Mac Geek Gab — Apple Tips, Tricks, and Troubleshooting

Shaving With Occam's Razor

5 snips
Feb 16, 2026
Rapid-fire Apple tips and little muscle-memory shortcuts you can actually use. Practical Mac and iPhone tweaks for camera lighting, external monitor control, and custom keyboard shortcuts. Tricks for Apple TV and HomePod handoffs, bulk Reminders cleanup, and keeping CarPlay usable with gloves. A meta dive into backing up notes, markdown alternatives, and which AI tools to call when context matters.
Ask episode
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
INSIGHT

Keep A Changelog To Speed Troubleshooting

  • An always-on change log or on-device assistant that tracks preference changes would speed troubleshooting drastically.
  • Feeding that changelog to an LLM could point directly to recent modifications that caused issues.
ADVICE

Show CPU Meters In The Dock

  • Add Activity Monitor to the Dock and right-click its icon when running to show CPU usage, history, network, or disk activity.
  • Keep Activity Monitor open only when you need it, since monitoring itself slightly affects CPU behavior.
ADVICE

Master Apple TV Remote Scrubbing

  • On Apple TV, tap the remote ring to scrub like an iPod scroll wheel for fine-grained seek and see previews.
  • Double-tap the ring's left or right edge to jump backward or forward (configurable 10/20/30s).
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
Get the app