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Mac Geek Gab — Apple Tips, Tricks, and Troubleshooting

Hidden macOS 26 Features, Homebrew Upgrades, and VPN Gotchas

Mac Geek Gab — Apple Tips, Tricks, and Troubleshooting

Dave Hamilton, Pilot Pete & Adam Christianson

Tech News, Technology, How To, News, Education

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2025

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hidden macOS 26 Features, Homebrew Upgrades, and VPN Gotchas — Mac Geek Gab 1122 episode image

You dive straight into practical macOS and workflow wins, starting with macOS 26’s new ability to record video by window and moving quickly into keeping your Homebrew setup clean, current, and fast. You learn how simple display resolution tweaks can hide the MacBook notch or eliminate it entirely, and why audio problems like AirPods mic failures often come down to overlooked system behavior. Along the way, you’re reminded to stay alert to sneaky gotchas like expiring Tailscale devices, VPNs that never fully disconnect, and cables that quietly become the weakest link. Don’t Get Caught assuming the obvious is working as expected.

Then it’s on to listener questions that hit real-world pain points: avoiding international cell charges even when using an eSIM, understanding why not all MVNOs are equal, and keeping vacation photos manageable by killing duplicates before they pile up. You dig into OS version mismatches, whether AI actually helps tech support when used correctly, and why asking AI to explain the “why” matters.

Cool Stuff Found rounds things out with tools for sleep and stress tracking, app update management, USB speed visibility, smarter System Settings navigation, notch-aware utilities, nostalgic screen savers, and shortcut mastery. It’s a fast-moving episode packed with ways to tighten your setup, reduce friction, and stay one step ahead.

Happy new year, y’all! See you in 2026! (don’t worry, that’s next week, right on schedule!)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

It's time for Mac Geekab!

0:02.6

And listener Ben brings us our quick tip of the week.

0:05.7

He says, I just discovered an advancement to screenshots in Mac OS 26.

0:10.9

When you pressed Command Shift 5, you can now do a screen recording of a specific window.

0:16.0

Previously, the recording choices were only whole screen or selected area.

0:20.3

You could do screen grabs, still pictures, of specific windows, and now in Mac OS 26, you can do full recordings of specific windows.

0:30.0

More tips like this, plus your questions answered today on MacKeeKalb 1122 for Monday, December 29th, still need to do day, 2025.

0:42.3

Mm-hmm. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Matt Geekap, the show where we take some tips like that from you or from us and share them.

1:05.9

We take some cool stuff found, also from you or from us, and share them.

1:08.9

And we take some questions from you or from us and share them, hopefully with answers

1:12.9

or at least with guidance down the troubleshooting path such that we can each learn at least

1:20.7

five new things every single time we get together.

1:25.0

Our sponsors for this episode include gusto.com slash MG. We can go to get three months free when you run your first payroll.

1:31.8

And also try.

1:33.1

Dot co-pilot.

1:33.6

Dot money slash Mac geek app.

1:35.3

Don't worry, the links on the show notes, if you like.

1:38.0

That's where you can go to get 26% off this fantastic money management app for your Mac, your iPhone, your iPads cross platform,

1:47.5

or cross device, I should say, very Apple-centric. And you can also get two months free with

1:52.4

code Mac geek app. We'll talk more about both of those in a little bit for now, for the last time

1:57.6

this year, here in, for this show anyway, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton. And here in New Hampshire as well is Pilot Pete for the last time on this show this year as well. Very cool. Confusing to say. I know what you mean. Yep. But we meant what we knew. Yeah. So I hope you had a good festivist, Dave, and good Christmas by the time this comes out. Yes, that's right. We're recording this on Christmas Eve. If it actually makes it out, this is take two. So we'll see how we do. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. I feel it good. I'm feeling good. Yep. And then next week after this comes out, Pete, you and I are off to CES to sift through the noise and find the fun stuff.

2:43.7

I am now starting to get a lot of like information from companies about CES, very late this year year all coming in much later than in the past.

...

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