• Mouse Scrolling
• Time doesn’t update
• Authentication is Disabled when bound to MS AD Domain
• Property Lists
• Official Guides
• Other Tips

Mouse Scrolling

If external (non-apple) mouse scrolling is inverse on a mac laptop, change:

Preferences –> Mouse –> Natural scrolling: False

But this changes it for both track pad and mouse. To me it should be on for a track pad but not a mouse. If your external mouse has software, install it so that you can separately set scrolling direction/mode.

Time doesn’t update

Notice your time isn’t automatically updating or seems super out? A reboot should fix it, but if not:

Quick Fix:

1. Go to Control Panel –> General –> Date and Time
2. Turn off set time and date automatically (if it was already off that is your problem, if not continue)
3. Turn it on again

Long term fix: https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/1dccrep/comment/l7x2ih7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Caveats:

• Issue with MacOS Sonoma
• Should be fixed in 14.5 but I had it occur again on 14.7

Authentication is Disabled when bound to MS AD Domain

TL;DR: Corrupt secure token.

Scenario:

• MacOS 15.5
• Intel CPU
• Bound to MS Ad Domain
• Mobile AD user without admin rights trying to install software
• Not in line of sight of domain
• Uses creds of local admin user
• Not long after upgrading to 15.5 from 14.7
• Not 100% clean machine

When completing various re-auths or up-auths and you are bound to a Windows Domain, you may encounter an issue where a local admin user account gets “Authentication is disabled”. There are other situations where this could apply. A bunch.

It was origionally all on M CPUs and not Intel based macs (and there appears to be an unrelated issue with M CPUs and secure chip stuff - but that isn’t what this post is about)

Fix per below article is:

#Check if your account has securetoken enabled, (it probably does)
# Disable it then reenable it.
sysadminctl -secureTokenStatus <username>
sysadminctl -secureTokenOff <username> -password - -adminUser <adminusername> -adminPassword -
sysadminctl -secureTokenOn <username> -password - -adminUser <adminusername> -adminPassword -
diskutil apfs UpdatePreboot /

Source: https://community.jamf.com/t5/jamf-pro/softwareupdate-is-trying-to-authenticate-user-authentication-is/m-p/245357

Property Lists

Not exactly like the windows registry but maybe sorta.

You can adjust properity lists via:

• defaults tool on MacOS. See Edit property lists in Terminal on Mac.
• plutil command on MacOS. See plutil man page from xode - I get the feeling defaults is better than plutil

Background:

“In the macOS, iOS, NeXTSTEP, and GNUstep programming frameworks, property list files are files that store serialized objects. Property list files use the filename extension .plist, and thus are often referred to as p-list files.”

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_list

Preference and configuration files in macOS use property lists (plists) to specify the attributes, or properties, of an app or process. An example is the preferences plist for the Finder in the Library/Preferences/ folder of a user’s home folder. The file is named com.apple.finder.plist. The default naming convention for a plist includes the distributor’s reverse DNS name prepended to the app or process name, followed by a .plist extension.

To edit property lists, use the defaults command-line tool. The defaults command is a powerful tool and, when you know the specific key and value in a property list you want to change, the defaults tool is very efficient.

The defaults tool works directly with the macOS preferences subsystem and is used by many apps in macOS to manage preferences and other settings. It can be built into shell scripts and lets you access preferences in the multiple domains that exist on a given computer.

- Edit property lists in Terminal on Mac

Official Guides

MacOS User Guide
iPhoneOS User Guide iPadOS User Guide
Terminal User Guide

Manuals, Specs and Downloads

Other Tips

https://saurabhs.org/macos-tips