Learn how to stop a Mac from automatically opening the apps, windows, and tabs from your last session after restarting, powering on or logging into your macOS user account.
If you don’t like seeing apps from previous session open automatically every time you power on or restart your Mac, here are some tips to prevent this from happening.
Untick the “Reopen windows when logging back in” box
After choosing the Restart, Shut Down, or Log Out option in the Apple menu, your Mac displays a confirmation dialog with Cancel and Restart buttons and a small tick box labeled “Reopen windows when logging back in.” Ticking this box tells macOS to automatically launch all apps that remained open when you last shut down your Mac or switched to another user. To stop this from happening, untick this box.
Hold the Shift key while opening the app
If you have multiple documents open in an app like Pages, then quit and re-open the app, it will restore documents from the previous session. This is a very convenient feature until it becomes annoying. Thankfully, you can simply hold the Shift key when opening an app to prevent it from re-opening any documents or windows from the previous session. You can also stop this behavior permanently by following the steps below:
• Open System Settings and click Desktop & Dock in the sidebar
• Turn on “Close windows when quitting an application” on the right side
Stop Safari from reopening windows and tabs from the previous session
Safari automatically reopen windows and tabs from your previous session, so you can pick up right where you left off. You may want to turn off this feature to always start with a clean slate:
• Be sure “Close windows when quitting an application” is turned on in System Settings > Desktop & Dock
• Open the Safari browser and click Safari > Settings from the top menu bar
• Select the General tab, click the menu next to “Safari opens with,” and select an option other than “All windows from last session” or “All non-private windows from last session”
Quit all apps before restart or shutdown
As an alternative, close all open apps before shutting down your Mac so there’s nothing to reopen from the previous session following a restart.
Mac’s operating system has allowed using a picture as the folder icon for decades. Plus, you can change the folder background to a different color or image. macOS 26 Tahoe takes things further by introducing additional customization options tailored to the folder icon.
You can now personalize your folders with popular icons (symbols) or emojis. So, if you’ve a folder where you keep just your college PDFs and Word documents, you can add a study emoji to it. In addition to using icons and emojis, macOS Tahoe also lets you change the folder icon color. Therefore, instead of sticking with the familiar blue folder icons, you can now change them to red, orange, yellow, green, gray, purple, blue, or something else.
Add an icon or emoji to a folder
• Right-click or Control-click over a Finder folder and select Customize Folder from the menu
• Browse through the stock icons and glyphs across categories such as People, Animals & Nature, Food & Drinks, Activity, Travel & Places, Objects, and Symbols to select the one you want to use (you can also click Emoji and pick one from there, or use the search field to find the right one)
• Click anywhere outside the icon picker to save your changes and exit the customization screen
Change the color of a folder icon
Unlike the above-mentioned icon feature, which is standalone, the folder color change is linked to the old tags feature. Earlier, when you added a tag to a folder, it would just show a small colored dot before the folder name. However, selecting a tag now applies that color to the entire folder icon. Right-click over a folder in Finder or Desktop and select one of the tags from the menu. To see all tags, go to the Customize Folder section and then click one of the colored dots at the top.
Change the color of all your folders
If you don’t want to change folder colors individually or add tags to do so, you can pick a desired color for all your Finder folders. Just note that doing so won’t change the color of any folders that you have customized on a per-case basis using the above-mentioned ‘Tags’ feature.
• Open System Settings from Apple menu
• Select Appearance from the left sidebar
• Click Folder color and select a suggested color, or click Custom Color to make a pick from millions of options
Remove the folder icon or revert to the default blue color
Right-click or Control-click over a folder on your Mac and select Customize Folder from the menu. Then, click Clear to remove the added symbol or emoji. To return to the original blue folder icon, click the current color or hit the tag icon to remove all tags.
Apple Photos app lets you select a bunch of photos & videos and play them as a slideshow with music, so you can view them comfortably like a movie. The slideshow is customizable with music, transition effects, and a custom duration for each image. If the video looks nice, you may want to save it as a video file.
Follow these steps to export a slideshow as a video movie:
• Open the Photos app and go to the Library section or an album
• Hold the Command key and select multiple images (or press Command + A to select them all)
• Click File > Play Slideshow from the top menu bar
• Click Customize to fine-tune the transition, duration, and music
• Click File > Export > Export Memory Video from the top menu bar
• Rename the video file, select a location, adjust the orientation and aspect ratio if needed, and click Save
The photo slideshow will be exported as an MOV file, which you can watch in the built-in Apple QuickTime app or a third-party app.
Magnifier app in macOS Tahoe lets you zoom in on small text on objects, things in your surroundings, or your face when applying makeup, plucking eyebrows, or putting on contact lenses.
Fundamentally, the Magnifier app on both macOS and iOS serves as a digital magnifying glass, you can:
• See a live camera feed and zoom in on it
• Take a picture and zoom in on it
• Use themes, filters, and other handy tools to better see the live camera feed or the picture
• Listen to the text after taking a picture or just by pointing the camera around the object
Open the Magnifier app on your Mac, click Camera in the top menu bar and select an available webcam, such as your MacBook’s internal camera. You’ll now see a live camera feed. Unless you’re using this to apply makeup or view a stable item like a whiteboard, the live camera feed may be too shaky. In this case, it makes more sense to take a picture using the shutter button and select it to read the contents. Use the minus-plus slider at the top to zoom in on the live camera feed or the picture you took. Once you have zoomed in on your live camera feed or photo, use the three-finger drag to move around and focus on just the specific part you want.
Other things you can do:
• Use the "Show detected text" icon to see text in the live camera feed or a photo
• Listen to text, adjust its playback speed, and click the sidebar icon in reader mode to change the theme, color, font, spacing, and more
• Use the sidebar icon to straighten the view, change the contrast and brightness, or apply filters; these can help you view text and other things more clearly (you can also save these preferences as your default settings, so you don’t have to adjust them every time)
The next time you end up in an Open or Save dialog window, try out a few of these helpful keyboard shortcuts to make navigating around the dialog and filesystem much faster.
Command+D
Selects Desktop as the destination.
Command+Shift+H
Sets the Home directory as the destination.
Command+Shift+A
Sets Applications directory as the destination.
Command+Shift+.
Toggle invisible items.
Command+Shift+G
Bring up Go To Folder window.
Command+R
Open the selected item in the Finder.
Command+F
Move the cursor to the Find field.
Command+.
Close the Open/Save dialog window.
Spacebar
View the selected item in Quick Look.
Tab
Tab key auto-completes paths and file names from the aforementioned Go To Folder window.
