Now playing: Watch this: Try these MacOS Sierra features 1:54 With MacOS Sierra, Apple’s voice assistant made the leap from the iPhone to the Mac. There are three built-in ways to activate Siri on a Mac, but all require you to click your mouse or the keyboard. If you’d rather say, “Hey, Siri,” the way …

Now playing: Watch this: Scan old printed photos easily with Google’s PhotoScan… 2:04 Get ready to backfill your Google Photos library. Or just improve your next attempt at Throwback Thursday. Google has a new PhotoScan app for scanning old photos that creates vastly improved results over merely snapping a photo of a photo. Unlike the other scanner apps I’ve used …

I am aware that a watched pot never boils, but sometimes I need to know how much time remains on a download. On a Mac, there are two ways to keep an eye on the progress of a download. 1. Launchpad in the Dock For files being downloaded from the Mac App Store, the easiest way to check their progress …

Now playing: Watch this: Five tips to speed up your Mac 2:17 MacOS Sierra changed the way your Mac handles applications from unidentified developers. It’s now stricter with installing such apps than previous versions of OS X, but there are ways to get around Sierra’s roadblocks. Because sometimes you need to install an app that Apple can’t identify but that …

Longtime Windows users making the leap to a Mac will need to go through a bit of an adjustment period before they begin to feel comfortable navigating MacOS. In an effort to bring you comfort, allow me to ask and answer seven questions that you might be muttering to yourself. 1. Wait, where’s the Delete key? What a Mac calls …

As a tech blogger who takes lots of screenshots, this tip is admittedly more exciting to me than the typical iPhone owner. But I bet you have more than a few screenshots cluttering the photos on your iPhone — as well as the Photos app on your Mac if you have enabled iCloud Photo Library. If you open the Photos …

The older my MacBook Pro gets, the more its cooling fan spins, and the less pleasant it is to use. If your MacBook is also prone to running hot, there are seven ways you can keep it cool and quiet. 1. Avoid Chrome Apple says that “runaway applications can cause the processor to work overtime and affect the heat level …

If you upgraded to MacOS Sierra, then you are likely familiar with its headlining features, whether you are using Siri to speak to your Mac, unlocking it with an Apple Watch or cutting and pasting from your Mac to your iPhone or vice versa with the universal clipboard. You might also be using iCloud to sync your data across your …

As I write this blog post, I have ten tabs open in Chrome and no other apps running on my five-year-old MacBook Pro. Despite this low workload, my MacBook Pro’s cooling fan whirs loudly. This is not a rare occurrence. It seems that with each passing day, the fan spins more and rests less. And should I do something as …

If you read Dong Ngo’s excellent primer on solid-state drives (SSDs) and how to extend their lifespan, then you might be wondering where you and your SSD stand. As Dong explained, SSDs have a finite number of program/erase cycles. That is, you can write data to and erase data from an SSD only so many times before it begins to …