I just hung up on my mom because the button in the right is green. A red button with a phone icon as used in the Phone app instead of an “X” would have been a better indicator.
I hung up on my Mom while FaceTiming her
Category: apple
What does Optimize video streaming while on battery do?
In macOS Ventura on my M2 Mac, I found an option in the “Options…” panel of battery settings called “Optimize video streaming while on battery.” What are the trade-offs of turning this on? Lower quality video when on battery? While watching Netflix, I didn’t notice a difference, especially since I wasn’t watching Netflix in full screen. After digging into the help, I found this comment:
While on battery power, play high-dynamic-range (HDR) video in standard dynamic range (SDR), which requires less energy.
More details are provided in an HDR article. The forum posts on macOS Rumors and Reddit don’t really provide any additional information. Has anyone published any benchmarks on this? If so, please tweet them to me.
Automating a New Macintosh Setup
In the past I have used the migration assistant tool to copy my files from Mac to Mac whenever I would get a new one. After almost 20 years of doing this I wanted to setup my new screaming M2 from scratch.
Automating App Installs
There are a couple command line tools that help this and I have created a bash script in github to run on the computer. Be sure to customize for your own situation.
Once this script is run on the Mac half the work will be done. The next steps below are for setting up the data.
The script and explanations below should only install M1/M2 compatible apps. Nothing on Intel.
1Password Data Setup
- Setup 1Password coud Sync
- Enable Local vaults
- Setup iCloud vault sync
Keychain
- Copy keychain file from original Mac
BBEdit
- Enable Sandbox Access
Spark
- Login to gmail account
- Don’t allow notifications
Hazel
- Register License from 1password file
- Give Full disk access
- Add back Hazel folders, sync rules with each folder and enable rules on other computers.
- Activate Hazel Notifications
- Enable App Sweep and Delete files from trash after 1 week
- Turn off Notifications for Files events and trash events
Bartender
- Register Bartender
- Setup bartender to hid everything but Fantastical and DayOne.
Dash App
In Dash preferences choose the Sync folder on iCloud Drive/Dash and everything is setup.
Timing
- Launch and setup
- Copy data from old computer
Freedom
Log into Freedom and make sure it is setup name device.
Fantastical
- Need to create new app password for iCloud calendar.
- Add accounts iCloud, Google, Meetup.com
- Set default calendar and default reminder list
Omnifocus
- Install Omnifocus Beta from TestFlight
- Copy over Omnifocus Archive to new computer
- Check that ctr-option-space is global shortcut
- Copy chat backup to new computer.
Install What’s App Beta
Slack
- Sign into Slack Channels.
ChronoSync
- Setup backup
Safari
- Enable Extensions in Safari
Time Machine
- Setup backup to Synology
- Setup backup to external drives
Anki
- Sign In to sync
Discord
- Login
Xcode
- Launch and accept dialog boxes.
Visual Studio Code
- Enable Syncing using GitHub account
OBS
- Setup for Highest recording
- Create source for Elgato
- Create Source for Insta360 Link
- Create Source for Screen Recording
Apple Music
- Check Download Dolby Atmos
- Deauthorize previous computer or you might reach the limit
- Check older authorizations to free up
Finder
- Set finder settings to open to home directory and show external disks
Home Folder
Copy over select Home folder contents
System Settings
Trackpad speed
Increase trackpad to max speed.
Configure Shortcuts
Disable unused sharing utilities and shortcuts
Keyboard
- Enable Dictation
Spelling
- Enable Show Input Menu in Menu Bar
Extensions
Disable/enable extensions
Storage
The storage control panel lets you delete the GarageBand music creation libraries.
Notifications
Configure notifications including:
- Turn off notifications from calendar because I use fantastical
- Turn off notifications for mail
- Turn off sound notifications WhatsApp
Unlock with Apple Watch
- Turn on Unlock with Apple Watch
Brave Browser
- Setup Syncing
- Verify Brave Rewards
Clay
- Sign into Clay with Apple ID
Git
Set .gitconfig file to contain your commit information.
`git config --global user.email "[email protected]"`
`git config --global user.name "My Name"`
– Create new GIT ssh key and associate it with account
Generate SSH Key
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "[email protected]"
Setup ssh to reference Keychain.
touch ~/.ssh/config
open ~/.ssh/config
Add the following to the above file:
Host github.com
AddKeysToAgent yes
UseKeychain yes
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
Add SSH Key to Keychain
eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
gh auth login
gh auth refresh -h github.com -s admin:public_key
gh ssh-key add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
Reference Articles
Making a Bootable macOS Monterey External Backup
Was trying to research how to create a bootable backup on a USB-C external drive under macOS Monterey. I am using a backup tool called ChronoSync, so I started to research and found a tech note about bootable backups.
No longer can you just make a copy of your main hard drive and make it bootable. You need to first install macOS on an external hard drive, according to Macworld.
The above article recommends that I format the drive as an macOS Extended format. Is that correct? I thought that we were using APFS now, and my internal drive is formatted as an APFS Volume Group.
I couldn’t test this because when I clicked “Show All Disks…” in the installer to see external drives for installation, the installer told me that I could not install on the volume I had chosen because it was part of an AppleRAID.
Looks like I will buy a dedicated backup hard drive and update this. If you have any suggestions on external drives for bootable backups, then tweet me.
Buying a Wireless Charging Station in Hong Kong for AirPods Pro, iPhone, Apple Watch
Recently was searching for a wireless charging pad that would support an Apple Watch, AirPods Pro and iPhone. There are some really well-designed stations, most that are quite pricey.
Satechi
One of the more stylish manufacturers of charging gear is Satechi. However, I balked at ordering this due to the extra shipping costs from the US to Hong Kong.
View Trio Wireless Charger With Magnetic Pad
Nomad
I found a version of this in the Wanchai computer center a while ago and this is the brand I use, but I didn’t see it the last time I walked around the computer center. Overall, it works well, though some days I wake up, and my watch has not been charged.
Belkin
After trying to find a charging pad that I don’t have to ship from the US to Hong Kong, this Belkin one seems to be the best looking and supports new fast charging methods for newer phones and watches. This is also available in the Apple Store in Hong Kong.
View Belkin BOOST↑CHARGE™ PRO 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Pad with MagSafe
All these are quite high in price, if you see a more reasonable priced version, please tweet bdeverman. Simultaneously, I’m going to be monitoring the Hong Kong Carousell Chargers & Cables category.
Importing Word files to Ulysses
Some Command line hacks to speed up TimeMachine backups
Made some big changes to my photos library and need my TimeMachine on Big Sur to backup faster over the network to my Drobo.
Searched and found a few tips. First one is this command to remove process throttling:
sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0
This still was not enough so then I also tried the renice command:
sudo renice -n -20 -p 565
To get the process id I just used activity monitor and looked for “backupd” in the Activity monitor.
Now I see the “backupd” process jumping up to as much as 50% of the CPU. Since I am on an Apple Silicon M1 I wasn’t too worried about it slowing down.
Updating Series 3 Apple Watch to WatchOS 7 runs out of space
Every time there is a new update to WatchOS 7 my series 3 watch does not have enough space to update. Dr. Drang has written a rant and some tips on how to get this to work.
Syncing Google Drive on M1 Macs
As of this writing Google Drive’s native Mac application is not supported on M1 Macs because it is a kernel extension and those don’t run intel code on the M1 architecture.
Manipulating Files in the Finder on Google Drive when Drive is no longer a folder
As I have many Hazel rules that sort files into my Google Drive files, I have been trying to find a way to sync my files from my local folder.
I found that Transmit had support for Google Drive and I could log in to my Google Drive using that App. Then I remembered that Transmit had the feature to turn a cloud service into a local drive, however after further reading I found this no longer worked as they don’t support the Transmit Disk feature anymore.
After migrating from my Intel MacBook Pro to my M1, I tried to do some sleuthing to find where the Google Drive data was stored to see if the files were readable locally.
I found the files stored in:
~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS
Unfortunately, the files were not stored as a human-readable folder structure and instead seemed to be in another database format:
Syncing from Google Drive to a Local Folder
This seemed to indicate my only option was to use Transmit to sync the Google Drive files back down to my local drive to recreate the local copy of the files. One of the drawbacks of using Transmit Sync is the inability to sync the Google Docs documents like sheets.
Syncing problems down to the Local Folder
After doing the sync down to the local folder did not sync everything. I found quite a few errors of syncing down event XLS files and with the Transmit report, it was hard to figure out why.
/SZP GM/Accounting/Payroll Report/SZ Party Payroll Report - 201807.xls - Could not download “SZ Party Payroll Report - 201807.xls”.
/SZP GM/Accounting/Canceled Platinum Business MasterCard 2017-2019/hsbc-6.pdf - Could not download “hsbc-6.pdf”.
Updating my Hazel Rules
Hazel lets you change the folder with the “Relocate Folder…” option…
WARNING This change all my rules to use the new folder and then started to move all my pdfs that were stuck in my downloads folder since my migration to my M1 Mac.
Uploading to Google Drive using Transmit
Now that Hazel had copied my PDFs I thought the next step was going to be to upload them to transmit. Just to be careful I used the “Simulate” command in Transmit to make sure that the upload was going to work? I got some confusing results as shown in this screenshot.
The files that Transmit considered to be changed were not just the PDFs that hazel filed. This si where I got gun shy to complete the upload and have published this blog post to send to Panic to see if they have any advice. Will update it after.
Automating sync
If I can get the
Panic has a video about how to set up a regular sync using automator.
Other Options
I saw a link to the program Insync which claims to be able to replace Google Drive file stream but I have not tried it.
Reference
Automating changes to Display arrangements on macOS
Now that I use Sidecar to turn my iPad Pro into a second screen I got a bit tired of going to the display preferences to change where my iPad was physically sitting each time. Since I am hot desking I have to put it on the left or the right and that changes almost daily.
Originally, I thought I would fix this would Keyboard Maestro but it can’t change the display layout and it is too hard to automate it to do the preferences.
I found a stack exchange thread with a link to displayplacer. This is a command line tool that can be installed by homebrew which will do the job of display preferences.
After following the instructions to install the tool you can capture your current screen configuration and then run a command to switch.
I created a Keyboard Maestro macro that monitors when the iPad is plugged in and then prompts me to turn on sidecar and choose the side of the desk where the iPad sits.