By Philip Michaels

App Report: Tiny delights

Sometimes, it’s the little things in life, as this week’s crop of intriguing apps proves. None of our entries promise anything revolutionary — just control over one aspect or another of your Mac that should stand to make your user experience just a tad bit better.

Oh and we throw in a game, too. All work, no play and all that.

So let’s work our way down the list of possible additions to your Mac or iPhone. And if you have something you’d like to see featured in this space, let us know about it via email at apps@sixcolors.com.

Mainspring

Your Mac is more powerful than you know, with a lot of controls hidden well out of view (at least if you don’t want to dig around in the Terminal). Mainspring imagines a world where you can control some of those features via toggles in a utility panel.

Want to speed things up by removing the delay before your auto-hidden Dock pops up or making the hide and show animation go faster? Turn those features on. You can also tweak the built-in screenshot tools to remove drop shadows or save your files as JPGs instead of PNGs. Or you can explore dozens of other optimizations covering various aspects of your Mac, tailored to whether you’re using a laptop or desktop.

Best of all, undoing those changes is as simple as sliding the toggle off. Mainspring really lets you tweak and fine-tune your Mac without running the risk of damaging something important in the process.

What I really appreciate about Mainspring is the setup feature that proposes different scenarios for getting started. I selected the Writer settings, which gave me access to the different screenshot tools that I could turn on and turn off. The app really makes it easier for amateurs like me to use.

You’ll need to pay a one-time fee of $29 for an unlocked copy of Mainspring, but the app comes with a free trial that lets you use it for one day so you can see if Mainspring’s various settings are just the tweaks your Mac needs.

Docktor

Sometimes, when I’m jumping between different apps for the same project, I forget what I’ve got open where. Did I start writing that document in BBEdit or in Google Docs in Safari? The free Docktor utility resolves any lingering doubts by adding live previews of each open app’s window when you hover over its icon in the Dock.

You will have to turn on some permissions to let Docktor do its thing, such as allowing screen recording to capture live thumbnails using ScreenCaptureKit. Optional permissions allow Docktor to know your location and look at your calendar to populate relevant widgets that can be added to either side of your Dock.

That’s another bonus feature for Docktor apart from the live thumbnail previews, though by default, the widgets appeared a little faint on my display. I took care of that by going into Docktor’s settings and fiddling with the Liquid Glass to make things easier on my eyes. That may be a step too far for some users, but the app is free to download and use so you can give it a try to see if it delivers what you’re looking for in a productivity-boosting utility.

Pop Out Timer

Apple devices have their own built-in Clock apps, though the one that comes with the Mac is a bit pedestrian for my tastes. Pop Out Timer offers a different spin on things, with a floating window that you can place just about anywhere on your screen.

That can come in handy when using the stopwatch mode if you want to keep an eye on your time while running through a presentation. As for me, I’ve used Pop Out Timer’s stopwatch as an impromptu time tracker for logging how much time I’m spending on projects where I bill by the hour. The app also features timer, clock and pomodoro modes.

Customization features in Pop Out Timer’s settings let you adjust the aspect ratio of the floating timer as well as the background and text colors. The app, which also runs on iPhones and iPads, is free to try, with timers restricted to 5 minutes. If you like what you see, unlock the premium version, either with a subscription (49 cents/month or $4/year) or a one-time $12 purchase.

TrillMark

When you’re heads down on a project, those notification pings your Mac sends out can fade into the background — which really defeats the purpose of notifications if you ask me. The $8 TrillMark lets you assign different sounds to notifications coming from different apps, so that an alert coming in from Slack will make a different noise compared to a News notification.

To differentiate notifications even further, TrillMark lets you set colors for individual apps, so that you’re sure to see the alerts that are critical to you and to know which apps they’re coming from at a glance.

TrillMark requires some tweaking. For instance, when I’m shuffling through songs in the Music app, I have a notification appear on screen with the song title and artist, but I don’t necessarily want a noise from TrillMark pinging over the music. Fortunately, if you go into the settings, you can ensure that such notifications appear silently.

Echo

Let’s wrap up this week’s look at apps with an iOS puzzle game that lets you clear your mind while passing a few spare moments.

Echo requires you to navigate your way through a maze with just a limited number of moves, but fortunately, there’s an Echo button where your past moves reappear to help you unlock doors and overcome obstacles. It’s a difficult concept to explain, but all becomes clear the moment you start playing.

Different game modes — a campaign mode along with endless play and daily puzzles — add to Echo’s replayability, while soothing music creates a very calming experience.

Best of all, Echo is a free download with no ads marring the experience, though there is a button where you can send a tip the developer’s way.

[Philip Michaels has been writing about technology since 1999, most notably for Macworld and Tom’s Guide. He currently finds himself between jobs, so if you need someone who can string a few sentences together (or make your sentences read a lot better), drop him a line.]

By Jason Snell

When your Mac just won’t let go of the Wi-Fi connection

You ever have one of those moments when you start to copy a large file in the Finder and groan when the Progress Window tells you it’s going to take forever? I used to have them all the time, and it didn’t make sense until I figured out that macOS was gaslighting me about my network connection.

The other day, Friend of the site Todd Vaziri wrote on Mastodon:

Two M4 Mac minis, both running Tahoe on the same local network, gigabit ethernet, using standard File Sharing. I can’t reliably play a Blu-ray rip from one computer to another without it stuttering… a measly 2.82 Mbit/sec file. What am I doing wrong here?

I replied, as did many other people, to tell Todd that he could probably solve his problem by disconnecting both Macs from his in-house Wi-Fi network. He tried that, and all of a sudden, his file transfers were running at fast Ethernet speeds.

You’d think that your Mac would detect the fastest network connection available and prioritize that, but it doesn’t. There is, however, a very helpful setting you can use to prioritize your settings. You can find it in the Settings app, under Network. Scroll to the very bottom of that pane and click on the inscrutable downward-facing caret next to the inscrutable ellipsis symbol (yep, System Settings is still terrible four years later), and choose Set Service Order.

In the resultant window, you can drag all of your Mac’s possible network connections up and down to create a priority list. Items at the top are your Mac’s preferred network connections; ones at the bottom will only be used if there are no other active connections. If you put Wi-Fi at the very bottom, your Mac should only use it when no other active connections are available.

Except: It doesn’t work reliably, and hasn’t for years. Because I’ve been exactly where my friend Todd was the other day, baffled as to why my two Macs on fast Ethernet connections were chugging through an impossibly slow file transfer. The answer was solved the moment I manually disconnected from my Wi-Fi router.

So what is a Mac user to do? The obvious answer would seem to be to turn off your Wi-Fi, but that’s not advisable: Macs use Wi-Fi for all sorts of features beyond getting on the Internet. If you turn off Wi-Fi, you’ll lose access to Continuity features, including the ability to AirDrop.

Instead, the right way to approach this is to leave your Wi-Fi on, but not connected to any routers. As a convenience, any Wi-Fi network you connect to is set to “auto-join,” so when you see it again later, your Mac will reconnect. That’s great, but if you’re being bitten by this issue, that convenience becomes a frustration. Instead, open Settings, choose Wi-Fi, and click the ellipsis button at the far right side of your Known Networks list. You’ll be given a small menu of options, including the (presumably checked) Auto-Join. Uncheck this setting by choosing it, and now your Mac won’t automatically glom onto your local Wi-Fi network. Do this for any networks that your Mac might connect to when you’re trying to be on your at-home or in-office Ethernet.

There is a downside to this approach. When I unplug my laptop from its docking station and open it up somewhere in my house, I have to manually connect to my Wi-Fi network. And when I’m back at my desk, I need to manually disconnect. (These can both be handled by clicking on the Wi-Fi symbol next to the network’s name, right from the Wi-Fi menu in Control Center.) Gray means it’s not connected, white with an accent color means it’s connected.

Yes, it’s a little bit of a hassle. So you need to ask yourself: How much am I affected by my Mac inadvertently using my Wi-Fi connection when it’s also connected to a wired network? The answer may be “not at all,” in which case you should probably keep using Wi-Fi using the Auto-Join regimen that Apple uses as its default.

But if you’re like me, and have seen slow file transfers and unstable videoconference connections resolved by dropping off of Wi-Fi and back to Ethernet, you may find that manually connecting and disconnecting from Wi-Fi is a small price to pay for networking stability.

[Apple folks take note: I have re-filed this bug, “Network traffic often sent to wrong interface based on network priority,” as FB24893093 after originally filing it as FB16275329, which was closed in 2025 because it was theoretically fixed in a late Sequoia build. Either it’s back, or it never left.]

By Jason Snell

M6 Mac mini review: Tiny, pricey, and powerful

2024’s M4 Mac mini was a revelation. It packed Apple silicon power into a shockingly compact space, breathing new life into Apple’s all-time utility Mac and (eventually) making it into a go-to device for home AI and even back-end podcast transcription.

Two years later, the Mac mini gets its first update since it became such a popular purchase. It’s a bit surprising: while the high-end model has updated to the familiar M5 Pro chip found in the MacBook Pro, the lower-end model has skipped right over the M5 and become the first Mac to be released using the next-generation 2-nanometer M6 chip.

It has also, unfortunately, seen a price increase. The Mac mini famously debuted in 2005 at $499 ($855 in today’s dollars), and the M4 model was introduced at $599 in 2024 dollars. Unfortunately, after a midstream price increase and the release of this new version, the starting price has been boosted to $899, a 50% increase over that relatively recent base price.

I get it. Memory and processors are skyrocketing in price due to the AI gold rush, on top of inflation. But the fact remains that at $599, the Mac mini was about as close to an impulse buy as a Mac desktop could get. At $899, it’s crossed an invisible threshold. I can understand it, but I don’t have to like it.

Previously, on Mac mini…

On the outside, this Mac mini is identical to the previous model. It’s still a 5-inch square that’s only two inches high and weighs only 1.5 pounds, a shock of a size if you’re used to the Mac mini’s pre-2024 silhouette. It’s got two USB-C ports on the front and three Thunderbolt ports on the back. (It’s Thunderbolt 4 if you’ve got the M6 model, Thunderbolt 5 for the M5 Pro.)

We’ll get to the chip momentarily, but Apple has made internal upgrades on some other Mac mini parts. Wi-Fi and Ethernet were left untouched in the 2024 Mac mini update, but not this year—the M6/M5 Pro models support Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. Both models also come standard with 2.5Gb Ethernet, with 10Gb Ethernet as a configure-to-order option.

And now, the star of the show

The Mac mini vaulted right over the base M5 processor entirely, preventing me from making more references to that classic “Star Trek” episode where a computer tries to take Captain Kirk’s job because some A.I. genius has conned people in positions of authority into thinking that’s a good idea. (Thank goodness I have no more need to reference such outdated, irrelevant themes.)

As a result, the release of this Mac mini also marks the debut of the M6, an entirely new generation of Apple silicon that will undoubtedly populate numerous Macs and iPads over the next year. That makes it worth peeking into the details of how the M6 is structured and how it performs, even if you’re not currently in the market for a new tiny Mac.

Since the beginning, Apple’s M-series processors have included two different sets of CPU cores designed with different characteristics. The performance cores were designed to run at high speed and rip through tasks, albeit at the cost of greater power usage. (Apple would tell you that even its performance cores are also optimized to use power intelligently whenever possible, of course.) The company’s efficiency cores, on the other hand, were designed to perform lower priority low-level tasks—and computers have a lot of those!—while excelling at energy savings.

While power efficiency isn’t as important for a Mac plugged into an outlet, it’s vitally important to laptops, which make up the bulk of Apple’s Mac sales. And of course, power efficiency can also reduce thermal issues that require venting, and reduce the amount of electricity you’re paying for.

Last year, though, Apple introduced a new core type, the “super core,” with the M5. What differentiates a super core from a performance core? It comes down to the different ways computer programs do work. Software splits up tasks into individual components, or threads, and passes those to the system to send to the processor. Some software is very good at breaking up work into tiny individual components, which is good, because those tasks can be distributed across many CPU cores, where work can proceed in parallel. But some tasks aren’t broken up so readily—whether it’s because the software hasn’t been optimized, or because the task itself really is just a single big chunk that must be processed at once.

According to Apple, super cores are focused on chewing through those single-threaded tasks at maximum performance. This differentiates them from performance cores, which Apple says are tuned to perform better at complex, multi-threaded jobs. Meanwhile, those efficiency cores are percolating quietly in the background, taking care of lesser tasks that don’t require the muscle that the other two core types deliver.

In the M6, for the first time, Apple has decided to apply all three different core types to a single design: It’s got six efficiency cores, four performance cores, and two super cores. Something for every kind of task, ideally, leading to the most optimal mix of power and efficiency.

In addition, the M6 has 12 GPU cores, which pick up the neural accelerators Apple added in the M5 generation (and therefore never before seen in the Mac mini), to assist in AI jobs that run on the chip’s graphics hardware. There’s also a new dual 16-core Neural Engine, so Apple’s doubling its own home-made neural processors, all in the goal of making the M6 more impressive as a processor for AI jobs.

With these changes, the M6 ran 11% faster than the M5 in single-core CPU performance, according to my tests. That’s slightly below average for an M-series generational update, though of course if you’re specifically upgrading from any previous Mac mini, you’ll see much greater performance boosts.

In multi-core testing, the M6 performed 23% faster than the M5 generation, very slightly above average for an Apple silicon generation change.

And when it comes to GPU scores, they’re up 24% from the M5 generation—again, a very slightly above average per-generation improvement. Of course, this improvement is largely built on the back of Apple’s choice to include 12 GPU cores in the M6, up from 10 in the M5. If you divide the scores per GPU core, it suggests that Apple (quite understandably) took this generation off from massively improving its GPU core design, given the major steps forward it took in the previous two generations.

This is now part of the Apple silicon playbook. If you see Apple add GPU cores in a processor generation, it’s most likely doing so because the actual GPU cores aren’t particularly improved, so to make the chip faster, it piles in more. Increasing the GPU count by 20 percent will generally improve your GPU performance by… 20 percent. The strategy allows Apple to crow about improved GPU performance even in a year where its attention is turned elsewhere.

What’s harder to tease out in any sort of benchmark test is how the chip will perform day to day, with a varied workload. Maxing out one CPU core or all the CPU cores provides a clean answer; Apple’s three-core-type design likely works more subtly in practice. My guess is that the mix of CPU core types will result in a better balance of power and efficiency, which is essentially Apple’s holy grail when it comes to processor design. Apple wants its chips to be able to rip through a task when you need it to, but run effortlessly (and in a low-power state) the rest of the time. That’s much more difficult to measure, however.

The Apple silicon Mac era has now lasted so long that we can begin to see patterns and judge how individual generations fit into the story. The M6 processor appears to be an average improvement, so close to dead-on average that it feels like it was made specifically to meet an internal metric for improved CPU and GPU performance.

These results are colored, at least a bit, by Bloomberg’s report that Apple has decided not to ship high-end M6 processors at all, and jump directly to a new M7 generation that is better suited to “meet growing demand for on-device AI capabilities and more graphics-intensive software.” There’s nothing wrong with the M6 at all, but if Apple’s next generation chip design includes some major AI and graphics performance leaps, I can see why the company might want to prioritize that release rather than rolling out an entire chip line-up based on an adequate but uninspiring creep forward in performance.

Small is beautiful

Back to the Mac mini. Since Dan Moren reviewed the last two releases of this product, I haven’t gotten a chance to spend much time with it, or to write about it in detail.

Let me be clear: I love it.

I’ve been using Mac minis since the very beginning. I’ve had a Mac mini in my home as a server for most of its existence as a product.

In the late 2010s the Mac mini was in the wilderness. It wasn’t updated for more than three years.

But thanks to Apple silicon, it has gotten a new lease on life—and a new design. The fact that the Mac mini became a hot product in the last year just warms my heart. It’s always been Apple’s most versatile Mac, capable of performing whatever Mac jobs you want to throw at it. The smaller size just makes it that much more delightful. It’s a shame about the price, but you could say that about most tech prices these days.

Still, what a computer! Even the performance of the base M6 model is more than enough for most computing tasks that regular people will ever need. If you invested in an external display a few years ago, most likely that display is still going strong—and attaching a new Mac mini to it will just refresh everything. If you want a Mac to live in a closet and serve files and web pages and run AI agents or whatever, it’ll be great for that too.

The Mac mini has come into its own at last, and I’m glad for that. Perhaps in the next few years, prices will settle down and Apple will allow it to cross back over into territory where it’s more of an impulse buy, a “why wouldn’t you upgrade?” sort of proposition. Right now, make no mistake, it’s still a great option if there’s a tiny space for it in your life—but you’ll need to actually do the work to calculate the value it will provide you before making that decision.