¶ Mac Geek Gab 1102 for Monday, August 11th, 2025
It's time for Mac Geek Cabin. Listener Craig brings us our quick tip,
¶ Craig-QT-Mirrors are WiFi's mortal enemy!
perhaps a little don't get caught of the week by sharing something about his Wi-Fi mesh. He has a satellite. He's got his router in his office, which is next to the front door in a fairly central location at the front of the house. A satellite at the back of the house and a satellite. Sorry, a satellite at the back left and a satellite at the back right. And he says, it has always stumped me that several devices that my wife uses in her she cave never connect to satellite one.
They always connect to the more distant satellite two. And on occasion, satellite one would go haywire and have to be rebooted. Recently, in the midst of preparations for some visitors, we noticed that the problem connections and connectivity issues moved from satellite one to satellite two. Interesting. He says, I scratched my head for a few days and then had a voila moment. My wife had moved a fairly large floor mirror to a different location in the back right of the house.
And its normal location was directly between her she-cave and the original problem, Satellite 1. With the move, she moved it very close to Satellite 2. I surmise that mirror construction, including some metallic core materials, must then be the mortal enemy to Wi-Fi signals. A little chat with ChatGPT confirmed. So watch placement and location of mirrors when setting up your or at least troubleshooting your Wi-Fi.
More tips like this, plus your questions answered today on Mac Geek of 1102 for Monday, August 11th. National Align Your Teeth Day 2025. Greetings, folks, and welcome to MacGeek of the show where you send in tips like that. You send in cool stuff found. You send in questions. We share it all. We answer your questions, we hope, all in an effort to ensure that we each learn at least five new things every time we get together.
Our sponsors for this episode include Coda.io slash MGG, where you can get six months of their team plan for startups for free. EternalStorms.at slash bundle, where you can get a whole bundle of Eternal Storms stuff. Yoink, Transloader, Deskmat, so many cool things. IDOU.com slash MGG. You get 15% off these practical, relevant courses designed to seamlessly transition you from theory to practice.
Strawberry.me slash MGG, or you can use code MGG to claim your $50 credit while you discover what's possible with a professional coach by your side. And Webroot.com slash MGG, where you get 50% off Webroot total protection or Webroot essentials. We'll talk more in depth about each of those throughout the episode. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
And here in South Dakota, I'm Adam Christensen.
And here also in New Hampshire, it's Pilot Pete and Show 1102. Wow, we're cranking them up there. And the only meeting this week is it's sequentially numbered. No other hidden meetings, codes, anything else I could think of. You guys got anything?
Well, I mean, I'm just excited about Show 1111. That's coming. It's been a while since we've had three, four. I mean, we've never had four numbers in a row.
This is our first four.
This would be the first. And I don't want to say the last, but I'll say the last for a good long while.
At least another 20 years and change.
Unless we start doing daily episodes.
Right.
I think if we started doing daily episodes, we might have to stop focusing so much on the episode number. Right. But anyway. yeah yep uh i'm curious about something we uh we apple
¶ Your Opinions on MGG’s Titular Methodology?
podcast for years has said don't put the episode number in your titles in apple podcasts um in fact they will sometimes even filter them out if they can sometimes but they say don't put it in there because that's you know you there's another place in apple podcast through like metadata where we can put the episode number And so we come up, our titling methodology, if you will, is that we usually find something that we've said during the show, a little quote or something, and put that in there.
And it's very much inside baseball. Yeah.
I i'm like we used to use what i considered you know boring and informative things like we talked about wi-fi you know wi-fi face id and battery limits like that was it which did you my yeah oh my yeah well they were oh i i know that there was more than one oh my on titles so i think i i'm i i'm curious what you the audience thinks about it but i'm also curious like we three have never really had this conversation and it seems we're in it so let's have it like what do you think adam about about.
I mean i have for 19 years i did mine exactly the same but that's true it was born out of the early days of podcasting when you had a you know an ipod and you were trying to get through things so i had straight like a numbering with a date and like the name of the podcast and you You know, that was about it. I never did that kind of custom naming thing. That kind of came later, I think, again, when we had actual podcatchers and
things that handled meta-meditation. Yeah. My naming conventions and what I learned was that my audience did not take well to change ever. They were not really open to it. So I didn't mess with too many things because it was working. Fair. And there was no reason to. Nobody ever complained about the titles of the show. And so I didn't even change when Apple did their thing. It's like, this is how I've done it. This is what people expect.
It sorts in the right order because I did the dates the right way and all that fun stuff. How about you, Pete? I think it made it easier for people to figure out.
Do you have an opinion on what we do for what we do here?
Um i like uh the the custom titles and i remember the conversation when we started so there i was you said that very thing you know apple says kind of don't don't put it in the show title yeah just don't do it and um i had new listener allison look over my website for accessibility and you know she's got a good eye for that sort of stuff she tore it apart man that was like getting my my masterpiece opus back from the teacher all marked up in red ink you didn't
do this you need to do that and it was all great constructive criticism and she said and put the show number in the title yeah and i said but
On the website oh no no no on the website yes in yeah yeah yeah in your.
Put it in the title itself too because she goes i don't care what apple says put it in there it's easier for your people to find with her what oh so i've done that from show one
So but you can do a custom title just for apple podcast so for mgg on our website the episode number is 100 there for um for apple podcasts it is not there and that's something you can set in the.
Metadata down in blue blueberry press or power press right yeah yeah so i just put it across all of them and apple's never griped at me about it or taking it out to my knowledge that i've seen no
But they they they do there is they have not they don't say anything but there is some, uh they advise you not to they are very clear about that um and there is some evidence to support them not highlighting shows that don't adhere to their guidelines and that's certainly true if your images aren't the right sizes you know all of those things so yeah i.
Comply with all of that but yeah i've always put the episode number maybe i'll just i'll take it out of the one at the bottom where you put it in for power press and see see
If all right
So we really haven't answered the question though so i'm going to ask the question to the audience and if either of you have uh an answer that you want to share to this otherwise we'll move on because we actually have a show to do uh but i i'm mainly curious to people who have found the show recently for for those of you who have been with us for a long time first of all thank you it it's like one of the most amazing things we get to experience together here uh but
for those of you that have been that you know once you're once you're in my i'm curious what you think about the titles too but that's more of our inside baseball thing and i love that where i'm curious for relatively new listeners is did the titles help you decide to start listening or not right and if so why because that is is i mean to me the titles serve two purposes one our inside baseball thing that we can all sort of you know get behind and enjoy and have as us you know and
i don't mean just the three of us i mean all of us and and then there's the um the you know we want to bring new people into the family the right yeah you.
Want to hook
We want to hook them right exactly so did the titles hook you what type of titles would hook you and and so that was that was really the question i was i was trying to get to feedback at mackie cap.com.
You heard him feedback at mackie cap.com
That's right pete feedback at macgeekgab.com. Dave, can I just add one last thing on that though? Because again, this, this bugs me and I just had to pick up my phone and check. Um, so, you know, it's like Apple says that, but like in the podcast app UI, um, the dates are there, but they're like really small. And also they do that whole relative thing. Maybe there's a setting for this, but it'll say, you know, this was five days ago or one week ago or like,
Oh yeah. Yeah.
And so I was just liked having a date or a number in the title because as you're scrolling through i thought i think this is to allison's point that p brought up you can see that you know like there's no question about it it's like okay that's that one that's that one oh i've got them in the wrong order yep yep yeah at a glance on your device so that was the main reason i always kept them in all
Right shall we go to quick tips.
Well i got one quick question oh on
The on the opening remember i said i had a question pre-show about the opening if wi-fi if mirrors are the mortal enemy of wi-fi can they be the best friend
No properly positioned
Uh, if you want to block wifi from a certain area, that's all they're going to do.
No, no. Okay.
No, no, no, no, no. They will, they will just block it. It, because it, yeah.
Go ahead, Adam. Sorry. The issue is the metal content. So, uh, another way like a Faraday cage. Yeah, exactly. All right. I'm assuming this, they don't probably don't use silver anymore, but you know, whatever they, there's metallic material in there. So the real thing is it's not mirrors are the enemy of Wi-Fi. It's metal is the enemy of Wi-Fi. Fair enough. Anybody who's ever, like one of my first apartments that are condos that I bought was all metal frame studs.
Yeah.
And that'll even mess with it. You know, even though between, you know, the 16 inches, is that right?
Yep, 16 on center.
Yeah. So the 16 inches between studs, even though that's not there, like that just having the metal caused extra problems versus like wood or something like that. So it makes sense.
Yeah.
And I would say even to a certain degree, like solid surfaces, like if you have lap and plaster walls and stuff like that, I think that can even be a problem. Just density of material.
Yeah. And depending on what the material is, we had a long conversation about this. I think it was the three of us about, um you know some types of i i guess it's plaster i'm not sure exactly but are are put on a metal mesh and some are put on wood right and and so the ones on the on the metal mesh that you wouldn't necessarily see if unless you were the one that did it but you know moving into a place uh you would uh you know that that that can also be a huge problem again because
of the metal it's you But you're right, Adam. Density of material. Stone is bad. Yeah.
All right.
Sorry for the rabbit hole.
So I got a quick tip from Andrew. Andrew says, hi. Hi, Andrew.
¶ Andrew-QT-Clear iPhone keyboard dictionary without Nuke and Pave
In a recent episode, there was a story of a person who wished to clear out certain words or a spelling of a word from his device's memory. It can be done without a complete nuke and pave. You can nuke and pave just your keyboard dictionary and learned words under settings, general, reset, reset keyboard dictionary. That's it.
Huh. Love that.
Boom. Yep.
Huh. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'll take it. I'll take it. I like it. Oh, you got the next one, right, Pete?
Oh, I do? Oh, no, no, no.
It's me. Sorry. No, I jumped all over the place.
¶ Craig-QT-Inspector is better than Get Info
No worries. Yeah. Craig shared something that is interesting. He says he credits Gary at MacMost for covering how much better in the Finder Inspector is than GetInfo. He says, when in a Finder window, you can always right-click on a file and choose Get Info. But did you know that if you right-click and then press Option, that Get Info will be replaced with Show Inspector? This also happens in the menu bar, of course, if you want to do it that way, too.
Inspector has all the goodies of Get Info, but with a few additional bonuses.
Inspector has the advantage of being sticky in that you can select another file in the Finder window, and inspector will stay on the screen as you hop from file to file and you can actually you can actually hop from file to file using the arrow keys if you have your stuff uh you know in a list or a grid so you can sort of drive around really quickly and see all that stuff he says so try changing your memory brain cells to use inspector instead of get info
you may be glad you did and he shares a little bonus tip that you can uh if you don't want to do it with the right click you can make this happen with option command and i so command i is get info option command i is um inspector so that's.
Cool the other other thing i'll add to that shortcut is um if you select uh multiple items and if you just do get info it will open multiple info windows whereas if you have multiple items and do the option trick command and option i it will open the inspector and the inspector will allow you to select inspect basically multiple items it'll say you have three items and uh give you like the total size of all three and some other things so it'll group those things together
in a single info panel instead of having separate info panels
So if i want to see how big four files are i select those four files and i do uh an inspector and it will it will calculate the size and all of that for me yep yeah, that is that's pretty good i like that yeah i'm sure i've seen that before i don't know that i ever thought about it that way yeah yeah, Love it. Great. All right. We talked about butt dialing in last week's episode.
I don't know that we called it that, but that's what we talked about, where people were making phone calls that they did not intend to. It's more like pocket dialing, I suppose. We have a couple of comments on that. You want to take us to Bruce?
¶ Bruce-QT-1101-Don't Unlock with Apple Watch to Avoid Dialing!
Yeah. Bruce wrote in with something that none of us considered when we were chatting about this. He says, the problem I was running into wasn't pocket dialing so much as my podcast playback getting screwed up. He said, I'd lock my phone, put it in my pocket, and sometimes the podcast playback went forward, backward, skipped to the next episode in overcast.
I'd take my phone out of my pocket, and it would be unlocked, and the phone would be in overcast, possibly from the activity widget on the home screen. I thought about it a bit. How could the phone get unlocked? Well, in my pocket. And one day, I saw the notice that this phone was unlocked with Apple Watch. I turned that feature off, and I think the problem has gone away. This might be the answer to the pocket dialing discussed in 1101.
With Face ID, I don't really need to unlock with Apple Watch for my phone, and I still find it useful for my Macs. This is in Settings, Face ID and Passcode, most of the way down the screen. Bruce, wow. Hidden in plain sight, right in front of us the whole time. Huh.
Yeah.
I think that may be it.
I mean, that may be it for some people.
One possibility, certainly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think we touched on the most common issue, which is simply leaving your phone unlocked when you put it in your pocket. Like, getting into the habit of locking your phone before you put it in your pocket, I think is probably... The easiest, the most common way of avoiding these things. But yeah, that one, that's interesting. Huh.
Yeah.
Huh. I have that setting turned on on my phone, the unlock with watch, and I don't have problems pocket dialing people that I know of. So I say. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway. Yeah. Go ahead.
Uh no kiwi gram and uh chat just mentioned the iphone screen needs to be awake for that feature to work so it's not likely to happen in your pocket unless maybe you're if you're in bright well like will it wake up because it'll wake up when it detects like light or movement right so maybe if you're in a really bright environment and thin shorts i don't know like what would wake up your phone in your pocket i would think that normally the sensor would keep it asleep yeah Yeah,
Right, exactly.
Well, remember, you hit volume up, volume down, and the power button briefly, and that'll lock it, and it ain't coming undone without your passcode being entered.
That's true. Yep.
That may be a way to troubleshoot.
¶ Steve-QT-1101-Require FaceID for Phone app to avoid butt-dialing
Steve has two ways of mitigating the unintentional launching of the phone app, which, again, I think is probably a... Limited use case or a limited problem case for these pot or cause of these pocket dials i think we've kind of identified the main one but but if the problem is that the phone app is launching without your.
Intention he has two potential solutions one is easy starting with ios 18 you can do this long press the phone app and choose require face id so that the phone app cannot launch without face id again we think the problem is more likely that the phone app is already launched when you put it in your pocket but that's one and the other which would be far more difficult but or far more involved than that but certainly accomplishes the same thing is create a boots and suspenders
series shortcut automation requiring a passcode once the phone app is launched and therefore prior to tapping a name or dialing a number and uh and he created a thing where it says you know when the phone is opened ask for number with a passcode if uh the passcode is correct great otherwise open uh safari instead so essentially the the logic is if you type the right passcode you get to stay in the phone app if you don't type the right passcode you
are brought to a different app aka safari so you know yeah interesting stuff uh we have more quick tips to share we have some don't get cots to share and we also uh the next thing we want to share is our sponsors. Because, well, you've heard me say it before, don't get caught.
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¶ Joe-QT-1100-Use Pill Organizers for holding screws during a teardown
Yeah. uh we got joe and joe wrote and he says just a quick comment regarding how to organize screws when taking stuff apart we had talked about doing like repairs and keeping track of all your screws and stuff like that the previous episode uh he says pill organizers you can get seven day morning and night large slot pill organizers for cheap at walmart and other places uh just label them one through seven and the flip and then flip it and then do eight through 14.
The doors snap closed when you're done with a step preventing them from accidentally falling out if it gets knocked around or something like that. Then just install in reverse. If following the instructions, just write pill one, et cetera, on, you know, next to your instruction. And then you know where the screws for that step were. So later, Joe from Raleigh. That's a great tip.
I love that.
Yeah, those are definitely readily available and cheap. I think, Dave, you might have mentioned, and I don't know if we call that a specific one, but that you have a mat or something that you use. And I don't know about you guys, but I have a lot of my tools for doing repairs and stuff like that come from iFixit, One of my favorite sites. That's where I go for all my instructions usually too. Great.
IFixit sells a lot of tools and stuff like that. And one thing that they have that's really cool is something called the FixMat. It's an actual working mat and it has little trays at the top that you can organize, but then the mat itself has a grid on it and it's magnetic.
So you can put stuff down on there on the grid and not only that it has like a pen that comes with it that you can write and then erase uh on the mat so you can label right on the mat what your step is and all that sort of stuff i mean it's a little more expensive than uh pill organizers at about 36 bucks you might be able to find it cheaper on amazon or other places but huh nice little product yeah
Yeah with a little either dry erase or green i would guess dry erase pencil but.
Yeah i think that's what it is yeah yeah
But yeah it erasable whatever it is yes.
But then the magnet will hold your hold your screws and parts in the same way but i do really like that uh i mean the pill organizers obviously again really cheap and you can get it from probably anywhere almost anywhere in your any drugstore walgreens walmart fun whatever cool
One more follow-up quick tip before we move on here.
¶ David-QT-1099-AppleScript to move the Dock back to primary monitor
From David, back in episode 1099, we were at MaxDoc. He says, I listened to your episode, and I have the same problem with my dock moving to my secondary monitor for no good reason. I can't explain why it happens, but I can suggest a quick remedy. I wrote an Apple script, and we've got it in the show notes, that moves the doc back to the main monitor in the event that this happens. And it is a one-line, well, it's not really a one-line Apple script, but it's short.
And he says, to make the process even easier, I've created an app out of the script that I keep in my doc. So I am literally one click away from getting my doc back to the main monitor and I don't have to like click and drag and do all the other things. He says, I hope that this helps others with the same issue. Yeah, for sure. You can take this, put it into script editor and then run it. Make sure it does what you want it to do, which you can do right in script editor
for AppleScript. And then you can save it as an application so that it just can essentially run standalone on your Mac, which is a great way to leverage AppleScript. And this is a good – if you've never messed with AppleScript before, this is a nice kind of easy entry to it and a useful one if you're having this problem of your dock jumping around from screen to screen. So I guess I should consider myself fortunate. I have multiple screens on every
one of my Macs, and my dock never moves. But I keep my doc on the, all of my screens are to the right of my, my main, my main screens in the middle. And then my, my second screen is to the right. I don't have screens on right and left of my primary screen. Uh, even when I have three, it's, it's off to the right or behind me. Uh, if you watch the live show, cause there is a screen back there that just shows our logo usually, uh, yeah.
But I keep my doc on the left side of the screen as the gods intended. So, you know, there you go. Is it time to move on?
Move on, folks. Nothing to see.
Nothing to see. All right, great.
Actually, a quick question, Dave. Did I see somewhere in the mail that someone, we were talking about the previous tip, the whiteboard or the fix-it mat. And I talked about someone using a Sharpie permanent ink. Did someone write in and say, just write over that with a, if you don't have alcohol, write over that with a whiteboard marker and it should loosen it up and let you erase it?
I have heard that. I mean, I saw that tip. I have not tried it. So the tip is, yeah, like you said, if you've written in permanent ink on a whiteboard, you can usually loosen up that ink by writing over it with a dry erase marker.
Yeah.
Sure? It's worth a shot.
Alcohol will work, but if you don't have any rubbing alcohol around, that's to get rid of the permanent.
¶ Antony-DGC-Battery Limit Changed "Until Tomorrow" doesn't always mean "tomorrow"
Want to bring us to Don't Get Caught here, Pete?
I'm going to, and you know what I just realized when I went to read the Don't Get Caught from Antony, he sent in a rather nice voice, Don't Get Caught, in a lovely British accent, which I will not try to imitate. But essentially, it boils down to this. Antony had a long day ahead of himself, and he normally keeps his iPhone on don't charge past 80% in order to preserve the battery life, extend the battery life of his iPhone. But you can go into the settings and say, hey, you know what?
Go ahead and charge it to 100%. I got a long day tomorrow. Charge it to 100%. And the thing comes up and it says, do you want to do this permanently or do you just want to do it till 6 a.m. tomorrow? And 6 a.m. tomorrow doesn't always mean 6 a.m. Tomorrow because Anthony got up and it was about 530, 540, something like that. He put it on, yeah, charge it to 100 percent and yes, leave it only there until 6 a.m.
Tomorrow. He went and got in the shower and got ready, got dressed and all that stuff, and he grabbed his phone to go out of the house. And 6 a.m. tomorrow was actually 6 a.m. today. So don't get caught by assuming that tomorrow means tomorrow. When it's before 6 a.m. on the same day, it's going to change back. And so he had to leave the house with, you know, like 83%. And that's as far as it went that day. So tomorrow doesn't always mean tomorrow.
It means the next upcoming 6 a.m. Apple's got that, like, written wrong. I understand with, like, the process, right? It's like it will reset at 6 a.m. Yeah. From whenever you've enabled it. So from now until 6 a.m.
Yeah. Yeah. But it does say tomorrow in the phone settings. So don't be fooled. Don't get caught.
Yeah. That's a good catch. Yep. I don't think I've ever experienced this problem
¶ DGC-Apple's Calendar.app doesn't always send invites through Google.
myself, but I have seen this happen. And I'll explain what it is. When you create an event in apple's calendar app and you put people in there and then you say send the invite you expect it to send the invite and if you are linked to an icloud calendar it does usually there's there's always some weirdness with it with icloud because it sends it through icloud it doesn't like send it from your email client where it gets even more weird is if you have a Google Calendar, because you can add,
you can log into your Google account and have Google Calendars appear in Apple Calendar too. So if you didn't know that, there's a bonus little quick tip and it's wonderful. If you have an event on your Google Calendar and you, or add an event to your Google Calendar and you add attendees to it, Sometimes it won't send out the invites to them. And Apple Calendar assumes that Google has.
The way you can confirm is by going into your Google Calendar's web interface and looking at the invite list for the event. If there is an invite list there, it has sent invites to those people.
If it if there is not then it has not sent invites to those people and i was testing this with jeff q who has worked with us at backbeat for decades and we had an event and i was like how many people have replied he's like none i'm like well that's wrong i'm like also i'm on the invite list for that event and i've never gotten an invite and so we dug in and we found this and so we did some testing same setup you know same apple calendar same apple calendar app i
should say same google calendar that he's linked to he invited me to an event you know a week later i got the invite immediately we looked it was there sent the invite to the 15 people or however many maybe it was more than that uh and no you know that nothing made it through i don't know if it's related to the number of people that are on the invite list maybe but just be aware like if there you get no error message at all so it like if you are inviting people
to an event and you're synced to a google calendar with apple calendar check it in google calendar every single time and if you if it doesn't put them there you can then add them on the google calendar side and it will do its it's thing like that's totally and you'll manage the whole invite list and you'll see who said yes and all of that stuff so just FYI, Don't get it. Yeah. Yeah.
And now there's Apple invitations, right? In the new.
Yeah. That's kind of different.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's very different.
In fact, it's a whole different. Yeah. I got that. I just.
Yeah.
Go to, go to the, go to the Apple walled garden.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But everybody else has to be there, I guess. Well, they don't have to be, but yeah.
I think there's a web interface for those. Yeah. It's kind of like a replacement for Evites or something. Yeah. In the day.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a better example of what that's for.
Yeah.
Okay. Well, I can take us to Scott, who has a don't get caught, because he got caught.
¶ Scott-DGC-Turning Off a Speaker Before Disabling Airplay Can Prevent Normal Function of your Mac Audio
He wrote, hi, Dave, Adam, and Pete. Pete? Pete? He says, oh, sorry, got stuck there, but it's in his name.
Repeat.
Anyway, he says, maybe it's just me, but I got caught with AirPlay. He says, I discovered I could not adjust the audio level in the music app on my Mac. I got to the point where I trashed the music and music EQ plist files. He says, what I discovered was I continued to ponder why this problem occurred, and I realized that it must be related to AirPlay. I was recently using my JBL Charge 5 Wi-Fi, and instead of disabling AirPlay from the Mac, I turned the speaker off.
I recreated the same situation and learned that changing the volume on the Mac affected the local audio and the audio level on the speaker. Turning off the speaker without disabling AirPlay created a situation where it could no longer change the audio level in the music app. Disabling AirPlay within the music app for that device restored the ability to adjust the audio. He said, I assumed incorrectly that if the speaker was no longer available, the app or AirPlay would automatically disable it.
And it doesn't. So he was not able to control his volume level because he turned his speaker off before disconnecting it.
Huh.
So, yeah. So best regards to Scott.
That's. Huh.
I don't know if that's universal, but.
Yeah, I don't think it is.
I've seen some similar behavior with my Apple TV and volume, but that's a whole different thing. But.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I wonder if he's using one of those apps that enhances audio and might be inserting itself into the chain there.
Oh, something like Boom.
Yeah, exactly. Boom or SoundSource or something. I don't know. That's, huh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, good question.
Kiwi Graham in the chat says, perhaps the speaker is sleeping and isn't actually off. So the mac thinks it's sending sound to it but it's not getting it or it's not playing it i don't know yeah that's interesting huh.
Yeah sounded like he couldn't get it locally to change the volume though that's the weird thing yeah i think you know pressing the volume button on your mac would change the volume on your mac but but no yeah yeah interesting
Crazy stuff. Send in your stuff to us for feedback at MacGeekUp.com, like we said.
Yeah.
What about cool stuff?
Let's do cool stuff.
¶ Seth-CSF-Access: Private Vault for Passwords
Got a couple cool stuffs for you. Here, Seth wrote in with one. He said, hey, guys, I'm sure I'm not the only one who wishes that Apple's password app was as full-functioned as 1Password. Well, here's the perfect companion to the password app that fills the void. It's called Access Private Vault. It's on the App Store. We'll have a link to it in the show notes. It does everything that 1Password does except save passwords.
It uses iCloud storage, gets listed under advanced data protection for end-to-end encryption, and is reasonably priced with single-family and lifetime plans. Plus, you can import directly from 1Password as well. So, this is the idea behind this app. I was a little confused by it, so I went and looked.
¶ What Password Manager do you use?
It you use the password app for your passwords and pass keys but then for everything else like you can do in one password like driver's licenses uh medical cards id cards memberships uh gift cards gear notes you know like all those other categories i would assume software licenses yeah those sorts of things yeah you could put all that in here and so like those two together They're basically equal, essentially, 1Password.
Huh. And it's about half the price. An annual family license is $25. And I'm pretty sure I just paid about $60 for my annual 1Password license, give or take. It was less than $60, more than $55, I think. So, yeah. Huh.
And family lifetime, $89.99.
And right, lifetime for $89.99. That's interesting. Yeah, we were talking a little bit about this pre-show. I still use 1Password, and obviously I just paid my family the annual license again. Adam?
Ditto.
Yes, I love 1Password, and I have the family license. I wish my family would use it more, but I try. They do use it occasionally, so I'm slowly converting them. but it's been, it's been a multi-year process. And I think I have one daughter who will actually use it fairly regularly because that's where the streaming passwords are. Uh, and the Amazon password, you know, they like it when they can order stuff and it goes on our credit card. Um, for sure. Yeah. But, um, yeah, outside of that.
Yeah. I just, I'm stuck with one password. I, I will probably be a 1Password user for forever, although I am using the password app for more and more things, if I'm being really honest.
I'm the same way. Yeah.
Yeah. It's good to be honest. We generally are here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
My kids have no teeth left. Cause I'm done pulling them trying to get them to use one password. Debbie's actually pretty good at using it. She finds the value in it that I find. So yeah. At least partway there.
Yep.
Yeah.
My, my family, my family's pretty good at using it for sure. I make sure that we have things in there that are valuable for them to have access to in a shared vault so that it encourages them to keep it up to date and that sort of thing. The things that I have in there are our like our passports so that when we're traveling, because I pester the crap out of my family.
If it's like, if they got a, you know, like my daughter just updated her passport and I knew it and I went to put it in to a flight and I knew that the old one was in one password.
And so I just made, I was like, yeah, you've got to go put it in one password so that i have it you know and like that kind of thing um and yeah um software licenses i think i mentioned recently we keep in there so that you know when they want something it's like yeah go get it in one password and then that way they have it on all their devices and and everything's uh everything's there but um i every year i think about moving to i have a bit warden server setup that i set up
on my synology and i just haven't moved to it yet and i keep thinking it's the right thing for me to do obviously i'm a nerd have all of the you know i already like the server's set up i just haven't migrated anything to it and i suppose one way to do it would be to like set it up for backbeat uh you know for the company stuff of the passwords that like i need to share with with like sadie and jeff and perhaps
even you guys like i don't We don't really have passwords that we share, I don't think. But anyway, you know, those kinds of things and test it so that I'm not just deciding on one day to just move everything in there. If I use it enough, then I might, you know, come March of next year, I might be like, all right, now it's time to make the jump and, you know, make the jump and then not renew my 1Password in whatever it is, July or something. But I love 1Password. Like, it works so well.
So anyway, that's my thought process.
We use that at my office. The main reason is because of PCI compliance being an e-commerce company, we can't, they want to avoid having those kinds of things on a third-party cloud service. You know, it's something, the company needs to be in control of that data. And that's like the key critical thing. I think in our case, it's not even accessible. I don't believe it's, it's not accessible outside our VPN. I have to be VPNed in to even get to that server.
To be able to sync with your Bitwarden, sorry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if I'm not on corporate VPN, I cannot even get to my passwords for reasons. And I will say it works pretty well. I don't find the user interface as nice and polished and friendly as 1Password. That's the only thing I'll give it. But I mean, all the functionalities there, you can put in your one-time codes, You can, you know, store all kinds of stuff in that. You can create collections, which are basically like folders, you know, where you can group things together. Sure.
So, I mean, it's pretty nice. And that is a huge advantage for someone who wants, you know, not to have their stuff in somebody else's cloud and be in full control of that data.
Yeah.
For sure.
Yep yeah all right cool uh we got one less one one last cool stuff found one less.
¶ Kevin-CSF-1101-USB-C (and USB-A) Data Blocker
Oh wait one more not one less that's right yeah so i'll comment up front that i forgot that these existed and i i meant to get one a long time ago and if you do any traveling and plug any device of yours in to somebody else's usb for a power source you need one kevin writes in hello gentlemen thank you i've been a long time listener of the show going back into double digits that's over a thousand now so i never miss an episode
the side chats about travel everyday challenges etc every bit as interesting and entertaining is the actual tech but i thought i'd share this cool stuff found regarding USB-C. The item is a USB-C data blocker. Only the power pins are enabled. I love this solution to ensure absolute hardware security against data hijacking when plugging into USB ports that might not be trustworthy.
I use this on work computers, public ports, etc. Admittedly, I rarely actually have a real-world need for these as charging into a wall or using battery back battery pack is probably a better practice anyway however when the need arises and i pull these out of my bag i have a small feeling of triumph over any possible usb hijacking attempts we'll put the link in the show notes love the show and keep up the awesome work kevin from edmonton so yeah i can't believe i don't have one
Yeah, I mean, I've known about these, obviously, for a while. Yeah, yeah. I don't have any either.
It just, you know, the black hats are getting cleverer and cleverer.
Our Apple devices ask us, though, if we want to connect via data to our iPhones, I should say, and our iPads. Our Macs, no.
Yeah. How long before someone figures out how to bypass it?
I mean i don't think you do right i.
Don't think so either right now but
Well but i mean like it you you it's a social hack right you would you know there would you you would have to accept on your phone that there's no there's no way for the device to like bypass that yeah.
Until there is i mean i could be wrong apple doesn't provide that you know you're right format yeah format c colon echo y you know somebody okay do you want to trust this echo yes you know and you know i don't know
Yep yeah.
I would presume too like i mean these are cool but i think you can just get power only cables too right
Yes true yes but as we talked about in the last episode traveling with power only cables it becomes a headache yeah it could be dangerous right yeah exactly but yes that would be you know the thing to have in your airplane kit you know is only that but I don't know make.
Sure it's labeled very very well
Yeah yeah or if.
You can get them in only red or something like that that would be good there
You go yeah I
Would be yeah go ahead, It's 10 bucks. No, it's, I mean, it's 10 bucks. It's not, it's not like you are correct, Pete, that having this is a good thing. Assume, you know, like assume the worst. Right. Exactly. I don't, we, we don't hear from people about this problem, but you know, all it needs, it's binary, right? It's, it's not what percentage of the time does it happen is, did it happen to you or not? And if the answer is yes, then you would wish that you had spent the $10 on a pack of these.
Yeah. Let me say it this way. I had a friend who once might have worked for an agency that had three letters or so. Sure. Who stated that, you know, at the state level, they can use your power cord to get your data. Okay. That seems awfully far-fetched.
Sure.
Right.
But I also know that another country's air defense systems got shut down by some stolen printers once many decades ago. So, data hacks can come from the most unsuspecting places. It's true. And that's why this is, you know what, and that kind of data hack will get around your data blocker. So, yeah.
And I think this is because it's it at least currently it would require a social component to hack this. I feel like this. In a self-selecting way, becomes a belt and suspenders approach because the people who are going to buy and remember to use these like you've literally just like so if your mindset is I need to protect myself, then as soon as you see the notification on your phone, you would say, wait, something is wrong. You're not on autopilot anymore, right?
You know, whereas if you're just on autopilot and you're like, dude, I got to charge my phone. Like I got 10 minutes and I, you know, I got 4% of my battery. I got to get as much as I can. You're just going to plug it in and hit yes. And you're going to forget to use your data blocker and all of that stuff. Right. I think right. Done. So if you're in the mindset of protecting yourself, this is unnecessary. If you're not in the mindset of protecting yourself, you're going to forget
to use this anyway. so like to me that's where that's why I haven't bought one I suppose now that I think about it but I don't.
Know well and plus your battery back your battery bricks
Right I charge myself yeah exactly yep, Alas. All right. We got some questions to go through. We have time for that, which I love. And the next thing we want to do is tell you about some of our sponsors because, well, I think you know this by now that I live and die by good systems,
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¶ Bjørn-Why won't music play through my phone's speaker?
All right, Bjorn Adam. Right? I think Adam's muted.
Oh, sorry. That's okay.
But he was Bjorn.
He usually comes off after the ad, but I think I had manually activated it before I went into the ads, so it didn't. Yeah, so Bjorn wrote in with a question, says, hi, guys. You recently helped a listener who had problems getting sound to play through the lightning cables on an iPhone. I have a problem in the similar vein that I hope you can help with. I have an audio app, More specifically, an older iPhone app that plays Norwegian hymns from the official hymnal.
When I play any of the hymns, I can get audio through my AirPods or CarPlay, but when the phone is not connected to any other audio source, there is no sound coming through the iPhone's speakers. Yes, I'm sure the volume is turned up on my wife's iPhone. This works as it should. Any suggestions? Best regards, Bjorn.
Huh that's fascinating to me uh my where i'm curious about this is i wonder if apple music not the custom app but apple music would play through the phone speaker in the same configuration right is it something about the app and i couldn't even begin to understand why that would be but or is it kind of a larger issue with the iphone itself i like this seems very strange what adam do you have any well i.
Doubt it's the app because he says his wife's iphone it works so unless there's something specific to the model iphone in the app which would even be stranger
That's true i when when he said i i i assumed he said on my wife's iphone it works as it should i I made the assumption that maybe she doesn't have the same app.
Yeah, he says it's an older iPhone app that plays Norwegian hymns. So I'm assuming from the official hymnal. So I'm assuming it's an official Norwegian hymnal app, probably from wherever. That was my assumption in reading it. So, I mean, we may be assuming way too much.
Right. Yeah, well, we have to. Like, I mean, you know, it's part of the gig, right? We have to make some assumptions. So, yeah.
Yeah. And, you know, like another assumption, I would assume, because he doesn't mention any other app playing through the iPhone speakers, You know, because like the first place my head would go is, well, are your speakers busted on your iPhone? Like, do you get, but I presume, you know, he wouldn't ask the question if he's getting sound out of his iPhone speakers from other apps, like he's hearing ringtones.
Are there other places? And I know he's turned the volume up. So I guess my question is, are there other places on the iPhone and I, you know, accessibility, I'm looking at you where you could do something that would cause the volume to be down? Yeah. Right. In, you know, in a way that and possibly like I'm looking, I'm looking through here, but there's so many different things. Like, is it, you know, is it jumping, is it jumping to a sleeping Bluetooth speaker?
Like we had, you know, potentially earlier in the episode.
Oh yeah.
Right. Like, is it connected to something? Put it in airplane mode. If, if assuming the hymns can be downloaded onto the device, right?
Right.
Right. And to put it into airplane mode, turn off wifi, turn off Bluetooth, you know, go into control center, turn all that off, and see if it still happens. At least you're ruling out, is this an internal problem to the phone, where it could be a setting or something, and it's nice to have his wife's iPhone there to compare and contrast so you can say, yes, this does work here.
So another thought with it working on his wife's iPhone and not his, that could be because it's an older iPhone app, maybe app-related device. He's obviously playing it through his AirPods, his CarPlay. I would presume his wife doesn't connect to his AirPods or his CarPlay. So is it getting stuck? Is it, again, trying to send it to your AirPods, even though your AirPods aren't in or even on? That would be odd for it to do that.
But again, that could be a software thing where it's like, all right once it's hit bluetooth audio it just gets you know it's a bug if it's an older app yeah it's just locked in at that point and it's not switching back yeah and there's probably no setting to manually switch it out you know like i don't know
Yeah i would try i would try apple music in that like when you're experiencing it try apple music and see is it just the app or is the entire phone because that that would be an interesting piece of data to have as you you know troubleshoot this kiwi gram in the live chat at macgeekup.com slash discord or macgeekup.com slash stream both will get you there uh says the app might have something like chromecast ability which is stuck in eight enabled that yep exactly yeah right yeah is
it trying is it playing it to your tv in the living room oh that yeah if your tv is you know if the tv is in like sleep mode but your sound bar is off or whatever you wouldn't hear it but it's still catching it but turning off wi-fi data you know airplane mode wi-fi and um bluetooth will rule that out you got another thought adam well.
I thought on the settings thing assuming that app is still available to re-download it may be worth just deleting the app which would clear its settings and re-downloading it and see if that resets it and puts it back in a good state
Love that, Let us know, Bjorn, and as we've said throughout the episode, if you have ideas about this, feedback at MacGeekCub.com. Shall we go to Craig?
We shall. We shall. Craig writes in, Hi, guys.
¶ Craig-Apple is dropping AFP support for Time Machine Backups. Is SMB OK to use?
Picked up an M4 MacBook Air during Best Buy's $200 off in sales tax holiday in Florida, so $799 straight up. What a deal. Nicely done, Craig. During migration from an older MacBook Air i5, I've got to the point where I made the first attempt to back up via time machine to my Synology, inheriting a backup file from an old MacBook Air. Saw this message when configuring. Quote, future versions of Mac OS will no longer support AFP, Apple File Protocol, network disks to time machine backups.
I recall hearing about that recently, and it was primarily a result of discontinuing support for airport and time capsule in Mac OS. Upon checking my Synology settings, I was indeed using AFP setting under Control Panel File Services Advanced. Next, he says the setting changed was related to enable bonjour service discovery to locate disk station. Options existing for both AFP and SMB, that's server message block, I believe.
And I have been using AFP. I vaguely recollect that when initially setting this up, AFP was recommended over SMB at the time, which was five to eight years ago. Curious if any dangers to changing this over to smb exist is that solely related to how to target the disk station is located and not related to the actual time machine backup execution thanks as always listener pensacola craig um
So lots lots of questions to answer but let me distill this all down um, What we're talking about is the way that your Mac is talking over the network to your disk station. It doesn't change the way the backups are stored. It doesn't change anything about that. It is just the language that they are speaking over the network. And it's, is SMB okay to use? Is it okay to stop using AFP? And not only is it okay to stop using AFP, it is highly, highly, highly recommended to use SMB for everything.
Not just your time machine backups but connecting from one mac to another smb it you're right, you know if you go back and listen to this show 10 years ago i don't know about five to eight but certainly 10 years ago we were saying 100 use afp use afp use afp that is no we say the opposite now do not use afp use smb i see you nodding your head out of it yeah.
That's just the right answer yes it's fine smb is great and you should be using it and not afp
I would turn yeah i would turn afp off on your disk station yep that way you will not be using it anymore you'll have to probably have to reconfigure your time machine backups because i think your mac will see it as a different drive it might not but but there's a chance and if so it's fine it'll pick it up and you know realize it's the same thing and go along but yes so there.
You go yeah
That is the answer moving on to uh to david.
Yeah so david has a question he says i have an iphone 14 with ios 18.5 i have
¶ David-Why Cardio Recovery Data Not syncing from Watch to Health App
a apple an apple watch generation 9 as a senior under care of cardio a cardiologist It is important to me to track my heart rate and recovery rate when I ride my bike. I recently switched from my Amazfit 6 back to my Apple Watch 9, as it is easier to see the heart rate during the ride. The Apple Watch records the recovery time under heart post-workout, Displaying beats per minute for the first two minutes after one completes a workout. This is great.
However, it does not populate the iPhone Health app automatically. On the iPhone, the data sources listed under cardio recovery are even blank and shaded to prevent manual entry of a source. You can enter the data manually in the iPhone Health app. I have read where several people online just gave up on trying to get an automatic feed. I tried a reset but to no avail, but did not reinstall the health app as it required another unpairing and I was concerned that I would lose data.
Is the only way to enter this for trending on the iPhone to enter it manually into the iPhone? An iPhone health app shows a heart rate accumulatively, so why not the recovery? This is something that, is this something that one has to pay extra for via another app or service from Apple? Asking the experts, David.
Can I just summarize this?
Yeah, there's a lot in there.
Yeah before i know pete you have you dug into this but it seems like what we what the problem is the apple watch is recording the post exercise recovery time your cool down time for two minutes and that for some reason that granular level of data is not being sent over to the health app it's just staying on the apple watch and not going anywhere is that correct that's the problem okay great thank you that's it yeah just wanted i i i wanted clarification for dave now what did you find pete.
So well i think i think the answer is no you don't have to enter it manually there's no third-party apps or anything like that and i was able to find other people that had this same problem i went into my iphone and looked and the health app did indeed record the cool down post workout uh cool down cardio recovery at one minute and two minute intervals and you can actually see a trend. If you go back a week, a month, six months, that sort of thing, you can see that trend line there.
And it was all right there. And I'm going, well, so why am I not getting it? And I went and looked, I was like, I've got an ultra first gen watch. And he has the Series 9, he said, but that didn't seem to be it. So what I think is going on is I found where Apple did a change where... You need to actually physically end the workout. If you forget to end your workout, it's going to turn itself off at some point, say, you know, and sometimes it'll
even ask you, hey, do you want to end your workout? Oh, yeah, I finished an hour ago. Whoops. And it's not going to record your cool down then because it has no idea really when you ended your workout. So you have to physically now end that workout in order to get the Apple Watch to do the heart rate cardio recovery.
So the first thing you do you're going to want to do is check your permissions go to health permissions on the phone um and and open that open the watch app i'm sorry open that watch app on the iphone go to privacy health and ensure that that's toggled on so you can do your heart rate and your fitness tracking and your workout those all need to be toggled on so that that can send the data over to your phone but
Isn't that already happening i mean if his heart rate oh.
No you You have to trigger those on. No, no, no. Watch will not share it.
Oh, but isn't his heart rate from his watch already making it to his phone? It's just the it's just the cool down. That's not making it right.
Well, yes, correct. But if your heart rate isn't toggled on, it's not going to send it either. Yes. So, yeah, it's all permissions. But so the next part is to go to the health app on the phone, tap your profile picture, go to the devices, choose your Apple watch and get to the privacy settings and confirm your heart rate, workout, and active energy are all enabled. And then if that's all good, you can kind of skip down to the part three of it.
But if those settings are already set, then you'll go down to unpair and repair to force the data sync. And he's worried about data loss, and that's what part three talks about, how to do it without... Data loss. And that's why I asked pre-show, is there a way to get this answer into the show notes? I think is the,
Um, cause yeah, put it in discord and then we'll link that discord chat to the show notes.
There we go. I will do that. So, so essentially you're forcing, uh, once you've checked those settings, uh, if, if you've changed any of them, then force a cardio recovery by doing another workout of at least 20 minutes. It says 10 minutes in my answer, but I read somewhere later at least 20 minutes then manually end it and and then make sure you don't uh kill anything on your watch for at least two minutes so it will do your your cardio recovery is
This um another link is this from chat gpt because if it is we could just link to the chat or if you found an art no.
I found an article on mac it wasn't mac rumors oh we
Can link to that.
Yeah yeah where i gotta find out where there was also an apple support discussion you pulled
It all together You synthesized it. Yeah, just towards the answer. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, we'll do that. Then unpair and repair is part three. And I tell them, you know, yeah, you're right to be concerned about data loss. And then I go through step by step. Basically, you're turning on iCloud Health backup enabled and make sure you do a backup. Get it all in there. Then you can unpair and repair the watch, which is a long process. That's going to be frustrating. But by making sure you've got the backup before you do that, you won't lose your health data. It will stay with you.
I've done, I'm on, I don't know, several iterations of watches. I don't know how many years now. And I went and looked back. I've got health data from my watch to my health app on my phone dating back to like 2018.
So I have a question though.
As long as you have an iCloud backup, you shouldn't lose data.
Is the iCloud backup of your health data, a backup from the health data as it exists on your watch or as it exists on your phone i think it's the latter.
I believe it's on the phone right
So if his workout recovery data has not transferred from the watch to the phone then iCloud backup is not going to have that right i mean like i yeah i but i agree with you that if it's not sinking over that that this is the answer.
So i sort of got your answer in in here um it is it goes uh ensure you got the backup back out one level scroll down to the i make sure iCloud backup is on tap backup now and wait for it to complete unpair the Apple watch this backs it up automatically backs
Up the watch automatically yes.
Yeah yes but then open the watch app tap all watches next to the watch unpair the watch and then go back in so it says when you unpair the watch it will back it up to the phone before it leaves it'll
Back up the watch to the phone.
How and i think it has to because that's how i got my you know yeah when you go set up a new watch it says do you want to set it up new or do you want to right
But that's the question i think in this case setting it up new would be the answer because you you don't want to inherit the settings that are keeping it from doing.
From yeah and and that data did not sync so it it yeah
I don't think you're going to get it i think Like, if you want this data historically, you would need to enter it manually. But I agree that this is the approach I would take to...
But if it's backing up the whole watch as opposed to syncing the watch, it may be there?
Well, whether it's there or not, you probably aren't going to restore that data to your watch. Right. I mean, you could try it like that would be if you if you have unlimited time, then the process would be back up the watch, erase the watch, restore the watch from the backup you just made and see if the problem is solved because it could be.
Yeah and then if it's not solved back of the watch or not it doesn't matter uh because you've got a recent backup but you're not going to use it erase the watch and don't restore the watch set it up as new in hopes that that then unsticks this problem but you might lose that yeah that's just the reality of it i mean you know or enter it manually but uh yeah which.
Is which is a major pain there's no doubt about it i was just thinking if the whole watch would go and then um Matthew makes a point in the chat or on comments on YouTube that making sure all the switches are flipped is important. Sometimes after an OS update, a major one, he goes back in and checks his permissions to make sure that they're all, in fact, the switches are all flipped on.
On the entering the data manually, this came up on MacCast like a long time ago.
Somebody had a scale and this is a similar kind of thing but it was the scale they were in the uk and they wanted their weight recorded in stones instead of pounds um and there obviously wasn't a way to do that but you could manually kind of get that into the data so i went through and wrote like a shortcut that would pop up and say okay what's what's the weight and then it would convert it and then put it into the health app. So I think you can, you can have shortcuts right to the health app.
I'm yes. A hundred percent.
So you might be able to write a quick little script that I, hopefully there's a trigger for like ending a workout or something like that. Um, and then you could just have it run an apple or a shortcut and then it would pop up and say, okay, what, what was your, what was your cool down heart rate?
Yep.
And then plug it in that way and have it enter that way for you it wouldn't be fully automatic but you probably could set up something semi-automatic
I like that yeah i you and you're right you def a shortcut can a hundred percent write to the health app i've i've used it to do exactly what you said to enter my weight when i you know before i had a scale that like you know linked to everything and published my weight to some chinese directory or something um i you know i would manually enter it and And it was easy. So yeah, fun stuff.
Yup. Or, um, yeah, yeah there you go lots of uh yeah lots of stuff i'm trying to think i don't yeah i don't think there's an easy answer for this when it's it seems weird that it's not doing that sync but you know just how it is yeah yeah okay.
Now and i'm gonna have to i just tried to put it in there and i'm uh 1500 characters over the 2000 character limit so i'm gonna create a pdf file and upload it that way
No no create create create in like um mgg help desk create a new topic and then you can put multiple messages in and that way it's its own thing and and if people have comments and or other thoughts they can put it in there and and that that's kind of the the beauty of discord is like having that threaded thing where you can you know and and someone who comes along six months down the road with a similar problem can find that and off the go certainly yeah mackiecup.com Discord,
folks, is where that magic little bit of our lives lives, and it's pretty good.
¶ MGG 1102 Outtro
I think we've hit our time, gentlemen.
I hear something.
Yeah, same. There it is. It's the band. They're back. Fun. Fun. Yep. Here we are.
And there we go.
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I would expect to not get caught, so don't get caught.
Made on a Mac. Later.