¶ Jim-QT-Add a modifier key to hot corners to keep from accidentally triggering them
It's time for MacGeekGab, and listener Jim brings us our quick tip of the week with, in system settings, you can configure hot corners, and by themselves, they can be great, but you can accidentally trigger them too easily. This can be remedied by adding a modifier key when you configure it in system settings. You do this by holding down the desired modifier key when you configure it, and no more accidental hot corner shortcuts when you fling your mouse out of the way.
More tips like this, plus your questions answered today on MacGeekAb 1098 for Monday, July 14th, 2025. We'll be right back.
Greetings, folks, and welcome to MacGeek. I have the show where you send in tips like that. You send in cool stuff found. You send in questions. We share them all. We try to answer your questions or at least provide a troubleshooting path Where the goal is we each get to learn at least five new things every single time we get together. Our sponsors for this episode include some new ones and some ongoing ones.
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¶ Chicago Tom-QT-Renaming Flags in Apple Mail
We'll talk more about all of those in a bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire on National Tape Measure Day, I'm Dave Hamilton.
And here in South Dakota, I'm Adam Christensen.
And here also in New Hampshire, it's Pilot Pete, where 1098 is assignment complete. We're not there yet. We're going to have to get there, though.
Yeah, that's right. We got to work. We got to work to get to the end of that. That's right. Yeah. All right. You got one for you. You got the next one for us, Pete.
I can do a quick tip from our hero of the week. Chicago Tom sends in this one. You can rename the flags in Apple Mail. Man, I never knew that. This one's cool. He says, I like to flag messages in mail for macOS sometimes so that I can easily get to them throughout the day. These emails might contain important instructions or attachments that I'll need for a meeting or a task. By default, these tags are labeled by their color, red, orange, blue, etc.
But did you know you can rename these flags? simply tag an email with a flag. Then use the dropdown in the flag section of the mail app. And for those of you listening, that's over in the left column. Like we're all assuming you look at it the way I do, where all your other mailboxes are. Right-click on the proper color and choose Rename Mailbox.
This actually renames the flag, not just the mailbox. So now I have properly labeled flags for today's meeting materials, task materials materials to discuss with colleagues etc when i see them so that works out really cool because i just went in uh this morning and renamed all mine to like financial urgent do do next week that kind of stuff so that yeah love
That that's that's pretty good
Huh yeah immediately in my workflow as soon as i read it gotta do that yeah
I had no
Idea just to be clear i i did have some trouble i'm like i'm looking at the flag column i'm trying to right click on the flag itself no it's over in the left side where the mailboxes
Are yeah yeah and you're and you're leveraging apple's rename mailbox feature in a way that i'm not convinced they intended but i'm glad that it cascades through and actually works so
It works yeah
Yeah all right i'll take it cool cool
Good stuff all
Right i got one from uh rn doug,
¶ rnDoug-QT-Flip your AirPods upside down to resolve fit issues
RN Doug says, I love my AirPods Pro, except they fall out of my ears all the time, even when sitting with no head movement. I've tried different size tips and the foam versions with no real improvement. It was to the point that I was considering getting something else that might provide a better fit. Well, today I came across a new to me tip that actually works and thought it was worth sharing.
Wearing the tips upside down allows you to lock AirPod into the cartilage fold, locking them securely in place. I can shake my head, jump around, jog, and they don't budge. I found the more secure fit also gives me more complete noise cancellation and has had no discernible effect on sound quality. Best of all, it's free and requires no modifications. The only con I found is that you can't change the volume since the touchpad area is now against the ear.
I don't use the stem volume control anyway as it's so finicky. You can still use the click features to answer calls or change modes. Anyway, if you're having AirPod retention issues, give this one a try.
Yeah, and he sent a picture along. It's literally taking the AirPod and basically spinning it almost 180 degrees from where it would normally be and using the outer ear, kind of the top front of your outer ear to lock it in. It's fascinating. Now, go ahead. Go ahead.
I was going to say, so I do that all the time. So this is one of those quick tips that it's like, oh, yeah, never thought of that as a quick tip. I swap ears when I do it, though. so that it's still pointing forward.
Oh.
You know, because there's a slight can't to that AirPod to point forward into your ear canal. So I swap ears when I do it, and that allows me also to change volume.
Right.
So it's now on the other side. It's not on the front. It's on the back. But I can change volume. And the reason I started doing it is Dave knows. Well, this is going to come out wrong. As Dave knows, I sleep with my AirPods in.
It is true that I know this.
Because I've told him.
Well, that's one reason.
Let's go with that.
I do as well. I only sleep with one in at a time. but i do the same thing but i don't have any issues with mine falling out even when i'm sleeping believe it or not.
So i do it because i when i roll over i don't want it on the bottom here
Yeah yeah yeah huh i had uh rn doug send try uh recording some audio through his airpods with those because i wondered how that might be if he were listening to something and got a phone call what what would that do and the sound in the traditional orientation was richer had more low end um but it it it was it worked perfectly fine in that orientation that the decision he came to was for short-term stuff no problem i would just leave it in the up you
know the the alternative orientation he's like but if i knew i was going to be making a phone you know a phone call for a while he's like i would put it in the right orientation you probably get better echo or not noise cancellation from you know ambient sounds and all that stuff when it's in the the expected you know orientation but
Yeah yeah i would bet.
Yeah yeah yeah all right uh i have another one that isn't just chicago tom it's
¶ MySpoonIsTooBig & ChicagoTom-QT-Possible fixes for flaky Apple TV Wi-Fi connections
also my spoon is too big uh but in our discord My spoon is too big Mentioned This is you were talking about troubleshooting poor Apple TV Wi-Fi signals in a recent episode. So here are two quick tips that might help. First, if possible, connect your Apple TV using an Ethernet cable. It's not always practical, of course, but if you can, it will give you a more stable connection. Second, you can check your Wi-Fi signal strength directly on the Apple TV. Go to settings, then network.
The signal strength appears as a series of filled dots. Five dots means strong. Three or fewer means weak. If weak, try adjusting your Wi-Fi setup by moving the router, etc. And then Chicago Tom added on, he says, This may or may not be relevant, but I thought I'd mention it. Every once in a while, my Apple TV will do the kinds of things that were described in the episode. It turns out that occasionally it switches over from my 5 gigahertz connection to my 2.4.
The 2.4 connection is, of course, used by all the various HomeKit items that I have scattered around my home.
Switching the connection back to five gigahertz solves the issue perhaps that may help so that's another one to consider is the the um which band it's connecting to and maybe you want to remove your if you have 2.4 and 5 as separate separately named bands maybe remove the 2.41 from the apple tv's auto join list so that it so that it doesn't have a join yeah yeah so yeah good stuff Anything to add oh go ahead pete yeah no no
I got nothing
Okay great yeah yeah okay all
Right i got one more from chicago tom he says hi in the last episode adam mentioned that he he'd like the ability to define custom routes in Apple Maps. Well, you can actually do this in iOS 18, kind of.
¶ Chicago Tom-QT-Apple Maps lets you do custom routes in iOS 18, too...kinda
Instead of choosing the automobile as your preferred mode of transportation, choose walking. This offers a prompt for defining a custom route by dragging your finger. And he attached a screenshot. I assume that this route can be followed in a car and maps will still track you. Your car will just be a lot faster. Hope that works and good luck. Okay, but yes, great tip. I appreciate it. I'm going to say this right now. How dumb. Like, if they could do it for a walking
route, they can do it for a driving route. Yes. Like, I don't know why.
Yeah. The button is already built. And I get why walkers or cyclists even would want to do this. And I also get why drivers of cars would want to do this. Why can't?
Just crazy talk, man. Go the way they tell you. Do what you're told,
Dave. Don't worry, my pretty little head, right, Pete?
Yeah, I mean, this is what we were talking about earlier. Just sometimes I want to take the scenic route. I don't want to go the fastest route.
Right.
You know, or the quickest route or the one with the least obstacles or whatever criteria they want. It's like, I want to go up the coast today. Yeah, right. You know, I know it's not the fastest, but that's the route I want to go and give me the directions.
Give me the directions, yeah.
I think that they probably think, this is pure speculation, that you can add a stop somewhere along that alternate route and then thus it will take you in that direction.
Sure, that would probably work too. Yeah, I mean, that's another great tip. You know, just like forcibly add a stop in that direction and maybe it'll reroute you there. But again, like this is a great feature.
It shouldn't be that hard.
Draw it up. Here's where I want to go. Follow that.
Yep. Yeah, we went somewhere this weekend to tour some castle or whatever and uh going down we took the the route that i would expect and there were even some stops along that route that we were like oh on the way back let's hit those and when i put into the gps like go home it routed me so far around that route it was like i get that you're gonna put me on highways and maybe it takes slightly less time but we're not going that way apple maps we
are gonna go this way and thankfully we had like logged notes about the places we wanted to stop so i had the names of them and i was able to put one of those names in the you know as as like exactly what you're saying here added to stop and then it was fine so yeah Yep. All right. We have we have a bunch of your questions to answer. We have some don't get caught stuff.
We have some cool stuff found that we want to talk about. The next thing that we want to talk about here, though, is our sponsors, because, you know, as a parent, all we really want for our kids is for them to succeed.
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All right. So, Dave, I have a question. Yes. You know what time it is?
¶ Michael-Should I consolidate Dropbox into iCloud to save $$?
What time is it?
Time for questions. Thusly, we've got one from Michael. He writes in, Dear Geek Gab Gentleman. Well, thank you, Michael. He says, I've recently retired and I'm looking at monthly costs. I've taken your sage advice on moving mine and my wife's cell service from the Death Star to Mint and have halved our annual costs. I actually had the guy trying to sell me cell service walk away from me and say, have a good day. When I told him, what cell service are you on? Mint.
Oh, thanks. Thanks so much.
Yeah. But I digress. He says, currently I pay for Apple One Family Plan at $25.95 per month and iCloud 2TB at $9.99 a month. I also have a 2TB Dropbox account for $10 a month. Between Dropbox and iCloud, we have 750 gigs used. Would it make sense to copy, upload everything from Dropbox to iCloud since I pay for 2TB with Apple anyway and get rid of the $120 a year I pay for Dropbox?
How would I do that? I looked at the Apple Premiere plan, but that is $14 a month more than the Apple One family, which doesn't get me anything I use but the storage I already pay for for $10 a month. Any suggestions or words of geek wisdom would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. I haven't missed a podcast in over 15 years.
Wow.
Best, Michael. Nicely done, sir.
Yeah. Yeah. Same. That's true.
Dave hasn't missed one in more than 15 years.
That's the first time you've ever called me David, I think. Yeah, I don't know.
It came out. Sorry.
It's like, wait, are you my mom? Are you my high school band director? I'm not sure. Yeah, yeah. David.
Are you in trouble?
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That could have been the case from either of the two of them. So, yes, for sure. I think this idea is a great idea, Michael. The only issue I can see, and it may not be relevant for you, especially anymore now that you're retired, is if you currently have any shared Dropbox folders with other people, right? For example, I still keep a Dropbox account, and I have some shared folders with my bandmates.
We used to use it for MacGeekGab until we started kind of doing it other ways. Some folks use it for work documents for sure, right? or other collaborative projects, it still is the default platform way to share documents amongst a disparate group of people. If everybody's on iCloud, if everybody is Apple users, certainly sharing via iCloud works. I don't, I think it also works with Windows folks, but it's not quite as seamless.
But really, like, that's it. As far as I can tell, Well, moving things from Dropbox to your iCloud Drive would be a smart move. And then, you know, don't cancel your Dropbox account. Just drop it down to the free tier. And then that way, if you do wind up needing to do some collaboration with people, well, you've still got your Dropbox account. It's just not full of all of your data.
So that's my thoughts. I, well, I suppose Dropbox's versioning is better than iCloud versioning, which is basically non-existent, right, Adam?
I don't, yeah, I don't. I don't believe that there is versioning that I'm aware of with iCloud documents. No.
Yeah. So make sure you're doing your backups the way you need to do them. So, yeah. That would be one other thing you're losing there. So.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do they still give over at Dropbox an extra gig for every referral?
Up to a point. I think I maxed it out. it i have like 26 gigs or something yeah yeah yeah
I think i maxed at 23 so that's why i'm curious if they stopped or something but because if you can get you know 15 or 20 gigs
It's right right
Free version it's useful
Yeah for sure yeah yeah yeah and you may already have some referrals to michael you know so yeah yeah yep but yeah i think it's a good idea trying
To think um when When you're sharing with non-iCloud or non-Apple people, do they still need to have an iCloud account, like a free iCloud account? That's the only thing I don't know either.
I think so, but that is also true of Dropbox. The difference between those two is that pretty much everybody by now has a Dropbox account.
Exactly, yeah. That's the thing. I find that non-Apple people often don't want to sign up for another account.
Especially if it's an apple account right yep yep yeah yeah go ahead pete
This this will blow your your monthly budget once get a nas drive and share everything that you need to from there
Yep yep i mean that's that's what i do except that i also pay for iCloud storage but my iCloud storage is fully consumed by my family's photo libraries as
You say it's for family right yeah family photos yeah
Kiwi Graham says correctly that it's not so much projects where you're the one who decides how sharing is going to happen because you could decide we're going to use iCloud for this. And then everybody just says, OK, fine, I got a deal. It's when other people are sharing to you, it's going to be Dropbox in 80% of all cases.
Right.
That's a very good point, Kiwi Graham. Thank you for saying that. Yeah.
It's kind of ubiquitous.
It kind of, yeah. Yeah, they were, they're one of those cases where being first to market actually mattered. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I think what they locked in on was sharing, right? Like I have a million cloud accounts for like storing stuff. Like I've got Google Cloud, I've got whatever Microsoft OneDrive, I've got iCloud, I've got Dropbox. But yeah, the de facto one, if you're going to like share something, and it just became Dropbox.
That's how I got a Dropbox account. It was from a bass player in a project I was in. He was like, well, I'll just share it with Dropbox. And I was like, oh, you have Dropbox? Because I knew about it, but I was like on the waiting list or whatever. And he's like, yeah, you don't? I'm like, not yet. He's like, well, I can fix that. I'm like, yes, you can. Woo-hoo.
Yeah, and I think you shared it with me shortly thereafter.
And then we started sharing it on the show for two reasons. One, because we wanted to share it with everybody. And number two, we wanted to build up our free gigs. I mean, it was a win-win. Yeah, yeah. We're transparent about it. Yep.
It was very, very good. Yeah. All right. Should I take us to, where are we on to next? Eddie.
Yeah, please.
Eddie has a question. He says, I'd like to revisit the best non-mesh router and travel router.
¶ Eddie-I need a good, standalone router with some nerdy flexibility
My current setup is an Eero Gen 2, at least seven years old. With several Apple TVs, iPads, M4, MacBook Airs, PS5s, and iPhone 16s. I live on a 50-foot boat. Well, that's cool. With minimal material between rooms. So mesh is overkill. I'm only using the base unit. This router is falling behind and keeping up with current Wi-Fi protocols. Our marina installed free community Wi-Fi along the docks, and I wanted to keep my cable connection and I want to keep my cable connection.
I haven't tested the cable connection fully and don't want to until I can be behind a firewall. I'd like a router that can share a cable connection or Wi-Fi signal, run a VPN, I use PIA, have at least Wi-Fi 6 capability and work well with Apple products. Bonuses would be NAS storage, multiple ports for hard wiring, Apple TVs and PS5s, and failover to the Wi-Fi if the cable fails.
I'd like to be able to connect to another Marina's free Wi-Fi instead of hotspotting or using my business's Verizon 5G router. Keep up the good work. I don't miss an episode. I listen to them all. Adam and Pilot Pete have added so much. Well, thank you, Eddie.
Thank you.
I agree, Eddie. This is a good one. My gut reaction is to recommend the Synology WRX 560. It does failover. It allows for the two WAN connections, and I believe one of those can be in wireless ISP mode, which is effectively what you're doing here. And that'll connect to the Marina Wi-Fi and then kind of make it the source of your internet connection. So that's definitely one of the options here and a strong one.
Another strong one though is the is from gl.inet they call it the flint 2 it's the glmt6000 we will have links to both of these here in the show notes today um this one is similar to the synology um software wise it's different software of course uh just but you know it kind of does all the same things or a lot of the same things um it has slightly better wi-fi specs than this synology i think it's got one more uh antenna per radio so you might get better coverage although
as you pointed out you don't really need better coverage you just need you know to go from wi-fi five to at least wi-fi six and all of that um but i've never put my hands on the the flint two from glinet so i can't say for certain but uh but i think either one of those would would do it i really think that that that you know you're looking for something somewhat nerdy in the the desire to use failover right that's not something that's in every router everywhere And then also the
whole wireless ISP thing is not in every router, but it is in these two. So they're both worth a look, I think. And we've got links in the show notes for both of them. So that's where I'd go with that.
Pete, I have no idea how I missed that. The WRX five 60 was out. Well, it's been out for a while.
Yeah. Long time.
Problem is my 2600, which is probably close to 10 years old now is so good and so reliable.
Yeah.
It does. So it was so far ahead of its time.
And you're not using the 2600 for wifi. You're just using it as a router. And that, that changes things too, of course.
Fair enough. Yeah. So, but the WRX 560 is cheaper than their 6,600.
Correct. And, and, and less antennas per radio, right? Like, so the 6,600 from Synology would also do all of these things and it has, you know, even better radios and, and stronger, in theory, stronger connections. I don't think for his scenario, he needs to spend the extra money to do that, but, but it certainly would work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing wrong with it. So, yep. Yep that's yeah
Yeah well that's that's awesome i didn't even realize they had yet another router out
Yeah i'm curious to see if we get another one this year they're you know they don't have a wi-fi 7 offering at all right now they don't have a router that has more than one port that goes faster than gigabit so it doesn't like they they are limiting themselves right now Now,
¶ Ian-Why can't I receive to my new iCloud aliases?
you know, those limitations, specifically the not having two ports that go 2.5G, because if your ISP is 2.5G and you want to be able to, like, have Ethernet to take advantage of that, you need two ports that are 2.5 and you don't get that. So, like, that's what moved me to the Unify Cloud, the UCG Max, the Unify Cloud Gateway Max was that. So, and I think that would work for you too.
I don't know about wireless ISP mode. Check that, but I will put the Unify Cloud Gateway Max in here because that doesn't have, well, that doesn't have Wi-Fi. Then you got to add Wi-Fi to it. So yeah, it's not, I'll put a link in the show notes, but it's not the one-stop shop that Eddie's looking for. Yeah. Right.
Okay. Well, should I take us to Ian?
Yes, please.
Okay. Ian's a new listener in the UK, so thanks for joining us. He says, I've tried the tip to get more email addresses out of my Apple ID back in May. I am slowly going through your back catalog with much enjoyment, especially as a blind Mac user. I have set up three aliases on iCloud, but when I try to test them by sending to and from each one, nothing comes into my inbox. I do not get any mail for undeliverable warnings.
The new email addresses do appear in the dropdown options to select where to send from, so my Mac knows the addresses exist. But nothing seems to go out or come in. Can anyone help with this? All the best. Ian.
Adam i have one idea do you have any ideas for this no go ahead okay my because it should work right from what he's describing of course we're not there it there might be something obvious missing i don't know but it's supposed to work the way you're expecting uh and so the first place i'd look is in mail rules on icloud to make sure that you don't have some you know policy rule that is filtering out everything that's
not coming to your primary address and just shuttling it to the trash or something like that. Because if the person that's sending it is not getting a bounce message, and I'm assuming that's you from your Gmail account or something, testing, if you're not getting a bounce message there, and you're not getting the email in your inbox, it means that iCloud is receiving that message and doing something with it. because otherwise the person on the other end, we're going to bounce.
So, yeah, I mean, it's just how that works. So, yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, that's that. Um, let's see. We have, Oh, well,
We're still on Ian. I'm going to offer a suggestion, you know, go to the competition as well. If you don't already listen to Alison, new listener, Alison over at no silica. She is always covering accessibility stuff so
Oh yeah fair you know
Great great show for accessibility on the mac
Yes yes yeah for sure yeah good call thanks pete uh listener michael has a bit of a uh question maybe a fist shake michael has been a listener for quite some
¶ Michael-New iPhone and watch craziness
time Simon is quite technically astute, but as with everything technical, there are many things that each of us can simply not know. Oh, I clicked play.
Hey, Dave, Pilot Pete, and Adam. Michael calling here. Question for you. So I am a new iPhone 16 Pro and Apple Watch Series 10 owner. I've been a Mac user since 2007 and was Android before, finally moved over to unify everything. But now that everything is unified, I've got tablets ringing in one room. My watch is ringing. I answer it. I'm using an earbud at the time. I'm trying to talk to my wife, and I hear it. Oh, she's talking through the phone.
Meanwhile, I'm using the Patreon app to listen to a podcast of mine, and it's still playing while the call is going on. Oh, no. I don't know what to do. I thought it would be easier. I like the equipment. It's slick as heck, but please, any advice you have to kind of unify these things so it works well, the way they say it's supposed to, because it is not working well for me at all. So thank you, lads. Appreciate it.
This is another one. Thank you, Michael, for sending this in. Yeah. Yeah, this is another one of those where I would start by saying that's not the way it's supposed to work. It is supposed to work the way you are desiring, where when you answer a call, it pauses the audio and all of these things. Do you have any thoughts on this, Adam, as we kind of bounce this around?
I don't know much about that because he mentioned the Patreon app. Right. And so here's here's the thing. For this stuff to work, they have to be using Apple's stuff for their player. There's no guarantee that, you know, Patreon chose to use built-in stuff for their audio player, right? So it could be that, or it could be broken. Like, my first assumption would be Patreon's doing something different with the audio, at least in that scenario.
But I'm with them on a bunch of this stuff. like S-Lady picking up on my phone when I've got my HomePod Mini right behind me and I'm trying to play music or issue a music command, right? Sometimes it just happens and it's frustrating. A lot of times it just works, but it's definitely not perfect.
Another one, especially with the AirPods, is I'll be sitting here and I'll be wanting to use AirPods with my phone for a phone call, and then i launched you know zoom on my mac and zoom picks up the the earbuds because i use those with zoom as well and then it pops open the dynamic island hey we switch this to your mac and if you're fast enough you can tap it and switch it back but yeah no i think we've all experienced this you know it's like it mostly works but it i'm with him and you know it's
not it's not like Apple people always like to say, it just works. It's, it doesn't always just work.
It can be definitely frustrating.
So I don't know if I have a really good, solution for them especially when you have multi-total devices other than you know for certain features like turning off if if you know you're never going to answer a call on your phone or on your mac i think you can go in can't you can go in and like choose which devices pick up say like phone calls yes i'm pretty sure there's settings for that so you know just turn it off on your mac if you because like i never take phone
calls on my computer ever right so and i haven't even disable that it'll ring and i'll just the one thing i do like about that is i will dismiss phone calls especially if it's a spam i'm sitting here working someone's spam calling me i can see that come up and i can just send them straight to voicemail or just dismiss it really quickly so that's convenient but yeah no i'm with him like it doesn't always just work yeah.
Yeah yeah for sure yeah i um there's that calls on other devices uh option in you know what is it settings apps phone and i like for example have this this computer turned off i i do not want calls appearing on on like i will never take a call on this computer so yeah you can go through your and you can choose that by device and it can make a difference you know and if for some reason i needed to do a podcast with someone and the only way we
could connect was you know facetime well then i'll just turn it on it's going to be okay you know it's fine so
Yeah but i've totally experience the phone call thing where it's like i'm already picked up the call i'm on my airpods and then for some dumb reason it suddenly switches to the to the to the back to the phone and it's like are you kidding me like yes and then i have to go to the phone app and then re-tap that re-switch it back and i don't know why that happens occasionally luckily it doesn't happen a lot but it does and i've had vice versa too you know where it's like on the
phone and then it suddenly just decides oh in the middle of the call i'm gonna connect to your airpods because those are close by it's like no no it's just talking yeah.
I i that i think that is one of the most common things that happens because almost every phone call that i take or make with a fellow apple user the first 30 seconds is both of us you know being like hang on i gotta like sync it to my airpods get my airpods and then the the second 60 seconds is us complaining about exactly this right so it it you have to do the airpods dance uh to start every phone call and i don't know why that is right um but but but it is it is so it
Is and i can't tell you how many times i'll have my phone next to my laptop The phone will ring. I'll have my AirPods in. I will click once to answer, and I get call failed because it tried to go over to the computer, and then it goes back. But, yeah. And I think Matthew Dropko in the comments said basically what you said, Dave. He called it call forwarding, turn off call forwarding when a device is nearby and should be turned off. Yeah. Okay.
That's the setting in the Mac and the iPad. He said, yeah, the same issue. So I was thinking it was called handoff. handoff but that's different because
That's other options yeah yeah okay so yeah fun stuff uh i would love to if you folks know how not to have to do the airpods dance tell us feedback at macgeekgab.com
Well where feedback at macgeekgab.com
Yep i would definitely email feedback Mac at MacGeekApp.com.
Yep, that's it. We have some don't get caught and some cool stuff found to get to. The next thing that we want to do is talk about our sponsors because you ever feel like your body's trying to tell you something, but it's doing it in Morse
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And our thanks to Open Phone for sponsoring this episode. so
¶ Paul-DGC-Some inexpensive USB-C cables aren't equal on both sides
listener paul wrote in uh and pointed us to an amazon review for a usbc cable that is the sun guy 10 gigabit per second um micro you some usbc cable right and it's got i think it's got micro b on one side and usbc on the other a reviewer on this pointed out that uh says I've connected this cable to several of my systems, and when the logo side is up, it is in 10 gigabit per second mode. But if the logo side is down, it's in USB 2 speeds at 480 megabits per second.
That seems crazy to me because USB-C is, you know, universal. But other people confirmed this too. So I think the – and thank you, Paul, for letting us know and letting us share this here. If you are buying budget-priced USB-C cables, when you get them, test them in all combinations, all permutations of what's up and what's down in terms of the cable. Just to make sure that similar corners have not been cut on whatever cable you
choose, because that can be maddening. So, yeah, I think that's a perfect reply.
Yeah, no, I just, you know, a good reason not to buy really, really.
Weird cheap cables and this frustrates me because you go to amazon and and that's pretty much what you see most of the time now is these really off-brand cheap chinese usb hubs and cables and like if you're doing any kind of searching that's what comes up all the time all the time and i know people have had success with some of those things i just frankly avoid them i stick with the brands i know you know it's like owc anchor yep um if i want less or more
inexpensive you know i'll go back to mono price um you know brands that i trust i just kind of stick to them because you find out weird weird stuff like this it's like that makes no sense it's not to spec they're not doing it right like they're cutting corners and how are you gonna you're gonna know I think in the review, the guy said, I know because I have a little device that I can put in line that shows me the speed.
And so maybe if you're buying a lot of cheap cables, you want to get one of those little things to show you the transfer rate, like on a little LCD screen so you can plug in and see what you're actually getting. Yep.
Kiwi Graham in our Discord chat says, I found today via isolation testing that a cheap USB-C charging cable was causing all devices on my hub to renegotiate power levels every 60 seconds. That sounds fun. That's great. Yeah. So, again, more evidence to support your theory, Adam.
So yeah yeah oh no uh what was i doing the other day you know i had my new drives and i had plugged in something and it might have been a cheap cable i had to unplug it because i plugged in and all of a sudden the drives started doing that where drive connect drive drop drive connect drive drop thing yeah and i bet you it was something related related to something like this like renegotiating power every 60 seconds because
they were like powering on and then powering on because they're USB bus powered. I bet you it was exactly the same thing now that I'm thinking about it. And I just like, I'm like, what the heck is going on? And I just disconnected this cable and then everything was fine.
When I did that test a couple of years ago where I bought all kinds of either Thunderbolt or USB 4 cables and tested with all of my devices, I definitely found some that were like not anything I would ever use. I didn't mention any of those on the show. I recommended the ones that I found that actually worked. And you can find quality, inexpensive USB 4 cables that will do everything Thunderbolt does, right? You know, they're not certified at Thunderbolt spec.
In many cases that's okay and uh so you know instead of spending 60 on a cable you can spend 20 that because it's usb4 not thunderbolt but you know the specs are so similar that it just works but um not you have to test it when you get it like you can't just you can't don't don't just buy it and throw it in your travel case and go on a trip for three weeks you know right like dave did uh a couple of years ago god i got somewhere dude i got somewhere
and was like all right great i gotta just you know i'm setting up my hotel room i pull out my extra screen i grab one of the cables that i brought with me i plug it in screen doesn't work it's like wait this is like a 10 gig cable like it should definitely work it's like no your cable has to be certified for displayport and it's like what and thankfully i like started i dug you know i tore everything apart that i had and found one cable in my
in my bag that would do it and it was like all right now every usbc cable i travel with that was what catalyzed that whole test i did a couple years ago uh of course but every usbc cable in my travel bag works for everything it'll work for thunderbolt it'll work for display. It'll work for charging. It'll work for hard drives. There is no cable I have with me that has different specs from any other. It's just, they all have all the specs, and that's the only way I can live.
Well, I can't live like that.
Yeah, I mean, again, life's too short to deal with bad cables.
That's that. It really is. Yeah.
Yeah. I would say, if you want to listen to that primer that Dave gave, that was show number 996, and it starts at 47 minutes and 50 seconds into the episode. Nice.
So, yeah. Very nicely done, Pete.
Yeah. Cool.
Well, Bob has a Don't Get Caught. that's kind of a follow-up to my Don't Get
¶ Bob-DGC-You can't migrate accounts that ever had Apple Music profiles
Caught from last episode. He says, Hi, Dave, Peter, and Adam. I've for a long time had an Apple account for myself, my wife, and a third account that we used for purchases that the two of us shared. This was well before Apple created family sharing. When that was created, we continued to use third account for purchases and just had that set up for, you know, medium purchases for both of us.
I was excited when a few months ago, the Apple was allowing you to migrate your purchases to your primary account. I was just going to migrate all our purchases to my account and family share it with my wife. Easy peasy, right?
No, Bob found out like I did. Well, no. After trying to do this for over a month and having three calls with Apple support, I was finally told today that if the account you were migrating from, the secondary account, had ever had an Apple Music account, even if it currently didn't have one, that account could not be migrated. So they're basically saying that you can migrate all your purchases as long as one of your purchases wasn't Apple Music or Apple One. Does this make any sense, Apple?
No. I guess I'm sticking with my old system of using that third account for media and purchases for both of us. Thanks for letting me rant. Keep up the good work, long-time listener, and love the show.
Bob.
Yeah, Bob, I'm with you. I'm in the same boat as we talked about in the last episode.
Feels like a giant money grab to me. I also don't understand why they can't just let me kill that other account because uh i don't know if the music thing got me or like i was talking about the other thing is apple developer accounts will also cause the same issue so if that secondary account ever had an apple developer account apparently you can't merge um even if it sounds like you kill that developer account or aren't using that
developer account so i'm going back and forth with apple on this one too we'll see hopefully they uh figure this out you know hopefully it's just a stumbling block and this new merging thing because they've only had the merging thing i think for about a year or so oh.
Not even around i well yeah maybe i don't know time
Relatively new.
It's relatively new that's the right way to say it yes
Yeah yeah so hopefully it's something they can resolve if enough of us uh talk about it or are caught by this hopefully it's something they can uh get us uncaught from yeah.
I i i think i mean kiwi gram again comes up with the perfectly crystallized uh reason for this and it's tech debt preventing different database merging and that's exactly these were never this was never meant to happen and so it's it's a bolt-on to something that where they can't change the underlying infrastructure right without without i mean if they were to go change the underlying infrastructure uh the support costs for that even even if they were certain they didn't mess
with anything it would definitely definitely mess with some people and it like and they know that like they've been here before so yeah yeah yeah All right.
Got another don't get caught this week. Yeah. This time from Russell,
¶ RusselG-DGC-Check your nits before you buy a display
who writes in, I don't like to be too negative about a particular product because it may suit other people just fine. But Adam mentioned the BenQ 5K monitors with Thunderbolt connections. I tried one and sent it back because it wasn't bright enough for me. I have an office with a window and I like my screen bright. Just a personal choice. Otherwise, it seemed like good and well-constructed equipment, but the maximum nits was simply not enough for me.
I eventually paid out the huge premium price and got a new Apple 5K screen. My other screen is an old 5K iMac using Luna display, which is very good, but not as convenient as a dedicated screen. If cost is a significant issue and you want mostly to use the screen to watch movies or video so there's relatively little interaction, then Luna is certainly a very good option. But you may need a separate keyboard and mouse to be able to conveniently set it up each time you turn it on.
Refurbished IMAX with the 5K screen can be quite cheap, and the screen is both good and bright. Just my 10 cents, Russell.
Yeah, for sure. I went and looked, and the BenQ screen has 400 nits brightness. The Apple Studio display has 600 nits brightness, so 50% more. And even 100 nits more brightness. Makes a difference when the sun is involved. My M2 MacBook Air is 400 nits. And when I'm sitting out, one thing that many of us in my family like to do on a weekend morning, if we have things to catch up on, is we grab our laptops and we go sit out. So, candidly, I do this during the week, too.
Grab our laptops and go sit out on our patio kind of by the fire pit. Whether we turn on the fire pit or not is, you know, ambient temperature dependent. But it's a nice place to just sit. And the sun's there, and it's a nice place to kind of wake up and go through your stuff. I had to go inside the other morning because my 400 nits wasn't enough.
My son's got the m1 pro macbook pro i want to say that i had for like five minutes and then realized when he was going to school for as a software engineer it was like you need this way more than me you will you will use the power of this i will not and so uh so he's got that one and that's at 500 nits and he was like oh yeah no it's totally fine i'm like yeah great that thanks kiddo yeah But, yeah, knits matter for sure. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. I've actually got a small suggestion along those lines, though. You guys may have heard of this product called SetApp. We've mentioned it once or twice, I think. But in SetApp, one of the programs is called DisplayBuddy. And I think DisplayBuddy will override. I mean, obviously, the maximum a screen can put out is the maximum it can put out. Sure, sure. I was, DisplayBuddy will override what you can set on your Mac by default, I believe.
I was able to, because I got that because I, when I first got my Elgato teleprompter, it locked up everything and it would not work. I was able to get. Turn that software off, turn the monitor on, but I had no control over the monitor. And Dave, you suggested to me try DisplayBuddy, and it worked great. And I could get things really, really granular in my control over the monitors.
I will mention that if you look in the DisplayBuddy notes, it talks about it will not work with the HDMI port on the M1 Max. They fixed it with the m2 but it doesn't send the control over hdmi on the m1 max but display buddy is a pretty cool piece of gear if you're using more than even if you're using only your notebook display you can brighten it up beyond what apple lets you do oh i
Thought display buddy only was for third-party displays that is that not the
Case yeah no it will just it will control your laptop oh
Then i need to try that at the fire pit the next time i'm
Sitting out there i do not know if sure you know again there's only so many nits in a given display right
Right you're not gonna you're not gonna challenge physics with this right
Right but i think it over let it overrides what apple will let you normally do i
Believe that i believe that
Yeah i mean the the nits matter for sure i mean we talked about uh when i got my new notebook i was gonna get that i was gonna get the air and what put me over was that the um video i saw where they were comparing the air display to the pro display and it was like oh for 200 bucks more i can get promotion and a display that goes up to 1600 nits if i need it right so.
Yeah you didn't need those retinas for anything did you no
I like i would strong for my next laptop because of this particular use case and this like i said this does happen if i have a bunch of email i need to go through uh answering mgg emails or even just you know my regular kind of inbox disaster uh I find that I can be more productive and more focused if I have just one screen. Most of the time having two screens is great, but one screen for email is awesome because I'm not – I don't have all the other crap.
I know I can turn all the other crap off. I'm aware. But it's fine. I grab my laptop. I have a change of scenery. I go sit outside. It's nice to be outside. But for that one use case, I would strongly consider the MacBook Pro the next time I replace my laptop, because I can get more brightness out of it. So, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. All right. We got time for Cool Stuff Found, right?
Yeah, we do. Let's do some Cool Stuff Found. I can kick things off with Joel.
¶ Joel-CSF-1096-Use Raspberry Pi for Time Machine backups
He says, I listened to episode 1096 while mowing the lawn. As you were talking about inexpensive time machine network devices, I was just starting the front of the lawn and thought, Raspberry Pi. Yes, I'd probably have a bit of an obsession with them because I like cheap innovation. I found the following info for using a Raspberry Pi for time machine backups. And he gives us a link to a Raspberry Pi time machine that you can build.
So you can get a Raspberry Pi and set up your own time machine on network backup, I would assume. So that's pretty cool.
Yeah, you install Samba on it and... Ah, there is in the Samba is the Linux engine that allows you to advertise shares on the network using SMB. And so it makes perfect sense that you would install Samba. It's open source. It's all the things that Linux usually is. The key to this, though, is that there is a time machine function configuration in Samba. And I love that the way that you kind of one of the things that you turn on is you say fruit colon AAPL equals yes.
And then fruit colon time machine equals yes. So it emulates whatever it needs to do to advertise as a time machine SMB share, and you're good to go. So you don't even – then you have to set up Avahi, which is the engine that advertises via Bonjour, which is what Apple devices use. And that's also a very standard thing. And then that's it. So it's Samba and Avahi. This makes perfect sense. Yeah.
Way to go.
Yeah. love it huh huh that's simpler than i thought i like that yeah thanks joel uh cory has our next one uh cory writes i've been using co-pilot money
¶ Cory-CSF-Copilot Money
for over five years now and i thought i would This is unrelated to Microsoft Copilot. He says he uses Copilot money to track my monthly budget and accounts, and it works great. It syncs with everything automatically, tracks recurring expenses, auto categorization. Easy for you to say. It's brilliant and definitely worth checking out. I don't know that I had ever heard of Copilot money.
Um you know as a as a long time quicken user i just kind of get into i've been in that mode maybe a rut i don't know for uh for a long time but this looks yeah this i mean it's very robust obviously if he's been using it five years it's you know it's been out at least that long so huh wow that's cool yeah interesting adding
To this a little bit uh i mean not quite as robust and it's good as that. But I did notice today, just as I was setting up for the show, I was looking at my Apple card and it was showing me my Apple card spending, and it had a little note said, so far your family has spent about the same as last year at this time. So it was like letting me know, like my expenses are, at least with my Apple card are on track with what I was spending last year.
That's good. Yeah, right. Yeah.
It'll melt my phone.
Do you guys both use your apple cards as kind of one of or if not the primary uh card that you use
Yeah i do because i have apple savings although you know that's we could have a whole conversation about how that's gone downhill but yeah yeah but i i do like that you know i just by watching my interest rate dropped precipitously as you know uh i think are they still with sacks like yeah that was going to change too but of course goldman sachs hasn't been happy so they've just been like cranking down that interest rate unfortunately but yeah i still like that feature i you
know i still like having it go right into my savings account so i set it up as my primary one especially with apple products because you get that you want three percent back for.
Sure right yeah right Yeah, so, yeah, when I buy Apple stuff, obviously, that's the one I use. Mostly, I think I use still the Bonvoy Amex is the one I use because our points and hotel stays are free.
Yeah, I do that a lot. I use, even when buying Apple stuff, I still use my Marriott Bonvoy Amex cards because that 3%, I mean, either way, right, that 3% is being paid by someone. So, the question is, what are you getting out of it? And if 3% cash back is the best option you've got, great. And with hotel points, it can vary wildly. It depends on what the room is worth in cash versus points. And the real key for me each year to maximizing Marriott points is South by Southwest.
Um hotel rooms are so ridiculously expensive that my points per dollar for that week wind up being worth about five percent and so that's why i use yeah but but again that's a very conscious you know mathematically calculated decision um and that's really the only week of the year where my marriott points are worth more than three percent oftentimes they're like somewhere between two and three other times they're worth like one percent and in those cases i don't use my points i just pay for
the room you know get the get the three percent back his points yeah so
Yeah i think you know you guys are a little different because you travel more so like i don't.
I don't need
An airline yeah hotel travel reward card so i just use my apple card the other thing i really like about the apple card is i i don't like carrying credit card debt so i pay it every couple weeks, probably every week to two weeks I pay off. So the ability to go in the app and just hit the button and have it come right out of my Chase account and get paid for, you know, I'm paying it multi-times a month. It's really just a way to like, shift money around.
Yeah yeah exactly yeah that's great that's great love it
I forget what the math was on it because i was just using the cash for other stuff but i think it might have been new listener allison who said it use use the money that you get back to pay off your card and that's how you truly get the yeah the savings yeah yeah i forget what the way the math works on that but It made sense when I read it.
Yep, absolutely.
We got one more cool stuff found from Jan Landy, who writes in on the, it was on Discord.
¶ JanLandy-CSF-Clop to auto optimize images, video, PDFs (also in Setapp)
I was using Permute and Squash until I found Clop, automatically optimized images, video, and PDFs with Clop. The app will quickly make your screenshots more lightweight, optimize the size of clipboard images, or shrink and crop your PDFs to fit a variety of screens. And guess where it's available?
Only on Setapp.
I think we mentioned that once before.
I think it's available on things other than Setapp, too.
If it is, I'd be shocked because I did a Google search.
But I think the manufacturer has a website. They must. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They must. They must. Let's see.
You can get it on GitHub.
Yeah, it's open source. There you go. Yeah, it's lowtechguys.com is where you can go get going.
I don't know how it, when I clicked on it, it only came up with a setup version. But yeah, a lifetime license is $15 whole.
Yeah, there you go. That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
That's the pro version, I'm assuming. Yeah. There's a free version and there's a pro version. The free version, it looks like, has some session limits on optimizing things like screenshots and files and things like that. But we'll do clipboard optimization and downscale images for free across the board. And then if you want more than five per session shortcuts or screenshot optimizations, you opt in for the pro.
And it integrates with file shelves like Yoink and Dockside. So you can have it take an image or whatever convert it and put the converted version on your yoink shelf so you've got it there to add to you know whatever email you're going to work on later or whatever it is so i that's pretty good i like that yeah yep
And i'm eager to play with the video downsizing of it because i always use handbrake which is pretty granular but you got to know what you're doing.
When I need to do quick and dirty video size reduction or even conversions, I use an app called Permute, which I believe is part of Setapp as well. It is.
It is.
But it's from Charlie Monroe, and it is, I like, It's my default, for sure. Also, audio. We work with a service called FlowSend, I think. I think that's the name of the service. It uses AI to help figure out where clips might come out of the show, and then Sadie likes that. And they won't take FLAC files, which is what we record the show to. So as soon as we finish the show, I use Permute to convert it to like M4A or whatever, and then we upload it to them, and then it does its magic.
You know, I don't think I knew Permute worked with video.
Yep. There you go. That it does.
While we're doing that, since we're talking setup and video and optimization things, I'll throw a shout out for another program on there called Downy for downloading videos specifically from YouTube. Because I was trying to grab something from YouTube the other day and it said, oh, you can download this if you sign up for YouTube Red or whatever.
Yeah.
I'm like, grab the URL, throw it in Downy.
Was able to download it anyway what do you think of that
Youtube yeah they
Don't make it easy
Yep that also from charlie monroe uh yeah yeah yeah i use i i i should just use downy i use yt-dlp from the terminal uh right and and that that works fine like but downy would be simpler like well it
Also optimizes it too so i think you can set optimization size so pull it down and you You can also optimize it and downscale it and probably have some of permute technology integrated.
In. Makes perfect sense. Of course it does. Yes. Right.
Yep. As does pull tube. Sorry. Got to keep throwing them in there.
Yes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like it. Yep.
Cool.
Uh-huh. You know, I didn't think we would have time to do some show business today, but we do. And so I want to take a minute and thank all of our recent MGG Premium supporters
¶ MGG Premium Listener Contribution Appreciation Moment
whose contributions have come in in the last few weeks. We will start with, and as we always say, I'll say it again, that this is optional, certainly not required, but it is absolutely appreciated. And it is a part of...
What allows us to do this show it you know it's it's you and our sponsors and and it very much in that order so thank you to everyone who chooses to participate in this and and and you know the most important thing you can do is keep listening to the show the second most important thing you can do is encourage other people uh other like-minded people to listen to the show and when i say like-minded i mean people interested in the nerdy stuff that we're talking about uh and then
and then number three would be support the show directly if you are able um and and actually number three and number four are kind of tied and that is go visit our sponsors uh you don't whether or not you buy from them is between you and them but going to visit them that it is our job to encourage you to go and visit our sponsors so we're happy to be transparent about that back to thanking those of you whose contributions have come in uh a hundred dollar contribution from richard
in galesville and also one from sandra in merrimack thank you thank you to both of you you rock 50 contributions thanks to chuck in boulder and stanley in catonsville thank you both a 45 contribution from roger in blaine a 40 contribution from david in lenexa A $36 contribution from Ben in Berkeley. Love that. Thank you. A $30 contribution from Richard in Pontrug and Christopher in Ventura and Andrew in North Glen. Thank you. Thank you.
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And if you're interested in learning more about that, MacGear.com slash premium. And I think that wraps us up, right? Do we have anything else to add? Anything?
Nope. I'm thinking I'm deaf.
I'm not hearing something.
Well, we can fix that. I have buttons for that, Pete.
Did I go deep?
You did not go deep to my knowledge. All right. Can you hear the music?
I do. There's the band?
Your hearing test came back positive. That's right. You can hear.
¶ MGG 1098 Outtro
I can indeed, in spite of my best efforts over the years.
Our testing is not nearly good here as it is with your AirPods, but, you know, it's fine. Correct. It's binary. Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Thanks to Victrola for doing our monthly giveaway with us at MacGeekUp.com slash giveaway. We are giving away a Victrola Stream Onyx turntable that you are going to love. So make sure you get signed up for that. Thanks to Cashfly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you.
Make sure you listen to our other podcasts, Adam's debut film podcast, Pete's So There I Was, my business brain and gig gab and uh we've added some new merch go check it out macgcab.com slash merch oh we have some reviews we need to read at some point we'll do that but not this week hoping
They're all five stars
I think we've got another one star maybe no no i think we're already done with that no i think
Don't meet me find you don't get
Caught that's I like the one stars,
You know, it's often good, good, you know, feedback. I agree.
We can grow. I absolutely agree. There's often, not always, but often something in those one star reviews that there's like a crumb of it that resonates with at least one of us. And then we have a discussion about it. And it's like, is there, is there a there there? Like, you know, sometimes it's like, no, there's no there there.
Yeah, you can't be thin-skinned and do this.
No, but sometimes there is a there there, and it's like, oh, there is a little tweak we can make. And we have. I would say in the last four to six weeks, I think we've tightened stuff up a little bit.
Yeah, we took one to heart.
Yeah, for sure.
Be honest, be constructive if you're going to leave a one-star, but we prefer those five stars.
Yeah, you can be constructive in a five-star review too, you know.
True.
There you go.
Hey, folks, don't get caught. We'll see you next week. Made on a battle.