Daily Battles: Mac Not Detecting External Monitor After Waking Up From Sleep

Are you having problems connecting your Mac to your external monitor(s)? Especially after your Mac goes to sleep, and then upon wake up, it no longer detects your external monitor(s) that was working just fine before?

Maybe you see something like this:

Turned out this is a bug macOS Big Sur introduced by update 11.1, and the recent 11.2 as shown in this article: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/03/macos-big-sur-external-display-issues/ Basically your Mac failed to wake up the monitor after the monitor also went to sleep.

In my case, the Mac laptop always successfully detects 2 external monitors, but always fails to detect the 3rd external monitor. Very Annoying Indeed!!

So how do you solve this problem? Here are several things you can try:

Solutions:

1. Turn your monitor off and then back on.
2. Unplug your external monitor (HDMI plugged into a USB-C adapter) from the Mac laptop and then plug it back in.
3. Use the key combination ⌘-F2 or ⌘-fn-F2 to force monitor detection.
4. Go to System Preferences, select Display, and then hold the OPTION key down. The Gather Windows button will change into Detect Displays. Click this button will help your Mac find the external monitor.

If any of the above methods work for you, great! To be honest, still quite annoying. But to really solve the problem, we'll have to wait for Apple to release a fix maybe in the 11.3 updates.

Leave a comment if you find my blogs useful. You can also follow me on Twitter for more useful tips and tutorials!

Video of the Day:

The proper way to fish!

“What you do all day?”

“It was a long, tough day of fishing.” 😏😂😜🎣 pic.twitter.com/AV6vQGgGi8

— Fred Schultz (@fred035schultz) March 14, 2021

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is blog.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How To Not Receive Phone Calls on Your Computer From An Android Phone

Last time in my blog I talked about how not to receive phone calls on your Mac from your iPhones. For more details you can read this blog post here:

Daily Battles: How To Not Receive Phone Calls on Your Mac

But guess what, your Android phone can still ring on your computer, whether it is a Mac or a Windows machine, and it is just as annoying, and you want to turn it off.

So why is your Android phone ringing on your computer? 

This could have something to do with how you set up your Google Voice.

This could have something to do with how you connected your SMS messaging to your computer.

This could have something to do with your Google Hangout settings.

But They Don't Matter!

Here's what you have to do to disable it!

In your Gmail browser window, click the arrow next to your name in "hangouts", and then uncheck "Ring on incoming phone calls." 

Credit goes to Clay Nichols for providing this solution on the web.

Hope you find this useful and stop getting annoying phone rings on your computer!

Video of the Day:

Covidiots Hall of Fame

The video from The Daily Show has a pretty good summary that fits this thread very well!pic.twitter.com/vCbtE7so0V

— Lanny Lin😷🧢 (@lannyland) February 23, 2021

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is blog.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Slack Message Stuck as Unread or New

If you have OCD like me, it really, really bothers you when there are notifications showing that you have unread messages. This could be your chat messages (phone messages, Google Hangout messages, Microsoft Team Chats, Zoom Chats), emails (Gmail or Outlook), social media (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, you name it), or your Slack for work.

Slack has become this tool required almost for every office job out there today. People expect you to see it quickly and respond quickly. You expect yourself to be on top of your Slack messages because it might be new information you don't want to miss or new issues that require your immediate attention. So when you have read all your messages, but the Slack app is still showing that you have unread messages, it becomes a super big nuisance and just annoys the heck out of you.

Especially after you have clicked the All Unread menu and was issued that you have read all your slack messages! You would go nuts!! I did!

Tried everything I can think off:

1. Restarting Slack
2. Right-click and select Mark All as Read
3. Restart the computer
4. Open the web version of slack
5. Click through everything in the thread to "read" them again

Well, none of that worked. But eventually I figured it out and hopefully this can save you a ton of frustration:

On your computer, while Slack is selected, keep hitting the key combination SHIFT+ESC untill Slack stops showing you messages still as new. Just make sure to do this after you have read all your messages, because this forces slack to mark all messages as read.

There you go! Now get back to work! I'll move on to my next daily battle too!

Leave a comment if you find my blogs useful. You can also follow me on Twitter for more useful tips and tutorials!

Video of the Day:

Birds! I like birds!!

Every day the most magical wild birds visit this woman's porch — but she wasn't prepared for a bright red parrot to befriend her and bring his girlfriend over to meet her ❤️️ pic.twitter.com/1gIwZ16xq6

— The Dodo (@dodo) February 25, 2021

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is blog.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How To Change Screen Capture Saving Locations on Mac

If you take screen captures a lot on a Mac computer like me (e.g., to post daily Covid Analysis Graphs on Twitter),  you'll probably find your Mac Desktop cluttered by all these screen capture files, something like this:

Not something you want to look at every day, right?

So what's the best way to solve this problem? My solution is to have a folder I designate to screen captures. And here's how you can change your default screen capture folder on a Mac so all screen capture files will automatically be saved to that folder.

Normally to capture a portion of your screen, you use the key combination of Command + Shift + 3. and then select the region you want to capture. To capture the entire screen (or screens when you have multiple monitors), you use the key combination of Command + Shift + 4.

So the trick to change the default screen capture saving folder is the key combination of Command + Shift + 5. You'll get a toolbar like the one shown below. Then you just click Options and then select Other Location from the popup menu.

Hope you find this helpful in managing your cluttered computer desktop.

Leave a comment if you find my blogs useful. You can also follow me on Twitter for more useful tips and tutorials!

Video of the Day:

World's cutest security camera!

World's cutest security camera. 💕💕😂😂pic.twitter.com/e9U9NzKN3I

— Figen.. (@TheFigen) February 21, 2021

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is blog.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: When Should I Change Water Filter with a Brita Pitcher?

Using a water filter for your drinking water can make tap water taste much better while saving on plastics bottles and containers. The most popular brand of water filter system is the Brita brand such as the one shown below (about $16.99 on Amazon). They sell both the pitcher and water filters. 

However, how often should you change the water filter, so the filter is not dirty, water still tastes good, and you can also feel assured that you are still consuming really filtered water?

The pitcher itself has a button and light indicators of when you should change the filter. However, it is a very confusing design and you would likely find yourself not knowing how they work. Pushing the button makes all the lights flash and you also don't want to accidentally reset the detector.

Even on Brita's website, there are confusing instructions. For some models, you are supposed to push the button for 2 seconds. This picture above shows 5 seconds. Some others say hold the button for 8 seconds.

So here's your solution:

After you change your filter, push and hold the reset button for 8 seconds doesn't matter what the instructions says and whichever model of pitcher you are using!

So how do you know when it is time to change the filter? Don't press that reset button. It will just make all the lights flash and make you accidentally reset your timer.

Turned out you just watch the lights while you are filtering a new batch of water. That will activate the detector which will let you know if it is time to change the filter.

Here's a video I found useful describing the different steps you should take to replace a water filter.

Good luck! Let's drink good water and also preserve the environment!

Leave a comment if you find my blogs useful. You can also follow me on Twitter for more useful tips and tutorials!

Many times, you don't really need the exact answer, you just need a range.







BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is blog.lannyland.com