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.
Displaying 81 - 90 of 90In this podcast, Jonathan Simeone walks us through the process of using the Finder to find and restore a single file from a Time Machine backup.
This offers an alternative to the method demonstrated in a previous podcast which involved using the Time Machine application itself to restore a file.
In this post, we will discuss the importance of reporting accessibility-related bugs to Apple and the best way to do so.
AppleVis is a great platform for discussing VoiceOver, Braille, and low vision related issues in Apple products, allowing you to confirm with others if what you are experiencing is indeed a bug, find and share workarounds, and express your frustration. However, it's important to make sure that the Accessibility Team at Apple is aware of these bugs so they can address them in future software updates.
Starting in macOS 10.9 Mavericks, files could be given one or more "tags", to help users keep things organized. A tag is simply a text label you can assign to a file, letting you organize your files with categories instead of, or in addition to, folders. For example, a student might have a science folder, holding a textbook, handouts, tests, notes, assignments, research papers, and more. What if a quiz deals with thermodynamics, as do some files of notes and a paper. Do you put them into folders according to subject, or according to what sort of document they are (quiz, notes, paper)? With tags, you can have both. Just tag all the thermodynamics files with a "thermodynamics" tag, the notes with a "notes" tag, and so on. Now you can find all your notes, all your thermodynamics notes, all your work related to thermodynamics… You get the idea.
The default Mail app on the Mac is easy enough to use once you set up your mail accounts. You up and down arrow through your messages, press delete to trash some, and… Wait, how do you read messages? Enter? VO-J? Use the preview? When writing a message, how do you choose contacts, or add multiple contacts to a field? Why is it so hard to view attachments? How do you add mailboxes to your favorites bar, so you can access them with hotkeys? Okay, so Mail isn't as simple as it first seems, but that's why AppleVis exists.
Assuming your account(s) are properly configured and you are receiving mail, the setup of the Mail app will be something like this:
For iOS 18, macOS Sequoia
If you have an iPhone, you’re probably fairly familiar with the Messages app on iOS, using it to send and receive texts, photos, videos, and other files. As part of Apple’s interconnected ecosystem, this capability is also available on macOS.
An example of how the Messages app could be useful on macOS is if you’re working on your Mac and a text comes in. Rather than stop what you’re doing and switch devices to view and respond to the message, you could simply open the Notification Center or Messages app on your Mac, view and respond to the message, and get back to your original task.
In my last guide on Pages and design, I described how visual documents appear with font variations and how you can manipulate fonts, sizes, styling and more so your documents can look aesthetically pleasing to your sighted colleagues.
In this guide, I’ll describe how you can quickly apply styles and customize them in your documents. Nothing here requires advanced VoiceOver skills, however you may wish to use hotspots to jump around a bit faster in Pages.
I have recently used the Contacts app a lot in macOS and have come to discover how it works, which is not the way I expected it to. I thought I would share my hard-won knowledge in the hope that someone else will benefit.
When you are in Contacts, hit cmd-n to create a new contact. It is important to note that you are not opening a new window when you do this; rather, you simply add a new row to the contacts table and are placed in the scroll area where information about the contact is stored. When you are done entering your information, therefore, simply stop interacting twice and you will be back to the main level of the Contacts window.
There is no save or cancel button as there is in most apps; if you want to erase the contact you are entering, navigate to the contacts table, find your newly created contact, and press delete.
In this episode, David Woodbridge demonstrates the Universal Clipboard facility available on devices running iOS 10 or later, and macOS Sierra or later. If you now copy text, images, or video to the clipboard on one device, it should be automatically available to paste on any other device that uses the same Apple ID.
Note that for Universal Clipboard to work your device must support the Continuity feature and have Hand-off enabled. For more information, check out the Apple Support article "Use Continuity to connect your Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch."
If you're using a Multi-Touch trackpad, you can use VoiceOver gestures. VoiceOver provides a set of standard gestures for navigating and interacting with items on the screen. You can't modify this set of gestures. NOTE: Gestures that don't mention a specific number of fingers are single-finger gestures.
Enable the Trackpad Commander and VoiceOver gestures: VO-Two-finger rotate clockwise
Disable the Trackpad Commander and VoiceOver gestures: VO-Two-finger rotate counterclockwise
Turn the screen curtain on or off: Three-finger triple-tap
Mute or unmute VoiceOver: Three-finger double-tap
Force the VoiceOver cursor into a horizontal or vertical line when you drag a finger across the trackpad: Hold down the Shift key and drag a finger horizontally or vertically
Move the VoiceOver cursor to the next item: Flick right
Move the VoiceOver cursor to the previous item: Flick left
VO+keystroke = Control+Option+keystroke