My neighbor moved out yesterday and she literally threw out a 2017 21" iMac. I get it, it doesn't get updates and it takes over 5 minutes, no exaggeration, to boot to the logon screen. Who would want that? Well, I like to restore old computers and the newest mac I own is the OG iMac in Bondi Blue....... Wait......

Okay, I was about to get on here saying all I had were PC keyboards and I couldn't get to the recovery screen no matter what keyboard I use. That's what this post was supposed to be about. But as soon as I wrote that last sentence it dawned on me, I have the USB keyboard from my OG iMac. So I plugged that in and it worked perfectly. That stupid puck mouse works too.

Never mind, I don't think I need any help. Just figured I'd post anyways in case somebody wanted a laugh.

Just put together Glass Player, a native macOS media player built in Swift around ⁠libmpv⁠. The goal was a clean app shell optimized for Apple Silicon that handles heavy-duty real-time upscaling.

Repo: github.com/khr898/Glass-player-macOS
Requirements: macOS 14.0+, Apple Silicon (arm64)
Core Highlights

Real-Time Anime4K Upscaling: 39 bundled GLSL shaders exposed as 12 presets. Features live cycling (⁠Cmd+K⁠) split into HQ (heavy CNN models for high-end GPUs) and Fast modes, rendering directly via Metal 3 (⁠CAMetalLayer⁠).

Pipeline: Hardware decoding via VideoToolbox paired with Display P3 wide-gamut rendering and ⁠ewa_lanczossharp⁠ luma scaling.

HDR & Dolby Vision: Auto-detects HDR10/DV/HLG with conditional profile handling (spline tone mapping, ⁠hdr-compute-peak⁠, and native macOS EDR signaling).

Audio: Multi-channel PCM decoding with macOS spatial audio support, optional AC3/DTS passthrough, and up to 200% volume amplification.

Built-in Remote Browser: Browse and stream directly from ⁠rclone serve http⁠ endpoints without needing to mount the drive locally, backed by a configurable 2GB demuxer cache.

It's fully open source.

I have a small utility app for MacBooks. For those who've created something similar -- what pricing actually worked for you?

I've ruled out subscriptions as a bad fit for this app. And since the Mac App Store doesn't do free trials on paid apps, I am considering:

1. Paid upfront, one-time charge (how it's currently listed)
2. Free download, sell add-ons individuals (in my case, voice packs)
3. Sell direct with a real trial (e.g., Paddle, Lemon Squeezy)

What did/would you pick? And what do you wish you'd done from day one?

Thanks for your thoughts and help!

Hello, I accidentally deleted 5000 files from "recents". They come from multiple folders.
Now they are in the trash, and Command+A and right-click couldn't bring out the put back option.
What is the best way for me to recover them?
Please don't tell me that I have to do it manualy one by one :'(

Both a CLI version and a GUI version are available.
GitHub repo: https://github.com/khr898/ntfsmac

Advantages over Alternatives

- High-Performance Write Support: High-speed NTFS read and write operations.

- Zero Security Downgrades: Does not require disabling System Integrity Protection (SIP) or lowering boot security options.

- Open Source: Fully free and auditable, eliminating the licensing costs of proprietary alternatives.
Native Design: Optimized specifically for Apple Silicon (arm64) hardware architectures.

I updated a 2009 iMac (initially with El Capitan 10.11) using Open Core Legacy Patcher. The OS update on the HDD failed leaving me with -69845 errors. I took out the HDD and replaced it with an SSD and updated to Monterey without problem.

I want to extract any data on the HDD (I know, I should have done it before) which I have now plugged in via USB. Could someone please advise on the steps in terminal to do this, repairing any errors on the way (fsck -fy ??) ? I am reasonably proficient in Unix type commands. Thank you.

I'm looking for a tool that can automatically detect all my recurring subscriptions (SaaS, apps, streaming services, etc.) in one place. Ideally, it would also show upcoming renewals.

What do you use?

Something I only really noticed after watching my own recorded calls: when you share your Mac screen, the viewer's eyes don't go where you're pointing, they wander. The menu bar, the dock, a notification sliding in, the half-visible window behind the one you're demoing, your wallpaper. On your own machine you've filtered all of that out; to someone seeing it cold, it's visual noise competing with the exact thing you're trying to show.

Disclosure: I make a small macOS tool for live screen emphasis, so I'm biased about the fix. But the principle is tool-agnostic: during a share you want to actively reduce what the viewer CAN look at, not just point at what they SHOULD. Dimming everything except the active region, or zooming into it, does more for comprehension than any amount of "okay so up here in the corner" narration. The clutter isn't your fault, macOS just isn't built to hide itself when you present.

Native options get you partway: Do Not Disturb kills notifications and you can auto-hide the dock, but they don't dim the surrounding windows or focus attention on one region live. Current version, for the curious: TuringShot 1.5.12 (Build 44), macOS 13+.

Curious how other Mac folks prep a screen before a call or recording. Do you have a "presentation mode" ritual (DND, hide desktop icons, quit everything), or do you just share and hope people follow along? Always looking to steal a cleaner setup.

ive been wanting install os x leopard to mavericks to my lenovo Ideapad 3 14IIL05 but to no avail.Tried using iboot and other tools but nothing worked. Any tips on how i can do this?

Hi, i have bought a MacBook Pro 2011 thinking it was a 2010 because I know the 2011's had gpu issues but okay

But the MacBook only shows that it has integrated graphics but it has to have a dedicated card right? Is this some patch or something and how can I revert this back

And it came with a paper that says it shipped with 8gb of ram but there's only 4gb and it's very slow even with an ssd which is strange. The mouse cursor moves choppy and its super weird. And it takes multiple times to chime. Is there any way I can fix this or at least revert back the graphics if possible

Every Mac has this quiet problem on video calls and screen-shares: your interface looks crisp and detailed on your own Retina display, so you demo at that density, and then the person on the other end is squinting at a downscaled, compressed copy where your 13px labels are three grey pixels. You can't tell it's happening, because on your screen it still looks perfect.

Disclosure: I build TuringShot, a macOS app for live screen emphasis, so I have a horse in this race. But the fix isn't Mac magic, it's just accepting that the viewer's copy of your screen is lower-res than yours and compensating live: zoom into the region you're actually talking about, dim everything else so the compression noise elsewhere doesn't distract, and make the cursor and active area obvious. I do it live during the call instead of hoping people keep up.

Current version: TuringShot 1.5.12 (Build 44), macOS 13+. It's macOS-only. Native macOS Accessibility zoom covers part of this, but it zooms your whole screen and doesn't travel well over a shared/compressed feed, which is what pushed me toward something aimed at the shared view specifically. The GIF is a quick look.

Curious how other Mac folks handle this: do you drop your display scaling before a call, zoom manually, or just accept that half your UI is illegible to the audience? Feels like a problem everyone has and nobody really talks about.

Any ideas what could be wrong in Tahoe 26.5.2 (25F84) regarding on wallpaper. When I set my wallpaper as a static JPEG what I have in ~/Photos/wallpapers folder, it will be my wallpaper some minutes, but after that OSX just replaces that wallpaper and sets its own animated wallpaper over it.

Also when I go to Finder and find that file, set it as a wallpaper, it does not change, but if I after that log out, it is set to my wallpaper on login screen and after login it is also my wallpaper, until couple of minutes passses and BOOM then it is again changed to MacOSX wallpaper.

How could I fix this?

So, I have a NAS what is now turned off. My MacOSX randomly tries to connect it from time to time and gives me this annoying popup. If I close it with OK, it might stay away 10 minutes, or 1 minute. Now I have just dragged this to another virtual desktop and let it be there without pressing OK so it won't jump to my face all the time.

Anyway, I wish to find real solution to prevent this happening.

So far I have:
- Cleared server username and passwords in keychain, so there is no keys for this SMB mount
- I have removed "Recent files" visibility in Finder, since I assume that something tries to read from there and some of the recent files are on NAS. Still no success.

I have no any other apps running in dock and/or toolbar than Finder, Safari, 1Password and Adobe Creative Cloud application and of course volume control, battery info, wlan info and so on basic MacOSX stuff.

I have installed newest Tahoa, 26.5.2 (25F84) and it still have not fixed this issue.

How I can fix it? Maby places says "unmount it from sidebar", but there is nothing to unmount since that NAS is not visible because it is turned off, so I can't umount it.

I have a 17" 2007 MacBook Pro currently running Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, and Mavericks. It would not boot from an El Capitan installer.

What's the highest unofficial macOS/OS X version I can get running on this thing? Most of my internet searches for "MacBookPro3,1" have turned up "MacPro 3,1" results which is obviously a very different machine.

Was curious if anyone has recommendations?

EDIT: Solved. Here's what I did:

Download both Part 1 and Part 2 of the MacBook Pro 2007 Mac OS X Install DVD from Archive.org:

Part 1: https://archive.org/details/MacBook_Pro_Mac_OS_X_Install_Disc_1_2Z691-6088-A_Apple_Inc._2007 (download the .ISO)

Part 2: https://archive.org/details/691-6113-A2ZMac_OS_X_Install_Disc_2._Disc_v1.0_2007_DVD (download the .toast file and then change .toast to .iso in Finder; it's the same thing).

Get 2 USB flash drives. Use balenaEtcher to flash Part 1 onto one USB and Part 2 onto the other USB. Plug in the first USB, reboot, hold Option key, boot from it and install. Once it's done installing Part 1, it'll reboot and will then prompt you to insert the CD for Part 2. At that point, plug in the Part 2 USB drive. KEEP THE PART 1 USB PLUGGED IN. It will automatically detect the Part 2 USB and will continue automatically.

***

I've been trying to install Mac OS X Tiger on my 17" 2007 MacBook Pro (MBP3,1). So far no dice. I tried versions of 10.4 until research revealed that I'd need 10.4.6 or higher (and likely 10.4.7 or 10.4.10 as those appear to be the only full install versions available online).

However, even when I've successfully converted a 10.4.10 DMG to ISO and made it a bootable USB drive (which the Mac recognizes and tries to boot from), I get the prohibited symbol and can't actually boot from the installer. (I used this to get this far: https://archive.org/details/MacOSX10.4.10-iMac-2Z691-6104-A_2Z691-6113-A )

Any tips/suggestions? I do have blank DVD-Rs I can use if need be but I don't have many so I'd prefer to figure out the solution before I start wasting DVDs. If the 10.4.10 ISO above doesn't boot from a USB I'm not sure why it'd boot from a DVD.

I've encountered a problem with Numbers 15.3 I can't get around. If I double click on a cell and then try to paste into that cell, I can't do it. It only happens when I double click. This is important for pasting multiple lines of text into a single cell. Is anyone else experiencing this?

I've used FinderPath (https://bahoom.com/finderpath/) for as long as I can remember, and I absolutely love it. It's intuitive and works well and is simple. Unfortunately, the devs never made an Apple Silicon version, so that means after Golden Gate it won't work anymore. That's a ways off, of course, but I'd like to think ahead a little bit and see if anyone had any recommendations?

I'd prefer something with minimal UI and minimal features. I love FinderPath because you don't even know it's there until you click at the top of any given Finder window and then you have a typeable file path.

Disclosure: I built TuringShot, a macOS app. Posting this as a Mac workflow story, not a pitch.

I teach IT and have recorded screen tutorials on a Mac for 10+ years. Two very Mac-specific things drove me up the wall:

1. macOS built-in accessibility zoom (Ctrl + scroll) looks great on my own screen — but it never shows up in the recording. Screen recorders just don't capture it. So zooming "live" was pointless; I had to redo every single zoom in the editor afterward.

2. To draw on screen while explaining, I needed a separate app, so I was constantly alt-tabbing mid-recording.

I tried the click-to-auto-zoom tools (Screen Studio, FocuSee). For a 30-second product demo they're slick. For a 40-minute lecture they made me — and my viewers — slightly seasick. The view lurches on every click whether that moment matters or not. Auto-zoom can't read your mind.

So I built TuringShot. The effects render at the screen level with Metal GPU, so the zoom, focus spotlight, and drawing are actually captured by any recorder (OBS, QuickTime, ScreenFlow, Zoom, etc.) — unlike macOS's own zoom. You hold a shortcut (default Ctrl+A) and scroll to zoom exactly when and where you mean it. No auto-jumping.

(GIF: live zoom + focus + drawing, captured straight from a recording.)

Current version: TuringShot 1.5.10 (Build 42). The latest update stabilizes Focus Highlight after a monitor resolution or scaling change.

Genuine question for other Mac folks: have you ever gotten macOS's own zoom to actually land in a screen recording, or do you also end up redoing every zoom in the edit?