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Posts Tagged → tips

Turn Any iPhone Into a Dumb Phone

posted in accessibility, iphone, tips on July 21, 2026

There’s a trend of people buying intentionally dumb phones. Sometimes it’s for a kid who needs a way to call home but not a portal to the whole internet. Sometimes it’s an adult trying to claw back their own attention. I understand the impulse.…

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The Worst Default Setting on the Mac

posted in macOS, tips on June 29, 2022

Found under the Mission Control System Preference, “Automatically rearrange Spaces based on recent usage” takes any Spaces you’ve set up and scrambles them every time you open a new app. So it just adds a bit of chaos to your day. I’ll never understand…

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Fast Windows Navigation with Moom

posted in moom, screencast, tips on March 29, 2022

Moving your windows around the screen manually can be a pain. In this video I demonstrate how I use a few keyboard shortcuts with a great little screen utility, Moom, to make my windows dance.

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Fixing the Print to PDF Trick for High Sierra

posted in tips on October 2, 2017

One change from the High Sierra macOS update is a slight modification to the command to print to PDF. Years ago I shared a tip about printing to PDF by holding down the Command key and pressing P twice. It’s a great tip and…

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“Hey Siri, Send”

posted in apple watch, tips on May 10, 2015

For the first week I used my Apple Watch, it drove me nuts that I still had to tap the screen to confirm sending text messages I’d dictated via “Hey Siri”. Then I decided to try dictating the button press. When presented with the…

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The iPhone Extension Trick

posted in iphone, tips on April 8, 2015

Have you got any contacts that have extensions in their phone numbers? If you do, you’ll know that adding extension information to your contacts can give your iPhone fits when placing calls. There is, however a trick. When creating a contact, instead of this:…

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Print to PDF, Revisited

posted in tips on October 23, 2013

** Note ** the below video is out of date. You’ll want this updated one. My Print as PDF post still gets tons and tons and tons of views. Apple changed things up a tiny bit with Apple Mail in Mavericks so I thought…

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Permalinking SquareSpace with TextExpander

posted in tips on March 15, 2013

I get a lot of requests about how I put permalinks at the bottom of link posts. People think I’ve done this with some clever bit of web programming but the answer is really just a TextExpander snippet. Here is the snippet text: [∞](https://www.macsparky.com/blog/%clipboard)…

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Use Hazel to Find Dates Inside Files

posted in tips on February 12, 2013

Timotheus over at macorios.com has a workflow for using Hazel to pull dates out PDFs. Basically, he uses the Contents field to look for strings of text matching common date formats. Clever. He is selling the rules for $4, which I can understand because…

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14 Days in Mountain Lion Calendar Week View

posted in tips on October 31, 2012

There used to be a really handy terminal command to open debug mode in iCal. One of my favorite settings was the ability to display two weeks in week view. Unfortunately, the command stopped working in Mountain Lion and it doesn’t appear anyone has…

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