notes on living with a Mac

short pieces about the small things that go wrong on macOS every day, and what genuinely fixes them. free tools get named even when they are not ours.

• three free-space numbers, one disk, and none of them is lyingpurgeable space is a promise, not a place on the disk. who keeps the list, what triggers a purge, and why df, Finder and the storage screen give three numbers.
• the update finished. the work it started did not.the update is not over when the progress bar is: indexing, photo analysis and shader compiles queue up behind it. what runs, and why it takes days on some Macs.
• the menu bar was rebuilt, and things fell off itLaunchpad removed, clipboard history added, the menu bar rebuilt and a switch that can block any icon. what moved in macOS 26, and where it settled a year on.
• a small utility is asking to control your computerthe permission was built for screen readers, which is why it is so broad. what it grants, how it differs from the other two panels, and how to decide.
• you granted it last month. it is asking again.the repeat prompt is Apple's policy, not your app misbehaving. what macOS 26 changed, where the setting moved, and why some apps ask far more often.
• the same app, two versions, and one of them can do lessthe sandbox is what decides it: what the App Store version cannot do, what a site download is checked for anyway, and two commands that tell you which is which.
• the number is real. it is also not all yours to gain.most of it is real, some macOS would have freed by itself, and one category is worth keeping. the breakdown, with the numbers measured on a live disk.
• the format that is better and that nothing acceptsmeasured on a Mac: heic lands at 38% of the jpeg of the same picture, and browsers still refuse it. the reason is not technical — it is patent licensing.
• your Mac is supposed to use all of its memory«15 of 16 gb used» is not a warning. what the coloured bar measures, why compression never stops, and why the Terminal has no colour to give you.
• your Mac writes down why it wakes upmacOS writes down why it woke, every time — the reason follows «due to» in one Terminal command, and it is rarely the setting people switch off first.
• the fan is not reacting to what you are doing nowthe fan follows how long the heat lasted, not how high the load went — so a spike is silent and an idle Mac can roar. what runs, and one line that tells you.
• the folder your Mac adds to every zipwhat is really inside the __MACOSX folder in a zip, checked byte by byte in Terminal — and why the Finder makes it while the zip command does not.
• your menu bar icons are not gone. they are parked where you cannot see them.the icons that do not fit are not dropped. they are laid out under the notch and off the screen. measured on macOS 26, with six ways to get the room back.

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