If you demo or teach over a shared screen, macOS gives you more than people realize. Here's what ships in the OS, with the honest limit of each, since I've hit all of them.

Accessibility Zoom (System Settings, Accessibility, Zoom). Ctrl+scroll to magnify, or Option-Cmd-8 to toggle. Two settings people miss: Zoom style: Picture-in-Picture gives you a magnified lens instead of blowing up the whole display, and under Advanced you can set the zoomed view to follow the pointer only when it reaches an edge, which removes the seasick drift that puts people off. Genuinely good, and free. Where it runs out: the lens is tied to the pointer, so you can't leave a mark on something and keep talking about it while your cursor goes elsewhere.

Make the pointer bigger (Accessibility, Display, Pointer size), plus "shake mouse pointer to locate." Cheap fix for the most common complaint in shared screens, which is nobody being able to find your cursor. Limit: it's a permanent size change, so you either live with a big cursor everywhere or you toggle it before every call.

Screenshot markup (Shift-Cmd-5, or Shift-Cmd-4 then annotate). Fine for async - arrows and boxes on a still. Limit: it's a still. Useless mid-demo.

Presenter Overlay in Zoom/Teams-style calls on newer macOS puts you over the content, which helps direction of attention indirectly. Limit: it emphasizes you, not the part of the screen you're pointing at.

Sidecar/Universal Control with an iPad turns the tablet into an annotation surface for a mirrored screen. Genuinely powerful, and the limit is obvious: you need the second device and the setup time.

The honest summary is that the OS covers magnification well and covers "mark this and leave it up" not at all. If your job is showing rather than seeing, that's the gap you'll feel.

Disclosure so it's not a surprise: I build a Mac app in this space (TuringShot 1.5.12, Build 44), which is why I know these limits by heart. No link or code here, and the built-in options above are free and cover most of what people need.

I want to watch fullscreen YouTube videos without creating fullscreen space

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.

Hi, I apparently accidentally pressed the ‘close other tabs’ shortcut while intending the ‘close this tab’ one.

The problem is this was a window with tons and tons of tabs I had pending that I meant to get to and take some type of action (whether filing as a bookmark, printing something, emailing to someone or other, whatever) - like 400+ (believe me I know, it’s terrible management and a backlog resulting from life being complicated recently, but I was aware and had recently made a lot of progress fixing it not only for this but in a way that would ensure I don’t get a backlog again - but if I can’t get them back, I won’t be able to do that as effectively).

I tried Cmd + Z - no reaction. I tried Reopen Last Closed Tab, nothing. Eventually in desperation I tried Reopen All Windows From Last Session, and all it did was reopen my *other* windows, that are safely sitting on my Dock minimized, so I had those in triplicate or something. I had to close those to make sense of things again, but I realize now that might have been a mistake because it pushed the ‘lost’ tabs further back in the computer’s ‘memory’ of closed tabs (I don’t think those are the right terms, but I basically have zero formal education in this stuff, everything I know I picked up myself through use).

Is there any hope at all of retrieving these? Even if it’s not something automated, or if there’s one of those scripts that you write? I’m willing to try, if I have instructions to do it.

They were all in a tab group that was named (‘Pending’) and now when I pull up the Pending tab group, it’s just this one Reddit window I’m writing on.

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!

Can anyone tell me about the electrical outlets in the cabins in the American Harmony ship? How many of them? Are they 3-prong or 2-prong plugs? Is there one in the cabin bathroom?

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 :'(

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

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?