Master Focus Modes, Action Button Tricks, and Screenshot Management

It's time for MacGeekGab and listener Zang74 brings us our quick tip of the week by saying I'm new to Sonoma and I realized I accidentally hit Command-R instead of Command-D when attempting to duplicate a JPEG file so I could rotate it.

Wouldn't you know it, it rotated directly within the finder.

Previews Command-L, rotate left, and Command-R, rotate right, work directly within a finder window.

No need to either open the image or even view it in Quick Look.

Amazing.

More tips like this, plus your questions answered today on MacGeekGab 1053 for Monday, September 2nd, Calendar Adjustment Day 2024.

MacGeekGab 1053

Greetings folks and welcome to MacGeekGab, the show where you send in your tips like that.

You send in your cool stuff found, you send in your questions, we share it all.

We hopefully answer your questions.

Sometimes we share tips and cool stuff found of our own.

We loosely tie it together into an agenda that allows us all a great opportunity.

An opportunity to learn at least five new things every single time we get together.

Sponsors for this episode include Coda.io slash MGG.

That's where you can go to have one doc to rule them all, bring all your text and tables together.

And at that URL, Coda.io slash MGG, you can sign up for free.

We'll talk more about that in a little bit.

For now, as far as I know, 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.

Hold on, let me adjust my calendar back a few years.

I want to be young again.

Yeah, this whole calendar adjustment day thing is, it's interesting.

It commemorates the day in history when New Year's Day was shifted to the 1st of January

and the entire calendar system changed.

Interesting.

Yeah, after the British Calendar Act of 1751, the Gregorian calendar was adopted by Britain in 1752.

But shifting and aligning with a new calendar was not that simple.

Interesting.

The residents of Britain and the American colonies went to sleep at night on September 2nd, 1752

and woke up the next day to September 14th, 1752.

Huh.

Change also led to New Year's Day being celebrated on January 1st.

January 1st.

Those 11 days are lost forever to the sands of time.

I was going to say, I've gone to bed on a September 2nd and woke up on the 14th before,

but I don't think it was a calendar adjustment.

It's not the calendar adjustment.

That's right.

Whoops.

Have you guys ever heard about the initiative?

There were a couple of plans and a couple of people have been trying to promote the international fixed calendar.

I don't know about this.

Was it like 13 months with 28 days?

Yep.

You got it, Pete.

Yeah.

You do 13 months and every month has exactly the same days.

So stuff would never shift, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

We could have Friday the 13th every month if we wanted.

Right.

Not just in September.

Something Kodak was behind, and I didn't know this until I just brought up the Wikipedia,

but apparently he instituted it in 1928 at Eastman Kodak.

That sounds terrible.

What a nightmare.

Wait.

Did just Eastman Kodak did this?

And so the people, this is like pre-Severance where when you're at work, you have to live

in one calendar and then the rest of your life happens.

So how did, yeah.

Okay.

So I guess.

I don't know how they dealt.

Like it was still seven days a week.

Yeah.

So, so Monday was Monday, whether you were in four weeks every month in the matrix or

not in the matrix.

Okay.

Yeah.

Huh.

It was just the date.

It was different.

Is there such a thing as a blue moon with a fixed calendar?

Can you get two full moons in the same calendar month?

I don't know.

Yeah.

I just find it.

I find it fascinating.

It's an interesting concept and it, it seems so logical, you know, I don't know what it

means for all other instances, right?

Yeah.

It's like the metric system.

God forbid we pick a, pick a system of measurement that actually makes sense.

It corresponds to other, you know, volume corresponds to.

Weight corresponds to distance.

God forbid.

It's because American school children, when, at least when I was going to school, I, it

was, we just couldn't handle it.

Right.

Interesting.

I remember that back in the seventies.

You know what?

Yeah.

We were going to swap everything over and they started putting it on the science and

then we went away from it.

It's like.

Yeah.

Everybody got scared.

Yeah.

We were too dumb to transition apparently in the seventies.

Yeah.

Interesting.

How about.

Yeah.

How about I take us to another quick tip and, and, and, and save, save us for many more

calendar adjustments.

You want to put us back on the rails.

All right.

There we go.

So, uh, Todd writes in about, uh, privacy and security and, uh, he says, uh, uh, wait

a minute.

Do I have the right one?

Yeah, I do.

Well, I don't know.

I can't tell you.

Security.

Read my mind.

Read what I'm thinking.

Terry, Terry, uh, Ty writes in, uh, for Mac geek gap, 10 49, Terry mounting or not external

drives.

I have an external SSD that I use for time machine attached to an OWC dock, which is

attached to my Mac book pro.

I have a handwritten card that I lay on my Mac books keyboard that states eject.

This reminds me to eject the drive, try to pulling it from the thunder dock, Thunderbolt

cable.

It says, I've been doing this by selecting the disc and hitting.

Command E, but then in Mac geek gap, 10 49, you hit me in the head to tell me what I already

knew there was a better way.

After the show, I created a shortcut to eject the disc that put the app in my Mac's dock

and went to a one click solution.

But that was, uh, that was, uh, working till about a week ago when I started getting this

pop-up after I clicked an eject app icon, it said the pop-up said privacy allow eject

TM drive to access your file, original Thunderbolt zero two question mark.

I mean, do you, do you, do you shoot?

You know, can't, I can't do this unless you say, okay, since I clicked on the eject icon

because I was ready to leave my Mac book, I grumbled with and clicked the okay button.

And today I stopped to think about the issue.

And I made a guess that this had to do with system settings, privacy and security, full

disc access.

I command click the shortcut.

Cut eject app icon in the dock, which opened the folder with the app.

I dragged that app icon to the full disc access window and gave permission via my fingerprint.

And my problem was solved.

Not sure why it took the system a week or so to determine that the shortcut was the

shortcut app was a privacy issue, but I am no longer getting caught when I want to leave

my back Mac book.

Cheers, Todd.

And I wrote it back.

I said, that's a great tip.

Thank you.

I'm not sure.

I would have thought to do this.

I had just kept clicking.

Okay.

Like a caveman for the rest of my life, but taking that app and throwing it in the system

settings, privacy and giving it full disc access.

Brilliant.

Yeah.

Interesting.

And he, did he have to, he did drag that into full disc access.

Okay.

So it hadn't appeared there because a lot of times when an app asked to do something

like that, it will have already populated itself.

Or app, the, the, the Mac OS will have populated it into that list.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Huh.

So that's kind of two quick tips.

One thing to do it.

And two, you can drag that app in there.

Yeah.

Populate it.

Yeah.

So I don't know about like all these people that are living their life, just scared.

Cause like I gave up on this a long time ago.

I just ripped the cable out.

Like, like, like it gave me, you know, like, I don't care.

You don't have to worry about it.

And you, you haven't had any.

Data corruption or anything like that.

Just kidding.

You're kidding.

I know people that do that.

You sounded serious.

I didn't know.

What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, just, well, I think, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong though.

Like if you had all solid state drives, would it be an issue?

It potentially, because.

If it's writing at the time, writing, writing is the main concern, right?

It's something's writing to the disc and you rip, rip.

Out right at that point.

Correct.

And with SSDs, you know, they do their, um, garbage collection and the whole

trimming or, you know, whatever to free up the actual, you know, to make the

sectors that should be free, actually free so that you can write to them

efficiently later.

So I, I would argue that it's possible that it could be worse with an

SSD than a rotational drive.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So what you're saying is, well, it's sitting there quietly, apparently.

Doing nothing, not making any noise.

That's right.

SSD could be correct.

Pete.

Yeah.

I mean, my favorite, and I know there's a lot of people that have this issue is when

you have some device and like my, my anchor, like hub thing as an issue every once in a

while.

And I don't know if it's overheating or what it does where it'll just, you know, kick off

for a millisecond and then all my drives go away.

So that's always fun.

I've.

I've had that too, with, with a variety of different hubs.

I've, I've always attributed it to like a, a power supply, you know, flakiness or

something, but yep, yep, yep.

Yep.

Anyway, I like it.

And I like talking about shortcuts.

We have a couple more, um, about shortcuts.

Burn shares one, uh, about screenshots.

He says, uh, an easy way to take a screenshot.

Get it emailed to yourself.

If you have an iPhone 15 pro with the action button is to first create a shortcut that,

uh, when invoked, it waits one second, takes the screenshot and then, uh, emails that screenshot

to yourself.

And then he assigns that screenshot to the action button or that shortcut rather to the

action button.

And it's an easy way to take a screenshot and have it automatically emailed to yourself,

which I, I, I, yeah, if it, I, I love the idea.

Of using the action button with shortcuts, because that opens it up to anything.

You'd almost anything that you'd want to do.

So, yeah, I like it.

Which begs the question.

I'll beg.

What's the question?

If you have an Apple watch ultra with an action button, could you do the same with that action

button?

Um, you can assign shortcuts to it.

Uh, but the shortcuts need to be able to run on your phone.

On the watch.

I don't think that's a good question though.

Can you use the action button on the watch to trigger a shortcut to run on your iPhone?

Like is, is there a, a cascading set of steps?

I guess that's what I'm asking.

Yeah.

Maybe, maybe I'm too, I'm too addicted to using my action button for my nightlight on

my watch.

So it is a nice, I have mine set the same way.

Well, I actually had to turn it off cause it turned on during a theater show once.

Um, which is bad.

Yeah.

That was it.

It, I was super lucky.

It was during a moment in the show where everything on stage was mostly dark.

This sounds like it's going in the wrong direction, but trust me when I say that the universe

smiled on me and, uh, there was one person like singing a song or something.

So I was playing like I couldn't fix this.

Uh, and the, the rest of the company was behind them with like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,

uh, little white lights that were supposed to look like fireflies in the woods and they

were just sort of randomly moving them around.

And so my watch just joined in as a yet another firefly.

I remember our music director kind of looking at me seeing it and I'm like, yeah, I know

that it was like, yeah, it's fine.

It's going to be okay.

Like it's, it's going to be fine.

And I, you know, I found a moment to turn it off or whatever, but yeah, it was like,

Ooh.

All right.

I got to change that.

I don't think I've changed it back since I, I,

I finished doing that theater show, but the guy, I'll take this moment to reiterate my

fish shake to Apple, Apple, when I'm in the red mode, I want a red nightlight and not

a white one.

Just saying.

Yeah.

That would be, it would be nice if you didn't have a default to that.

Yep.

That would be good.

All right.

Any more shortcuts?

More shortcuts, please.

Yeah.

Kirit has one, uh,

related to something that comes up on the show from time to time.

I don't know that we covered this.

He had sent us this question about, Hey, when I get into my car, car play always starts

automatically playing the last thing that I played.

And I don't always want that to happen or I don't like that to happen.

Um, and I think I've brought up in the past, the only way I've seen to work around it or

possibly work around it is before you exit the car, making sure you deliberately, you

know, stop or pause whatever you were playing.

And then it shouldn't come back on.

Um, Kirit wrote back to say, Hey, that doesn't work all the time for me.

Um, and he said, so he, he kept searching for a solution and he came across a shortcut.

Um, there's a YouTube video for it.

So we'll include that in the show notes.

But in essence, what it is, is with shortcuts, you can set up something called a personal

automation and personal automations can be triggered by a number of different events.

My daughter's favorite one was, um, she would have her iPhone play a sound every time she

plugged in the, the charging cable.

So you can, you can detect that.

So, you know, and it would say something like, Hmm, yummy.

But anyway, I digress.

But another, another shortcut you can have is, uh, when car play connects.

So you can simply set up a shortcut that says when car play connects, pause, and then you

pause the music app or pause, pause playback.

Yeah.

Yep.

I I've set this up on my phone and it works.

It, it, there is a lag though.

Like the music starts playing and then it stops.

And so when I first set it up, I was like, wait a minute, what just happened?

Why did my podcast stopped?

Stop playing.

Cause it, it, you, you don't set it just for the music app.

You just set it for playback in general for the now playing thing.

And so it was like, oh, well, I'm going to set it up.

I'm going to set it up.

I'm like, okay, great.

I'm into my, oh, wait, what happened?

Okay.

Got it.

Oh yeah.

I did that.

That was me.

I caused that.

Yeah.

So, uh, but it's okay.

Caught.

So don't get caught.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

But it does work.

Yeah.

Self-inflicted.

There's a lot of things that are self, self-inflicted here, but, uh, but yeah, no, it, it works.

And the link is in the show notes, which is excellent.

Uh, Andrew has.

Is a tip.

I, I, have we talked about this before?

Standardizing on one downloads folder.

It sure.

I, I feel like we have, but maybe not.

Um, you know what?

We're just going to do it again.

And if it's, if it's deja vu for all of us and not just me, well, then it's shared deja

vu.

And I don't know what that actually is, but, uh, Andrew.

Deja vu.

Toi.

Sorry.

I don't even know.

Thanks so much.

Thanks so much for listening.

This is the final episode ever.

It's what I do.

Dave.

I know you invited me.

Uh, yeah, yeah, it's true.

I leave your mic unmuted.

It's all my fault.

Uh, he said recently you were discussing the existence of two download folders in Apple

land, one in the home folder on Mac OS and the other in the iCloud folder on iOS, iPad

OS and Mac OS.

It takes less than a minute, uh, to have just one downloads folder.

Mac OS has a downloads folder in the user's home.

It is only on the Mac.

Correct.

When you are on a, when you are an iCloud account holder, uh, and you are signed into

it on your iPhone, iPad or Mac, a downloads folder also exists inside your iCloud drive

folder.

Confusing?

Logical?

No.

And yes, the logic of having a downloads folder on the Mac is for those who don't use iCloud.

They might live in Google land, Microsoft land or no land whatsoever.

You can run a Mac without an iCloud account.

And this downloads folder doesn't sync anywhere.

However, life is pretty bad for iPhones and iPads without an iCloud account.

It can be done, but it's like having a car without gas.

Yeah, but there's a lot of electric cars that run with it just fine without gas.

Anyway, I digress.

Uh, he says, so most people have an iCloud account on their iPhone or iPad, whether they

realize it or not.

So how do you get one downloads folder to rule them all?

It's easy on your Mac.

Go into Safari settings.

The first tab general asks you where you want your downloads.

Downloads to go change this from the downloads in the home folder to downloads in the iCloud

folder.

Then in Apple mail, do the same thing in the general tab, change downloads from the home

folder to the iCloud folder.

And now you're done.

All of your downloads will sync across all of your devices on your Mac.

You can add the iCloud folder for downloads to the sidebar by simply dragging it there.

And on iOS and iPadOS, you can also change the location of downloads from Safari to do

so.

Go to Safari settings.

And choose where you want your downloads to go because iPhones also have, uh, a local

downloads folder and a sync downloads folder.

So I love this.

Uh, it is nice to have just like you can have one documents folder, one desktop folder to

rule them all.

Uh, you can have one downloads folder to rule them all.

One might note that when you enable documents and desktop syncing, your default documents

and desktop on your Mac are synced to iCloud.

And if you enable that on all of your Macs, then all of them have the same thing synced.

You will also note that there is no way in the iCloud settings to say sync my downloads

across all my devices.

My guess is that this is very intentional on Apple's part because on your Mac, you might

download some six gigabyte file or something that's a disk image of like the latest Mac

OS.

And you might leave that in your downloads folder for a very long time and you might

not want that.

It's synced across iCloud, especially when the defaults, you know, iCloud storage is

still, what is it still five gigs or something?

It's like, it's ridiculously small.

I think, yeah.

So I think that's why this doesn't happen automatically, but, but Andrew, you are a

hundred percent right that this is doable.

I just want to wanted to kind of offer that context so that we all make this decision

eyes wide open.

That's all.

So yeah, yipper, but you are correct.

That will work.

Love it.

Uh, yeah.

Am I, am I taking Doug's quick tip here, Adam?

Is that, is that on me?

I will happen.

Oh, I don't, I, I can.

Yeah, go ahead.

Take it.

Cause it's related to the thing that we talked about last episode with your home videos.

I think it just didn't get marked.

Yeah.

So, um, I had commented and I, I think Doug has provided the answer, so we'll get to in

a second, but basically I had commented that I had a time when I got caught the other day

because I had a, I had a, I had a, I had a, I had a, I had a, I had a, I had a, I had a,

I had a bunch of home videos of my kids that were very, very important to me.

And we were having a dinner and, and my wife asked me to show my, our friend this video

and I couldn't find it on my Mac or on my phone or anything.

It was just like gone.

And I realized that this happened when Apple moved everything over to the TV app.

Cause it used to be, you know, in the movies app, I think it was called.

Right.

And you had this home video section.

And home videos ended up getting moved into, I think iTunes media and it was just gone.

And so I had to scramble and find backups.

But Doug says, as for home videos, I think they lived in a subfolder of the iTunes media

folder.

And he's absolutely correct.

And did or do not automatically move to the TV app.

Their existence here enabled home sharing to show them in Apple TV under computers,

which is a different app.

And you can access them from there.

So he says, unless you actively deleted your iTunes media folder without looking inside,

they still should be there.

And they probably are because what has happened and I've recently disconnected it because

as I mentioned earlier, I've been having these issues with my hard drives, just auto disconnecting.

So I had disconnected all my hard drives and my iTunes, my iTunes media folder lives on

an external drive.

Right.

So that's probably.

That's probably where everything went.

Now, I wouldn't have, I still wouldn't have been able to find them on my iPhone though,

because I don't think they sync anywhere.

So that was the problem when we were at dinner was like, I was expecting them to be somewhere

on my iPhone, but obviously they're not going to be there.

They would only be there if I, I don't even know if there is a computer app on the iPhone

or not.

Interesting.

I don't know how you would access them.

Like even if, even if my Mac was connected and I had my media sharing on, you know, computer

sharing on.

And, and, you know, like if all those things were true, I don't know if I could still get

them from my phone.

I, he's right about the TV app.

There's a computer, there's like a computer app, I think it's called or something like

that.

Or would they show up in, in, yeah, I'd have to do a little more research, but he's absolutely

right about where those things got moved to when Apple kind of split everything apart.

So I appreciate that.

Yep.

Yeah.

Thank you, Doug.

Good stuff.

All right.

One last quick.

Tip from for today.

Not, not final.

We, we, I think we might actually still do a show next week, despite, uh, despite our,

our indiscretions here.

Uh, but I think I've been uninvited.

I'm not sure.

We'll see folks.

Yes.

Stay tuned.

We'll, we'll all find out together.

Um, Andrew says I may be late to the party on this, but I just discovered that on a Mac

you can drag and drop Apple mail items.

Uh, into notes to do's calendar and probably more on notes.

If you drag and drop, uh, from mail into a note, it creates a hyperlink to that note,

uh, to, to the mail message from that note.

I would think if you drag drop from mail into note.

Yes.

Right.

Uh, if you drag and drop from mail into a reminder to do, it creates an entry and an

icon taking you to that mail item.

And similarly in calendar, if you drag from mail, uh, into calendar, it creates an appointment

and an icon.

Taking you back a link, taking you back to that specific email.

If you are on your iPhone or iPad and click the link or icon, it takes you to the mail

message on that device.

So this stuff is all synced across if you have mail accounts that are synced across.

So yeah, that it, that's one of those interesting things.

I, I never really used this.

Um, but I can absolutely see the value in it.

So do you, either you guys use the mail?

Mail links for this reason?

No, I don't.

But I mean, obviously this is a great way for those important emails.

This would be a great system for like those people who are like, can never find that email

when they're searching for email.

Yeah.

Like you could build a, you could set up a note and like for stuff, you know, you're

going to need to come back to drop them in there and you just have a note that syncs

across everything and, you know, kind of separate them from that's one use case I can think

for it.

But yeah.

And then even like putting them into a calendar events or whatever is kind of nice too, because

you know, someone sends you an email and sets up a meeting or a time and maybe that the

email has information in it that you want to reference, you know, then you have it right

in your calendar event and you can just click over.

Like there's a lot of good use cases for this.

I've just never used it.

I'm just not that organized.

You know, I'm not David Sparks.

Right.

Yeah.

I, I'd love to hear from someone who does.

Use this because I, I, as I said, I don't, but I agree with you, Adam, that there is

it, that there are some potential efficiencies here that if maybe if I hear some use cases,

I'll like be like, Oh yeah, I have to start doing that or whatever.

I don't know.

I mean, I don't use mail so that maybe that's part of my problem, but you know, I bet you

could use it even though from Thunderbird or any of the other.

You could probably track stuff across.

I wouldn't guarantee that at all.

No.

In fact, I would assume that I couldn't.

Okay.

Well, because it's, you know, it's using hyperlinks in Apple's thing.

Yeah.

I can't drag a message.

Well, let's see what happens.

Well, that's interesting.

So, okay.

I dragged a message into a note and I get a link to IMAP dash message colon.

So I'm going to drag a message into a note and I get a link to IMAP dash message colon.

So I'm going to drag a message into a note and I get a link to IMAP slash slash.

And what happens if I click that link?

Does it bring me?

Don't do it.

There is no application set to open the URL.

IMAP colon slash slash.

Yeah.

Okay.

But.

I bet you could set Thunderbird.

Yeah.

We'll do this in real time.

I can't set Thunderbird to open that.

It is.

And there is nothing, not even the mail app in my, in my applications folder can be.

Okay.

chosen to do this oh it's uh is there not something you can check to say all apps not

just recommended oh you're right okay all applications let's do this thank you p look

at this real time real time troubleshooting it really is yeah yeah okay where is thunderbird

here probably th yeah uh but do i run i run the thunderbird beta on this computer okay great

uh all right so i say open and uh hmm it did open a blank window on thunderbird i click it

oh this is amazing i clicked it again and it's yelling at me again that it has no application

set to open this okay well we tried yeah we sure did didn't we it's not known if this application

can open these things i got that yeah yeah so it's it's a no-go with at least with not with

thunderbird this way

so yeah doesn't work with spark either just or the new spark desktop email thing yep uh i've

been such a spark fan for so long and this new i'm sorry i you know i love the developers i love

the company but this new desktop app that they put together it's just non-standard they they

went and did their own thing it's beautiful i mean it looks beautiful they the designers did

a great job but it is like all weird non-native i don't know what they've done oh

the

functionality kind of stuff you know they like wrote their own things and i i don't like the

new version of the app the desktop app especially interesting i i'm so i i need to mess around with

mail in uh in the new mac os 15 and see if it's been made more functional or more extensible or

something that would allow me to go back to it um i and thunderbird's been fine though like

i really other than other than these things i don't know if it's been made more functional or

these kinds of things and the big one for me is that thunderbird does not

uh work with apple script and you might think well how many people use apple script with mail

have you ever taken an attachment and dragged it onto the mail icon and have it open a new mail

message with that attachment as part of the message guess what that's apple script that

makes that happen and with thunderbird not supporting apple script i can't do that so

there there are there are things

and i also um like when you click a link to you know send this as an email or something

some of that leverages apple script in mail and so thunderbird doesn't do that either there's

there's a few things where it's like oh yeah i have to kind of you know do a little work around

um yoink is great for that so you know if uh actually by this point but by the time this

episode is released or right about this time we'll um we'll do our drawing for the winners

of the uh five licenses of yoink from our august giveaway and we will be able to announce our

september giveaway but at the time we're recording this i don't have the details yet but you can

always go to macgeekup.com slash giveaway and you'll see what it is i just can't announce it

yet because it's not all together but that's okay it's close yep this goes back to this whole

conversation goes back to what i brought up last week where in my old age i've started to take the

path of least resistance and i'm like you know i'm not going to be able to do that because i'm not

coming back into the apple fold because life just gets a lot easier that way even though there's

there's hardships obviously like there's advanced things you miss out on or little quirks but

more and more just easy you get good features like this tip yep yeah for me it's a trade-off

right because doing like i i can't manage my email the way i would want to anymore with apple

mail because i have all of my stuff coming into one mail account and i can't manage my email the

need to be able to have different things happen when i reply from different addresses different

signatures that sort of thing and apple mail just doesn't allow for that so it it's yeah yeah i i i

also am looking for the path of least resistance it's just that my version of that path and your

version of that path are different yeah yeah it's all it is yeah yeah exactly yep all right uh let's

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coda for sponsoring this episode you want to take us to the next thing here adam the next question

yeah toni has a question for us he says how do i make it so that one focus mode doesn't override

the other for example i work at a church and i have work set to automatically focus mode not just the

focus mode but also the other one so how do you make hayden focus so you can auto focus forgot to

overwrite the other for example i work at a church and i have work set to automatic focus mode only

the real world i don't want to overwrite three quick steps or I need a class class to let me get laid

into a group of people who work pretty hard i don't even know how that clever fashion but this is

it really does make me f***ed up for all you know as you know the kung fu Pope on totality

work set to automatically focus based on smart activation. So when I drive to the church

slash work during the week, all is fine. But during the actual church services, I have a

do not disturb set based on time, Sunday at 11am to 6pm and Wednesday at 7pm. You would think that

it would know the one I want. But I guess it seems to me that my church slash work address,

it seems to me at my church.workaddress, and I'm messing this up now. Basically,

it's turning on when he doesn't want it to turn on, right? He wants it to do the church work thing,

the work focus, and then on the weekends he wants, or when it's service time, he wants that. So

is there any way to prioritize focus modes?

Yeah.

And it turns out, as far as I've been able to find out, there is not. Apparently, when the

focus modes conflict, the most recently activated one will take precedence. And since you're in a

geolocation that's activated, it's going to override the time-based one. So I'm wondering

aloud here, and maybe this is kind of a geek challenge if there's a way to do it differently.

I'm wondering if he can schedule his work mode to deactivate. Now, it's a geolocation to start it,

but then to deactivate it.

Then to deactivate it on certain days, say five minutes before service is supposed to start. And

then the scheduled one, do not disturb, should kick on as scheduled. So, Tony, I want you to

write to me and tell me how smart I am.

Well, as you were talking about that, I was implementing it here, Pete. And you can set,

when you go into your focus mode and set a schedule,

you can set multiple schedules. And so I wonder if, and this is where I don't know if it's an and

set of things or an or set, right? But you can set location and time. But again, I don't know

if it's location and time or if it's location or time, but I could set multiple things.

The instructions say, have this focus turn on automatically,

at a set time location or while using a certain app. So my guess is that these are,

that these are or conditions or conditions. So you can't say only turn it on when I'm at work

during these hours. It's this time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I'm wondering if you have a

location one, can you have it turn off or does it come back and go, Oh no, I'm in this location and

I'm going to turn back.

Gone. So, well, what if though we go back to what seems to be a theme of this episode and we create

an automation that says it because automations can be set for times and only if in a certain

location and then run, can, can we say, so let's say a time of day at eight, eight, nine, nine,

I'm going to say eight 45 AM on weekdays. Uh, what am I going to do?

I'm going to run a shortcut and I can have the shortcut be turn on my podcasting focus.

So that would, so you'd create a shortcut that turned on the focus. Just that's all the shortcut

does. Then you'd go into that automations tab in shortcuts and tell it when these conditions are

true, run the shortcut that turns on my focus. And you would also go into your focus mode and

turn off any automatic.

Focus things. And so you would be using shortcuts automations to trigger a shortcut to trigger a

focus mode. And I think that might do it. I'm feeling pretty triggered with that Dave.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in, in theory, right. You should be a, you could almost set it up as one

thing with the conditionals if you want to get really crazy. Yeah. Right. Yes. That's,

that's correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I, if I'm in this location,

and it's, it's not this day of the week and it's not these times, then do that. Otherwise do the

other thing. Yes. Right. Yes. Yeah. Heck yeah. I think that would work most of the time.

So forget the built-in focus mode thing. Just write your location-based shortcut to

trigger it all conditionally.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So join us in our discord. If you have questions about doing this, we're happy to help. Uh,

mackiecap.com slash discord would be, would be the place to go, but yeah. Yeah. This is doable.

I liked it. Yep. Yep.

Apple should add though, you know, to that point, to your point, to your earlier point,

should be an and, or you should be able to choose. Yeah. Like when you're setting those up,

they should, that would, that would solve this problem without having to do some sort of priority

thing.

Because priority might change too. So like, you know, I think the ability to set up focus modes

with and conditions or war conditions would be great.

Yeah, I agree. I like it. Yeah. I love it. This is a good, this is a very, um, real time episode

here. So yeah. Right. Yeah. Yep. All right. What else can we do in real time here? You want to take

us to the next one, Pete?

I think if we go to Drewski, we'll, uh, see,

if we can take him off the edge of insanity because he writes in and says, I'm being driven

to the edge of insanity by the messages app, iPhone SE3 running 17.3.1 and an M1 MacBook Pro

13.6.3. And if you do write to us at feedback at macgeekgab.com, it's always helpful to tell us

which OS you're using or iOS. Did you say feedback? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. He said feedback at

macgeekgab.com.

And that's where Drewski wrote to us. And he continues with, it is so inconsistent and

unpredictable when sending a photo or video attachments, but only to Android phones. I have

adjusted the settings every possible way I can think of countless times, and I still cannot depend

on the attachment being sent. This is regardless of wifi or cellular signal. Sometimes the attachment

sends without issue. Sometimes there's a slow moving green progress bar, which almost always

results in a not-so-good-to-me.com.

Delivered error. Sometimes the recipient reports a successful send, although the app reports not

delivered. And sometimes one attachment goes successfully, and a moment later, another does

not. I beg you, please help me correct this and stop my descent into lunacy. On the other hand,

I do have a whole new application for Ozzy's Diary of a Madman. So there's that.

Oh, yeah. All right. Yeah. Messages of a Madman, the 2024 remake.

Yeah. So,

usually, the slow-moving, inconsistent green bar, or even blue bar, if you're sending an iMessage,

combined with the not-delivered reports,

the times where I have seen these, it's because service is bad or intermittent or whatever. Like,

when we were in your plane, Pete, you know, and I would send a text message, you know,

occasionally the signal would sort of,

you know, catch us depending on our altitude and how close we were to a tower. And we'd get

some messages in and be like, oh, I want to send a text out. And, you know, some, and a lot of those

would say not delivered. And then later in the day, I would get a response from, you know, my

family that would be like, oh, that's pretty cool or whatever. And it's like, oh, it was delivered.

Okay. So when I-

It would pop up on my iPad.

Yeah. Right. I would see it. Yeah. If we were in a group text together, it was like, well,

it definitely was delivered. It's right there. Yep. That's right. You're right. Yeah, exactly. So

those things, anytime I've seen them, it's related to inconsistent or weak service.

We know based on what Drewski said that his phone has been in great service and still he's seeing

this issue. Assuming, let's,

going with that information as, you know, a piece of truth here. One other thing I would

check is enable Wi-Fi calling so that when you're on Wi-Fi, it can send this stuff over the Wi-Fi

to SMS gateway, which does exist and that can work. But assuming neither of those is the case,

it's still telling me that there might be something about the service on this device.

And with that, I would go,

I would go into settings, general reset and reset network settings. I've seen that fix weird

cellular mobile data problems in the past. And it's the first place I would go. This will though

delete all of your VPN settings and it might delete some or more than some of your saved

Wi-Fi passwords. So bear that in mind as you do this. Some people have been able to

successfully preserve their Wi-Fi passwords by disabling iCloud key chain syncing before doing

this reset network settings, do all the resets, make sure your phone's working,

then re-enable iCloud key chain syncing, and it will pull back down all of your saved Wi-Fi

passwords. If you don't disable Wi-Fi syncing and it does wipe your passwords, it will push

the deletions of those back up.

to iCloud and you lose them on all of your devices, potentially. That part of things

inconsistent. But if you turn off iCloud key chain before you do this, that usually will

save you from that. So, but that's what I would do next. Because it seems like a cellular data

issue or a cellular connection issue, I should say, because SMS is not data. I mean, it is.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. RCS will save us all, right?

You know, here.

Here's an interesting thing. I've been running the 18.1 betas on my daily driver iPhone. And by

and large, it's been working fine. The one that just came out on Wednesday, the 28th,

solves the one sort of pesky issue that I was having, which was that when my phone was in low

power mode, it took a really long time to wake up. It was sluggish to wake up, which, in a sense,

checks out, right? You know, if it's going to be in low power mode,

it's not checking the digitizer all the time. So it doesn't, you know, wake up. But it was

far different than, you know, an iOS 17 experience. I believe that has has been fixed or changed now.

But otherwise, it's been really reliable. I am on Mint Mobile, which as of the moment we're

recording this, which is Thursday, the 29th, has not yet enabled RCS on their network. However,

which means I'm still using SMS.

I have several text groups that are SMS text or SMS slash MMS text groups with like,

you know, friends and bandmates and things like that. iOS 18 and 18.1 have made those groups,

even without RCS, so much better. If someone reacts to a message, it comes through as a reaction,

just like it would in an iMessage chat. Previous with iOS 17, I would get like a new text message

that says, you know,

Tom reacted with a heart to quote, and then they'll quote the message. So it's filtering

those properly. Now, if someone does a reply, the replies actually are threaded properly. So it's

those fill the messages app is smarter, even with SMS, which is really nice to see,

because, you know what, a week from the day this episode's released, we have an Apple announcement.

And so, you know, I would assume that iOS release will be a week after that. I don't know if Mint Mobile

will have their act together with RCS yet or not. So there's there there it stands to reason there

may be folks who when 18 comes out, upgrade and still don't have RCS support, because it doesn't

exist. But hopefully, hopefully, talking to you, Ryan.

Get your act together.

That's right. Listen up, buddy. Quit making those funny movies and flip that RCS switch, will you?

I have no other thought on that, that it may be a side case. And when I have experienced

problems with it going through at times, it has been because I have had my VPN on.

So when I've turned off VPN, it goes through. It's like, oh, all right.

And I don't know why that, you know, it shouldn't be the case, right? It should just send it on a

different route, but it doesn't always. And frequently on my MacBook Pro, when I send an

email and it bounces back, I go, uh, my mail server does not like when I'm using a VPN.

Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. No, it's a good point. Thinking about what, you know, I said reset

network settings, but thinking about the things that you might have put in the way of, you know,

your connections. SMS.

Shouldn't be impacted by a, by a VPN unless you're on a wifi to SMS gateway, in which case it could

be. So I, yeah, turn it off. See what happens. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, VPN, like we have to use a

VPN at work and I mean, it doesn't impact me that much, but I mean, it's, it does throttle my

connection for sure. Like, you know, I'm getting less bandwidth, but it should be plenty for

something like a, like an SMS or, you know, like I wouldn't think that would impact.

But the other thing that I wanted to mention is like a possible workaround. I mean, you could

just use a service like box or even iCloud sharing and just like send the link to the,

to, to the file, you know, to the attachment on another service. And I would imagine that

would just get through, you know? Yeah. And you could use, um, WhatsApp. You could use,

you know, telegram. You could, you know, any of the all digital, all the time messaging platforms

would, you know, would theoretically work unless there's some more widespread issue. So, yeah.

Yeah. But I mean, like most of those, you can go into the, you can go into the finder,

you can go into the app and then just go right to messages, right? Click the share button

for the file and go to messages and it'll send the link rather than trying to attach it to an SMS.

Yeah. Yeah. Fair, fair, fair. Yeah. All right. Uh, James has a question and

James disappeared from the note only had, well, I don't think it disappeared from the note. I think

it was never put into the note to begin with pilot P but, uh, I remember James's question

and it was addressed to you, Pete. The question is,

can you explain to me how pass keys work and are they going to make us more secure

with things? You know, now I see websites that have pass keys and passwords.

It does the fact that I'm using a pass key, make me more secure. What's the deal, Pete?

You're our only hope help. Yeah, there you go. Well, if I'm your only hope, uh, you probably

should just hit stop now and get out of your car, folks. Walk away, walk away now. Run quickly.

That's right. Yeah. Don't, don't walk, run driven from insanity in real time.

That's right. The second part of the question is, was about passwords. And if we're still using

passwords, are we more vulnerable? And the simple answer is yes. As long as you're using a password,

even if it's in parallel with a pass key, if the website is allowing that, that then if you're

just using a password.

Yes. If your password gets lifted by somebody else and they can get in. So yes, you're more

vulnerable. So obviously the hope is to eventually get to all pass keys because that technology is

pretty cool. It's just asymmetric crypto key. Yeah. Or, or, or one of those that Adam's holding

up as a little, a little like a YubiKey. Yeah. But, uh, it's an asymmetric, uh, crypto key. So

when you set one up with, for instance, bestbuy.com,

you're essentially creating an asymmetric key. Bestbuy stores your public key on their server.

And when you go to log in, it queries your key chain and your private key answers and says,

here I am. And you never, you're not transmitting out a password as it were. You're just unlocking

that key. And it says, oh, okay. Yeah. You're you. And you log in and you activate that pass

your private key by usually a fingerprint or a face ID or something along those lines.

So even if, and I put in there,

cause he asked if someone tried to do like phishing or something like that,

that's fine. As long as they've got your public key, your private key is going to answer,

but they're not getting a password from you. So they can't grab your private key and then go log

in at another site with you. So, or with your private key, cause they don't have your private

key. So that's what makes it more secure. And it's, it's pretty, pretty cool technology. And

it's been around for just a couple of decades or so, but.

Yeah. Do you have stuff?

To add to that, Adam?

No, just, I mean, the, the, the big part of this is, you know, the private key is unlocked by

something you have something physical, be it your fingerprint or your face ID in a lot of cases. I

don't know if this is all a hundred percent of the case, but like these little Yubi keys, right? It

has to be plugged in. This one's lightning and USB-C on one side. This one's a USB,

just a USB-A one. So those are from my work. I have to use them to log into things. Although

it's become more convenient now that pass keys are better supported. I can actually use touch ID

on my keyboard. And I actually had my IT department order me a new keyboard with the touch ID on it.

Cause I use my laptop and clamshell or, um, you know, even other services now I can, I can tie

into that. What was I doing? Just, oh, the Synology. I just set up my Synology with, with

pass key rather than other authentication. So not only is it more secure, but it's also just more

convenient in my opinion, especially with our Macs and iOS devices, which have biometric things

that support pass keys built in now. So like touch ID, face ID works great. Yeah. Yeah. It,

the, the frustrating part is like websites that make me log in with a password and then use my

pass key. And it's like, okay, like I love the security. That's great. But this first step is

unnecessary. We don't, we don't need it, but it using the pass key is the second factor, uh, right.

Is, is better than using, uh, you know, SMS is the second factor, for example, right? It, it,

right. Because, because of the inherent security. And when people say when Pete says asymmetric key

just means it's a two-part key and you can hand out the public key all day long.

And then without your private key,

uh, you, you can't, no one can authenticate. So yeah. Yeah. It not even you. Yeah. It works

well. I have it set up on my Apple account and that works fine. You know, I get to go log in and

it's all good. So, yep. And I, and I don't have to type my password. I just use my pass key

and it lets me in as long as my Mac's unlocked, my pass keys unlocked and I'm in, which is cool.

Uh, so Gordon, Gordon has something interesting to talk to us about and it's not directly a

question, but it brought up questions in my mind. So, uh, Gordon says recently my mom's WordPress

site, which he uses for community events, stopped receiving emails from her contact form and they

automated emails informing her that the nightly backups were successful. After some research,

I discovered that the emails were sent using WordPress's default mail method, uh, and often

get flagged as spam. So it's just,

going through the regular PHP mailer and WordPress. Uh, this is due to lack of authentication

information leading to emails being marked as spam and not being delivered. So there's all this new

deliver deliverability technology that can validate emails. And if it's just going through

your standard server and no domain, those can get blocked and flagged as spam. So he says as a quick

fix for my mom's website, I followed the common recommendation of using WP mail SMTP plugin.

And basically,

uh,

sending it through a known service like send layer, you know, and they have these additional deliverability

things built into them. He said that solved the problem, but it came with the downside of I ended

up paying $60 a year for email, which is an ideal for a site that generates no income. Then I

remembered that if you subscribe to iCloud plus, you can set up a custom email domain. I decided

to try the solution for a couple of my other hobby sites, as I don't want to pay for transactional

email services, uh, for these sites with iCloud cloud plus,

and set up a custom email domain that's associated with a domain name you own. I tested this for one

of my hobby sites by setting up custom email domain on iCloud.com and then entering the

necessary information into the WP mail SMTP plugin on my WordPress website. Success. I started

receiving my contact form and administrative emails. Uh, and the best part is I was able to

do this with a service I already pay for without needing an additional third-party transactional

email service. So if you run a business and were like, oh, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

If you run a business and rely on websites to generate income, a transactional email service

may be worth the investment. However, if you have a hobby site and you're looking for an email

solution, iCloud plus custom email domains might be the answer you're looking for.

Huh. So yeah, I think this is a great idea. And what I responded back was, you know, I've been

wanting to play with this. I haven't really found a use case. So I think one, thank you. I think this

is a really good use case for people. But then the questions I have is,

do you guys know, I don't know if either of you have set up custom email domains. Is it just

one domain per iCloud account? Or can you do this with multiple domains? Like I haven't

played around with it. Oh, no. So, well, we have a family account. And my, I don't have a custom

iCloud. I don't have a custom domain on my iCloud mail. I could, I just haven't chosen to implement

that. But like my wife has one that she uses for her mail. I don't have a custom domain on my iCloud

mail. My daughter has a, her own custom domain for her mail. My son has a custom domain for his

mail, but I think we could cross pollinate that. Like, I think it's on our family account. So I

think there are ways of doing multiple domains, at least certainly with a family account. I don't

know about individual accounts, but that's a good question. Yeah. And then, so then does when email

comes in, is it, is it the kind of thing where like every email address at that domain,

just goes to your like iCloud or it goes to that one domain? It goes to your iCloud. Yeah. Email

comes into your iCloud account. Yes. Yes. Your iCloud email is the recipient of that. All of it.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. So you, it's not like you can have additional email accounts that are going

to different people. It's all going to funnel into your one iCloud account. So it's like,

that is you. Okay. That is you. Correct. And, and, and when you go to send email from,

even if it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a,

from the iCloud web interface, you get to pick the address from which you are sending it. Yeah,

sure. You know, it's interesting. I, because earlier this episode, I was lamenting the fact

that you can't have different signatures for different outbound addresses, all tied to the

same account. And now here we are talking about how Apple's own functionality has this in it,

but still doesn't allow for separate signatures. So maybe there's hope. Maybe they will,

actually adopt this. Uh, Rod L in the chat has another answer for this. Uh, and it is a service

called SMTP to go. I use this with one of our domains. It is for sending email only. And there

is a free plan that lets you send a thousand emails a month with a 200 email per day limit.

So for exactly what Gordon's talking about here, this could be used for free and almost certainly

would, um, would suffice. So you, you, you could save your 60 bucks a year with SMTP to go. And

then of course, as you, you know, as you send more emails, well, then, you know, the price

they do have, it's a freemium service, right? So do you need more than a thousand emails a month?

You get 10,000 emails a month for 10 bucks.

Which is more than your $60 a year. But if you're doing less than a thousand a month,

this might be your answer too. So thank you for that, Rod. Yeah.

That's SMTP. The number two go. Thank you.

SMTP to go. Yep. Link in the show notes for show. Uh, where are we here on time?

Yeah. Okay. Great. Uh, Tony says I use next DNS, uh, mainly to block ads, but, uh, I guess

I like the security features and they help too. However, there are some sites and apps that just

won't load with the next DNS filters in place. I could go in and look at the logs, see what's

being blocked and start whitelisting domains. So that doesn't happen in the future. But most of

the time, I just want a simple back to no DNS filter. So I can load whatever, uh, he says the

McDonald's app is one of them and then turn it back on when I'm finished in shortcuts. There is

an option to turn on and off.

VPN, but there is no way to turn off a networks filters and proxies. Do you all know of a way that

is quicker than going to settings, then general, then VPN and device management, then restrictions

and proxies, then the next DNS profile and change it to automatic. Then go back to what I need to do.

Then go back and through those steps and turn it all on again. If there's a way to do this via

shortcuts, I could link the tap the back of the phone two to three times to run a shortcut,

do whatever the filter is blocking and then tap it again.

So that would be really fun, but I don't know how to do it. Pete, you might have an answer.

And neither do I. Sorry. Okay. Moving on. Sorry, Tony. Okay. Tony, I have a partial answer. And,

uh, again, the, the proxies part starts getting tough, but I have a partial solution to this and

I put it in MGG tips in discord. And I also, I just put it in MGG live chat. Uh,

it's a quick way to get into your VPN profiles, turn them on and off. Uh, it doesn't deal with the

next DNS profile, but, uh, at least I don't think it does, but the shortcut I use is open the

shortcuts app and tap the little plus. I can't create a new shortcut, search for open URLs and

add that to the shortcut. And in the URL field, enter press colon root equal VPN. And the shortcut

will directly open your VPN profiles on your iOS device.

Oh, so it gets you like one, one tap away from.

Yeah. One tap away from getting into it. So you don't have to go into settings and search for it

and all that. And then just like that place your shortcut somewhere on your home screen or your

doc or whatever, you know, whatever you like. So it's a start. Yeah. Someone take us further

down that path that has more, more G2 than me on that subject.

I wonder if one of the, you know, there's those shortcuts extended,

extensions that third-party developers have put together. I wonder if one of those has anything

more. I mean, probably not. There are certain limitations, but these people have gotten really

creative. So I don't know. Maybe so. Maybe not. Uh, where are we here? What are we, uh,

what are we doing here? We're going to go to Richard next with his question. Um,

no, let's, let's save that. Let's do some cool stuff found. Cause there's been

some cool things found. Yep. All right. Uh, I'll start with Joe's. If either one of you wants to

grab some of these other ones, that'd be great. Um, but if not, then we'll, we'll just talk them

through. Um, Joe sent in a, uh, a thing. He says, I, it turns out I'm not the only one having a hard

time understanding why Apple added a low power mode to the Mac, but no easy way to toggle it.

It really should be a toggle and control center. However,

a cool utility called cool down to toggle the max low power mode. Uh, he does acknowledge that

the, uh, the Al Dente app also has a toggle, um, but it does not show you its status at a glance

and cool down sits in your menu bar and you get to, uh, see and toggle low power mode on your Mac

in the menu bar, which, uh, I would have really liked to have when we were trying to do recordings

from CES Pete. And I realized that low power mode was killing my ability to use stream yard. So

I like it. Yeah. Cool down. So there you go. Thanks for, uh, thanks for sending that in.

That's a good one, Joe. Excellent. Hey, Jim has one. Yep. Um, I was trying to find this in the,

I don't know why I can't find this in the notes, but I know what he was talking about. Cause I

read this email. So back on, uh, 10 51, I believe it was.

Yeah. We were talking about, um, ways to do Bluetooth audio, uh, actually capture,

uh, audio from your AirPods pro when you're shooting a video and you can't do it in the

native, uh, in the native app in camera app. And so we had recommended and said, you might try,

you know, a third party app and filmic pro was one that I've used in the past and, and like, and

it is now a subscription model and it's a little more expensive.

So Jim wrote in and said, Hey, check out black magic camera from black magic. Um, and they have

a great app that he says is even more full featured than filmic pro and added bonus. It's

free. Yeah. Love it. I got, uh, I got actually something more to add to that. I saw this from,

from Jim who, uh, happens to also listen to my other show. Thank you, Jim. Appreciate that.

Uh, he says, uh, or he said it's free and I went, okay. And I downloaded it and man,

it popped right up with like seven day free trial, then $4.99 a week or $19.99 a year or a $40 one

time purchase. And I went, well, not doing it right now, but unlike most of the time, when I

see something like that, I didn't delete the app. I just didn't. And I went, Oh, I wonder, I wonder

if I can at least look at it without getting the subscription. And I went back in and I opened it

up and there was no screen.

And I thought, wow, did I accidentally take the seven day? And I wouldn't check my subscriptions.

I did not. And it's, it apparently is working. Okay. I don't know. But so color me confused,

but I'm just saying when it came up and said, Hey, this is going to cost you. And then it didn't.

So don't be interesting. I'm not seeing anything about in-app purchases on the page for black.

We're talking about black magic.

Camera, Pete black magic camera from black magic design from black magic design. Interesting.

And when I first, I downloaded it and I opened it up and it wanted, it was like, Hey, subscription

and money. And okay, well, I'm not going to do it right now. And then I went back to it a few

minutes later to look at something and it wasn't asking for, and I thought, well, maybe I accidentally

subscribed. Are you, are you sure you didn't accidentally open filmic pro because everything

you just described is.

Well, and I'll even comment. So I had originally down it downloaded filmic when it was pre it's new

model and just a tip for anybody who may have done the same thing. Cause I hadn't opened it in a

while. So I opened it when this tip came in and sure enough, it popped up, you know, all this

subscription stuff and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it also mentioned that if you had the

older version, you could just continue to use version six versus version seven. So I just had

to find the little tiny, you know, like clothes. I don't want anything. And it dropped me right back

into the, into the original app version six app that I had. I think you launched filmic. I think

you launched filmic Pete. This is literally the same filmic. This is literally the same discussion

we had about pricing last week though. And you did download filmic, right? You told me, I mean,

I think I'm pretty sure that you had it and you were like, Oh, it's going to be super expensive.

And it was like, well, it's not as expensive.

99 for a week. Like I, I, unless, unless we're, unless this is solo deja vu,

which is totally possible, but I think it might be, what did you call it before? I'm not going to

say it because yeah, I'm not, yeah, whatever. Yeah. Cause I, I just downloaded black, black

magic camera and it's a hundred percent free. So I, it must've been a different app. It had to.

Yeah. Well, I thought I did it from the app store.

When it said, Hey, download open, but I could be wrong. I'm just, it was bizarre. That's why I put

the note. Yeah. Cool stuff found. I went, eh, don't be, don't be fooled by it. Folks go back

to it. I don't, I don't, I don't think, I think, all right. Yeah. I don't think there's, I self

inflicted a fooling on myself. Well, that we do that all the time for sure. Uh, we have had another

cool stuff found, uh, floating around about black magic camera. And, and that is that because as of

month, the new version of this adds multi iPhone control and an iPad version. Right. So I know. Yeah.

So you can edit, it will pull in all this data. And then of course, uh, it's in a format that can

be used with, um, DaVinci resolve, uh, for the Mac, which is black magics photo video editing

software. And if you haven't, if, and that's probably the bonus cool stuff found here is

DaVinci resolve.

DaVinci resolve is amazing. It is a professional video editing suite that is available for free.

And really that one, I should make clear. There is a freemium, uh, option there.

I've never run into anything on it, doing the things that I do that would even make me think,

oh, I can't do that because I haven't paid the whatever it is, 300 bucks or 400 bucks for the,

for the package. It,

and it's built for this, right? It's built for solo folks, hobbyists, students to learn the

package, to use it, to really become fluent in it. And then if you wind up doing this professionally,

there are some features that you might want for that, that really only apply to pros.

And that's what you would pay for. But if you're doing it professionally, the three or 400 bucks,

and I, I keep saying three or 400 bucks because, um, I can't remember how much DaVinci resolve is,

but it, but that it's,

it's that it's not, um, it's not any more than that, but yeah, no, DaVinci resolve is awesome.

And it's now up to version 19 to 95. So it's actually less than I was saying slightly

DaVinci resolve studio is the pro version. You can look at the differences, but

it's what I use for any video editing that I have to do. And it's way, way more powerful

than anything I've ever touched. So, uh, right. Filming with black magic camera

might well be a good idea. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Um, a good way to, you know, get your content in a way that it's going to have all the metadata

in all the ways that, uh, that DaVinci resolve would need. And with the multi-cam stuff,

this starts getting really interesting. So, yeah.

Who needs a $50,000 studio camera? Get a, get a few iPhones, magic camera 2.0. And

you're good to go. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I know.

I have to check that out. Yeah, no, you, you, yeah, you, you would probably use DaVinci resolve

far more than I would Pete, just knowing the kind of stuff you like to do. And, and you'd,

you'd, you'd make way better use of it than me. So, yeah. Okay. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to,

and it turns out it's all free. Yep. My favorite price as an airline captain, just saying.

All right. Uh, well, Stephen,

with another cool stuff found, uh, light shot screenshot for easy screenshots. He says,

hello, gentlemen, losing that term loosely. I think he is. He says, I was listening to episode

1051 where you discussed applications that created screenshots on a Mac. I wanted to provide my two

cents worth just for fun. I'm not a power user. So instead of memorizing keyboard combinations,

I downloaded an application called light shot screenshot years ago, and it continues to work

for me. My present machine is an M2.

MacBook air 13 inch. It was free when I downloaded it and it remains in the app store. As far as I can

tell, it is still free. You launch the application and you're given the crosshairs, which you use to

draw the area that you want to capture as usual. You are then given the option to print, save,

or copy their rudimentary markup tools as well. It does have a couple of buttons so that you can

directly share to Twitter, Pinterest, and a couple of other places, but that's not my usual workflow.

The app icon, which looks like a purple feather quill pin sits in my dock for

access. And as they say, it just works. So thank you for your time and efforts. Great show. Best

regards, Steven. Thank you, Steven. That's pretty cool. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're not someone

whose fingers remember commands that, you know, our brains all work differently, put it in the

dock, click it. There you go. Right. Good to go. I like that. That's pretty good. All right. One

last cool stuff found before I have to go.

Uh, meet my new doctor. Um, I swear I'm going to find it somewhere here. Here it is. I found it.

Great. Uh, Rob, the doctor or the cool stuff found, uh, cool stuff found first. Uh, Rob says

back in episode 1047, you were talking about using a device to monitor the temperature inside

your refrigerator or freezer. And I believe you mentioned a Bluetooth device for that.

And that you had to be very close to it sometimes to read it, uh, to read the, the

temperature from it, because of course it's like a Faraday cage of sorts. I wanted to let you know,

Rob says that I have had great success using a different device and protocol. You may have heard

of Laura L O R a instead of using the 2.4 gigahertz range of Bluetooth, Laura uses 900 megahertz

lower frequency generally equates to better signal penetration propagation. True. I have employed

several devices from yoga. I've had a lot of fun with that. I've had a lot of fun with that. I've

had a lot of fun with that. I've had a lot of fun with that. I've had a lot of fun with that. I've

had a lot of fun with that. I've had a lot of fun with that. I've had a lot of fun with that.

Uh, which leverage this Laura technology, L O R a, you first add their hub to your network via

ethernet, and then you can deploy a wide range of devices. And in this case, their temperature

sensor. So, uh, yeah, he says, I found this brand to be rock solid. The devices just work.

And with zero hassle, I'm even using one to notify me when the mail is delivered to my

mailbox at quite a distance from my house, well beyond the, you know, 30 to 35,

I would expect with Bluetooth. I just thought I would share this and hope that it helps someone

else who has a similar need. It recently literally saved my bacon, notifying me that the freezer in

the garage had given up the ghost and allowed us to quickly respond. I put one of these in my Amazon

cart as soon as, uh, it came in because yesterday I went to get something out of the freezer in our

garage and noticed that the door, there was something inside that was keeping the door from

being closed and things were.

Starting to thaw and that's bad and dangerous. So yeah, it's 39 bucks to buy the, uh, wireless

temp sensor with the hub. I think without the hub, it's $22 or something. So I, I, I, I was

looking to see if like the hub is matching some other hub that I already have, but I don't think

it is. I don't think I have any low raw hubs here. Um, so, uh,

yeah, it says don't try this with wifi. Our unique Laura based sensors are different from wifi,

Zigbee, Zig, Z wave, and most other wireless smart sensors. So yeah. Okay. Yep. So I need,

I need the hub. So I'll pay the 40 bucks. Well, actually there's a 10% coupon, so I'll pay the 36

bucks. Yep. Yep. Fun stuff. Go ahead. I was just going to wonder, uh, is that a, uh, is that a

standard? And also Zoe says always save the bacon.

Which I agree with.

Yes. Right. Yep. And if the bacon, if the bacon starts to thaw, just cook it and eat it. That

that's the, that's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is interesting. Yeah. I, I'm, I, I feel like

I'm buying a hub that I don't need because I have so many other things like that, but, um, maybe I

just bite the bullet, just do it. So I need, I probably need this. We had the same thing. My

daughter accidentally went out and get sucked to get something from the freezer.

Same thing. Didn't, didn't shut. And then it was in the garage and obviously we didn't know it came

out and I know we lost some steaks, which I was not happy about.

Yep. That's yep. That's how, uh, that's how it works.

The price of this thing is cheaper than the, than the lost food alone.

That's fair. That is fair.

Not to mention your electric bill trying to freeze the entire garage.

Yeah.

Just isn't going to work.

It's just, it's not, it's not as efficient as you would think. Yeah.

I'm going to bite it out.

All right.

Doctor time.

It's doctor time. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Thank you

for, uh, sending in all your tips and your questions. Thank you for just simply listening.

It really, it, it, it's so amazing that we continue to get to do this and we're very,

very fortunate. Thanks to our friends at cash fly for providing all the bandwidth to get the

show from us to you. Uh, check out Pete's other show.

So there I was check out my other two shows, business brain and get gab.

We linked to all that stuff in the show notes.

We linked to our socials in the show notes.

If you want to find us there and, uh, check out our merch store,

Mackie cap.com slash merch.

Maybe you need to get a Mackie cap t-shirt so that you don't forget the three magic words,

which none of us are wearing any of the shirts today.

So I don't remember Pete. Do you remember what the words are?

I, well, I do. And for my pilot friends, I'll say it like this.

Stay off the radar, but for everyone else, don't get caught.

Later.