File system
Why macOS ignores capital letters in file names
It sounds academic until a website works perfectly on your Mac and returns a missing file in production.
Guides for Mac Users
Walkthroughs for the file and mailbox problems macOS gives you no answer for. Written by the people who build the tools, not by a content team.
Three subjects, thirty five guides
The Mac file system
12 guides
How macOS lays data on disk, what separates the formats, plus how to read any path a support article hands you.
Mac email clients
13 guides
Where each client keeps your mail, what the formats hold, plus what survives when you move to a different one.
Mac disk space
10 guides
Reading the storage bar, finding what is genuinely large, plus why deleting something frees nothing.
Showing 1–9 of 35 articles · page 1 of 4.
File system
Aliases, symlinks and hard links on a Mac
Choosing the wrong one is how a link stops working six months later. It is also how a backup comes out a size nobody expected.
File system
Why Finder opens the wrong app for a file
The three step fix works for most people. This is for when it does not, and for the one file that ignores it.
Storage
Reading Mac disk space in Terminal and why it disagrees with Finder
Three commands, three different questions. One of the disagreements between them is only the units.
Storage
Where iPhone and iPad backups are stored on a Mac
Regularly the largest single folder on a Mac, and the one nobody recognises when a disk scan reports it.
File system
How Spotlight indexes your files and why it rebuilds
Spotlight does not search your files. It searches a database it built earlier by reading them, which explains every way this goes wrong.
Converters
The Apple Mail Envelope Index and when to rebuild it
It is the fix everybody reaches for and the one that fails most, because half these symptoms come from somewhere else.
File system
Why your Mac cannot write to an NTFS drive
Nothing is broken and nothing needs repairing. There is data on that drive though, and every route out of this has a wrong order.
File system
Mac file paths explained, slash, tilde, Volumes and containers
Support articles hand out paths constantly and almost never explain the notation. Learn four opening characters and every one becomes readable.
Reading because something is stuck?
Every tool in the catalogue has a trial that runs on your own file, so you can find out whether it helps before you spend anything.