Make life easier with these advanced tips
WITH ALITTLE foresight and planning, you can save time and effort when working on your Mac. These handy helpers will make things run more smoothly.
FILE AND FOLDER NAMING AND ORGANIZATION
When you create a new file or folder, take care to name it something that makes sense when you view it later or send it to someone else. For example, the screenshot at the top of this page was called Page 7_topshot.PNG when we passed it to the designer, they then knew it was for the top of the seventh page in this article. If we’d left the title as Screenshot 2024–01–02 at 1.13.37pm, it would’ve been much harder for the designer to know where to place it.
Likewise, if you have a folder with a huge number of files in it, it’s worth thinking about whether there’s any way you can subdivide the files into folders contained within the main one. Adding new folders doesn’t cost you any hard drive space, but can make the content in your folders a lot clearer.
MAKE REGULAR BACKUPS
Save out your work to an external drive on a regular basis to guard against drive failure and accidental deletion. As well as using Time Machine, it’s a good idea to clone your drives using an app such as Carbon Copy Cloner https://bombich.com) or SuperDuper! (www.shirt-pocket.com) And never save backups to the same drive as your data; if the drive fails, you lose both.
MASTER iCLOUD DRIVE
Click on iCloud Drive in a Finder window’s sidebar. This is your iCloud Drive, data stored and synced on the cloud. The main advantage of iCloud storage is that you can access it on all your Apple devices and on the web at https://icloud.com using any device with a browser.
Files you need when away from your Mac should be stored on iCloud Drive. Obviously, the disadvantage here is that the storage space is limited depending on what subscription you pay for, so don’t waste it on items you don’t need access to when away from your main device.
RETRIEVE A DELETED FILE
To get back a file you’ve accidentally deleted, open Time Machine and navigate back to a time when you had the file. Navigate to that particular file, click on it and press the Restore button. Simple!
OPEN BLOCKED APPS
Apps that aren’t sourced from the App Store or identified developers are blocked by Gatekeeper in macOS. If you want to open the app, go to System Settings > Privacy & Security and scroll to Security. If an app has just been blocked, there’s a button marked Open Anyway. Press it.
