OTHER MONTEREY TIPS & TRICKS
Fuzzy search, full keyboard control, snapshots, and more
OVER THE LAST few years Macs have gained powerful features such as APFS snapshots which haven’t been readily accessible. At last Disk Utility can manage them, and Monterey empowers the more advanced user in many other respects.
SPLIT SCREEN
While Full Screen mode lets you concentrate on one window, splitting it into two is often better for your productivity. Hover the pointer over the green button at the top–left of one of the two windows you want to see until a floating menu appears, and decide whether to put that window to the left or right. With that in place, click on the other window you want and the pair will be shown in Split Screen mode until restored with Escape.
GO TO FOLDER
To find folders in the Finder use fuzzy search. Access this using Cmd+Shift+G or in the “Go to Folder” command. Start typing the name of the folder you want to find and it’ll come up with a range of useful alternatives. It also remembers the last folders you looked for.
KEYBOARD CONTROL
When you’re busily typing on your keyboard, moving your hand to use a mouse or trackpad distracts and isn’t efficient. Accessibility, in the Navigation tab of the Keyboard section, offers Full Keyboard Access, which lets you drive pretty well everything without touching your mouse or trackpad. If you struggle with its keyboard mapping you can customize that, and you can add access to the menu bar and Control Center in the Dock & Menu Bar pane.
CONVERT IMAGE
To quickly convert an image to a different format, for example from HEIC from your iPhone to JPEG, select the image in the Finder and Control–click for the contextual menu. There, select the Convert Image option in Quick Actions. You’ll be offered a range of image formats, whether to rescale the image or leave it the same size, and whether to preserve its metadata.
GET PHOTOS INFO
Photos and videos contain rich metadata about the camera and settings used, location, and more. Display these by clicking the Info
button at the upper right of each image in your Photos library. Some of that information can also be corrected or changed.
MERGE PHOTOS LIBRARIES
Although Photos can still only open one library at a time, and can’t split a library directly, it can now merge two into one. Open your main library to which you want to add the contents of another. Ensure you haven’t got an image selected first, then use the Import command in the File menu to select the library you want to import. You can then import all the images and videos, or just a selection of them.
QUICKTIME PLAYER CONTROLS
Even the humble QuickTime Player app has had a makeover, making it easier to control movie playback. On a trackpad you can drag backwards and forwards through a movie, and click on the “>>” control to choose from a list of playback speeds, which are the same as those available in the Playback Speed in its View menu.
MANAGE SNAPSHOTS
Disk Utility now has extensive features for managing APFS snapshots, including those made by Time Machine and third–party apps. To list snapshots on a volume, select the volume in the list at the left, and use the Show APFS Snapshots command in the View menu. The list shown is in order of creation, the most recent at the end, and sizes shown are cumulative. Select a snapshot and click “–” to delete it, which is irreversible, or use the (…) button to mount it, or open it in the Finder. Beware of deleting snapshots on the volume you store your backups on, which could be damaged.
DELETE BOTH VOLUMES
If you need to delete the Data or System volume from a bootable Monterey system, you’re best off deleting both of them together. This is because they’re linked with one another using firmlinks, and are in effect inseparable twins. To restore the system, install macOS afresh and migrate your files from a backup, which recreates them as a couple.
BLOCK FULL DISK ACCESS
Some apps and tools can easily regain Full Disk Access in the Privacy tab of Security & Privacy when you don’t want them to. Instead of deleting them from that list, once they’ve been installed and granted access, uncheck them and leave them in the list. It’s harder for them to become enabled again than to gain access once they’ve been removed.
EXTERNAL BOOT DISKS
If you start up an M1 Mac from an external drive, Monterey changes how you can alter its secure boot from Full Security. Start up from that external drive, shut down, then start up in Recovery by holding the Power button. Enter Options, and the Startup Security Utility available from the menu lets you change policy for that drive alone. In macOS 12, you can’t set policy for an external drive from the Recovery system of the internal SSD.