If you enjoy discovering hidden features of your Mac, then it’s a good idea to get acquainted with the Option key. The Option key is like that special book in a library that, when moved, causes a secret door to swing open. In this case, the secret that is revealed is a Mac feature that is hidden from most users.
My recent experience with water damage to my new 16-inch MacBook Pro reinforced two practices that I've followed for many years; making a bootable backup and creating a bootable macOS install drive. While I was able to reload my MacBook...
Snapshots are a feature of APFS (Apple File System) that has been part of the macOS since High Sierra. A snapshot captures the state of an APFS formatted drive, and preserves all the files on the drive, as they appeared when the snapshot was taken. If you ever need to, you can roll back the drive to its previous state. In this Rocket Yard guide, we're going to take a look at APFS snapshots, how they’re created, managed, and deleted, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of snapshots.
Using an external device as your Mac’s primary startup device can offer a number of advantages, as we outlined in Using an External Drive as Your Startup Drive: Part 1. This can include having increased storage space, faster performance, the ability...
If you just upgraded to a new Mac, or used the clean install method to upgrade to macOS Catalina, chances are you’re going to need to copy information from your old Mac, or older Mac OS, to your upgraded Mac. There...
Did you upgrade to macOS Catalina and decide it's not for you? Perhaps a favorite app isn’t Catalina compatible, or changes in some of the apps Apple provides are not to your taste. Maybe your Mac just seems to be...
If you’re getting ready to install macOS Catalina on your Mac, you have some preparations to make and a few choices to make. While many people just download the new operating system and let the installer do its thing, it’s...
macOS Catalina is usually installed as an upgrade over an existing version of the Mac OS. But you can also perform a clean install, which places a pristine version of macOS Catalina on a drive of your choice. A clean...
A bootable version of the macOS Catalina installer is one of the often-overlooked tools a Mac user should have on hand before upgrading to or performing a clean install of Catalina. The bootable installer you create in this guide will...
