Hands-On Mac (Audio)

Hands-On Mac explores and explains the Mac — and beyond! From clever Terminal commands to little-known iOS settings, Mikah Sargent shares all the best tips and tricks for your Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. You'll get all the details on Apple's apps and the best apps in the App Store, you'll learn about awesome accessories for your Apple devices, and you'll explore updates to Apple's operating systems — including iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and watchOS. Hands-On Mac is your one-stop shop for Apple know-how.

You can still get legacy episodes of HOM for free on your favorite podcast apps. The new versions of Hands-On Mac are only available ad-free on Club TWiT or Apple Podcasts. You can join Club TWiT for $7 a month and get everything the club offers or just get the podcast for $2.99 a month. You can also get the ad-free audio versions for $2.99 a month on Apple Podcasts.

Host: Mikah Sargent

Leo Laporte gives his thoughts on Apple's new M1 MacBooks and what it means for the future of the Mac.

Get the new Apple MacBook Pro with Apple M1 Chip: https://amzn.to/3ntda8c
Get "In the Beginning...was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson: https://amzn.to/3h0Yknc

Host: Leo Laporte

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Leo Laporte shares a must-have app for macOS, iStat Menus from Bjango. This system monitoring app gives you real-time info on your Mac's stats, including a CPU monitor, GPU, memory, network usage, disk usage, disk activity, battery, and more.

Get iStat Menus: https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

Host: Leo Laporte

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• LastPass.com/twit

Want to know what's new with macOS Big Sur? Watch this!

• New features:
• Control center and the menu bar
• Notification center and widgets
• Messages
• Photos
• Time Machine and APFS
• New wallpapers and new sounds (including the startup chime!)

Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac!

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

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• itpro.tv/twit promo code TWIT30

Here's a tool that comes with every Macintosh - the Mac Activity Monitor. It's a lot more useful than you might think!

Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac!

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

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• peakdesign.com/twit

macOS Big Sur is here! now you have to keep it secure. Here are some easy ways (and some pretty tricky ways) to keep your Mac safe. You have a lot of security options with macOS Big Sur, and third party software can give you even more options.

• Use secure passwords. To keep your information safe, you should use passwords to secure your Mac, and choose passwords that can't be easily guessed. See Tips for creating secure passwords and Learn how passwords are used.
• Require users to log in. If others can get physical access to your Mac, you should set up separate users for each person using the Mac, and require each user to log in. This prevents an unauthorized person from using the Mac. It also separates user files, so users only have access to their own personal files and settings. Users cannot see or modify the files or settings of other users. See Set up users, guests, and groups.
• Secure your Mac when it's idle. You can set your Mac to log out the current user if the Mac has been inactive for a certain period of time. See Set your Mac to log out when not in use. You should also require a password to wake it from sleep or from the screen saver. See Require a password after waking your Mac. For convenience, you can set up a hot corner to click whenever you want to immediately lock your screen. See Use hot corners to start the screen saver.
• Limit the number of administrative users. One or more people can have administrator privileges for a Mac. By default, the administrator is the person who initially set up the Mac.
• Administrators can create, manage, and delete other users, install and remove software, and change settings. For these reasons, an administrator should create a standard user account to use when administrator privileges are not needed. If the security of a standard user is compromised, the potential harm is far more limited than if the user has administrator privileges. If multiple people use your Mac, limit the number of users with administrator privileges. See Set up users, guests, and groups.
• Encrypt the data on your Mac with FileVault. If you have private or confidential information on your Mac, you can use FileVault encryption to protect that information from being seen or copied. FileVault encodes the information stored on your Mac so it is locked and cannot be read unless the login password is entered.

• Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac!

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

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• LastPass.com/twit

Here is everything you need to know to install macOS 11 Big Sur.

• Make sure you watch all the previous Road to Big Sur episodes first!
• Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac!

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

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• itpro.tv/twit promo code TWIT30

Remember, I'm doing a clean install. To speed up the setup, I want an inventory of all my installed apps and configurations.

• If you've installed `mas` using `brew`, you have a command-line interface to your App store installs. And `brew bundle dump —all —description —force` will write a list of everything you've installed from brew and the app store to `brewfile` in your home directory. Save that!
• Running brew bundle install will reinstall everything (you might want to edit the list first to avoid reinstalling stuff you don't want)
• But what about apps you installed by hand. There's no easy way to reinstall them, but at least you can get a complete list of everything you've installed with a simple terminal command
• `ls -la /Applications/ > Installed-Apps.txt`
• Now that you have a list of installed apps you might want to save configuration files. You'll have to do that manually for GUI apps, but in most cases, they store these files in Library/ApplicationSupport - remember there are two Library folders, the system-wide folder in the root directory, and the Library in your home directory. Make a copy of both and store them on an external drive.
• If you've moved your Home directory to a separate partition or drive your ~/Library will be preserved. So no need to worry about that. Just make a copy of the system-wide ApplicationSupport folder.
• CLI programs usually store their configurations as hidden files in your Home folder. These files usually begin with a dot. You can see them with the following command:
• `ls -ld *.`
• As you can see many of my dotfiles are really aliases to files stored in a folder called Sync. This is where Syncthing comes in handy
• Dotfiles often contain private information, like PGP private-keys and mail passwords that you wouldn't want to store on a public server. Instead I sync them to a shared folder available on all my systems. That way I always have access to dotfiles I want to use on all my machines, but I keep them away from prying eyes. I've written a little shell script to automatically alias them when setting up a new machine. Remember aliases?

Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac!

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

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Sponsor:

• peakdesign.com/twit

I have mentioned that this time I'm going to do a clean install of Big Sur, but even if you're going to just upgrade on top of your old macOS it's very important to make a backup of your system. Now is also a good time to think about your backup strategy.

• https://dpbestflow.org/links/39

• FireCuda Gaming Dock 4TB at https://amzn.to/37u2tgF(affiliate)

• Use Optimized Data to move stuff off your Mac to make room
• Hit About This Mac under the Apple icon, select storage, and hit manage.
• Get ready for a clean install
• Update brewfile
• Update time machine
• Make a full image backup
• Make an image of your data disk
• Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac!

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community.

Sponsor:

• peakdesign.com/twit

Is Big Sur compatible with your old Mac apps? Find out all the answers in this episode of Hands-On Mac.

Who can run Big Sur? Just because you're running Catalina does NOT mean you can run macOS 11. Apple says these systems will work:

• MacBook, 2015 and later
• MacBook Air, 2013 and later
• MacBook Pro, late 2013 and later
• Mac Mini, 2014 and later
• iMac, 2014 and later
• iMac Pro (all models), 2017 and later
• Mac Pro, 2013 and later

Free space requirements

• 50.33GB looks to be the minimum Fresh Install Space Requirement?
• 12.5GB of Available storage Space = Fresh Install? (Catalina Requirement)
• 18.5GB of Available storage space = For Upgrade? (Catalina Requirement)

Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac!

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac

Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community.