macOS
Shine a spotlight on the solutions to your most irritating Mac problems
macOS quick-fire questions
How to recover the password to my encrypted disk?
> Unless you’ve been given another way to unlock the disk, such as through your iCloud account, there’s nothing you can do to recover its password. A specialist data recovery service might be able to help, if you can prove it’s your disk and not someone else’s.
How to remove the preinstalled apps from Big Sur?
> You can, but really don’t want to because it’s so difficult. Those apps are installed on Big Sur’s Sealed System Volume: to remove them you have to break its seal and lose its security protection, which can’t be replaced. It takes tricky commands in Terminal in Recovery Mode, so they’re best left alone.
Time Machine grinds to a halt
Q After updating Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, routine Time Machine backups have ground to a halt, and just run on forever. Should I upgrade from Catalina, or is there something simpler?