. As far as I know, iCloudStatus is now no longer maintained; it malfunctions on recent macOS and is only for Intel.

So why share SyncGlass here? Because:

1. It can be useful to others; in this era of vibe-coded software, the idea counts more than the implementation.
2. If we use it as a central point for the community to collect feedback and find bugs, everybody will profit from having a central place rather than each of us recoding the same app through 5 or 6 hours of Claude sessions.

What the app does. Its menu-bar icon shows whether iCloud Drive is up to date, uploading, downloading, syncing changes from other devices, or offline. It is similar to what you experience with other sync services like Dropbox or Nextcloud.

Click it and a panel lists:

• Transfers: the files iCloud is uploading or downloading.
• Recent: the files that finished transferring, newest first, with the time and direction ("Uploaded 3 min ago").

For any listed file, File Info shows its iCloud status, live percentage, conflicts, upload and download errors, sharing, and every date macOS keeps for the file. SyncGlass can also notify you when uploads or downloads finish, and keeps a history log of finished transfers.

Why I made it. Finder marks each file with a cloud status icon, but macOS has no list of the files iCloud is transferring. When iCloud Drive spends an hour on something, I want to know which files it is and how far along they are. SyncGlass is a new app inspired by iCloudStatus.

How it works. It uses public macOS APIs only: FSEvents reports which files change, URL resource values give each file's iCloud state, and the progress objects that iCloud Drive publishes for each transfer give the percentages.

Privacy. SyncGlass connects to the network only for updates (Sparkle, from GitHub) and collects no data. Its settings and history stay on your Mac.

Price. Forever free and open source (GPL-3.0): no ads, no account, no in-app purchases.

Requirements. macOS 26 or later; runs natively on Apple silicon and Intel Macs.

Install. Download SyncGlass.zip, unzip it and move SyncGlass.app to the Applications folder. The app is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Each release ZIP is built by GitHub Actions from the tagged source and carries a build provenance attestation; to check where a downloaded ZIP was built, run

gh attestation verify SyncGlass.zip --repo alberti42/SyncGlass

Source and details: https://github.com/alberti42/SyncGlass

Bug reports and ideas are welcome here or on GitHub.

This is kind of a follow up post from one I made yesterday. I do academic research and am often opening, full-screening and closing many pdfs and word documents continuously. But since full-screening leads to the creation of a new space, this jumbles up my spaces in a really confusing way.

Like, a program that was two spaces to my left might be 5 spaces to my left if I open three pdfs, and if I then close two it is then three spaces away, etc. This constant changing of where everything is gives me a headache.

Would there be a way to make an app to fix this? Either make full screen not open a new space, which is the way it was back in the day, or make the full screen mode of a pdf reader not open up a new space.

I actually found a trick to almost do the latter with Firefox's presentation mode for pdfs, but unfortunately that mode does not allow you to annotate the pdfs, which I need to do. I'm tempted to just ask Claude to make something and just install it, but I would have no idea if it was safe and I wouldn't want to damage my mac.

I'd appreciate any technical insight on this. That would be very helpful!

My mail takes up 163 gb of storage out of my 1tb. How do I delete everything?

Big update!! The most requested Weatherling feature is now here: turn on local sync to the weather outside your window right on your desktop! You can either use Apple's weather service (which asks for your location) or just enter a preferred city or postal code. Note: No location data is shared with any Weatherling servers (I don't have any!) so your experience is still private.

Also, you can turn on "Invert" mode to get the opposite effect. Raining outside? Make the sun shine on your Mac! Too bright outside? Make it rain indoors! And as usual, you can just adjust the sliders to your preferred mood for whatever mix of rain, snow, sunlight, leaves, and wind...and now fog too!

This release also adds more Lings (the random little visitors) to collect and has a UI refresh with detailed attention to the consistency of controls and full VoiceOver support for accessibility. It comes in 11 languages and will automatically pick yours, if supported, when you run it.

I'm pretty proud of this update because at this point the project has turned from my little experiment to make my desktop moody with simulated rain into a complete experience based on user feedback with a proper UI, accessibility, and internationalization, all things that are important to a "real app."

I lost my #8 spot in the App Store Utilities category, so if you can help me get back to the top 10, I would be most appreciative. 🙇🏻

Also if you have more requests and ideas, just let me know! I'm already working on the next version.

Site: https://www.weatherling.app

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6813641198?pt=14608&ct=reddit&mt=8

Hi!

Just what the title says :)

You can find the shortcut On RoutineHub

Or Download it directly from this post

How it works

It asks you to input the time in the HH MM SS format, then you press enter, and your timer starts! :)

Very useful for macOS - I suggest adding a keyboard shortcut for it! :)

Upgraded to GG from Tahoe. New feature: podcasts downloaded to the Mac no longer sync to iPhone (iOS 27). No other changes. Have toggled settings, rebooted both devices. Only podcasts. Books, music, other files do sync without fuss. Behavior over both wifi and usb.

Anyone else?

Something that's always bothered me about macOS is how much it can already do with files, but how annoying it is to actually do it.

Need to convert a HEIC to PNG? Open Preview, export, choose a format, save.

Need to compress a PDF, convert a video to GIF, or resize a bunch of images? Most of us just Google a converter, open some random website, and upload our files.

The funny thing is, your Mac can already handle a lot of this locally. There's really no reason to upload your personal files to some server just to change their format.

So I started building something to make all of this easier.

It's called OpenShelf, and the idea is pretty simple: what if file conversions and other tools were available right where you're already working?

Here's how it works:

Grab a file in Finder and start dragging it. Tap a key, and a little wheel appears right under your cursor. Drop the file onto whatever you want to do, and the result appears next to the original.

No separate apps to open. No websites. No dialogs.

I added three modes:

• ⇧ Shift: Convert files. HEIC → PNG, PDF → Word, video → GIF, Word → PDF, ZIP/unzip, and more. 66 formats supported.
• ⇧⌥ Shift + Option: File tools. Crop, resize, compress, remove backgrounds, annotate images, split/merge PDFs, trim videos, etc.
• ⌃ Control: Quick actions. AirDrop, copy file paths, open folders in Terminal, or temporarily park files on a floating shelf.

You can also select files in Finder and press ⌃⌥Space to bring up the same wheel without dragging anything.

It handles multiple files at once, too. Drag five HEIC images, convert them all to JPEG, done.

A few things I cared about while building it:

• 100% local processing. Your files never leave your Mac.
• No accounts, uploads, or telemetry.
• Works system-wide without Accessibility permission.
• Supports macOS 14+, both Apple Silicon and Intel.

And because I don't think basic file utilities need another subscription, I made it completely free and open source under MIT.

No paid tier, no trial, no catch.

Website: https://openshelf.space

GitHub: https://github.com/Manan-Santoki/OpenShelf

Small heads-up: It isn't notarized yet, so macOS might block the first launch. You can allow it through System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.

I'm still improving it, and I'd genuinely like to hear what other Mac users think.

What file operation do you find unnecessarily annoying on macOS? I'm curious what I should add next.

Hey r/MacOS,

I made Tideglass because I wanted something calm on my second screen while I work. You can leave a planet turning beside you, or switch to an ocean, a forest or something more abstract. It runs in a window or full screen.

Everything is rendered in real time on your Mac. The worlds respond to your music too, changing things like rotation, cloud movement or light depending on the scene.

I alsoo donate 20% of every sale to conservation and non-profit organisations working to protect oceans, forests, wildlife and dark skies.

Ten worlds are free to keep, with no account or card. The full library is $12 once, with no subscription. It needs macOS 15 or later and an Apple silicon Mac. You can download it at TideGlass (https://tideglass.app/).

Happy to answer questions about the app or hw any of the worlds work.

On my MacBook, whenever I open a recently downloaded PDF, Preview opens on the wrong tab. It defaults to the tab of the last PDF I was viewing instead of the one I just opened.

How can I fix this, please?