Listed below is a selection of posts from across the AppleVis website which have been especially selected to help you setup and get to know your first Mac.
In this episode, Tyler demonstrates how to disable predictive text suggestions on macOS.
As you type on your Mac, macOS by default attempts to finish words and phrases it thinks you're trying to type. If you find that hearing these suggestions spoken by VoiceOver is more distracting than helpful, you can turn them off by going to System Settings > Keyboard, clicking the Edit button under the "Text input" heading, and toggling the "show inline predictive text" switch off.
transcription:
Disclaimer: This transcript is generated by AIKO, an automated transcription service. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.
Hey, Apple vissers, Tyler here, with a quick tip for how to disable predictive text suggestions on macOS.
By default, as you type on your Mac, macOS attempts to finish words and phrases that it thinks you're trying to type.
In this episode, Tyler demonstrates how to enable audio descriptions for the TV app, as well as for videos on supported websites in Safari on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. Note that not all apps and websites that offer audio described content detect this setting, meaning you'll have to manually enable audio descriptions through the playback interfaces of such services.
To enable automatic playing of audio descriptions for the TV app and Safari on iOS and iPadOS, go to settings > Accessibility > Audio descriptions, and enable the "Audio descriptions" toggle. To do the same on macOS, go to System Settings > Accessibility > Descriptions, and enable the "Play audio descriptions when available" toggle.
In this episode, Tyler demonstrates how to encrypt an external disk on macOS for improved security of the disk's contents.
To encrypt a disk formatted as Apple File System, (APFS) connect it to your Mac, focus on it on the Desktop or Finder sidebar, and choose "Encrypt [disk name]" from the context menu (accessed by pressing VO-Shift-M). You'll then be prompted to create a password for the disk, which will be required to access its contents. As this password is the only way to access the disk's contents, it should be reasonably difficult for others to guess, but easy enough for you to remember.
In this episode, Tyler demonstrates how to get weather information in your Mac's menu bar, useful if you, for example, want to be able to quickly access such information but don't want to deal with widgets or the Weather app.
To add weather information to your Mac's menu bar, go to System Settings > Control Center, and choose "Show in menu bar" from the "Weather" popup menu. The temperature for your current location, if the Weather app has previously been granted access to it, should then appear in the status menus. Clicking the temperature should reveal a dialog with the current temperature, other applicable information about current conditions, an "Hourly forecast" group showing the expected conditions for the next four hours, and a button to open the Weather app.
In this episode, Alex Hall shows us how to look up the definition of a word using Spotlight in macOS.
To do this, press Command-Space from anywhere in macOS to open Spotlight, and type the word you want defined. Then press Command-L, followed by Return, and a window with the definition of the word you searched for will be displayed.
In this episode, Crayton shows us how to move files and folders in Finder using the keyboard.
To do this, navigate to and select the file or folder you want to move, and choose Edit > Copy (or press Command-C.) Then, open the destination folder and press Command-Option-V to place it in that location.
In this quick tip, Chris Wright shows us how to permanently delete files and folders on macOS.
To do this, in Finder, navigate to and select the item you want to delete, and press Command-Option-Delete. Click Delete in the confirmation dialog, and the item will be deleted immediately, bypassing the Trash.
In this episode, Tyler demonstrates how to schedule an email to send later using the Mail app in macOS.
Have you ever needed to send an email but didn't want to interrupt someone's work or personal time? With the Send Later feature, you can schedule emails to be sent at a specific date and time, making sure your message arrives at the most appropriate moment.
To do this, compose an email in the Mail app, interact with the "Send" group in the toolbar, and choose an option from the "schedule to send message" menu button. If you choose the "Send later" option, a dialog will appear allowing you to choose a date and time. After the message has been scheduled, it can be found in the "Send later" mailbox, and you can change the scheduled time by opening the message and clicking the Edit button within the "send later banner" group.
In this podcast, Tyler Stephen shows us how to share folders in iCloud Drive on a Mac running macOS Catalina 10.15.4 or later.
More information on sharing folders with iCloud Drive is available on this Apple Support page.
With folder sharing in iCloud Drive, you can share entire folders of files with friends, family, or colleagues. Then, you can work together on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or iCloud.com.
When you create and share a folder in iCloud Drive, participants can access all the files in that folder. If you add a file to a shared folder, it's automatically shared with all participants, too. You can also add or remove participants, edit sharing permissions, or stop sharing a folder anytime.
If you have multiple Apple devices, you may know that there are many features that allow them to integrate with each other to keep content up-to-date across all of them. In this guide, I will give an overview of how iCloud, the service that facilitates this interconnection, can help you manage and sync your content, as well as how it can help protect your privacy and security. The good thing about it is once you have a few things set up, features largely work automatically with very little additional interaction required from you, the user.
Terminology
iCloud is the Apple service that allows Macs and iOS devices to keep content in sync between them. By default, you get 5GB of free storage space, upgradable up to 12TB, to store data such as documents, photos, emails, contacts, calendars, and more. With any paid storage plan, you get several additional features marketed collectively as iCloud+.
In this episode, Tyler demonstrates the VoiceOver Text Checker on macOS, a feature that identifies common errors in typed text such as misspellings, repeated spaces, and misplaced capital letters.
This feature can be accessed via Keyboard Commander, and by default is mapped to the letter D. When in a text field, pressing this command should present menus for the types of errors identified in the text, such as misspellings, white space, etc.
If you’re coming to macOS from Windows, you’re probably used to either downloading apps from the Microsoft Store, or downloading an app package from a website and running its included installer. On macOS, there are several ways apps can be installed and uninstalled, which I will give an overview of in this guide. The good news is that whatever methods the developer has employed, the installation and uninstallation processes should seem very straightforward to you, the user.
In the eleventh of a series of podcasts intended to help new users of VoiceOver on the Mac, David Woodbridge shows us how to create and rename folders when using VoiceOver.
These demonstrations were recorded on a Mac running OS X Snow Leopard, but the procedure is still the same at the time of posting.
In the fifteenth of a series of podcasts intended to help new users of VoiceOver on the Mac, David Woodbridge shows us how to turn off the VoiceOver trackpad commander.
These demonstrations were recorded on a Mac running OS X Snow Leopard, but the procedure is still the same at the time of posting.
In the sixteenth of a series of podcasts intended to help new users of VoiceOver on the Mac, David Woodbridge shows us how to unmute VoiceOver speech if it has inadvertently been muted whilst running VoiceOver.
These demonstrations were recorded on a Mac running OS X Snow Leopard, but the procedure is still the same at the time of posting.
In the first of a series of podcasts intended to help new users of VoiceOver on the Mac, David Woodbridge shows us how to get VoiceOver running on any Mac laptop or desktop.
These demonstrations were recorded on a Mac running OS X Snow Leopard, but the procedure is still the same at the time of posting.
In this edition of his series of podcasts intended to help new users of VoiceOver on the Mac, David Woodbridge gives us an overview of the VoiceOver navigation commands.
These demonstrations were recorded on a Mac running OS X Lion, but the procedure is still the same at the time of posting.
In this edition of his series of podcasts intended to help new users of VoiceOver on the Mac, David Woodbridge shows us how to use auto spelling suggestions with VoiceOver.
These demonstrations were recorded on a Mac running OS X Lion, but the procedure is still the same at the time of posting.
In the second of a series of podcasts intended to help new users of VoiceOver on the Mac, David Woodbridge shows us how to use the Keyboard Helper feature in OS X to familiarize yourself with the keyboard layout and functions.
These demonstrations were recorded on a Mac running OS X Snow Leopard, but the procedure is still the same at the time of posting.
In the eighth of a series of podcasts intended to help new users of VoiceOver on the Mac, David Woodbridge shows us how to access the menu bar, dock and desktop when using VoiceOver.
These demonstrations were recorded on a Mac running OS X Snow Leopard. In Mountain Lion, only VO+M for Main Apple Menu, and VO+MM for Status (now called Extras) menu.
To access Spotlight, navigate within Extras menu or use the Mac short-cut key Command+Space.