How to rename “EFI Boot” to “Windows” on the Mac

This is an irritant for some people like me who use multiple drives and partitions. Since all Windows and/or Linux boot partitions show up as “efi boot” on the Mac startup, it is desirable to change the name on startup so we can easily figure out which partition is which.

For some, it is merely the aesthetic value, but, in either case, being able to change the EFI boot name is generally desirable.

In this video, we will see how to do this on the Mac for installers and then how to change the same once we are booted into Windows on the Mac.

Generally, since we would format the Windows partition to NTFS, we have to use a small workaround in Windows to change the boot name for the Mac.

In this video, we will see how to go about the name change…

Mac OS – How to create a USB installer and downgrade

Given the fact that there are applications that are yet to be updated to be compatible with MacOS Big Sur, quite a few people saw a need to downgrade back to their older MacOS versions.

I will discuss how to create an external USB bootable drive for multiple MacOS versions and how to use this drive including on systems which have a T2 chip on them.

The Apple support links are as follows:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

The free archiver Keka can be found at:

https://www.keka.io/en

Let’s see how this works…

Mac OS – Empty the Trash/Bin Fast!

This is a little known feature on Mac OS which allows you to clear the trash extremely fast compared to the normal “Empty Trash/Bin”.

For example, if you have thousands of files left by some application, or, just want to rebuild files for any application and delete the existing ones, just emptying the trash can take quite some time.

A typical example of this, in my case, would be to delete the preview files in Lightroom or ON1 Photo RAW cache which can have thousands of files.

This is far more apparent if the data is on a HDD, external or internal, rather than a SSD.

One way around this is to use the command line and delete the files and folders using the rm command. Fortunately, the trash/bin in Mac OS has an equivalent which just deletes instead of displaying the file count and its status while emptying the trash/bin.

Let’s see how this works…