One very minor thing that's been bugging me since macOS Sequoia came out is that if you launch an app that lives in your menu bar, but also has a hidden Dock icon a second time, then the Dock icon will re-appear. This happens to me a lot because I use Alfred to launch apps and also to bring an app to the front. This works because opening a...
I create a fair few scripts in my ~/bin/ directory to automate tasks. Since discovering uv and inline script metadata, I've started using Python far more for these. As ~/bin is on my path, I want to run the script by calling it directly on the command line. To do this, I use this shebang: #!/usr/bin/env -S uv run --script The command line will...
My preferred calendar app for the Apple ecosystem is Fantastical as I've found that it meets my needs well. One minor irritant is that the editor popover defaults to a collapsed view and I have to expand it to see everything, in particular the notes field which I use frequently. I recently discovered that there's a hidden preference to change...
One thing that I've found helpful is to add a set of patterns to my global git ignore file (config/git/ignore for me) that allow me to create temporary files that are automatically excluded from git. The patterns I use are these: # Ignore a file by renaming it with ignore its name *.ignore ignore.* *.ignore.* This lets me create a file with a...
When I'm on a Zoom or FaceTime call, I want stop all notifications on my Mac so that I'm not distracted by them and would like this automated. It's not easy to tell when a call is happening, so I simplified the problem to stopping all notifications if the Zoom or FaceTime is running as I only run these apps if I'm on call. To do this, I created...
As usual, at the end of the year, I look back over the photos I have taken and think about the year. This year I have published 1162 photos to Flickr. It has been a good year, seeing friends and family, taking photos, attending conferences all coupled with enjoyable work for a good client. I am pleased to have kept up with taking a least one...
Thanks to Kyle and Lorna, we've moved rst2pdf's development out of the dark ages of setup.py and into uv with pyproject.toml. As a result, I've changed the way I develop rst2pdf locally; these are my initial notes. Set up Python environment Given a clone of the rst2pdf git repository, do this get going: $ uv sync --all-extras This will create a...
I recently discovered the /usr/libexec/corebrightnessdiag command line tool on macOS. In particular, /usr/libexec/corebrightnessdiag nightshift-internal will give information about when the Mac's nightshift settings, including when sunrise and sunset are! $ /usr/libexec/corebrightnessdiag nightshift-internal Night Shift Status {...
We recently changed ISP to Aquiss who could not have been more helpful with pre-sales and support for the change over from BT Internet. Aquiss do not provide a router, so I removed the BT Smart Hub and put in a Ubiquity UCG-Max and connected it up to my existing AC Pro Ubiquiti access points. Obviously as it was a new provider, I tested the speed...
I recently acquired an Elgato Prompter which acts as an additional screen on my Mac. It does this using DisplayLink and the DisplayLink Manager app needs to be running. A new security feature of the newer macOS versions is that when your screen is being recorded, an icon is displayed in your menu bar. It looks like this and cannot be disabled:...
I've been playing with different Ethernet network adapters to see if I can maximise the throughput to my Mac as my ethernet didn't seem particularly faster than WiFi. To test the speed, I want to use my internal network only as going onto the Internet will create too many variables. iperf3 is the solution for this. Running the test To run a speed...