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July 2017 Newsletter
Taking Mac and iOS Screenshots
macOS and iOS have both long included built-in screenshot features that make it easy to take a high-resolution picture of what you see onscreen. (You can, of course, use a camera to take a photo of your screen, but expect the quality to suffer.)
Taking a screenshot in iOS works the same on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Just press the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons simultaneously. The screen flashes, and iOS saves the screenshot to your Photos app—look at the bottom of the Photos collection or, if you’ve turned on iCloud Photo Library, the All Photos album.
The same technique works on the Apple Watch, where you press both the digital crown and the side button simultaneously. (If you're like me, accidental presses of those buttons explains why random Apple Watch screenshots might appear in Photos.)
On the Mac, you can take your pick from three built-in methods of taking screenshots:
If you take a lot of screenshots, consider memorizing macOS’s keyboard shortcuts. For a full-screen screenshot, press Command-Shift-3. For a screenshot of an arbitrary size, press Command-Shift-4 and drag out a rectangle. To capture just an object like a window, press Command-Shift-4, hover the pointer over the window, press the Space bar to show the camera cursor over the highlighted object, and then click to take the screenshot.
A few notes:
The Command-Shift-4 shortcut is the only way to capture a menu.
On a MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar, after you press Command-Shift-4, notice the helpful buttons on the Touch Bar.
All screenshots are saved as PNG files on your Desktop and named with the date.
If those keyboard shortcuts sound hard to remember, try Apple’s Grab app, which is hidden away in the Utilities folder inside your Applications folder. It’s a simple app, but it can take full-screen, window, and selection screenshots, and it walks you through the process. You can also use Grab to capture a full-screen screenshot with a timer, which is handy if what you want to record appears only while you’re dragging an icon or another object, for instance. Captured screenshots appear in Grab as Untitled TIFF documents that you can close, copy, save, or print.
Want to mark up a screenshot with circles and arrows and a paragraph of text? For that, use Apple’s surprisingly powerful Preview app, which takes screenshots as editable graphic documents. Choose File > Take Screenshot > From Selection, From Window, or From Entire Screen. That last option takes a timed screenshot so you can set up any temporary conditions while the timer counts down. It's the only way to capture the pointer in a screenshot. To access the tools you need to add shapes or text to your screenshot, choose View > Show Markup Toolbar. When you’re done, you can save the screenshot in a variety of formats.
Airplane Mode: Flying with Apple Tech
Since 2013, we’ve been able to use handheld electronic devices such as the iPhone or iPad at pretty much all times during airplane flights, including takeoff and landing. That was a big change from previous policy, which banned the use of personal electronic devices below 10,000 feet, forcing passengers to occupy themselves with books and magazines at the start and end of flights. (The horror!)
But now flight attendants ask us to put our devices into “Airplane Mode.” You probably know how to do this on your iOS device, but if not, here’s how. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to bring up Control Center and tap the airplane button at the top left. Alternatively, you can open the Settings app and enable the Airplane Mode switch (it’s the first switch in the list). When you land, use the same controls to turn it off again.
Airplane Mode disables the cellular voice and data features of your iPhone or iPad, and on all iOS devices it turns off both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. However, only the cellular features are important to your airline—you can re-enable both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth at any time. That might be useful if you want to use the airplane’s Wi-Fi network for Internet access (sometimes for a fee) or Bluetooth to play music over wireless headphones.
To turn these wireless features back on, tap the grayed-out Wi-Fi and Bluetooth buttons in Control Center, or flip their switches in Settings > Wi-Fi and Settings > Bluetooth. Don’t bother turning them on unless you’re going to use them, though, since you’ll save a little battery life by leaving them off for the duration of a long flight.
Why do the airlines care about cellular? It has little to do with airplane safety; the prohibition originated from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, not the Federal Aviation Administration. The reason is that fast-moving cell phones used high in the air may light up many cell towers at once, which can confuse the mobile phone network.
If you’re allowed to use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, why do the airlines make you stow your MacBook Air during takeoff and landing? It has nothing to do with the technology—the airlines ban laptops during times when there could be an emergency landing because they could, like carry-on luggage or lowered tray tables, impede evacuation.
Free VPN Setup Help
We continue to recommend that every Mac, iPhone, and iPad user start using a VPN. We've mentioned previously how federal law was recently changed to allow Internet Service Providers to have full access to your data, and how we were both saddened and incensed by this. We remain in this complex emotional state.
As a refresher, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a software program that creates a private, encrypted tunnel from your Mac to the internet so that you can send email or browse the web without your ISP spying on you.
The VPN we recommend is Private Internet Access (PIA), a link to which is available at www.macatoz.com/vpn. (We receive a small commission for any sales through this link.) The cost is $40 a year which supports up to 5 devices simultaneously. If you need help setting up the PIA VPN and you're willing to use our affiliate link above, you may contact us and we will help you at no charge.
Tip of the Day
Ever wanted to jump to a particular folder on your Mac while opening or saving a file? You can, thanks to a clever Finder trick. Whenever you have an Open or Save dialog open in an app, switch to the Finder, find the folder you want to access, and drag its icon into the dialog. Presto—instant navigation to that folder! This trick even works if you drag the proxy icon—the little icon in the title bar of any window—for any folder.
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