How to Use Safari Extensions to Enhance Your Browser

When web browsers were first invented, they did little more than display web pages and save bookmarks so you could return to pages you visited often. Since then, web browsers have become mini-platforms on their own, and Safari, like other browsers, lets you use extensions to enhance your browser experience.

In this article, I’ll explain how Safari extensions work, why they changed recently, and I’ll mention a few extensions that you may find useful.

Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.

Use Smart Albums in Apple Photos to organize your photos

If you have lots of photos, Apple’s Photos app on the Mac is a great way to organize and edit them. You can view your photos in many ways: by date, location, and you can even view all the photos of specific people. The Photos app even creates special “memories” for you, of photos from specific places, with your favorite people, days when you’ve taken a lot of photos, or even the best photos of your pets. But the Photos app does this all automatically, with an algorithm; you have no control over when or how these memories are created.

You can also organize your photos in albums. An album is like a playlist in iTunes or the Music app: you choose what it contains, and you can view the photos, watch a slide show, use your selection to make a book, and more. Smart albums, like smart playlists in the Music app, allow you to choose photos by conditions, such as the date they were taken, their location, people they contain, any keywords or titles you’ve assigned to the photos, which camera you used, which lens, and more.

In this article, I’m going to tell you how you can create smart albums, and why you may want to use them.

Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.

Understanding the System Information App

A Mac is complicated device, and sometimes you want or even need to find out a bit more about its internals. You may want to check if all your hardware is working correctly, or you may want to verify that your Mac’s hardware – or certain software protocols – are compatible with a device you want to use.

The System Information app contains a full gamut of resources about your Mac. It lists all the hardware specifications: not just the processor and RAM, but also which Bluetooth module the device contains, its graphics card, its input/output ports, and even shows all the USB devices connected. This app also tells you about your Mac’s networking interfaces, and lists software installed on your Mac.

Here’s how you can use the System Information app to get useful info about your Mac.

Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.