¶ Brad-QT-When Notifications Cease, force-quit Notification Center in Activity Monitor
It's time for Mac Geek, Gab, and listener Brad brings us our quick tip of the week with, I recently had a couple of instances with users not getting their audio or banner notifications for their messaging apps, WebEx, Microsoft Teams, etc. On their Macs. For one case, the solution was turning off focus mode. For the other case, the user was not in focus mode and all the settings were correct, both in the app settings and system settings.
Resetting notifications for the affected app in system settings also had no effect. The solution was quitting Notification Center in Activity Monitor. More tips like this, plus your questions answered today on MacGeekCab 1092 for Monday, June 2, 2025.
Greetings, folks, and welcome to Mac Geek Cab, the show where you send in your tips, we share them. You send in your cool stuff found, we share them.
You send in your questions, we share them and answer them. really we put it all together so that everybody has a fantastic opportunity to learn at least five new things every single episode store.insta360.com with promo code mgg is where you're going to go to get your insta360 x5 360 degree camera this thing's super cool we'll talk about that in a little bit and also square.com slash go slash mgg which is always with like any of the other of our other sponsor links is linked
in the show notes at macgeekab.com so you don't have to remember all the extra stuff but that's where you can go to get up to 200 bucks off of square hardware when you sign up we will talk more about them in a little bit too for now here in Durham New Hampshire I'm Dave Hamilton.
And here in South Dakota, I'm Adam Christensen.
And here in Vernon, Texas, it's Pilot Pete. Greetings, everybody. Good to be with you this week.
I'm glad your Wi-Fi works in Vernon, Texas, Pete.
Yeah, at least for now.
Yeah, I guess I should knock on some wood for you there. Yeah, right? Yeah.
Yeah, here we go.
Yeah, yeah. Fun. We'll see how this goes. Yeah, man. Yeah, it's good, too.
Vernon, Texas, 30 miles south of Altus, Oklahoma. Huh so okay yeah it's it's northwest of dallas little more northwest of shepherd uh wichita falls and three hours east of amarillo east southeast amazing so we're up in north texas so
Cool stuff fun yeah uh we the mgg monthly giveaway for may will have ended by the time this episode comes out uh and uh so maze was an eero pro 7 and we've got more hardware for june it is the one more headphones that we've talked about here on the show so very excited to give away some of those too so go sign up at macgeekup.com slash giveaway uh we're going to be at max stock uh all weekend and we will be doing a live mac geek up there on saturday july 12th so the Saturday
night of Mac stock and code Mac geek gab 50 saves you 50 bucks off your registration for Mac stock. And, uh, we would love to see you there. We, we love that show. Yeah.
It's fun. It is fun. And speaking of codes, I almost forgot. Code 1092 is either a subject in custody or a parking violation. I didn't know you could get taken into custody for a parking violation, but okay.
Well, you can when it's June 2nd and national leave work early day. So, you know.
There you go. There you go. Oh, that's good. I left work early to go get my parking ticket taken care of.
That's everybody good.
Way to go ahead a good way to bookend the week because i had monday off and i can leave work
Early no no we're recording on the 30th of may which i think is like uh, national root canal day or something so not quite as pleasant but that's bad yeah maybe i have that wrong i can't remember but uh one of these fridays recently was that it might be today but uh but no it's monday so you you get to you get to start the week by leaving work okay and next week monday the 9th is wwdc keynotes day and so we will be doing uh we will not be recording
that geek cab for for that day that week until after the keynotes which means there won't be an episode at 3 a.m. Eastern on Monday morning the 9th. It will come out probably about 17 hours later than normal. But it'll all be worth it in the end, of course. So looking forward to that, too. And it seems like maybe we will get operating systems named after years, is what I'm seeing.
After what?
The latest rumor that seems to have some support is that instead of it being, you know, Mac OS 16 and iOS 19, it's going to be everything 26. So it'll be Mac OS 2026, iOS 2026, tvOS 2026, Vision OS 2026.
That will actually be helpful.
I don't disagree. Yeah.
Oh, that's a 10-year-old operating system. No wonder you're having problems or, you know, whereas you have no idea whether it's a Sequoia or Sayonara or.
Yeah, exactly.
Which came first.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Wow. That's a great idea.
We never get macOS Sausalito. I'm so disappointed.
Well, we might still. It just might be macOS Sausalito 2026 instead of 16.
So that's fine. You know, and then they'll update it to macOS Hot Sausalito.
Wow! All right, that deserves, I like that, Pete. Thank you. That was good. All right, let's get back to quick tips here.
¶ Hans-QT-Set up your Dock for your remote desktop on the opposite side for a visual reference
Okay. Hans has one.
Now that we've paved the path. Yeah, go ahead, Adam.
Yeah, Han says, hey, I have an iMac mini that I access exclusively via screen sharing from a MacBook Pro that I use for a variety of purposes. Originally, the two desktops were set up identically, but I found that when I tried to access the dock, I had to be careful which one I selected from. Eventually, I realized that if I put the dock for one on one side and the other one on the other, I didn't have to worry about which one I was trying to select from. It's not difficult but it is useful
That's a great that visual reference i really like that idea huh yeah that's that's pretty good yeah yeah yeah and i'm guessing it was a mac mini not an imac mini unless unless he's got some piece of hardware that i don't know about it.
Does say it does say imac
Mini i know yeah but.
Yes i'm assuming that's a mac
Mini it didn't hit me when i first saw it come in but as you said it was like i don't think so but it makes more sense that way The Mac mini would be the headless, you know, type of kind of device. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. I noticed something in iOS 18.4 and later,
¶ QT-Set a default translate app in iOS 18.4 or later
and I noticed it in the release notes for Google Translate because it says you can now set Google Translate as your default translation app on iOS and iPadOS 18.4 and later. To set it up, go to the settings app, apps, default apps, translation, and choose Google Translate. I have found Google Translate to be far more better than Apple Translate. It is the one I find myself launching when I need to do translations. So it's nice that we have the option of doing that.
Yeah.
So I don't know. I, it, it has, it has more options. It has, uh, I, I don't know. It just, it's the one that gives me what I want as opposed to having to jump through the apple hoops. Whatever. That's how it works. What else do we have here? Scott. Oh, yeah.
¶ Scott-QT-1091-Use Shortcuts and ArtCast to create custom Apple TV photo galleries
In episode 1091, we were talking about Apple TV screensavers last week. And Scott says, I understand the desire to have photos play from your own library, but I'd like to suggest an alternative. It's a combination of a cool stuff found and a quick tip. The cool stuff found is an app called ArtCast that allows you to choose from thousands of galleries and artists and photos from all around the world.
The cost is a modest $6 a month, and there's an ad-supported version as well, and provides us with endless entertainment by displaying an ever-changing art show on our large TV instead of seeing a big black screen. The quick tip is that I have a shortcut automation set up for every day at 8 a.m. To wake up the Apple TV and launch the ArtCast app. The app opens to whatever gallery it was last displaying and just starts its cycle again.
You can set the duration of each image displayed, and I've set the Apple TV to shut down to never, so it just keeps going all day. Every time I walk past the den, I'm delighted with a different image. I've checked both Apple TV and Sony documentation and it is 100% okay to have the Apple TV and our Sony TV on for 12 plus hours a day. And the cost even in price crazed California energy markets is less than $10 a month if you leave it on for those 12 hours every day.
We really enjoy it and it's taken the place of the standard Apple TV screensaver with the display of some wonderful art. Scott, thank you. I love the idea of the shortcut to automation, the personal automation, the home automation, I guess, to, to fire everything up. That's, uh, that's clever. I love that. It's good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. That's, that's what I got. We got another one from Brad. Cool. One, another quick. Yeah. It might be the same Brad.
¶ Brad-QT-Remove Orphaned System Extensions with systemextensionsctl
One, one last one from Brad. Yeah. I don't know if it's the same Brad or different Brad, but, uh, this Brad says ever since the dawn of system extensions when Apple largely replaced kernel extensions with system extensions. We've all encountered cases of orphaned system extensions when we remove an app, and the associated system extension is not removed. Originally, to remediate this, we had to temporarily disable SIP. A year or so ago, Apple released the removable system extension configuration
profile payload. Say that 10 times real fast.
But this left.
The orphaned extension in a state of deactivated, waiting for uninstall upon restart. But that hung in that state. Well, as of Mac OS 15.4, there is an undocumented command, which is system extensions control. So system extensions CTL, GC. This will truly remove the orphaned system extension without disabling SIP. It does prompt for admin creds, even if executed by a script, by a MDM solution, so a multi-device manager solution. But it does indeed work. Hopefully these are useful.
Thanks for all you do for the Mac community. And I did run the man page on this, and he's absolutely right there this command this gc command uh or option on this command is not listed in the uh i haven't tried this yet but it's it definitely is not listed in the uh in the man
So age i had not run the man page what i did was i just ran system extension ctl without the gc and without issuing like a sudo command or anything like that just to see what it said and it came back and it gave me a usage guide uh and it gave uh five options and the last one is gc so it is not documented in the man page but the app itself will tell you about it and it describes its one line description of the gc option is garbage collect orphan system extensions
and that makes perfect sense as to why they called it gc so yep yeah yeah i know yeah so.
So do you think uh is is that how hazel works its magic and
Uh no no no no no no no no no no this isn't hazel's watching for when you delete an application and then it knows what support files not extensions but but the support like you know what what what stuff in your library folder your preferences folder and all that stuff it's kind of different yeah yeah but.
So it's in the same wing of the house just not the right
Room yeah yeah yeah gotcha okay yeah yeah, So, and, and, uh, and did we talk about this last week that Hazel does have.
It does have that functionality.
It does have that, that app. Yeah. That app sweep functionality. Yeah. We, that's right. We did. Okay. Good. Yeah. So, um, garbage collect. Go ahead, Adam. Yeah.
Just going to say that, uh, there's also a list option that will list,
Uh, yes, there is extensions.
So, like mine says, two extensions are there, and then it gives you the details on what they are. For example, I have my camera extension turned on, activated, and enabled.
Not a good that did you this morning.
Exactly.
Behind the scenes there, Adam had a little trouble joining us this morning, thanks to camera troubles.
I absolutely did. and my Motu driver is also activated and enabled because I'm using Motu for my microphone. So that makes sense.
Nice.
I love this. Oh, yeah. Okay. I would definitely recommend issuing the list command first before you garbage collect just to see what you've got there. Yeah, that's great.
Huh.
Love this.
That's handy.
Yeah, that's it. I had no idea this command existed. And that's why we do quick tips, because that's why we do everything with the show so that we can all learn together. We have some more. We have some don't get caught. We have some questions, some cool stuff found, some reviews to talk about. And the next thing I want to do is talk about our first sponsor because, well, have you ever had one of those checkout nightmares where the card reader
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All right. Should we jump to some don't get caughts? Yeah.
¶ Michael-DGC-Your iPhone's VPN Might Interfere with CarPlay
Is that the mic? Michael has some advice for us. He says, hi, gang. I hope all is well with Dave, Pete, and Adam. Well, it is. Thank you for asking. or mentioning. Recently, I started a lease on a new Honda Civic Hybrid. Well, congratulations. Honda vehicles have had Apple CarPlay for as long as I can remember. My Acura had CarPlay and worked without much trouble.
Sometime after the acquisition of the Civic, I noticed that my phone, which was paired when I first got the car, was not always connecting. The phone priority was saved in CarPlay, but the car and the iPhone would not connect, either by Bluetooth or CarPlay. I reset the CarPlay and the iPhone multiple times. Sometimes it would work, and sometimes it didn't. Frustrating for any Apple product user who expects their Apple gear to just work.
Anyway, after about a month of this, I remember I had the same problem with the Acura early on. My VPN was sometimes running on my phone, i.e. Actively screening the internet. I turned it off. Problem solved. I haven't bothered to take the step to have my iPhone's VPN not filter the car's CarPlay if that's possible. Maybe someday I will. Just so easy to turn off the VPN and not have the problem the next time. Cheers!
To all the great work you do i always tell apple users to check out your podcast well thanks your friend michael pj
Thanks michael yeah that's very cool yeah i have i have caused that problem, before with uh vpns and like i i've had it where i was on a vpn i think we talked about this on the show i had taken my dad to the hospital for like a you know a hours long procedure or something You know, and it had been on the hospital Wi-Fi the whole time and was on a VPN and then got in the car and could not get maps to load directions to save my life.
And so there I am driving my dad. It was some I thing or whatever.
He's doing great, by the way. but uh this was years ago and uh like he can't see because you know he had this thing going on and then there was me trying to like fumble with the phone because i don't know where we are this is some hospital that you know on the other side of the state or something so it was yeah it was a it was a fun little thing and even rebooting the phone didn't solve it because the vpn turns back right back yeah yeah wow so yeah yeah it was i've.
Done this same thing and for whatever reason did figure out hey yeah just turn the vpn off and now i feel badly that i didn't bring this to everyone's attention months
Ago and now we know it's.
Well it's how we do it it's part of our it's part of our workflow when i when my phone isn't working in carplay i go oh i've probably left the vpn
It's true yeah i i think you you certainly of all the people that i know uh you use a vpn more frequently i think yeah and so that's probably why it's why you're so aware of it for me it was like oh i'm on hospital wi-fi i should probably be on a vpn okay fine you know and uh it's not something i do all the time so i i just forgot about it but yeah fair.
Enough i don't know why even at home i'll leave the vpn on
Yeah often sure yeah yeah because i can yeah it works it's not i mean it's it's not a bad thing and in yeah except for when it gets in the way of something and so yeah.
Yeah and then you know then the swear it
Starts that's right that's right yeah oh well.
Well, there's another don't get caught that it turns out I had something to do with to be helpful. So kudos to me. I had no idea, but I'm thrilled that this worked out for Val.
¶ Val-DGC-An AirTag in your car might just help the police locate it if stolen!
Val wrote in and said, Dear Adam, Pilot Pete, Dave, I trust you gents are well. A few days ago, my car was stolen from my driveway. Oh, that's never fun. Thankfully, I remembered Pete's advice from an old episode about hiding an air tag in the car. I did this back in 2023 and it paid off. When the car was stolen, I provided the police the exact location and we recovered it in about four hours.
Interestingly, the thieves couldn't find the air tag, though they tried to locate the car's built-in tracker. Another great tip I followed was labeling the air tag with the installation date so I could monitor the battery. Even after all this time, the battery is still going strong. Just wanted to say thank you for your sage advice. Cheers, Val. I am thrilled that that worked out for you. Very cool.
I love that. I mean, it's one thing to talk about it on the show and say, this might help someday. Thank you for sharing that. I love that, man. Yeah, that's great. Love it. Love it. Love it. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I had completely forgotten that we'd even offered that advice, but.
Yep.
Yeah. Love it. All right. Yeah, we should move on to questions.
Want to move on to questions? Yeah, I like it.
We should so do at this time. Shannon wrote in. Com.apple.asr snapshots are snapshots created by the Apple software store.
That's the answer.
You're reading the answer.
Pete. You're right. Well, because I don't have it in dark mode this morning. Oh. And so normally I have it in cyan in dark mode so I can see it. And thank you.
It's all good.
I'm back with you guys.
Where is he going with this? Is he summarizing on the fly? What's happening?
I'm doing it. Yeah. Look at me. I'm so smart, I just had to give the answer first. Just ask me. All right, let's try this again. Shannon writes in, gents. Thank you. Thank you, Shannon.
¶ Shannon-What is com.apple.asr in Snapshots?
I have an M1 Mac Mini with a 2-terabyte hard drive. I have noticed that recently my used storage space has increased greatly. I ran Daisy Disk to try and determine what was using so much space and found that I have a hidden space snapshot that is 227 gigabytes. If I try and delete the snapshot, I get the message that says that I have to use the application that created the snapshot to delete it. I have no idea what has created this snapshot.
The name of the file is, and here's where it came from, com.apple.asr.9747. So it would seem that it is a file created by my Mac, but if that is the case, then I would think that I could delete it. And any ideas of what the snapshot file is from and how I can delete it? Thank you, Shannon. And I've got a quick question to add to that now that I read that. Could you use a sudo to get that too?
Possibly.
I'll step out of the way.
Possibly. You were just going Jeopardy style as Brian in the description points out. You know, it's like give the answer and then we come up with the question. That might be fun to try one time.
I'm stuck with it.
Maybe that could be a whole episode thing. But yeah, no. So as Pete was about to say, com.apple.asr snapshots are snapshots created by the Apple System or Apple Software Restore or ASR utility. They're actually used during macOS installation as part of the restore process. And it essentially is a snapshot preserving a point in time of a copy of your system volume.
Um so you might be able to my assumption would be you might be able to go into disk utility and see these volumes and they should show up as asr data volumes and you might be able to delete them from there if you can't while just normally logged in you can always try booting into recovery mode and then running um disk utility from there because then you won't be like logged in you know you can run it outside of the normal uh user account and maybe it'll let you delete them from there.
That would be my first thought to try those two things.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um i i have definitely had trouble deleting those those snapshots before the ones that are like from the reinstallation or new installation update installation restore things but clearly they've got to be deletable i would assume so yeah.
It's just a snapshot like any i mean yeah we talked about the time time machine snapshots i think either last episode or a couple episodes ago and it's kind of a similar thing
Yeah exactly exactly huh yeah i.
Would that's why i asked i would try to brute force it with a sudo before i knew
You know well you know one thing you can do is run an app in fully privileged mode and the way that you do it is um go to the terminal i mean what you would do is type sudo space the path to the app but there's an easier way to do that so you go to the terminal you type sudo space and then from the applications folder or in this case the uh utility the applications utilities folder because i think that's where disk utility lives drag just drag
the app onto the terminal and it It will auto fill the path to the launchable application. You hit return. It will ask you to authenticate because you've prefaced it with sudo. And then it will launch that app with full root privilege or not root privileges, but administrator. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that might be a way if you want to use disk utility and privileged mode.
I've never tried disk utility that way. i have run the finder in privileged mode before uh to delete files that didn't want to get deleted and that kind of and it's worked fine so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.
A built-in quick tip to that answer
A built-in quick tip yeah yeah yeah.
Okay. Very cool.
Yep.
Should I take this to Hans?
Let's go.
All right. Hans writes in, he says, I have a Mac Mini that I access exclusively via screen sharing from my MacBook Pro that I use for a variety of purposes. Originally, the two desktops were set up identically, but I found that when I tried to access the dock, I had to be careful which one I selected from. Eventually, I realized that if I put the doc for one on one side and the other on the other, I didn't have to.
I think you're reading Hans's. Different Hans. No, you're reading Hans's quick tip that Adam already read.
I know it. I know it. I'm having a bad day. I'm sorry. My notes froze on me.
Wow. This is. Okay.
Okay. Do you want me to get this one? Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, Adam. Because I'm trying to get notes to unfreeze. I'm sorry. There you go.
I can help you out pete it's all right thank you i'm gonna vamp a little bit while i try to find this one yeah unless you have it handy
I do i've got it i'm.
Happy go for it
¶ Hans-How do I keep my iPhone lock screen free of notifications?
Yeah yeah yeah i'll ask and and you'll read and answer yes sure that hans writes i've been uh enjoying this show ever since adam came over from maccast he followed you over uh and uh he says coming from an iphone 11 that I'd had for four and a half years to a new iPhone 16 Pro, I'm mostly very happy with the upgrade, but I have a question. I disabled the always-on lock screen because I don't like it. Occasionally, when I touch the screen to access the lock screen, a notification appears.
I know I can access that notification directly in the lock screen, but I don't want to. I can't imagine ever wanting to do that. I'll get to it when I'm ready, not when the phone is ready. If I'm not careful, the notification on the lock screen disappears, so I don't have it to remind me to get to it later. I've found a workaround. Pressing the side button makes the screen go dark again, and it hasn't come back when I access the lock screen again, and the notification doesn't go away.
But how do I make it never happen in the first place? I don't even know what to call it to search for this intentional bug. So what you want is your notifications not appearing on the lock screen, but you still want them in notification center so that you have the so that they are still there to notify you. And you haven't just dismissed them because you wanted to get rid of them from the lock screen. So I have a couple of options for this. The first is if you go into settings,
notifications, you can choose to display as count. There are three options. The standard one, I think, is stack, where it starts stacking your notifications to keep them from overwhelming you on the lock screen. The third one is list. And then there is count, where all it will do is show the number of notifications you have at the bottom of the lock screen. I think that's going to be your easiest path to this.
Failing that, if that does not give you what you want, you could set up a full-time focus mode. And by that, I mean a focus mode that you use full-time that only allows lock screen notifications from specific apps and make that none. That would be another way to do it. And if that doesn't work, the third thing I can think of is the tedious path of going into each application's notification setting.
So same screen, settings, notification, go into each app and turn, uncheck the lock screen for alerts. That will get you there, but you have to do it for every single application you have, including every new one that you add. So try the count thing and see if that solves it for you so have either of you tried the count thing yeah you're gonna.
Yeah yeah no i'm
Going to okay yeah yeah my screen is constantly cluttered with notifications and it's gotten to the point of stupid yeah well you know
Yeah see that one to me i i'm in the same boat pete like i'm overwhelmed with notifications on the lock screen and i think I think that last tip that you gave Dave is good for that scenario where there's certain apps I just don't care about on the lock screen and it's not all of them, you know, but like I can go into those few that's like, yeah, I really don't need to know, you know, this notification on the lock screen from this app and I should just turn those off. That'd be nice.
Yeah. Yeah.
And it turns you blind to it when you get so many.
I hear a plane in the background, Pete.
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.
No, it's fine.
Yes, there is indeed a plane in the background. Yeah.
And you can focus modes make this easy because you can choose with a focus mode to either only allow notifications from certain apps or only.
It hide notifications from certain apps right and people too so you can get pretty you can do all the things that you want uh i think with a focus mode and really kind of kind of dial that in and i i definitely have done that i've talked about the focus mode that i made a couple of years ago called conference where i have it mute notifications from like my ring cameras and like all the home automation stuff that i'm not home there's nothing i can do about the vacuum if it got stuck on you know
the little placemat we have on the floor for the pet food like it ain't that it's not me today yeah you know so turning that stuff off made a huge difference for me at like conferences where i still want to get notifications from people i'm there with or emails or texts and like all that stuff was important but the the home stuff yeah not so much so yeah.
I would i would be curious to hear how people are using focus modes like that conference thing i mentioned or or anything else like what what are the use cases uh sure we have the driving one the sleep one you know but specifically what are you adding i'd like to know well i'll.
Tell you i added the one that the tip came in a couple weeks ago you put the
¶ What Focus modes do you use?
shortcut on that when when i go into my phone app it sets an i'm on the phone focus and so i don't get buzzed and binged and banged by everything else that's coming in so
And that works on the phone the the automation with the trigger the app trigger at.
First i thought well but it's not going off but it takes about 10 seconds after the phone app is closed before it goes okay you're off the phone i'll turn that off for you so that's great but i've been using that one i like it i like it huh
Yeah all right i gotta add that yeah yeah yeah.
My answer is i don't use focus modes enough i just haven't taken the time like that's the real answer like i probably should use more and i don't i think i have i'm trying to remember if i have one i should set up one for work for like trigger when i'm on a zoom call i would think would be nice same
Kind of thing yeah exactly why not yep yeah.
I got rid of the sleep one because it was too restrictive. I like to be able to look at my phone at night and in the middle of the night if something comes up or I want to see what time it is, that sort of thing. But I'll turn it off. I got a phone playing in the background.
No, you're fine. I turned on the reduced background noise. We can still hear it, but you are definitely far more present now.
Okay, good. So I went to do not disturb for my nighttime. I turned that on at night, not sleep mode. The sleep mode was just too... It was screwing up my ability to use my watch at nightlight and little things like that.
Does it still track your sleep when you're not in sleep mode, or don't you care about that?
I believe so, because I use Sleep Plus Plus app.
Okay.
That seems to be just fine.
Okay, because, yeah, Sleep Plus Plus really just uses your Apple Health sleep data to show you some different reports. But it's not – the app isn't doing the sleep tracking. The app is doing the processing and reporting. So if you're getting data in Sleep++, then yes, you're getting data in Apple Health.
So Zoe brings bacon. Great minds think alike.
You might want to share that, Pete, because no one knows what you're talking about. That's right.
She says, I have also changed from sleep to do not disturb focus mode at night. So yeah, I just found sleep too restrictive on my ability to do things I needed to do.
Yeah, I see it. I'm curious. Feedback at macgeekup.com. Let us know how you're using focus modes, anything clever, anything that you're using. You know, this, as always, the stuff that's obvious to those of us that are using it is not necessarily obvious to everybody else.
I can give you one real quick that I probably should go back to. When it first came out, I set up a Uh, you know, the option where you can change your, basically your home screen on your iPhone based on a focus mode. And I had set up one for like the weekend. So I had kind of my business apps during the week, you know, more of the stuff that I'm using day to day, and then kind of more of the fun apps by default on the weekends. And that was kind of fun for a while.
And I could put, you know, more personal widgets. Like I had my, what I was watching on TV, you know like that the tv apple tv stuff you know recent shows and shows that i wanted to see on my watch list along with you know more photo widgets and less of the like i didn't have my calendar on there you know like i don't want to know my calendar on the weekend during the week it's important so i could played with that for a little bit and that was kind of fun it's cool
Yeah i have a one that i call nuclear that i use on the weekends that i named it because i i ideally I just wanted data like notifications from my nuclear family that that I use. And it's expanded a little bit now because our well, our family is kind of expanding in a sense. So, you know, that that that works out really well for the weekends because it hides the notifications that I don't want.
And I've started experimenting on that one with the reduce interruptions, the intelligent interruptions, whatever that one is that that. The Apple intelligence option that has been added there, and I'm vamping while I'm trying to find it.
Priority notifications?
The intelligent breakthrough and silencing. So I turned that on, and it says, When nuclear is active, intelligently allow priority notifications to interrupt you and silence others. Any notification specifically allowed or silenced will always be allowed or silenced. So the things that I have told it, I want these, I get those. But if there's something that whatever Apple intelligence on the device thinks, you might want to know about this too, Dave, like it, it, it does break that through.
Then that works better than I thought it would. So. There's, there's at least that. So, yep. But let us know. Feedback at MacGeekGab.com. We want to hear all about your notifications, focus modes and all that stuff.
You heard him. Feedback at MacGeekGab.com.
That's right, Pete. That was feedback at MacGeekGab.com.
We have more questions to go through and, uh, and cool stuff found and reviews and all the fun stuff. the next thing I want to do is tell you about our next sponsor because I really want to talk about the Insta360 X5.
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That's how you get that free selfie stick that vanishes in your footage because of the way the AI works. It's all very cool. But you've got to use code MGG when you check out. But that way also they know that we sent you and that's also good. So store.insta360.com. Make sure to use code MGG when you buy your X5. And I think you're going to love it. And don't get caught with boring footage. Our thanks to Insta360 for sponsoring this episode.
¶ MGG Review-BenTsuki from USA
All right, let's do, we've had some reviews come in to MacGeekHub.com slash review lately, and I think it's time to share some of them. You want to start us off, Adam?
Yeah, we got a five star from Ben. He says, great Mac focused show with some iOS mixed in. Great show focused on tech surrounding the Mac. I always learn some useful tips regarding Mac usage, operation, and general procedures, such as backup, file loss prevention, even travel tips. The recommendations on hardware and software are also very useful i've purchased several of the mentioned items keep up the good work guys
Thanks ben fun love that um i you ever heard of the bad news sandwich adam where you know you take oh it's a it's a management technique where you i mean it's a like any kind of technique but where you take you know if you got to deliver some bad news you sandwich it with good news on either side and uh gary goo allows us to experience the
¶ MGG Review-Gary-Goo-69 - Too Much Gab, Not enough geek!
bad news sandwich uh one star too much gab not enough information uh this one tends to have too much banter and gab between the three hosts and not enough actual useful apple related tech content also they tend to not be too well prepared for the show and just do research on the fly or just plain don't know things. They also sometimes just give misinformation.
I thank you for this, Gary. I mean, I share it a little bit tongue in cheek because of the bad news sandwich, but we do take everything to heart. And you're right. Some episodes, this one perhaps included, have a little bit of meandering, but that's okay. It gets us to where we're going, and we always do endeavor to make episodes as valuable as we possibly can. So...
So with that in mind, should I read Hans's next question?
Ask it for a friend.
Oh, goodness.
Not the next one?
Well, I was going to say on that, too. I have a little comment on that. You know, like, I would get a lot of this, too, when I was doing the podcast. And everybody has a different style or different things. So what's great is there's lots of podcasts out there. And if this one doesn't work for you, that's fine. And, you know, or continue to listen and we'll take your feedback. Like Dave said, we love the criticism and, you know, we take it to heart.
But, you know, there's tons of great stuff out there that you can go find and there's something for everyone. So good luck if this doesn't, you know, if our style is not working for you, that's okay. It's really okay.
Exactly. And I would say, you know, I hope you're having as much, you should be having as much fun as we're having when you're listening to your podcasts.
Yes. Yeah. Oh, and if this show isn't the right one, either find another one, like Adam said, or start your own. And if you need help starting your own, feedback at MacGeekUp.com. We will help you. Absolutely.
Cool. Yeah. And no, that's great. And I don't think... I don't think you meant that in a way of, you know, go somewhere else.
No, no, no.
Listen, this isn't for everybody, and that's okay.
That's the beauty of podcasting. We love it.
All right. There's only about three and a half million of them out there.
I love that 400,000.
You're bound to find one.
All right. Let me add the last slice of bread to this sandwich.
¶ MGG Review-Ed-Houston THE Best Mac/Apple product-related podcast
Bye. Stars. The best Mac, Apple product-related podcast. Hands down, the best Apple Mac product-related podcast out there. I don't know what I enjoy more. The geek part, where they impart many practical, useful tips each week, either from themselves or listeners. Or the gab part, where they talk amongst themselves and offer helpful insights, usually with a humorous slant that is very fun to listen to.
I only became aware of these guys in the last couple months, but I've listened every week over and over again. I'm even going back in their episode list and working my way backwards to listen to the past podcasts. I only have about a thousand more to go, but I'll get there. Ed. So thank you, Ed. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, and there's five more stars. So counting them all up, we have 16 stars out of 20 possible this morning. That means we're averaging four stars, even with a one-star review. Because Mo Coffee writes in and says, Thank you, Dave, Pete,
¶ MGG Review-Moe Coffee
and Adam, for providing such amazing and helpful content, and I will ever strive to never get caught. Made on a Mac.
Oh, I like it. That's great, Mo Coffee. But yeah, if you want to leave your review, we love that. Obviously, MacGeeCup.com slash review makes it as easy as we possibly can for you. So, there you go. Yabble. Shall we? We've got plenty of time left. Oh, you know what I want to do is I want to share some of the, I want to thank all of our premium listeners because our sponsors certainly are a huge part of what allows us to do this show. And you are all, you are another huge part.
MacGear.com slash premium is where you can go to learn about that and do it.
¶ MGG Premium Listener Contribution Appreciation Moment
It is completely optional. it is absolutely appreciated and uh we we love everybody that can that can participate in whatever way you can participate if that's sending in questions great if that's uh sending in reviews that's great if that's telling a friend about the show that's great and also what's great is those of you who can uh and do support us directly and with that i want to thank the following uh donald and revere for his hundred dollar contribution
uh thanking the following people for their fifty dollar contributions richard and salem joseph and aventura and daniel in san diego thanks to eric and sun prairie for a his 45 contribution, Thanks to Bob in Houston for what I believe is our first $42 contribution. The answer. I love that. $35. So thank you for that, Bob. Thanks to Anders in Vastras and Thomas in Arroyo Grande for your $35 contributions. Thanks to the following for your $30 contributions.
Harry in Canyon Country. Barbara in Hanahan.
Raymond in Edmonton. Seth in Tucson and Melanie in Sorum Sand thank you thank you thank you thanks to all of the following for your $25 contributions Timothy in Coralville Stephen in Colmpton Gary in McKees Rocks James in Scoresby Jed in Jersey City Charles in Midlothian Peter in Oslo Juergen in Vilderstadt Brent in Philadelphia Harvey in Sorum James in Charlotte Michael in Wake Forest Charles in Mechanicsburg, Charles in Kobe Keith in Edmonds Ken in Lands Unknown Tim in St.
Augustine Daniel in Levittown I want to make sure I'm doing this right here Yes, there we are John in Fredericton It's easy to say that Mark in Knoxville Robert in Pontesbury Peter in Rochester.
Michael in Attleboro Steve in Santa Fe Craig in New Lambton Scott in Columbia Thomas in Chicago Peter in Fort Myers Laura in Spokane Valley Gary in Houston Robert in Paso Robles Rick in Traverse City Brian in Walton Hills Jim in Myrtle Beach and Brian in Johnson City Thanks to Robert in Wakefield for the $20 contribution and the following for thank you for your $10 contribution Stephen in Plainfield John in Vienna Jason in
Charlestown Joseph in Marietta Stephen in Costa Mesa Wagner in Allen Robert in Colombiana James in San Antonio another James in Melbourne Chris in Chorleywood, Bill in Parts Unknown, Barry in Des Plaines, Timothy in West Windsor, Mark in Vero Beach, Abel in Santa Rosso, Jonathan in Plainsboro, Paul in Lawrenceville, Neil in West Hartford, Michael in Robbins, James in Amity Harbor, Santiago in Palm City, Phil in Summers, Mark in Coopersburg, Donald in Furlong, Peter in Auburn,
Nick in Marquette, Scott in Bourbonnais, Cal in Russellville, Jeremiah in Edgewater, Brian in Southbury, and john in wake forest every single one of you rocks thank you so much and uh very very kind of all of you you are awesome so. Again, it's yeah. Mackie come up slash premium. If you are interested in the list, the list was, uh, long for a variety of reasons. One of them is that, uh, we have had so much to talk about on the show that we haven't gotten to that in too long.
So shall we go about humbling though? I know. Yeah. Yeah. It really is. Yeah.
It's pretty good.
Shall we go to Steve's question?
¶ Steve-Reliability of CCC Backup for a wipe and restore?
We shall. We shall do so at this time. He writes in high MGG team. I have a Mac mini in the dock on my, oh, wrong one. I haven't done a full nuke and pave since the days of, yeah, right? It's just the way my morning's going. I haven't done a full nuke and pave since the days of the Mac OS allowed the full volume carbon copy clone restores. So I'm a bit leery to do it now. Hold my hand in this new era. I'm running CCC 6.1.12 on Sequoia 15.0 MacBook Pro M1.
I've had issues with Spotlight not seeming to index right away and some system flakiness and slowdowns that are nonspecific. So I did a first aid scan. I have seen the following error on my data drive and based on the unfixable error, I think I should do a full format and restore using CCC backup, but I am scared to do it in case something isn't properly restored. CCC reports its backup is successful. Here's the first aid scan. And he goes through the errors.
I won't read them out because they will sound like nonsense. He said, but we'll have them in the show notes. I tried a recovery mode first aid, and it still didn't get further than this. If I do a full format and reinstall of macOS, will the CC backup via Migration Assistant get me back to where I was, including all of my data and application configurations and registrations? Thanks, Steve.
So a couple of things on this. Oh, can you hear me? Yes. A couple of things on this that I think I missed the first time around. First, he says he's on Sequoia 15.0. I would upgrade your operating system because I think we're on 15.5 now. So that might be worthwhile doing. I don't think that's going to make a difference in this instance. But if you're going to be doing a backup and restore,
You know, might help.
The other thing is, yes, I would presume restoring from your carbon copy backup via migration assistance will get you back to where you were with all your data applications, configurations, registrations, as long as you have it set up to backup all that stuff. I'm assuming you're doing a clone, so you should be fine there. But before you try any of that, I would first recommend running the scan on the entire container instead of just your volume.
Because what I noticed, because you gave us that full list of scan feedback that Pete didn't read out because it would have been really boring, but within that, it has a clue. If you read through the error messages in the scan, it's giving you a suggestion, and the line is, try running FSCK against the entire APFS container instead of a volume.
Well, FSCK is the File System Consistency Check-In Interactive Repair command that you could run from the terminal, but Disk Utility is going to basically do the same thing. But you need to run it against your APFS container. To do that, go into Disk Utility, and from the View menu, choose Show All Devices.
And then you should be able to select the container for the volume, not just the volume itself and you can try running your scan and first aid on that if that doesn't work while you're booted in normally you already mentioned that you had tried running from recovery mode i mentioned this on the tip earlier too so boot your mac into recovery mode and run from disk utility there to do that on an m1 you shut down your mac press and hold the power button wait
until you see the apple logo or a spinning globe you might have to type in your password if requested and then you should be able to open up the disk utility in recovery mode from the mac os utilities menu and you can run your scan from there Give those a shot and let us know how it turns out.
Yeah.
There they go. Hiding the answer right in front of you again.
Well, to be fair, like it, that's a long list of things. And if you're not, it is, it's easy to gloss over things in there. I read through that list because I, I was like, well, is there some part of this that we should read in the question? You know, I was like, okay, so I'm filtering things out.
Even doing that i never saw the note that adam called out so it you know it's buried there but yeah yeah running against that's really i mean it's it's smart advice anyway and it's especially smart advice when it's literally what apple is telling us to do it almost should come up as like an alert though like that's the kind of thing that disc utility should yeah yeah it's.
Like but adam did that to us a couple weeks ago too it was over the iphone mirroring one it's right there it's like you know i have to stumble across the answer but it was right there for hey yeah turn off iphone mirroring um
The thing is though even that error message it says you know use fsck and like how many people are going to even know what that is
Like that's fair i mean.
The reality is i could have given the tip on you know how to boot into terminal and run the fsck k command but like that's way more work so
Yeah disc utility already runs fsck for you like the error or then not the error but the log that you're seeing is coming from fsck it's saying run me again on the container so yeah yeah yeah love it cool all right perfect next up right well.
Yeah next up jed wrote in with a question he says hey geeks so my sister has
¶ Jedd-Which Wi-Fi mesh system(s) do you suggest today?
struggled with access points and bad signals and finally is willing to go mesh. I have and like my Eros, but I seem to remember last time this came up that Dave said, if I was starting from scratch, I would suggest. But I don't remember what that was. Or more importantly, if that's changed. She's not super technical, but also not incapable either. Suggestions and, of course, price is a factor. Suggestions and thoughts. Thanks, Jed.
Yeah um this is a good time of year to have this conversation it seems like everybody's kind of in that mode of rethinking about that kind of stuff um all else being equal i like euro as as my sort of go-to it really is the simplest. The most robust in terms of it just works. And I constantly am testing different Wi-Fi systems. I just turned on the Unify Wi-Fi 7 access point in my office as kind of my primary one.
And I realized that old, old, old iPads that I have would not connect to the Wi-Fi because of some setting that is on by default in the Unify stuff because it's doing the extra security or whatever that the old iPads can't do. It's like, oh, yeah, okay. Connected it to the Eero and it just fired right up. So I do like the Eero. I would probably, price-wise, I would lean you toward the 6E because the 7s, they have come down quite a bit in price, but take a look to make that decision.
That said, there are always reasons to consider alternatives, and that's why I said all else being equal because our homes, our environments for Wi-Fi are not all equal. What I have here is very different from what Adam has, and Adam does really well. You have the Orbeez over there, Adam. And for that long haul, back haul over Wi-Fi, the Orbeez is it, as far as I'm concerned. That's the one. Yeah.
Yeah, I was going to say, I'm super, super happy with my Orbeez. I think the issue with the Orbeez system is it's not on the more affordable end of the price scale. I had to invest quite a bit.
Yeah, correct. Eero really isn't either. But again, you need what you need and you could, you know, you have a detached building like I do here. I just happened to have a detached building where the previous owner buried Ethernet cable between it and the house. So I'm able to do things differently than you're able to do things and you have to go Wi-Fi or bury some Ethernet cable. Right. You know, so affordability wise, I really like the TP-Link Deco mesh.
And that stuff is fantastic. they somebody years ago at Eero because I was talking with them about uh you know systems and all that and I'm like they're like what other ones do you like I'm like well I like the TP link they were like yeah like the retail price on that stuff is less than our cost because TP link owns their own factories they make tons and tons of stuff they are able to do all of this at scale and so it's you know i always say that every
business uh needs to have an unfair competitive advantage right like that's just how businesses work and if you run your own business figure out what yours is right uh and with tp link certainly one of theirs is that they make so many things that they're able to do it at scale and and and be inexpensive uh and so you know tp link deco is something that I would strongly consider, especially, when you're being conscious of budget, which I know we all are. So, and it works really well. So,
Those would be the three that come to mind. Yeah. I mean. Unify is fun. Nerdy and all of that, but it does get, it's not, based on what you described, it is not something I would recommend for your sister. Right. Yeah. And it's not what I use. I, I think perhaps the best thing that I can say is that I have almost all of them here, like collecting dust a lot of the time, which is awful. That's why I try to like give them away to friends and family once I'm done testing.
But the Eero is the one that I constantly, consistently go back to. But like Orbi would be on that list these days. And the TP-Link Deco would also be on that list. They're really built for consumers to get what they need and forget about having to manage the system. And I think that's super important.
I'll second that. I'm running those Eros, and they're just – it's seamless. Yeah. And a couple places I need an Ethernet plug-in, if you put the Ero near where you need that. It does a Wi-Fi backhaul, obviously, but, uh, it, it gives me the chance to plug in an ethernet cable.
Yeah. Yeah. It works out. So I, yeah, that's my, that's my thoughts on this. That's our thoughts on this. It's not just me.
So yeah. Yeah.
Yep.
So should we go on to,
Yeah. If you have any other questions, obviously let us know it's tis the season. It seems, it seems this is the time of year we always get into kind of the Wi-Fi stuff. So yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Should I read Chris's question? Let's do it. We got time?
I think so, yeah.
Yeah. So Chris writes in, in 1091, Dave offered basically an aside on the latest
¶ Chris-Is the Nvidia SHIELD TV really best for Plex?
episode that you went with a shield to get the best results with Plex. I was intrigued. I know that a lot of people praise this box, and I occasionally have issues playing content on my Apple TV with Plex. I'm told some BS about the file format, codec, yada, yada, yada. I've got the latest 4K Apple TV and the latest version of Plex running on an M1 Mac Mini, and the content is on a NAS. So I feel that I should be able to play anything and everything.
Plus, I often have more than one file version of a movie or an episode for Plex to choose from. So when I get a playback error message, I want to throw the remote. Oh, I know that feeling. I know that feeling. Is the shield saving you from the same frustrations? Chris.
Uh yes that is there are a variety of reasons why the shield is you know the current best plex playback device um and really they're more about the limitations of the apple tv than what's great about the shield the shield has you know a super fast cpu more than it would need to be uh has all the things but what it doesn't have is the limitations that apple seems to have chosen to put into the apple tv where it won't let full quality uncompressed sound
through without messing with it and therefore keeping the atmos uh data from getting passed through for uncompressed sound for compressed sound it makes it through just fine that's why it works with like apple tv plus Netflix and some very few movies from Plex. The shield passes it through. But it's another piece of hardware. And I don't like the user interface of the shield nearly as well as I like the user interface of my Apple TV. So a lot of times I default to using the Apple TV.
And if I know that I'm going to watch something with Atmos content or something like that, then I will launch up the shield. But I do have an interim step for all of us. And that interim step is Infuse, which is an app, a third-party app from a company called Firecore. It exists for all of your Apple devices, including the Apple TV. And while it can't completely bypass Apple's limitations, it can do more than the Plex app can do in terms of getting things working right.
So Infuse often becomes my default app for watching Plex content. It is a paid app and it's a beautiful app. It works really well. It feels very much at home in the Apple environment. And so that, you know, actually the app, I say the app is paid. That's not true. The app is free. I mean, the pro features that are optional are the thing you pay for, and you might want some of those. But, yeah, it's a great app.
I completely forgot about Infuse. I need to download that and use that again because, obviously, VLC players – one i've been using to play off but it doesn't play plex stuff
I can but not you know it like plex feels like smoothly plex feels like a first class citizen with infuse you don't have to like connect to it with dlna although you you can uh you can just connect to your plex library and then when you launch infuse it looks just like you've launched plex i mean it you you get all of that experience it doesn't have to spend hours indexing it just reads and talks directly to plex in a very seemingly native way i don't know obviously i don't know exactly what
they're doing behind the scenes but my experience is like it's fine my family uses infuse all the time nobody hates it you know so that that speaks volumes that's.
What i need to do yeah
It yep it's good stuff will.
That play it should interface with channels as well right
Um but let's not go there the no the answer is no channels interfaces with channels yeah yeah well there's that if you wanted to point a folder you could i'm sure you could do all that but that that's making that.
Starts getting yeah hard
You're creating unnecessary complexity for that yes yes.
I i once you said no i went oh yeah i see why
Yeah don't.
Do it don't do it folks
Yeah i.
I like that they offer a lifetime price which is nice
Yeah i want those pro features i can't say.
99 bucks for a lifetime 12.99
Yearly there it is so yeah on.
The mac app store
Great thank you for looking that up appreciate it i can't see it because i own it already and it i don't know maybe i can see it i never know where to where to look for where do you look for that stuff oh do you twist open the in-app purchases thing I see it now.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, there you go. Great.
Same for Plex. If you aren't a, what is it called? Plex Pro?
Plex Pass.
Yeah. Pass, yeah. I bought that, I don't know, 15 years ago now, and it's been worth every penny. Buy the lifetime Plex Pass. You won't regret it.
Yeah agreed agreed yeah um i know we're almost done i have a i have two
¶ CSF-Limitless BoostHero flashlight and jump starter
cool stuffs found that i want to share the the first one is uh we've talked about how nice it is to have a battery in your car that can jump start your vehicle uh this is something that i highly recommend And we all have, I make sure I have them in every car that we own. And the Limitless folks have a cool take on this. It's called the Boost Hero. It is a portable jump starter that stays in your car in the form factor of a flashlight. So it's a handheld flashlight that can charge your phone too.
And it also will jump start your car. And I've tried it in all three of those things because we have Subarus here and Subaru, at least in up until this year, has made it very easy for you to leave lights on that will kill the battery. So we have routine opportunities with which to test things like this. It's 130 bucks. So, you know, you're getting what you pay for here. Comes in a bunch of different colors, but really works.
It's great. I love the form factor. It's lightweight and you can kind of just tuck it away in your car and then you have it when you need it. And the, the jumpstarting instructions are super easy. If you've never done this kind of thing before, it really walks you through it and makes it so that anybody can do it. Um, yeah, that's good stuff.
It says for up to six liter gasoline and four liter diesel engines, that's some monster power there. Um, So that ought to tell you why those batteries can bring down an airplane if they decide to go high order and go hot.
Exactly.
There's a lot of juice in there. Holy cow.
This is the kind of thing it came in. I have all of these in my vehicles, too, versions of these. This one looks great. But it was funny. I was camping in the Black Hills and the people, a couple campsites down from us had, you know, left their stuff plugged into their, you know, auto power or all night and ran down their battery. And, uh, they come over to my campsite and says, Oh, can you, uh, can you drive your car over and, and give us a jump? And I said, I've got something even better.
I pulled it out and walked over, hooked it up, jumped him. And the woman says to her husband, you need to get one of these.
Yes. Yes. That woman's advice is true for all of us who own vehicles. Yes. Yeah. Even if you have jumper cables and always have another car around, which obviously we don't, but the simplicity of just being able to like you, you know, you didn't have to drive your car over and get it close enough for the hoods and the whole freaking thing. Like, it's just easier.
The other part of this, I don't know about this flashlight one, I'm assuming it has, most of these also have either USB-C or USB on them, and you can use them as a battery to charge your phone to an emergency situation, too.
That is correct with this. Yes, you can charge your phone with these two. Yeah, with this one, too. It's awesome.
It's great. And now that we have satellite SOS, you know, like another good reason to have that, you know, your batteries run down, you're in an emergency situation, you can plug that in, get enough juice to get a message out.
That's a really good point. Yep. Yep. I like it. I like it. Yeah. And the flashlight on this has a couple of options. You can have like full blast, which is like 110 lumens, low power. You can have it do an SOS. You can have it flash the Morse code for SOS just repeatedly and also do a strobing kind of thing. So, you know, it's definitely built for exactly the scenarios you're discussing, Adam. Yeah, it's good stuff. I have another cool stuff found that I'm still kind of testing out,
¶ CSF-MailMaven from SmallCubed
and it's Mail Maven, which is a new mail client from the folks at Small Cubed. These are the people who made MailSuite, which had MailTags and SigPro and MailActon and all of those plugins that we loved here so much at MGG and yet had to do without because Apple took away the ability for developers to make plugins like that and extensions don't work the same way. So the folks at SmallCubed decided, all right, we're done with being reliant
on Apple to bring you these features. We will bring you these features by writing a mail client that has them in it. And if you used any of those aforementioned plugins, MailMaven feels very at home. I mean, it feels a lot like mail anyway. There are some user interface slight differences and tweaks, of course. But in general, it very much feels at home to an Apple mail person and especially feels at home if you were a former user of any of those plugins, too.
So it's really flexible, which is surprising for a mail client coming from a small company because usually they make the version they want. And that's what you get. But that's not been the case with this. I feel very, you know, I can tweak things and, uh, and it works, it works really well. I'm not using it as my primary yet, but I am close. Uh, so yeah, it's pretty good. Pretty good. So I just wanted to bring that up. It's in public beta now.
Uh, you can go download it and I think they've got, uh, yeah, they've got discounted pricing for the first year. It's like 45 bucks or something. So, and if you owned anything from them, there's renewal pricing. So you can look into that too. So Male Maven, and of course, linked from the show notes. All right. That's what I got. You guys got anything else for today?
I actually do have one. I sent you the link to it in the back room.
¶ Sunway Solar Car Battery
So you don't need the flashlight to jump yourself if you, for instance, leave your car for long periods of time, as I do leave mine at work. I have a little solar charger that I leave in my windscreen, for those of you in Britain, windshield for the Americans. And it's got a cord and little alligator clips. There's also a cigarette lighter, but if you plug it into your cigarette lighter, it won't work unless that's hot all the time, which in most cars it is not without the key on.
So it goes to little alligator clips. Whenever the sun's up, it trickle charges my battery. So my battery has sat for over six months in a parking lot without being started. And when I get there, I am confident my car will fire right up because every day it gets 12 volts of power trickled into it. And so it's a solar charger to keep your car.
And it's $23.
23 whole dollars.
Huh.
Huh.
Go figure. That's right. Wow. And actually they come in different sizes. The one, one and a half watt one is $23. they go 4, 5, and 8 watts and the 8 watt one is $40 so like they're very huh.
Mine's a one and a half one and it's never, never not started.
Amazing. Love that. Huh. Wow.
And it's got wiring in it. So you, you know, you're supposed to take your alligator clips off your battery before you fire it up. But if you don't, the wiring in it, the logic in it prevents backflow of electricity into your solar panel.
Okay. Yeah.
Blowing that up.
Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Yeah.
Yeah.
Huh. Well, what fun is that, Pete?
Right, then you don't get to use your flashlight jump starter.
That's true. Yeah.
Yeah. No, I meant the backflow. Like, why stop the backflow? That could be fun. Exploding solar panel.
Yeah.
Boom.
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Fun.
¶ MGG 1092 Outtro
All right. Awesome.
Yep. Outward we go. Thanks for hanging out, everybody. Thanks for sending in all your fun stuff to us at feedback at MacGeekHub.com.
Thanks for participating in our discord thanks to cashfly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you thanks to the folks at one more for doing our monthly giveaway for june with those headphones make sure you go listen to pete's so there i was show adam's debut film podcast and my business brain and gig gab if any of that stuff interests you and uh thank you yeah Share the show with somebody. I would love that. It's always great.
Do I hear the band? They're there.
There's the band. Nobody's wearing our shirts today.
I forgot.
We're coming up on 20 years here, and my family's planning a little gathering here at the house the night before our thing. So if you're in the Durham area, reach out and let me know, and I'll let you know. I'm not sure how big this thing's going to become, but Pete and I will be there, and I would like to have some of you if you're local. So reach out feedback at Mac geekup.com. It'll be on, I think the night of July 12th. So, yeah. Uh, but with that said, what's our, what do we say?
Uh, uh, go.
I would, I would say like Pete often did in this episode. Don't get caught.
That's fair. Made on Mac. Later.
All right um wake up now july 12th
June 12th did i say july i.
Think you did
Shoot i might actually edit that into the episode then okay um.
Double check it i think that's what i heard yeah because i was like are you gonna be
At max stock
Yes no it's june 12th it's june 12th june 12th I will edit that into the episode. Yep. Yep. Yep.
And I think I will be there. I'll be in between Denver and Memphis and I'll be back home.
All right. Then let's, we can just do this right now because, well, now we've said it, we've recorded it. I'm just going to add this to the episode. It's June 12th, folks. It's June 12th, not July 12th. I got caught, had things, but yeah, it would be June 12th, Thursday, June 12th. So coming right up. So there you go. Now, later.