Setting Energy Saver Preferences on macOS Mojave/High Sierra

System preferences can be set on macOS using the defaults command. For example, say I wish set the Prevent sleep setting that can be set through the System Preferences interface, but instead via command line. If your settings match those in the screenshot above, running defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist in the terminal should output { “ACContinue reading Setting Energy Saver Preferences on macOS Mojave/High Sierra

BetterSnapTool: Windows-like window snapping for macOS

One thing that bothers me about macOS is the lack of the side-by-side “window snapping” functionality that is built into any modern version of Windows and in many Linux windows managers. I often see co-workers manually dragging and re-arranging windows on their screen. BetterSnapTool is a $2.99 app that does exactly this, and much more.

How to Install macOS High Sierra on VMware Player 14.0.0

Download a fresh copy of VMware Workstation Player for Windows or Linux from the official VMware site. The free trial of this product has no expiration if used for non-commercial purposes. You’ll need to unlock your installation of VMware to use Mac operating system as a guest following these instructions (external link). On a computerContinue reading How to Install macOS High Sierra on VMware Player 14.0.0

Compressing PNG images with pngout, optipng, and advpng

Screenshot tools for Linux and macOS generally produce image files in the .png file format. PNG is a lossless compression format, meaning that it can be compressed without losing quality, which is unlike another commonly used image format, JPG. There are 3 command-line tools which can be used to compress PNG files, pngout, optipng, andContinue reading Compressing PNG images with pngout, optipng, and advpng

TeamViewer: Remote Desktop to Android Tablet

In the past, I’ve written about different remote desktop products/solutions, including NoMachine for remoting into traditional desktop machines, but also a few alternatives for accessing and controlling Android devices from a computer. Today I’d like to mention TeamViewer, a product free for non-commercial use that supports computer to computer, Android to computer, and computer toContinue reading TeamViewer: Remote Desktop to Android Tablet

How to Install macOS Sierra on VMware Player 12.5

Enroll in Apple’s Beta Software Program. Download a fresh copy of VMware Workstation Player for Windows or Linux from the official VMware site. The free trial of this product has no expiration if used for non-commercial purposes. You’ll need to unlock your installation of VMware to use Mac operating system as a guest following theseContinue reading How to Install macOS Sierra on VMware Player 12.5

NoMachine – Improving Video Quality By Using the H264 Display Encoding

This basically involves two steps: Client-side support, aka adding the required decoding libraries on the local computer. See official documentation: Enabling the H.264 codec on the NoMachine client host. Here is an example of following the steps on my Macbook Air: brew update brew install ffmpeg && brew upgrade ffmpeg cd /usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/3.0.2/lib sudo cp libavcodec.dylibContinue reading NoMachine – Improving Video Quality By Using the H264 Display Encoding

Marble: A cross-platform, multi-purpose Virtual Globe

Marble is a Virtual Globe app that started as part of the KDE desktop environment that is now currently available for Linux (all flavors), Mac OS X, Windows, and Android. It has tons of features and definitely worth checking out for map and geography lovers out there! Below we view the globe using a historicalContinue reading Marble: A cross-platform, multi-purpose Virtual Globe