Some macOS 13 Ventura and macOS 12 Monterey users are being upgraded to macOS 14 Sonoma after dismissing notifications that encourage an upgrade. It’s a nasty bug, but the TidBITS Talk community has some advice on how to avoid the forced upgrade.
After upgrading one of his Macs to macOS 14 Sonoma, Adam Engst ran into problems with Time Machine, which refused to back up until iCloud Drive had finished syncing and continued to balk even after the sync had seemingly finished. The problem? A seldom-used troubleshooting account that also had to finish syncing.
Although the addition of the iPhone 15 lineup and Macs using the M2 family of chips to Self Service Repair is welcome, the release of the remote Apple Diagnostics for Self Service Repair troubleshooting tool is more interesting.
If you try to print using the Lists style in Contacts in macOS 14 Sonoma, Contacts will freeze and require force-quitting. Worse, if Contacts gets stuck on Lists style, you won’t be able to print at all. Here’s how to recover.
If you're using 1Password 6 or 1Password 7 from the Mac App Store and receive an error message about the 1Password app being damaged, 1Password has some possible solutions.
The Fn key has been a fixture on Apple keyboards for decades, but many Mac users lack a sense of its purpose. Adam Engst thought he was going to write a quick article listing hidden keyboard shortcuts that tap the Fn key but got dragged into documenting the history and capabilities of this unsung key.
Some users have awoken to their iPhones and iPads asking for a passcode due to an unprompted restart the night before. Many people may not care what their device does at night, but beware that it could prevent alarms from triggering and block emergency calls.
Many people find themselves helping older friends or family members with reduced physical or cognitive capabilities. Adam Engst distills advice from a pair of TidBITS Talk discussions that asked about the best iPhone and simplifying the iPhone experience for older people.
As with all its services, Apple offers no real troubleshooting when iCloud Drive synchronization stalls in macOS. Glenn Fleishman encountered a problem that took months to diagnose and fix. In the process, he went through the wringer of trying nearly everything suggested online, via Apple support, and from colleagues. In the end, the magic that fixed it was undisclosed engineers.
Worried about backing up your cloud-only files? The latest version of Carbon Copy Cloner can temporarily download, back up, and evict these files, ensuring your data’s safety. Learn about this ingenious feature that bridges the gap between local and cloud storage in your backup strategy.
A bug in iOS 17 can cause a hang while transferring data from an old iPhone to a new iPhone 15. Update to iOS 17.0.2 first!
Has your Slack interface changed recently, dropping the workspace sidebar in favor of another one that replicates capabilities available in the channel sidebar? Read on for the trick necessary to bring back a permanent sidebar of your workspaces.
If you’ve ever been frustrated by trying to copy a column of data—or even just a handful of cells—from within a table on a Web page, get the Copytables browser extension for Chrome-based browsers, Firefox, or Safari.
If you rely on a SanDisk portable SSD, be sure to back up its contents, given the prevalence of failures resulting in data loss.
Annoyed by the bug in macOS 13.3 Ventura that prevented screen savers from working on multiple displays? Apple quietly fixed it at some point, so as of macOS 13.4.1, you can again enjoy your eye candy on all attached displays.