Mac Geek Gab — Apple Tips, Tricks, and Troubleshooting When the Internet Spits You Out
6 snips
Mar 30, 2026 A tech-packed hour on backups, mirroring NAS drives, and preparing for World Backup Day. Tips for taming email with server-side rules and training Mail categories. Practical Mac power moves like killall -9 and Activity Monitor signals. Tricks for AirPods fit and one-ear noise cancellation. Workarounds for VPN blocks and alternatives to AirDrop, plus Cool Stuff Found like AirTag sleeves and Comma 4 AI driving gear.
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Send Specific Signals From Activity Monitor
- Use Activity Monitor's View > Send Signal To Process to choose specific signals like SIGKILL instead of Terminal commands.
- Adam showed the dropdown includes options (hangup, quit, kill) letting you send SIGKILL from the GUI safely.
Track Birthday Rewards With Reminders
- Use Reminders to track birthday reward expirations by creating a Birthday Rewards list and saving vendor emails or expiry dates there.
- Tim stores birthday info in store apps then adds Reminders so rewards don't lapse before he redeems them.
Keep Spare Drives Not Preemptive Replacements
- Don't preemptively replace healthy NAS drives; monitor SMART and keep spares or a hot spare for fast rebuilds instead.
- Pilot Pete recommends relying on Synology monthly health reports and having at least one spare or hot spare ready to avoid extended degraded arrays.
