OK, I know about login items, what I want to stop is not there.

Microsoft (gack) Update and Tailscale both launch on a restart. Can’t find where to prevent this. I’m sure it was covered on Day 1 of Mac User School (which I took decades ago) but I can’t figure it out.

Call me a noob if it helps, but I’m stuck. Sequoia 15.7.9 on an Intel iMac & Apple silicon MBP.

PS: This is my 4th MBP and my 2nd iMac.

My mac that i purchased is now being used for my school where they installed mosyle device management. the problem is that they turned it into their computer. is there a way that i can bypass the mdm with terminal commands or anything else. they essentially own my damn mac now which is dumb because its mine? I just want to access messages and my browser opera. in certain times when i can access messages (it seems like applications are blocked at certain times) I cant send messages unless i have vpn which is also strange? I cant unenroll because they still can access my device. I can't really talk to any teachers about it because they think its a very good idea. anything helps.

Out of the box, Mac OS is decent for privacy (compared to Windows). However, it can be exceptionally further improved. I have some optimizations to share that may be useful and can even potentially improve one's security in Mac OS. These changes are tame to pretty extreme for some. So, depending on your use case, feel free to pick and choose.

Turn on Lockdown mode and enable File-vault.

Ideally, don't use an Apple account. If you must, make sure that Advanced data protection is enabled.

Config the firewall, so stealth mode is enabled and the two settings above it are disabled. Disable any incoming connections that are not critical, or just disable all of them via the toggle.

Install LuLu, which is an open source firewall that gives u far more control over what outbound connections are active within your Mac. This let's you have far more control over Mac Os's overall telemetry and with any apps that you have installed.

Use a VPN that respects you. Mullvad VPN is a nice option. Just remember VPN does not mean a silver bullet, so if you use it and just log into ur social media's/Google account (even if it is with their Mullvad Browser), it kinda defeats the purpose.

My daily browsers are Zen/Brave.

Parallels is a solid VM for Mac os; however, they are making changes with their new version that just annoy me. UTM is a great open source option as well. The performance drop is massive, but the talented team over at UTM is slowly working towards closing the gap.

I am personally working on a front-end for QEMU that I will share on Git-Hub soon. The whole point of it is to make a VM that is focused on privacy/security. So, by default, sharing of any kind is disabled. There is a quick toggle to let you pick your network types, if you need internet access. But, it will not launch until your VPN is active, and it has a quick VPN leak check built into the GUI that you can quickly run too. This will hopefully be useful for folks that may need to test malware and conduct other pen-testing.

Overall, as a cybersecurity grad, has been a fun project. I am pursuing medicine, but this field will always be a fun hobby.

why when I scroll down or up in downloads it's not smooth at all but when I go for photos its very smooth , can you see the difference ? how to solve this problem ?

thanks

Hi I'm currently having issues my startup loading times let me explain.

I have blockers and all sorts to stop me from betting and getting into any bad habits, however after protecting my computer with a bunch of apps and learning how to make scripts on terminal to block settings. I found that I have 2-3 second window in which none of the login items popup/startup which allows me to quickly unselect all the blockers and then fall back into bad habits and get back into bad habits. Is there anything you guys recommend like purchasing or anything to stop that or delays so my apps can start up way sooner?

I’d really appreciate the help!

MODEL: Macbook M5 I bought it last year in November/December

Hey all,

I've been battling my mac's storage space for the past few years, where- sometimes- it would randomly fill up all of my remaining storage, seemingly with nothing? This got logged as System Data in the breakdown, which isn't totally helpful. When restarting the computer, this phantom data would all vanish- but sometimes, fill back up in as short as 20 minutes.

I never could get a good answer from customer support (I don't think they knew either), so after finally breaking down and doing some self research, I tracked the cause for me- that being, that Mac auto-downloads the default background wallpapers, in 4k, 240fps, even if you don't use them as your background. They're very nice videos, but it'll sometimes download them en-masse, causing 5-25 gb to mysteriously vanish with no clear reason.

To check if this happened to you-

1: Open finder

2: At the top of the screen, click Go -> Computer (note: you do need just 'computer'; the library we navigate to later is different than what Go's "library" option will bring you to. Confusing, I know)

3: Go to your hard drive, and then into Library -> Application Support -> com.apple.idleassetsd -> Customer -> 4KSDR240FPS (note: You made need to enable hidden folders to see the library folder? I don't quite remember, but if you don't see it, check another guide on how to reveal hidden folders)

4: Check the videos in there to see how much space they are taking up.

~~~

Now then- if that is eating up all of your storage, how do you fix it?

Please note, I am not a tech-spert at all. Fuck around with system files at your own risk. I'm simply relaying my own experience for you to use as a jumping-off point, not to copy verbatim without thought. Okay? Okay.

To fix it, I:

1: Changed my background & screen saver to custom ones, to avoid needing the Mac defaults

2: Went into the folder listed above, and deleted all the videos

3: Cleared out my trash to permanently delete them

4: Dragged the folder to the "favorites" section of finder, so I could quickly access it later if need be

Note that this isn't actually a permanent solution. The backgrounds'll probably decide to download again, seemingly at random- you might get a few minutes of peace, or maybe a few months of peace. No real way to know.

But, it's at least more convenient than restarting your whole computer every 20 minutes for weeks on end, so I thought I'd share my findings~

Hi alll.....last night I erased my iMac (Sequoia). After restart, I connected my WD external hard drive and began moving a few folders over. Worked great. The drive also worked perfectly fine on my Macbook Pro (Catalina). I used Migration Assistant to transfer some files to the iMac from the MBP. As that was finishing, iMac froze on black startup screen but wouldn't progress from there. I realized I had left the ext HD plugged in, and knowing from the past this causes issues, I unplugged it. It unfroze and finished restarting just fine. Now, the ext HD does not show up on either of my Mac's desktops, but does show up in Disk Utility, although it will not mount. Format is ExFat. I plugged it into a Windows PC and then back to my mac....no change. It does show up just fine on the PC and I can access the files successfully. Anyone have any ideas or thoughts on what changed?? I appreciate all of the help in advance!

Also wanted to add that when I click on First Aid, it immediately fails.

It's quite hard to explain so I've filmed a very short video. I have tried everything within display settings on both devices, with no luck.

Chatgpt told me to try the "double push method" which apparently "realigns" the devices, but I haven't had a great deal of luck with that either.

My Mac and MacBook are 2021 and 2020 M1s, both running on Tahoe.

Any help would be appreciated.

I decided to downgrade from Mac OS Tahoe to Mac OS sequoia because I thought it was worth it and didn’t like the look of Liquid Glass and it still has security updates until fall 2027 so do you guys have any tips to make it better

See title. I was almost out of memory, tech support guy is rooting through stuff, I explained I use the app for work projects (it's part of our accessibility remediation in concert with PDFix), he deletes anyway. I deleted the app, I rebooted, I reinstalled, I deleted the app again, I deleted the library files, I reinstalled the app, I deleted the new install, I reinstalled again, I made sure the library files were gone, I emptied the trash and I still get this error message.

Action Fix Fonts (Callas) failed with exit code 125

I feel like I've taken all the steps advised by people in this sub and on other forums. I'm at a loss. Does anyone have advice they can offer? Thanks.

I somehow turned something on my mac that is now making sounds every once in a while i have turned off every accessability setting i could find yet it still plays intermittantly. I cant really describe the sound either i keep saying carnival whistle but nothing seems to undewrstand what sound I am refering to.

Hi! So my sister got a hand me down macbook air from a distant relative and got so excited because it was the first time our family ever got an apple product and she quickly finished setting it up as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we dont know if my sister made a typo or whatever, but when she wanted to use it again, the password wasnt working. She's kinda impatient, so she tried retyping it over and over and over again until the account got locked. We had know idea about this activation lock thing until it happened.

We tried using the method from the apple website with the serial number and stuff but that requires a confirmation link to be sent and well...the only access we have to the email is through the laptop (the apple account isnt signed in anywhere else. I know. Very dumb). Now were worried if there's still any other option to unlock it so that my sister can still use the laptop for her online classes.

Genuinely please help :( We're very casual technology users and seriously had no idea how strict apple was when it came to these things. I really really don't want it to just become paperweight.

i have a m1 air purchased just a month ago. it has 51 count cycles and my battery health has degraded to 96% and i'm concerned! is it normal? i don't think so? i have brave as a browser so does it contribute to degrade my health? help this poor woman out.

Normally it does, but after 2-3 days, it stops showing up on lock screen. Also it moves from centre of screen to right. How to get it to show up on lock screen again without having to reboot?

On Windows I could kill the explorer.exe process to fix these kind of bugs, anything similar?

Hi everyone,
I have a base M3 Macbook Pro and I have an issue with the graphics every time I disconnect the two external monitors.

I have one 4K monitor connected with a USB hub and a vertical Full HD one that I occasionally connect with the Mac's HDMI.

At the moment I am running the macOS 26 but it's an issue I've also had with macOS 15.

Does anyone know why this happens? It's not permanent, after a reboot everything works just fine, but this shouldn't happen...

I'm at 20 days on my M4 MacBook Air and 49 days on my M2 Mac mini. I think both would be higher if I hadn't performed an OS update and had a power outage!

Not sure how to check? Open Terminal and run 'uptime'.

Why did WhatsApp make the new sidebar so wide? 😩

Before this update, I could easily resize WhatsApp to **half of my screen** and use another app on the other half.

Now, because of the new sidebar with **Chats, Updates, Communities, etc.**, WhatsApp's minimum window width is wider than half of my screen. So I **can't fit WhatsApp and another app side-by-side anymore**.

This is especially annoying on macOS when you regularly work with two apps side-by-side. The previous layout worked perfectly fine.

**Please give us an option to collapse or hide the sidebar, or at least reduce the minimum window width.**

Anyone else annoyed by this update?

this is my ram with a few things open:

1. google chrome with messenger and this reddit tab
   
2. spotify
   
3. BoringNotch

i know that the green is perfectly healthy but im gonna need more space for school work since i got some big documents here and there ;-;

I feel like this feature is glanced over so often when comparing to Linux and Windows. I know Windows simply can't do this, but haven't looked deeply into Linux yet. If anyone knows, I'm running Fedora 😁

I love quick access to Downloads, Desktop and Screenshots from where I can just drag drop into any app without having to open Finder.

Anyone have other handy folders docked?

I’m running macOS Tahoe and I’m getting this error when trying to play a YouTube video. I’ve attached a screenshot of the error.

I’ve already tried emptying the cache, clearing my browsing history, turning off all extensions, and even uninstalling all extensions. The problem goes away temporarily after doing this, but then comes back again after watching around 3–4 videos.

At this point I’m not sure what else could be causing it.

Has anyone else experienced this on macOS Tahoe? If so, have you found a permanent fix?

Hi,

I'm using Postman on my new MacBook Air M5 (keyboard layout Italian). My previous pc was a windows. I'm used to use Ctrl+ù to toggle line comment. Now on macos it doesn't work and even using AI I'm not finding some keymap to use. How can i fix this? I found Option + shift + a but it's not that same because it's a block comment.

Until recently, I was able to have a version of MEGA that worked with my MacBook that is this version. It said there was a big error message that it wouldn’t load, so I deleted it and can’t seem to find a new version that will work with my Mac. If anyone can, please find me one that will work with this version that I have here, it would be truly gratefully appreciated.