If you’ve lost track of your various iTunes subscriptions, there’s a relatively easy way to view them all at once, as well as manage which ones will (or won’t) renew themselves automatically.

You’ll need to open iTunes on a Mac or PC to view and manage your iTunes Store subscriptions.

First, launch iTunes on your Mac or PC desktop, then click Account, View My Account. You’ll probably be prompted to enter your iTunes Store password (which, remember, may or may not be the same as your iCloud account) before you can proceed.

Once that’s done, you’ll land on the Account Information page. Scroll down to the Settings section, then click the Manage link to the right of  your iTunes Subscriptions.

Now you should be at the Manage Subscriptions screen, where you’ll see a list of your active and expired iTunes subscriptions. For each entry, you’ll see the date when the subscription ends, as well as whether the subscription has its “automatic renewal” setting on or off.

To turn off automatic renewal for a subscription, click the Edit link, then toggle off the “Automatic Renewal” setting—and don’t worry, your subscription will remain active until its expiration date.

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First, you need to right-click the desktop, select “New Folder”, rename the folder by selecting its label (which always takes me a few tries, for some reason), then select and drag files into the folder. That’s a few too many steps, if you ask me.

Right-click the files you want to organize, select “New Folder with Selection,” and let your Mac take care of the rest.

Feel the same way? If so, good news: there’s a handy shortcut that’ll let you take a bunch of desktop items (or, indeed, files anywhere on your hard drive) and stuff them into a brand-new, empty folder – and and all it takes is a couple of clicks.

Just select the files you want organized, right-click ’em (that’s click No. 1) and select the first menu option, “New Folder” with Selection (click No. 2).

When you do, all the files will immediately jump into a nice, neat folder. Even better, the name of the new folder will already be selected, meaning you can simply start typing to rename the folder—much easier than trying to select the folder name manually.

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My first thought was to simply drop the receipt in her purse, but then I had a better idea—one that wouldn’t involve keeping track of a tiny, easy-to-lose scrap of paper.

You can easily attach a file on your Mac to an event in the Calendar app.

First, I took the receipt and scanned it into my iPhone using a free, third-party scanning app, then I sent the scan of my dry-cleaning receipt to my Mac. In my case, I used Dropbox to send the scan from my iPhone to my iMac, but you could also send it via Message, Mail, Airdrop (which lets you share documents between newer, Bluetooth-connected Macs and iOS devices) or iCloud Drive. Just open the scanned document on your iPhone, then tap the Action button (the square one with the arrow) for some sharing options.

Once I had the scanned receipt sitting on my Mac, I added a “Pick up dry cleaning!” event to my wife’s shared iCloud calendar, clicked the “Add Notes or Attachments” field (it’s just below the alarms and “Add Invitees” option), then clicked the “Add Attachment” button.

Doing so opened a Finder window and within that window, I found the scanned receipt, selected it, and clicked the Open button to attached the scan to the calendar event.

You can open (but not add, unfortunately) Calendar attachments on an iPhone or iPad.

The calendar event and attachment automatically synced to my wife’s iCloud-connected iPhone. All she had to do was open the event, tap on the attachment, and the receipt appeared on her screen. No need to fish around in her purse for a crumpled up scrap of paper.

Of course, a PDF scan isn’t the only thing you could attach to a calendar event; you could attach a photo, a Word document, or even an MP3 if you wanted to.

My only complaint, though, is that while you can open a calendar event and attachment on an iPhone or iPad, you can’t add an attachment to an event directly from an iOS device. Why not? Good question.

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Not only can you turn on DND manually, you can also set it to turn itself on and off automatically, on any schedule you choose.

Just flick up on the Notifications window to reveal the Do Not Disturb switch.

Turning on Do Not Disturb mode manually

Want a quick break from all those incessant alerts from Facebook, Twitter, Mail, and the like? If so, just turn on DND mode manually.

• Click the Notifications button in the top-right corner of the screen (it’s the one that looks like three bulleted horizontal lines), then scroll up a tiny bit.
• When you do, you’ll reveal an on/off switch for Do Not Disturb mode. Flip the switch to turn on Do Not Disturb, then toggle the control again to deactivate the feature. If you leave Do Not Disturb switched on, it’ll automatically turn off at midnight.

You can set Do Not Disturb to turn itself on at, say, 10 p.m., then turn off at 7 in the morning.

Set Do Not Disturb to turn on and off automatically

If you like, you can set DND mode to turn itself on and off on a schedule. All you need to do is access the Mac’s Notification settings.

• Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select System Preferences, click the Notifications icon near the top of the System Preferences window, then select the Do Not Disturb tab in the left column.
• Under the “Turn on Do Not Disturb” heading, check the box to make Do Not Disturb turn itself on and off at specific times each day. For example, you can set Do Not Disturb to turn itself on at, say, 10 p.m., then turn off at 7 in the morning.
• You’ll also have a few more DND options to consider. For example, you can set DND to turn on whenever your display goes to sleep, or while you’re “mirroring” your display on another monitor.
• Want callers to be able to reach you while DND is switched on? If so, check the appropriate box, or check the “Allow repeated calls” box to make sure a (potentially) frantic caller can get through.

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Hi Page! Without taking a look myself, it’s hard to say what might be slowing your Mac Mini down, but there are a few things you can do to diagnose the problem yourself—and if you’re willing to spend a little cash, there may indeed be a “magic bullet” that’ll give your Mac a serious boost.

The Mac’s Activity Monitor app can tell you if there’s a program or process that’s slowing down your Mac.

First, you can try seeing what’s going on inside your Mac by launching the Activity Monitor app. You’ll find it sitting in the Utilities folder of your hard drive, or just do a Spotlight search for “Activity Monitor.”

Launch the app, click the Memory tab up at the top, then click the top of the long Memory column to sort the list of apps by the amount of system memory they’re using. See anything taking up an unusual amount of memory—more than a gigabyte? If so, try quitting the suspect program. (Note: You’ll probably see an entry for “kernal_task” at the top of the list; that’s an important Mac system process that should be left alone.)

Also, check out the Memory Pressure gauge at the bottom of the Activity Monitor window. Is the gauge smooth and green or do you see yellow and red spikes?

If you’re seeing spikes, that’s a sign that your Mac is running low on memory—and if you’ve got a three-year-old Mac Mini running on a new version of Mac OS X, that’s definitely a possibility.

Now, you were asking about a “silver bullet” for a slow Mac, and in my experience, here it is: a memory upgrade. It’s a quick way to give a sluggish system a big speed boost. Even better, memory upgrades are relatively cheap, and (so long as you’re handy with a screwdriver) you can generally do them yourself.

Now, not all Macs have “user-accessible” memory. Many of the latest, thinnest MacBooks, for example, are sealed tight, as is the 2014 Mac Mini.

Check the “About This Mac” window to see if you can upgrade the memory on your Mac.

To see if you can upgrade your Mac’s memory, click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen and select About This Mac. If you see a Memory tab, click it for details on how much memory is installed on your Mac, plus how many removable memory modules are available.

Click the “Memory Upgrade Instructions” link for details on how much more memory you can install, and how to install the modules yourself—typically a process that involves little more than loosening a few screws and snapping the (delicate) modules into place. For the Mac Mini, you don’t even need a screwdriver to open the case.

No “Memory” tab? If so, your Mac’s memory probably can’t be upgraded, although you can always search Apple’s support site to be sure.

In your case, Page, your three-year-old Mac Mini has slots for two removable memory modules, probably (I’m guessing) with 2GB of memory in each module, for a total of 4GB of RAM (short for “Random Access Memory”).

If you want, you could double that total to 8GB by buying a pair of 4GB memory modules, which (according to my quick research) would set you back about $40 or so. Want even more memory? If you have an “late-2012” Mac Mini model, you could spring for a total of 16GB of RAM (or a pair of 8GB modules) for $80-ish. Older Mac Minis can only handle up to 8GB of RAM.

You don’t even need a screwdriver to open the Mac Mini’s case.

One thing to keep in mind about memory upgrades: you must install modules in both memory slots on your Mac, and both modules need the same amount of RAM. In other words, if your Mac Mini has a pair of 2GB RAM modules installed, you can’t just replace one of the 2GB modules with, say, a new 8GB module. Instead, you’ll need to remove both the old 2GB modules and install (for example) a new pair of 4GB or 8GB modules. Sounds like a waste, I know, but that’s the deal. Update: While Apple recommends using only “matched pairs” of RAM modules, the DIY gurus over at StackExchange say that you can mix and match differently sized modules, so long as you don’t mind losing a tiny bit of performance. If you’re at all nervous about upgrading your RAM, though, you should probably stick with Apple’s guidelines.

You can shop for memory online; Amazon (which seems to sell everything and anything) sells memory modules, while sites like Crucial.com and Kingston.com will step you through the process of picking the right memory for your system.

Your neighborhood computer repair shop probably offers Mac memory upgrades too, perfect if you’re squeamish about prying open your Mac’s case yourself.

Hope that helps, Page. Still have questions? Let me know!

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Luckily, there are a couple of handy Mac OS X settings that make it easy to find a tiny cursor, whether you’re using a mammoth iMac with a 27-inch “Retina” display or a svelte 11-inch MacBook Air.

Note: the following tips were tested on an iMac running on Mac OS X “El Capitan,” the latest version of the Mac operating system.

Just use the “Cursor size” slider to boost the size of your Mac’s mouse pointer.

1. Make the cursor bigger

If you’re always having to squint to find the mouse pointer on your Mac’s screen, your best bet may be to permanently boost the size of the cursor.

• Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select System Preferences, click the Accessibility icon in the window that appears, then make sure the Display tab on the left side of the window is selected.
• See the “Cursor size” slider? Move the slider to the right to boost the size of the mouse pointer. Once you’re happy, go ahead and close the Accessibility window.

2. Shake your mouse to make the cursor grow

Don’t want a jumbo-sized mouse pointer? Here’s an alternative: set the cursor to get bigger only when you need it to.

• Once again, click the Apple menu, select System Preferences, click the Accessibility icon, then click the Display tab in the left column.
• Check the “Shake mouse pointer to locate” box.

Now, give your mouse a good shake—and when you do, the cursor will suddenly triple in size, making it much easier to spot.

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Hi Nicole! Congrats on the new Mac, but yes, I can see how it might be a bit odd that there’s no hard drive icon sitting on your desktop.

Now, one way to deal with a missing Macintosh HD icon is to simply select New Finder Window from the Finder’s File menu at the top of the screen; doing so will open a new window that’ll allow you to dig into any volume accessible from your Mac, including your hard drive.

No “Macintosh HD” icon on your Mac desktop? Make sure the “Hard disks” box is checked in the Finder Preferences window.

That said, I totally get why you’d want the missing Macintosh HD icon back on your desktop. Here’s how to do it.

• Click the Finder’s File menu at the top of the screen (just click the bare desktop if you don’t see the word “Finder” next to the Apple menu), then select Finder Preferences and click the General tab.
• You should now see a list of all the items that will show up on your desktop. Go ahead and check the box next to “Hard disks.”

Now, go back and check your desktop. You should see the missing Macintosh HD icon sitting right there, right where it should be.

Hope that helps, Nicole. Still have questions? Let me know!

Bonus tip

Click the Sidebar tab in the Finder Preferences window to pick and choose which items appear in the sidebar of any Finder window. Among the choices: “All My Files,” Applications, your hard drives, and Downloads.

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All those options will certainly work, but here’s a better, easier one: just create a Mac hot corners that’ll reveal your desktop with a flick of your mouse.

What Mac Hot Corners can do for you

For example, I’ve got my Mac set up so that I see my desktop by moving my mouse all the way to the bottom-right corner of my screen. I can also flick in another corner to activate Mission Control (the Mac feature that gives you a bird’s-eye view of all your windows and “virtual” desktops), while a third corner lets me turn my screensaver.

These so-called Mac hot corners aren’t for everyone; indeed, it can be a bit jarring when your windows fly off the screen because your mouse strayed too close to an activated hot corner.

Jump from one place to another quickly with the use of Mac hot corners

For me, though, hot corners make for a quick, easy, and even addictive way to jump to Mission Control or clear my desktop with a simple flick of my mouse.

How to get started with Mac Hot Corners

Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select System Preferences, then click the Mission Control icon. Now, see the “Hot Corners” button in the bottom-left corner? Click it, and you’ll see a new window with four pull-down menus, one for each of your hot corners.

Select an option—any option—for each hot corner. Among your choices: Mission Control, Application Windows (which highlights all the open windows for the application you’re currently using), Desktop (which makes all open windows fly off your screen, revealing the desktop beneath), Dashboard (which turns on the Mac’s panel of “dashboard” widgets), Launchpad (the iPhone-like launcher for the apps installed on your Mac), Start (or Disable) Screen Saver, and Put Display to Sleep.

Remember that you can choose the same action for two or more hot corners, if you wish. And to keep a corner … well, cold, just choose the “-” option.

All done? Click the OK button.

Now, give your new hot corners a try. Flick your mouse to a corner—yes, all the way in, not just in the general vicinity—to activate the action you picked in the settings menu. Flick again in the same corner to return your desktop to its normal view.

What if you decide that hot corners are a little too hot for you? Just return to the hot corner settings window and select “-” for each corner.

Still not convinced? Check out this other article about mac hot corners.

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Hi Nadine! No, you don’t need to pony up for Photoshop (or even the cheaper Photoshop Elements) if all you want to do is add text to photos on your Mac, or draw an arrow or two on your snapshots. Indeed, there’s an app sitting on your Mac right now that’ll do the trick.

Add arrows and captions to photos with the Preview app

You can right-click an image to open it in Preview.

Just go to the Applications folder on your Mac’s hard drive—or, better yet, just open Spotlight by clicking the magnifying glass button in the top-right corner of your desktop—find the Preview app, and launch it.

Another option: right-click the photo you want to edit, hover your mouse over the “Open With” menu option, then select “Preview.”

Once you’ve opened the right photo in Preview, click the View menu, then select Show Markup Toolbar. (And yes, this may sound familiar if you read my recent tip about iOS’s new Mail Markup feature.)

Getting started with Preview’s “Markup” tools

Now, let’s try some markup tools. Click the Text button (the one marked with a “T”) to add text to photos. Once you click the button, the word “Text” will appear on the image, flanked by a pair of blue handles. Double-click the text and start typing to add your own text, or click and drag to move the text wherever you’d like. You can also select the text with your cursor, then click the “A” button in the Markup Toolbar to change the color and font of the text.

Click a button in Preview’s Markup Toolbar to add text, shapes, arrows, and more.

Ready to try an arrow or a circle? Click the Shapes button (the one with the square and circle), then click an option: anything from a line or an arrow to a bubble or a star. You can then drag and resize the shape to your heart’s content, or change its color by clicking the Border Color button in the toolbar.

You can also draw freeform lines with the Sketch took, trace and add a signature by clicking the Sign button, or crop the image with the Image Size tool.

All your changes are saved automatically, but you can always restore an earlier version—or go all the way back to the original—by clicking the File menu, then selecting “Revert To.”

Hope that helps, Nadine. Still have questions? Let me know!

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More often than not, though, the dock merely seems to be in the way, obscuring the bottom of web pages, bulging upward whenever my mouse strays too close to the bottom of the screen, and generally distracting me from the task at hand.

Wish you could keep the Dock hidden until you really need it? Just check this box.

But here’s the thing: if you wish, you can actually make the dock disappear from your desktop until the very moment you need it.

Try this…

Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of your desktop, click System Preferences, then click the Dock icon.
Near the bottom of the window, check the box next to “Automatically hide and show the Dock.” When you do, the dock will disappear from your desktop.

So, now what?

Move your mouse down to the bottom of the screen—and just as you touch the bottom, the Mac dock will slide back into view. Go ahead and click an icon just as you normally would.

When you move your mouse up and away from the bottom of the screen, the dock will slink back into its hiding place.

Bonus tip

Want to move the dock to the left or right side of the screen? Click the Apple menu, select System Preferences, click Dock, then pick an option from the “Position on screen” setting: Left, Bottom, or Right.

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