Did you know that you can quickly access information about your router, and check if your network is performing well? See your BSSID, signal-to-noise ratio, and even the transmit rate between your router and computer. All it takes is a press of a button and a click of your trackpad/mouse.
If you hold down the Option (alt) key and click the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar, it will provide you with details about your router and the network you're using. The items in gray (except for "Wi-Fi: On") are all pieces of additional information seen only in this mode.
• IP Address: This is your computer's IP address.
• Router: Your router's IP address. You can type this into your browser to access your router's web interface.
• Internet: This tells you if you are able to access the internet or not. If not, open Wireless Diagnostics.
• Security: Your router's security. Most routers on the market offer WPA2 Personal, and it keeps your network encrypted.
• BSSID: This is your router's MAC, or hardware address. It acts as an identifier for your router that lets it talk to other network-connected devices.
• Channel: This is your WLAN channel, and it determines which radio frequency the router uses to transmit information.
• RSSI: Received Signal Strength Indicator measures how well a device "hears" a signal from the router. It's useful for determining if you have enough signal to get a good wireless connection.
• Noise: This measures how much radio noise is interfering with the RSSI signal. Signal-to-noise ratio is a measure used in science and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise. It is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power, often expressed in decibels.
• TX Rate: The transmit rate is the speed of the data that is transmitted between your router and your computer. Right now I have a speed of 450 Mbps.
• PHY Mode: This is the wireless protocol that the router uses, according to the IEEE 802.11 wireless standard.
• MCS Index: This number corresponds to the protocols uses to encode the radio signal.
If you've ever wished you could schedule the opening of a specific file, or set an application to launch on a specific date and time, either on a one off basis or on a recurring scheduled event, you can actually do both right in macOS with the help of none other than the default Calendar app.
• Open Calendar in macOS and create a new event, either by clicking the [+] plus button or by double-clicking on any date
• Double-click the event to display event details
• Click on the date and time section
• Pull down the "alert" menu and choose "Custom…"
• Pull down the "Message" menu and choose "Open file"
• Directly under the menu, pull down the next menu and choose "Other...", then use the file browser to select the file you want to open on a schedule
• Choose "OK" when finished
Once the date arrives, the selected file will launch automatically in the default application at the date and time specified in Calendar as the alert. Use the “repeat" function to set the file to consistently relaunch on the given date and time provided. These can be standard, or custom repeating schedules like every last Friday of the month. The repeat feature is an excellent additional trick for repetitive tasks that use the same file, like a weekly or monthly earnings report, tax document, expense sheet, or whatever else requires regular use on a scheduled basis.
Entering "apple" in the location bar of Safari will yield you Google search results for those terms. However, including a trailing slash will cause Safari to add the ".com" to a logical location in the address, and take you to that URL. So, "apple/" will take you to "apple.com". Finally, if you type “apple/macbook”, Safari will go to "apple.com/macbook”.
One of the features macOS Sierra brings to the table is collaboration, specifically in Notes. Sharing notes is a great way to collaborate with your friends, family or coworkers.
Sharing notes is simple. Open Notes - you’ll find the app in your Applications folder or in Launchpad. You’ll see a new sharing button next to the share button on top. Click on it, and you can type in names or email addresses from your Contacts.
Once you choose people to share with, you can send the invitation in several ways:
• Mail
• Messages
• Link
• Twitter
• Facebook
• AirDrop
• LinkedIn
Once the person accepts the invitation, they are free to edit the note as long as they are running iOS 10 and/or macOS Sierra. You can change the level of access that each person has too.
Keep in mind that you can only share notes stored in iCloud, not notes stored on your device. You also can’t share password-protected notes. It’s easy to see which notes you’re sharing because the person icon will be presented in the list.
Mac users now have a window snapping feature built directly into macOS Sierra, which allows users to easily snap windows to aspects of the screen or against one another. This offers a nice way to quickly and precisely align windows, and it's more or less the Mac equivalent feature of window snapping from the Microsoft Windows world.
Window snapping on the Mac will snap windows to any of the following targets: edges of other windows, the menu bar, the top of the Dock (if visible), and the sides of the screen.
With several windows open on the Mac display, grab one and drag it against a snap target. You'll "feel" the dragged window snap to place, repeat with additional windows as desired
The window snapping ability in macOS is a bit more full featured than what is offered in the Windows world, with a broader range of snap targets. You can snap however many windows together that you can fit on screen, regardless of their size.
While you can't completely turn off window snapping, you can temporarily disable window snapping in macOS with a keystroke action when moving windows around on the screen. To temporarily disable window snapping, hold down the Option (alt) key when you're dragging and moving windows around.
