The spotlight search box can be used for (simple) math prompts. My Mac (M1 iMac on 15.3.2) has its language set to Dutch. In Dutch, the official way of formatting decimal numbers is the inverse of the us-English way: groups of numbers are separated by a . and decimals with a , . So, for example: 12.345,67 (12 thousand three-hundred forty-five and 67/100).

When following the official number formatting of the configured language, math in Spotlight works fine. But Dutch people are also human and make small mistakes sometimes, and we also sometimes use a dot to indicate a decimal. But if you do that, spotlight seems to just disregard the decimal and starts showing completely unexpected results:

5,0 + 5,0 = 10 (expected) 5,0 + 5.0 = 55 5.0 + 5.0 = 110

Interestingly, while typing the above on my iPhone 12 w iOS 18.3.2, the autocorrect suggestion given after pressing the =-sign was exactly the same…

Also, this behavior has been around for years, not just the recent MacOS versions. I’m not sure if this also is present when using other languages.

Thanks for your post and work, and say Hi from me to Tim!

Round 2 :)

This one is very annoying when I have Safari windows already open on my secondary display and trying to create a new Safari window on my primary display because it then needs an extra click to focus the window.

Since this occurs with multiple apps (and also third-party ones like BBEdit), this is very likely not an issue in each of the apps but rather in AppKit or the windowing system.

System info:

• MacBook Air M2, 2022, 8GB RAM, 256GB storage
  • macOS 15.3.2 (24D81)

A not very important but annoying one - iOS keyboard dictionary for British English contains American words and spellings (e.g. gotten, yogurt etc.)

The monitor calibration tool on macOS does not support HDR properly, resulting in severe miscalibration.

Also while writing this post I realized “miscalibration” is not in iOS’s spellcheck dictionary lol.

Also Apple doesn’t fully support high refresh rate displays. My current display Apple supports as 100Hz when on Linux and Windows I can run it as 120Hz or 144Hz.

(M2 Mac Mini running 15.3.2)

External monitor is connected via thunderbolt to DisplayPort cable. It’s connected to my Windows/Linux computer via DisplayPort cable directly to the GPU.

Firstly, I have to thank you for doing this - you’re awesome.

Given your

Can’t help with general UI/UX complaints

I am unsure you can help, but I’ll drop it in here anyway.

Device: iPhone 14 Pro on iOS 18.4 (released by the time of this comment)

Issue: When screen recording, the Dynamic Island activity shows up in the recording - this is intended. However, if I do something in an app which full-screens the UI (as in the app hides the status bar - for example, I tapped a photo in the Photos app to hide everything but the photo, zooming in also works I think), the island activity disappears, but the black cutout remains in the video until a few seconds later, when it too abruptly and weirdly disappears with some weird flickers and other visual glitches. I can’t word it properly, so here’s a video (idk how to upload it so here’s the first way I found to do this - lmk of any other way to do this): https://streamable.com/ko8gsy

My test case: I am playing music, and the dynamic island shows the now playing activity. I start screen recording in order to demonstrate the issue. I then go into an app which has the capability to hide the status bar (clock, wifi/cellular, battery and the dynamic island activities) - in my case, I choose to tap on a photo in the Photos app to hide all but the photo itself. I zoom into the photo before I do that so that the island isn’t on the black part of the UI (issue would be invisible). After tapping and when the status bar disappears, the activity does so too, but the cutout/“pill” remains until a few moments later, when it glitches out when it abruptly disappears too.

Has been happening since the iOS 18 dev betas in the summer at the least.

Sorry for the incredibly bad wording. Lmk if you need more info

I already have tickets for this, but I use the phone as a music player, and when using Siri it’s exceptionally bad at handling albums/bands with other languages, as it tries to convert the foreign words to English, then search. Double metaphone exists, y’all. :)

Could they also add a way to say “play album X”? 50/50 it will play artist X instead of album X. And if I say play album X by artist Y, it’ll either play that artist, that album by that artist, or a different album with the right name.

Thanks for doing all this!

Using a song as an alarm sound only works if it’s locally downloaded in Music and there are some codec and bitrate restrictions as well, but this is never explained anywhere. I’ve had to figure it out by trial and error.

At the very least there should be a warning in the Alarm app when you choose a song as an alarm that isn’t going to work.

Friend running latest M4 Max Studio. Studio display configured as main monitor connected to 1st TB5 port. Secondary Dell 4k monitor connected to HDMI.
Latest MacOS thinks the HDMI monitor is on, even when it is powered off. This means that a second Firefox window on screen 2 is unreachable without powering on the second monitor. Would be nice to have a feature that would return all open windows to the active screen(s).
Better yet if there was M-TAB or M-` would show the second window and open it on a screen that is actually on.
Big hassle for multi-monitor setups. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

I have this notch in my MacBook Pro display, and system tray icons just disappear behind it once I have too many of them. I need a third party app like Ice or Bartender to fix this bug, and honestly, it’s embarrassing for Apple to not have fixed this in so many years.

I recognize this is a “feature” but I think it should be treated like a bug, or at least let us turn it off!!

Whatever egghead came up with the “keyboard hot zone” that dynamically (and invisibly) increases the size of the keys based on what it thinks you’ll type deserves to be tarred and feathered. Problem is, it’s always fucking wrong. It happened already typing this text, the above “increases” was first typed as “increased” because it expected “d” and thus made the “d” key zone slightly larger and the “s” zone slightly smaller. I tried typing “NCASE”, like the PC case brand, the other day, and I had to try repeatedly to get the “s” key to pop. I kept hitting the “a” key because it expected “NCAA” and increased that key zone.

Just the iPhone keyboard overall is bad. Inconsistent layouts based on where you’re typing. No number row. No period/comma (unless you’re typing a website). Just why.

PM me your Apple zero-days. /s

I suspect that this is a feature, or at least a partner-related market decision, rather than a bug, and I suspect the most you’ll be able to say is “the weather is nice today” or “thank you for sharing this”, buuuut…

DisplayPort 1.2 Multi-Stream Transport: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253432530?sortBy=rank

With a full implementation of DisplayPort 1.2 MST it should be possible to output to two independent (non-mirrored) monitors over a single USB-C port. This can be via an MST hub/dongle or using monitors that support DisplayPort MST daisy chaining. This is a core part of the spec to the point that my Steam Deck supports this.

macOS, however, will treat MST displays as targets for mirroring instead of separate displays. The only way to have an elegant “one wire” experience with a MacBook is to use a much more expensive Thunderbolt dock or a dock that uses a DisplayLink chipset which requires a driver to be installed (as DisplayLink are a company unrelated to DisplayPort).

It’s worth noting that macOS does support MST in the form of two video streams for one very high-resolution monitor, which is kind of interesting.

I’d love it if we could use MST docks/hubs/splitters with macOS rather than either needing expensive third-party peripherals or plugging multiple wires into our MacBooks. Especially because most office setups I’ve seen recently use MST hubs if they offer dual monitors!

Thanks for reading this far, and more importantly thank you for soliciting feedback in this forum and manner. Best of luck!

Sometimes app icons stay in their dark version even though the UI is in light mode. Was still present in iOs 18.3. just updated to 18.4 so don’t know if it has been fixed yet.

MacBook laptop, latest MacOS.

When I hop on a zoom call, I always get a pop in the toolbar about filters. There’s an x on the dialog bubble but you can’t x out of it.

When my external monitor shuts off, it cuts my internet connection whether it’s WiFi or plugged in via Ethernet.

I have a mac m3 I’m forced to use for work. It is managed by my organization (I’m not sure exactly what that entails).

There is no screensaver that just turns my screen black. I don’t want animation, I don’t want color, I just want the screen to be blank.

Speaking of, I kept hearing my fan spin up and was wondering why. Flurry screensaver was just taking up like 2.5 CPUs and a couple gigs of ram. No clue why. It was actually supposed to be the photos screensaver, but I’m assuming it was angry that the photos screensaver was pointed at a folder with no photos (nor anything else). This was when the PC was running and in use so the screensaver should not even have been running.

Sometimes, when logging in, the password will just not work. If I click off my user and click on admin or another, it will then work fine. Multiple occurrences, not sure of cause.