With the introduction of Mail app categorizations in the iOS 18, Apple is now walking the same path other email services have been on for decades and equally created a gimmick — auto email categorizations. With or without AI, I’ve never seen email categorizations work properly in any context, let alone professional one. Had any tech giants have the technology to create an email butler, we would have seen it first changing the tide of losing fight that is the spam emails.
Tagged macOS
App to Keep Mac from Sleeping
I was quite surprised to see that there were inquiries into the recommendations for customizing sleep behaviors for macOS, as apparently some of the third-party apps fell short. Back in the 2000s, I would have said Caffeine without a doubt. It had not seen major updates for a while until it’s under the new ownership. It’s still freely available, open source. True to their words, the new developers seem to focus primarily on the simplicity of Caffeine —that was the motto of the era.
How to Batch Incrementally Edit Times on Photos
One of the nonsense I had to pull myself through during scanning old family albums was its lack of metadata. I could guess the date of when the photo might have been taken, but photo library apps of any kind would rely on time stamps as well to order the photos. In order to correctly display which photo was taken first from the roll, the program relies on time stamps; and it is that very time stamps scanned photos do not have.
How to Iterate Through Dictionary on iOS Shortcuts
I’ve talked about using dictionary in Shortcuts to handle data. If you started using one in a custom shortcut, there is one odd bit that may not be immediately obvious if you try to loop through the dictionary; it loops with the entire dictionary as the Repeat Item. It defeats the purpose of using iterating through dictionary if it cannot parse the dictionary for iteration.
App to Test Internal Network Bandwidth
As I was upgrading to a new router this week, one of the things I immediately wanted to test was the existing ethernet cables and ports. As reliable as they are, cables and ports are also physical objects with lifespans. If cables running behind the walls are damaged, that’s a major headache; and if one of the cables running between switches is damaged, albeit minor, it’s still a headache to find out which.
Where are Touch ID Peripherals?
Apple started adopting biometrics in its devices beginning with iPhones, back in 2015. MacBooks released in 2016 were the first Macs that had embedded Touch ID Keyboards, and later an updated wireless keyboard with Touch ID was released in 2021. It’s been 4 years since the first Touch ID keyboard came out; and I’m yet to hear any other manufacturers jumping in on the chance to make the first non-Apple keyboard, let alone any rumors of development to make it happen.
How to Enter and Manage Dictionary on iOS Shortcuts
If you are a fan of Shortcuts on either macOS or iOS, no doubt you would have encountered a similar problem as I. In order to load some data on to a custom shortcut, only sensible way would to do so is via a dictionary-type variable. But Shortcuts doesn’t make it easy to enter the data, let alone manage the data once entered. It’s all done on GUI, which is not ideal when the data needs to be either copied into or typed in.
Expelled! Spiel
If someone asked me what kind of game Expelled! is, I would say it is a visual novel, or a mystery novel stylized in a video game. Its experience is akin to what many Agatha Christie novels were when I first read them —bleak, and justice served was not always what I would have imagined. It is objectively horrible, (when violence isn’t?) but it remains a kind we can digest. In the case of Expelled!, I would argue it is less a question of edibility of the food, but the unique tendency of food escaping from the player’s mouth.
How I Tried Leaving 1Password in 2025
I’ve been using password managers for a while, and I believe I started using 1Password beginning with either version 3 or 4. Inevitably when I say I am using 1Password, I’m not just talking about simply using an app; I’m talking about the entire password manager platform. 1Password has gone through series of audits, bug bounties, and survived rounds of security breaches other password managers had to suffer through. I believe, at the very least, we can confirm a good password manager is more than an encrypted spreadsheet full of login infos.
First Party Apple Apps are “Sherlocking” Subscriptions
Back in late 2000s, back when I was considering to move to OS X as my primary system, one of the big appeal —albeit it’s not always up to the level— was that Macintosh was bundled with first party softwares that are often exorbitantly expensive on the other side. And let me tell you, the time and time again, Time Machine alone saved my skin several times; and I had the liberty to tell other people to do the same with their Macs and PCs, always have a backup.
How to Exclude Steam Games from Time Machine
One of the obvious challenges of using Time Machine is that not all apps and databases are optimized to use automatic backup. Or to be more blunt on the subject, with modern video games ranging roughly up to several hundred gigabytes with day one patches that are equally large, Steam has been enabling developers to distribute unfinished and unpolished games without repercussion.
The Case of Missing macOS Sleep Trigger
I was on a lookout for a certain trigger to automate macOS, a sleep trigger. I try not to automate any of the scripts around uncertain triggers, especially sleep cycles, when there may be certain expectations of how things should be at that moment. For example, if a script inadvertently disrupts the machine from going into sleep, as a user, it would be confusing why the machine simply fails to go into sleep. Not to mention if I ever forget such a script is running in the background, it would be pain to discover it again. But when I actively…
How to Troubleshoot SSH Permission Issues
This one is for documentation purposes. Networking issue is usually the rabbit hole that gets deeper and weirder more we find out. My method of approaching networking is to leave the ones that are currently working, as-is. In other words, don’t jinx it.
How to Change Num Lock Default Settings on macOS Terminal
I suspect this is yet another “tabs or spaces” question for developers, but I believe there is a silver lining for all —we want consistent UIs. I want my numpads to work as number pads throughout. There are only few cases when I need it to be something else, be it may directional keys, application keys, or etc.
How to Change Username and Home Folder on macOS
Choosing the right username can never be more important now than it did before. If your journey in computing started in some computing center with UNIX, no doubt the importance of 3 characters-long username hasn’t escaped you. Whereas, if you started your computing with a PC like I did, a proper or useful username is likely an alien concept. On POSIX systems, it’s a simple enough concept to either change the username (if system allows) or simply transfer over to the newly created account.