Here’s yet another swing at the Presets issue by Don Quixote. Next year, I’ll get a life (maybe…)

This is a followup to my first posting here at https://valleau.art/blog/printer-presets-no-longer-working-right/

My presets have (knock on windmills) been OK for a few hours now.  The work for this post was done on a Mac Studio M2, running Tahoe 26.1 on Dec 9, 2025.

Let’s face it: Apple’s implementation of the “split presets” (print jobs and custom jobs) back in Ventura was “half-baked” at best, and has caused a few years of pain now, at least for some users. Unfortunately, the thing is still half-baked, and the bugs and poor design remain into Tahoe. What I have here is therefore not a fix, but a work-around, that will (at least in my own experience) allow you to create and use printer presets without corruption. It takes some setup, and a full acceptance of Print/Custom, along with a caveat or two.

Here’s the gist of it: Apple software is broken. A lot of the things that used to work no longer work and give unexpected results. However, there is a safe path through this minefield. That’s what this post shows: the path of least failure. Deviate at your own risk.

(I should note that everything here is based solely on my own individual experience. If something is wrong, there’s no one to blame but me.)

But at least presets are viable again.

Good Luck!

Tracy

—————————

What I suggest and did:

First: why not nuke and pave – reset the entire printing system? Well, that completely removes ALL your printers and you have to start over from scratch. I personally have 3 different label printers; three different full color printers and three Piezography B&W printers. Also a laser printer and a multifunction.

Starting from scratch (especially with the 3 quadtone Rip printers) would be a massive effort, reinstalling 9 different printers, and without any guarantee that all that time spent would actually fix anything.

So I opted to fix only the printer(s) where the presets kerfuffle actually shows up.

—

Overview:

1) reset all the default printer settings using CUPS. 

2) delete current settings

3) create each and every new Print Job preset begining with the Default Settings and NOT with an existing preset. 

4) if you alter a preset and want to save it for future use, you MUST use a CUSTOM preset.

Details:

Here’s what has worked for me:

FIRST:
If you have a load of presets for your printer, take a look at them, make screenshots or otherwise record them because you’re going to remake them all over again.

STEP ONE:

CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) is here: in your browser at http://localhost:631. The login is your own login to your mac, name & password. If you are asked to activate the web interface, launch the Terminal app, and paste in  this phrase,  “cupsctl WebInterface=yes” and hit the enter key.  I suggest you just copy/paste the phrase without the quote marks.

Select “printers” from the meu bar and from the list click on yours. From the resulting Administration menu, choose “set default options”.

Here’s your chance to set your most commonly used settings. I suggest you do that. The Default Settings will become the basis of all your subsequent presets, so you can save yourself time by having it default to your most commonly used preset options. This will leave you with less to do when you create a new one. Note that the list has about 60 options  most of which you will not need, and is several screens long, so be sure to go all the way through it, because the save/update button “set default options” is at the very bottom.

I suggest that you do NOT leave the main ones, such as paper, blank. Put in something that you use a lot and will help you quickly see that you, in fact, selected the default preset.

Once you have saved your new default settings, you can exit. (Before you leave, it wouldn’t hurt to do a similar ‘refresh’ for each of the printers listed.)

(Why do this? It’s possible that after years of use, and various iterations, the saved setup may have become corrupted for any number of reasons. Can I swear this CUPS rewrite is really necessary? Nope. But as a retired programmer (“been there, done that”) I can say that it’s quite possible. Either way, it certainly won’t hurt to have fresh, clean files behind the scenes. Upshot: just do it. It’s only a one-time thing.)

STEP TWO:
Visit ~/library/preferences/
and find “com.apple.print.custompresets.forprinter.[name].plist” (where [name] is your printer.

(Optional, but wise) Save those current presets by zipping up that plist, and moving it somewhere else.

Trash the plist itself.

STEP THREE:

Reboot your computer. Load your printing software and check to make sure all the previous presets are gone, and you have only “Default Settings” at the top of the presets popup menu. If you still have presets, you trashed the wrong plist. Put it back and find the right one.

When you see an empty presets list you can empty the trash. 

MAKING A NEW PRESET

Notes:

1) it was necessary for my printers to be turned ON for this process. With my 3880 QuadTone RIP printer, if it was off, the setting did not “stick’.

2) Further: I made the presets by accessing “Page Setup: Paper & Print settings…” (above item #2, in the image above) and NOT by hitting “Print” to bring it up.

3) Finally, I always use “OK” and never the “Cancel” button inside the Print window – specifically within the “printer options” section of that print dialog. “Printer options” offers color matching, printer settings, roll paper settings, advanced paper control, and HDD settings. Each one of these brings up a set of choices that are either confirmed with the “OK” button or (supposedly) unchanged using the “Cancel” button. (This is entirely internal to Apple, and NOT handled by any application.  It is broken. The “Cancel” button will “magically” alter your presets! DO NOT SELECT “CANCEL.” If  you want to cancel a change you made, you need to  accept the alteration anyway, by hitting the “OK” button, and then go back in again and change the setting back to what you want. Again: “Cancel” will corrupt your settings.

4) Pay attention. Always check that your desired presets are correct before choosing to save your preset. You can be pretty sure that if you accidentally hit the “Cancel” button to back out, things will NOT be OK!

FROM NOW ON, you will use that Default Settings preset as your starting point for all new PRINT JOB presets. This method creates a pristine new PRINT JOB preset each time, based on the Default Settings  you created in CUPS for your printer.

Why use PRINT JOBS? Because those are the base from which you make your CUSTOM JOBS.

Let’s say you have 3 papers: Velvet Fine Art (VFA), RAG Photographique (RP) and Hot Press Natural (HPN). You would select the Default Settings preset and from there set up a preset with your chosen ink, bit-depth, print speed, DPI and so on for (let’s say) VFA. Next save it as a PRINT JOB named “VFA” for just the printer involved.

Now go back and load up “Default Settings” again. Make the same changes for RP, and again save it as a PRINT JOB, named (say) “RP”.

For the third paper, go back and yet again load up “Default Settings” and create a new PRINT JOB named “HPN.”

Now you have three print jobs showing in your main presets list for your chosen printer.

Since the whole point of presets is your convenience, so lets make two variations of (say) the VFA paper: one for quick sanity-check prints, and one for the final print that will be hanging in MOMA.

Load up the VFA print job you just created. Change it so that it’s 1440 and bidirectional. Go back to the presets menu and choose “save current settings as preset…” (just like you did above to make the PRINT Jobs) but this time choose to save it as a CUSTOM JOB. Make sure the name is clear to you, such as “VFA Fast.”  (I’d also choose to make it for the given printer, instead of “all printers”. YMMV.)

Go back and reload the VFA PRINT JOB again, and alter it for 2880 and unidirectional. Save that as a CUSTOM JOB similarly, but name it “VFA Slow”.

You now have three presets for your printer when using VFA paper.

TO USE THESE:

if you want a quick test print, from the popup presets menu, choose “presets…” and then the saved CUSTOM “VFA fast”. (There is a “gotcha” here however. If is physically possible for you to select one PRINT job and use the CUSTOM job from another paper. This is NOT what you want 99% of the time. You should either choose the print job preset and then the custom preset OR choose “Default Settings” and then select a CUSTOM preset. Doing that, choosing the CUSTOM will load the proper PRINT JOB setup correctly.)

Side note:

Before Apple split presets into PRINT JOBS and CUSTOM presets, we would make new presets by simply chaning an existing one, and save it with a new name. It’s not that simple any more. 
If you want to a variation of an existing print preset,  load up whatever you want to use as the base (say Velvet Fine Art) and make your changes, but then (as just explained) you >>MUST<< save that as a CUSTOM Preset, NOT a PRINT JOB preset! (My experience with taking an existing PRINT JOB preset, and creating a variation of it, and then saving that out as a PRINT JOB again is -wrong-, and leads to corruption. It appears that the Apple OS -knows- it’s a variation (aka CUSTOM) and saves different data, which when mistakenly saving as a PRINT Job instead, may result in a corrupted preset.)

My presets are generally on a per-paper basis, with perhaps a set of different paper sizes (VFA 8×10; VFA 13×19 etc) or print density/passes (1440 bidirectional vs 2880 unidirectional) or roll vs sheet, etc. Those variations would be saved as a CUSTOM Preset.

My presets also apply specifically to one printer. My label printers have no use for fine-art printer presets, and I don’t want to wade through them when they don’t apply.

WHERE ARE MY NEW PRESETS?
If you are using CUSTOM Presets, you must remember that they ARE NOT LISTED directly in the presets popup list. That list is for PRINT JOBS. If you have CUSTOM presets, they will be listed in the -submenu- “PRESETS” in the main presets popup, above the print jobs.

Here’s the SUMMARY

1) visit CUPS and make a new Default Settings for your printer.

2) visit library preferences and delete the old presets.plist

3) reboot

4) use “Default Settings” to create individual PRINT JOBS for each paper, and for your specific printer.

6) using that PRINT JOB create variations and save each as a CUSTOM JOB.

Repeat steps 4 and 5 to make new presets.

Note:  a PRINT job should never be saved on top of a previous one, with an eye to replacing it. That worked fine for years (decades?) but not so much anymore. Now you need to make a new one from your Default Settings.

And… when reviewing settings during use, click the OK button to dismiss the dialog box. Do not click “Cancel” as it may not be safe to do so. (Myself and others have experienced a “cancel” click causing unexpected results.)

________________________________________________________________________

One Last Thing:

How did Apple screw this up?  I have a hypothesis, and it’s only and no more than that  –  my best guess.

The basic mistake was to allow a what should have been a CUSTOM JOB to be saved as a PRINT JOB. That is, a variation on an existing PRINT JOB >>needs<< to be saved as a CUSTOM JOB. It turns out that the OS knows when you’re “subsetting” a PRINT JOB.  Knowing that, they should not offer the ‘save as Print Job’ button if it’s really a subset of the main job that you are saving. That may, in the current state of things, yeild a corrupted print job, with cascadingly serious results.

At least that’s what it looks like to me as of now… but I’ve been wrong before.  (in 1957, I think)  

This has worked for me, and I hope it will do the same for you.

Finally, my thanks for Joseph Holmes and Roy Harrington for their interest, encouragement, advice and unflagging patience & courtesy.

The “Tic-Tac” UAP (Unidentified Arial Phenomena)  is a UFO famously recorded by US Navy airmen, and the subject of a recent full scale investigation by the US Congress. Lots of video, lots of hand wringing, lots of speeculation  that it’s aliens violating the laws of physics.  (Just so you won’t think I’ve joined the tinfoil-hat crowd, here’s the gist of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos.)

The only way this works for me is if the Tic-Tac itself is a hologram.

As a massless hologram it could easily exhibit all the observed traits. (Amazing speed & impossible direction change are easy with lasers.) Probably generated by black ops satellites (or nearby ships). Some types of radar can interact with holograms, ie HSR.

Probably a government project. Certainly not alien. (Would aliens buzz our military, or is it more likely our own military running a test?)

I suspect this project began decades ago, with satellite lasers being tested in agricultural areas of the UK. (The so-called “crop circles”.)

The reason it’s “black” is because they must have figured out how to keep the divergence (width) extremely tight – tighter than the genral public knows. That is, when we shoot a laser at the moon, by the time it get there, the “dot of light” is extremely faint, as it’s about 120 miles wide. But if the point of origin is measured in feet instead of hundreds of thousands of miles, I’d imagine you could generate an unfocused blob, or simple geometric shape. 

As far as public knowledge goes, there are all kinds of technical and theoretical issues with doing this, but again, that’s why it’s “black.”

Additionally, notice that we have no evidence that there is any physical interaction going on. One of these “ojects” sweeps at thousands of miles an hour just feet above the surface of the ocean, at there is no wake nor disturbance of the water. The ONLY way the speed; the changes of direction; the lack of physical interaction can be photographed is if the object is massless – made of light.

No magic; no little green men; no violation of the laws of physics – just a clever black op. It’s the only explanation that actually makes sense, at least to me.

Just my two cents. 

(I have disabled comments on this because of the tin-hat crowd. I’m not interested in discussing it; merely wanted to get it out there.)

As I push toward 80, I’ll admit I find it easier to stay home and make prints than to go out and take photos. And, as many of you know, one of my joys is making prints on paper, whether my own images or those of others.

To that end, I’m please to let you know that I was recently honored by Canson-Infinity with a Certified Print Lab seal, “…representing expertise in Fine Art printing.” Canson, founded in 1557, has produced some of the world’s finest papers, used by Picasso, Degas, Matisse, Cézanne, Van Gogh and Monet.

Canson says: “The Certified Print Labs are a network of ‘best in class’ studios and boutique labs based around the world. All the partners have completed a technical evaluation and offer the best print quality on Canson Infinity papers, combined with excellent service. The network offers services for photographers, printmakers & artists looking for excellent quality and service.”

Near as I can tell, I’m the only such certified printer between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Personally, I’m delighted because I have favored Canson Infinity and Arches papers for almost two decades now. I like the way their papers take the ink, and the gamut they can handle. Certainly there are other papers I use, but images just seem to look more elegant on Canson papers.

Prints are usually $85 each, and that includes paper, ink, and 30-60 minutes of cleanup, adjusting, and other prep for making an exceptional print.

Please feel free to pass this information along to others who might need my services, and keep me in mind for printing your next show or gallery pieces.

I’ve got a website for this service: https://itstheprint.com

Stay well!

Tracy

So, let’s take a quick look at it.

Perhaps you’re old enough to remember the Weston Lightmeter:

It had a “photovoltaic cell” (don’t panic) which is simply some goop which when exposed to light generates a very tiny electrical current. The brighter the light, the greater the current, and the greater the current, the farther the little needle on the display would swing to the right. Underneath the needle is a printed chart, with numbers, so your light meter reading was simply the number that was underneath the needle when it stopped moving.

In other words, the light meter effectively measured the “luminosity” (intensity/brightness of the light) in any given environment.

Now, if you were to cover the front of the meter, where the photovoltaic cell lives, with say blue cellophane, then only the blue light would enter, and you’d be measuring the luminosity of the blue light only. If you wanted to know the luminosity of only the green or red part of the spectrum, you’d just cover the cell with green (or red) cellophane.

OK: simple enough… but that is exactly how your digital camera captures the data it needs to (later) make an image.

The sensor in your camera, which gets exposed to light when you push the shutter release button, is (in the miracle of modern technology) covered in a checker-board pattern, with literally millions of “little Weston meters”… and each one has a piece of colored cellophane (aka a “filter”) on it, either red or green or blue. (The actual arrangement of those filters is called a Bayer pattern.)  Here’s what it looks like:

So, when the sensor is exposed to light, each sensor cell records a single number that is relative to the intensity of light at that location on the sensor. In the image above, that would look like this:

(I’m making up the numbers, of course, for this example>)

(Row 1)   green = 300    red = 55  green = 340   red = 66 

(Row 2)  blue = 4000   green = 421  blue  = 3980  green = 345

(Row 3)  green = 298    red = 66  green = 302   red = 75

(Row 4)  blue = 4100   green = 407  blue  = 4009  green = 301

If you were going to save those 16 cells (or all  millions of them) to memory or on a disk, the data for that group, as seen in the recording, would be:

300 55 340 66
4000 4213 980 345
298 66 302 75
4100 407 4009 301

or really more like this, all run together:

300 55 340 66 4000 4213 980 345 298 66 302 75 4100 407 4009 301

Those individual cells are called “photosites” or sometimes “sensels”, but you’ll notice that each one records the intensity of only one color. The whole thing is called a “mosaic” since that’s what it looks like.  They are NOT called “pixels”  (which are on your monitor or printed photography because “pixel” is from an image, and is a single cell with all three values, red, green and blue, so that you get full color in each place, not just one color.)

That is what a ‘raw’ (which means not finished, or not cooked if you prefer) file is: a long string of numbers representing the luminosity intensity values straight from the camera sensor.

—-

Obviously however, that’s not an image – it’s just a bunch of data. Even more apparent is that each cell as recorded is not “full color” but only the intensity of red, green or blue.

Where does the full color image (with a lot more colors than only red, green or blue) come from?

Computer magic: that mosaic is run through software which “demosaics” it. The software looks at all the surrounding cells, RGB,  and extrapolates (figures out) what the full color of each pixel (now is the time to call it a pixel) should be, and saves each cell with three numbers: a value for red, a value for blue, and a value for green. A pixel is a “picture element” which has a RGB component to it.

The data might look like this:

(Row 1, Cell 1)     red = 255  green = 133   blue = 18

(Row 1, Cell 2)     red = 255  green = 131   blue = 19

(Row 1, Cell 3)     red = 254  green = 136   blue = 21

(Row 1, Cell 4)     red = 253  green = 140   blue = 22

or those 4 cells just from Row 1 above:

255 133 18
255 131 19
254 136 21
253 140 22

aka

255 133 18 255 131 19 254 136 21 253 140 22

In the image file, instead of one number per cell,  there are now three numbers per cell representing the full R, G, B value of that single pixel.

After fully demosaicing the data from the sensor/raw file (which itself remains unchanged ) those extrapolated values are saved into a new, different and familiar “image” file, such as a jpg or tif. Now you have two files: a raw file (in which the original data is unchanged) and a new image file (full  of new data).

Let’s say you have a bag of groceries, including, flour, eggs, sugar and milk.

A “raw” file is more like the bag of uncooked groceries, while an “image” file is more like a finished cake.

Well, that’s the gist of it. Vastly oversimplified of course,  but that’s basically how it all works.

HTH

addendum:

about editing a raw file: You don’t. The raw file data remains the same. The changes are applied when you demosaic the raw file into a bit-map file.

In digital photography, the “sidecar” file associated with a raw image file typically contains metadata and adjustments made to the image, including exposure adjustments, white balance, and other non-destructive edits. The sidecar file is often in XML format (commonly using the .xmp extension) and is separate from the original raw image file.

The sidecar file records the changes you’ve made to the image in your editing software without altering the original RAW data. When you open the raw file in the same or compatible software, these adjustments are applied according to the information stored in the sidecar file. This allows for flexibility, as you can adjust or revert changes without losing any original image data.

Here is how to print a target of patches, for use in creating a custom color profile. (Note: this requires that you either have your own spectrophotometer, or are printing a target sent to you by someone you hired to create the custom profile for you.)

A target image is composed of hundreds or thousands of little color patches. The profiling software knows exactly what those colors are. So if printed correctly (as in “unaltered”) then the spectrophotometer can read t he printed value; compare it to the correct value, and create a profile. Obviously then, when you print that target on your computer, you do NOT want anything to change the colors accidentally! In other words, “color management” must be OFF.

Macs are notoriously difficult to print a “pure, unmanaged” color patch target without corrupting it.

The usual advice used to be to use Adobe’s Color Print Utility (CPU), but unfortunately, CPU is no longer supported on Catalina or later.

However, if you are printing from a Windows machine, you can still use the Adobe CPU: (https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/no-color-management-option-missing.html)

Most pros will say to use Print Tool from Roy Harrington. (http://www.quadtonerip.com/html/QTRprinttool.html)

[FWIW, I too recommend this product and use it for all my printing, but it’s not free. Since it is also a RIP, it does FAR more than just print clean targets. IMHO it will be the best $50 you’ve spent lately.]

Or you can use the (free) software you already have: ColorSync Utility. It’s in your “Utilities” folder. It’s more fussy to use than Print Tool, but it works. 

Here’s how to print an unmodified, clean target using Apple’s ColorSync.

LATEST version of CS

1. run colorsync and choose file/open and load the target. (The target MUST NOT have an assigned profile!)
2. across the bottom of the window, you will see three popup menus. Set them to “Match to Profile”  “None” and “Relative Colormetric (media relative)”
3. choose File – Print from the main menu
4. in the resulting dialog box, twirl down the arrow to see the contents of “Color Sync”
5. at “Color:” change the popup menu selection to “Print as color target” (If it’s grayed out, you likely have a profile assigned to the image. See the built-in ColorSync “help”.)
6. finally, select “Print”

OLDER version:

1. run colorsync and choose file/open and load the target
2. choose Print and select your desired printer
3. select “color matching” from the popup menu
4. choose any profile, except “automatic” – I use ARGB1998
5. from the same popup menu choose the top item: “colorsync utility”
6. from the “Color:” menu, choose “Print as Color Target”
7. Finally, select “Print”

HTH

Tracy

Why? Because they screw up your ability to see tones properly. Using a dark background will trick your mind into producing a print that has clogged up shadows, and is overall too dark.

Don’t believe me? Check out the image below.

See that grey band in the middle? It is exactly the same shade of gray all the way across. The left end is NOT lighter than then right end.

Take a look at squares A & B, below.

A & B are exactly the same shade of gray” (RGB 110,110, 110). 

This is built-in our human perception. You can look at the A/B image above all day, and B will always look lighter to you than A.

Upshot? Your editing environment really does have an effict on the work you produce. Don’t use dark backgrounds for editing photos.

Set your editing tool to as light an environment as you can, and change the background to white, to keep your brain from messing with you!

When “good enough” isn’t: canned paper profiles

In my business (making prints for museums and galleries) the usual prebuilt paper/ink profile, often described as “good enough” really isn’t. Instead I make my own profiles using X-Rite’s i1Publish Pro 3. If that applies to you as well, here are some tips:

Printing on expensive paper is, er, expensive, so I print the calibration target on a single sheet of 13 x 19 paper. I print 1586 patches because this number gives a chart with 30 shades of black, from white to darkest black. Choosing some other number of patches may only offer 10 or 12 luminosity values. The greater number helps your textures stand out.

The patches are 0.340″ wide and 0.302″ tall, allowing the full 1586 to be printed on a single sheet.

Also, at least with Epson printers, I print the chart using the same DPI (1440/2880) as my final prints. That’s because 1440 shows more paper-white than 2880, and thus the patches are less dense when read by the spectrophotometer. In other words, the resulting profile is different with different DPI.

I allow the print to dry for 24 hours before reading it. This is critical for matte paper in particular.

I do not have a mechanized reader, so do the scanning my hand, using the supplied tools. I time a single pass of the scanner to take at least 4 seconds. The chart has 28 columns, so I’m reading 7 of them each second. The version 3 hardware scans at 400 samples per second, so each patch is getting about 60 samples. (This is about the same time that X-Rite’s mechanical arm takes on a single pass.)

Also, I find it easier to maintain even speed during a single pass to push or pull the spectro unit (instead of swiping left or right) and so turn the table 90 degrees.

Finally (and this will depend on your printer) I add a bit of smoothing to the profile, slightly beyond the default 50%.

I hope these tips help my fellow i1Publish Pro users make better profiles.

You would not take a flashlight and cover the end with blue cellophane, and shine it on the print, because it would trash all the other colors. To get a more rational view, you might take it outside and look at it in the sunshine, which has a balance of all the colors, right?

As a print-maker, you want to have a lightbulb you can use indoors that shows all the colors evenly (unlike the blue flashlight) and thus similar to sunshine.

The color temperature of sunshine is agreed to be about 5000K. Lower temperature is “warm” (making white paper look orange-ish) and higher is “cool” (making white paper look bluer).

But besides the color temperature, sunlight is also a reference to all the colors in balanced amounts. How close any lightbulb comes to that even balance is the bulb’s CRI, Color Rendering Index. By definition, sunlight’s CRI is 100. Fluorescent bulbs usually have a CRI of 80 or less, while specialized bulbs can get to 95 or more. 

Unlike sunlight, all bulbs have a spectrum where some colors have more energy than other colors. Fluorescents, for example, exaggerate the green and orange dramatically, and the emission graph looks like a saw tooth blade. Most LEDs peak in the dark blue and greens. Sunlight however has no peaks or valleys, and is a smooth, nearly horizontal graph. 

Fluorescents and LEDs have low CRI, and so you are seeing exaggerations of some parts of the spectrum and a muting of other parts. No good if you’re trying to analyze a print.

Generally speaking, any CRI above 93 or so is suitable for viewing photos, but the closer you get to 100, the better. Such bulbs are usually expensive, often in the $20-$40 range. Solux “museum” bulbs were 4700 K, about 94 CRI and $30 each.

All that leads here: I have found standard base lightbulbs, with 5000K temperature, and a CRI of 98 (which is amazing) and furthermore are LEDs, using less electricity than halogen or tungsten.

AND… they are less than $3 each.

So I’m sharing what I use with all the photographers I know. You can buy them on Amazon. Here is the URL:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BNBN5TY4/

Finally, if you’ve never had such a light before, it will take 2 or 3 days for your brain to adjust to it. As my drill instructor used to say “Suck it up sweetheart. You’ll get used to it.” (For you cynics: no, I do not benefit from this recommendation. It’s entirely altruistic.)

The usual thing you find if you search the web looking for a way to keep Alexa from constantly saying “OK” to your commands, is “Oh, that’s easy: just turn on Brief Mode.”

Thing is, that only works  (ahem)  briefly,  for one or two commands, and then the syrupy “OK” comes back.  What we want is for “brief mode” to stick forever, not for a few hours. This has been driving me, and thousands of others, crazy for years now.

Try this – it worked for me:

First, turn on brief mode, with “Alexa, enable brief mode” on each Echo.

Then:

Run the Alexa app On Your Phone.

Select devices, and then filter by type: Echo & Alexa

For each and every Echo device you have, do this:

1) Click on the device in the list of devices

2) When the device panel comes up, click on the little gear in the upper right corner

3) Scroll down to the General gray bar

4) Click on Sounds

5) Under Custom Sounds gray bar, set Notification to NONE

6) Under Request Sounds gray bar, set both Start of request and End of request to OFF

Again, do this for every Echo you own.

That should kill the annoying “OK”

7 ? )Note: Based on a post I found on the web I did, at one point, toggle the Alexa’s Voice setting (back on the main device setting page) from American 1 to American 2 (female to male) and that -MAY- have acted to help finalize t he new settings. My own Echoes now have a mixture of male and female, but none of them say “OK” any longer, much to my delight.

Being brief and cursory introduction to Smart Device plugs and switches.

! Here are some useful things you can do with them:

1. Turn lights or appliances on and off from anywhere using your smartphone or if you have a smart assistant like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple HomeKit, you can control your switches with voice commands. Light can be controlled individually or in groups

I can turn on lights when go to the kitchen, and off when I leave. Change the central heating by voice.

Set schedules for your devices. For example, you can program your lights to turn on at sunset and off at bedtime, or set your coffee maker to start brewing at a specific time.

Some smart switches come with energy monitoring features that let you track how much power your devices are using. This can help you identify ways to reduce your energy consumption.

Create automated routines that integrate with other smart devices. For example, you can set your lights to turn on when your smart door lock is unlocked, or when a motion sensor detects movement. or simulate your presence at home by setting your lights to turn on and off in a random pattern while you’re away. This can help deter potential burglars.

You can create “scenes” that set multiple devices to specific states. For instance, you might set a “Movie Night” scene that dims the lights, turns on the TV, and adjusts the thermostat or receive notifications on your phone when a device is turned on or off. This can be useful for checking if you left something on when you’re away.

There are other things to control besides simple on/off:

HVAC controllers

Smart locks

Smart blinds and shades

Smart TVs

and more

I’m barely scratching the surface and merely controlling lights, but I’ll tell you – after 6 years of the convenience of voice control, it’s rough to give it up. I have 6 lights in our livingroom. They are all in one group, so I just say “Alexa, turn on livingroom lights” instead of walking to 6 different places to flip a switch in each one. Later, as I curl up in bed, I say “Alexa, turn off everything.”

The switches come in two types: a wall switch, which requires you (or your electrician) to remove the current switch and replace it with the smart switch.

Here’s an example : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBNX6Q51

The other kind is a simple no-tools-required plug

Plug example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BXMNJDW3

unplug your lamp from the wall; plug in this unit and then plug your lamp back into it.

To get these units recognized (added so you can use it), you use free software for your iphone

The actual process depends on the type of connection your devices use : either wifi direct or hub-based.

Older hub-based may be a closed or proprietary system, and I never used them. But coming full-circle, the newest, easiest, fastest and most compatible is called “Matter”.

If you are just getting started, you probably should choose “Matter” compatible devices.

Just to make the point however, here’s a brief overview of the wifi unit process, (Matter units will follow.)

Wifi is the most complex to add, involving a button-press (on the unit) until the unit LED signals that it’s ready. Then in the app on your phone, (SmartLife [SL] is a common such app) press the search button. Normally the unit will be recognized in 30 seconds, but it may take up to 2 minutes. (It may fail too, in which case, follow the secondary instructions in the box.)

Once it’s added successfully, give it a unique name such as “desk Lamp” and hit save. At this point, you can control the light from your phone by tapping on its name in your list of devices.

If you want to use Alexa to voice control the unit, you will need to add the unit name to the Alexa app on your phone. This is done using the same app [SL] you just used to recognize the unit. Fortunately it’s as simple as finding and clicking the “Add to Alexa” button.

Finally, you can create Groups in either Alexa or SmartLife; Matter or wifi. There are rules to creating groups, particularly if you want the same named unit in two different groups. Ask me for help if you need it.

Now on to Matter.

First, you don’t need SmartLife. 

Next, you don’t need button presses nor LEDs flashing just so. All you need is the Alexa app (or Apple TV or a Home Pod or…

… well there are too many to list. Visit here for the current state of Matter (2024):

https://www.theverge.com/23568091/matter-compatible-devices-accessories-apple-amazon-google-samsung

Adding a Matter device is very simple: plug it in and then run the Alexa app. It will ask you if you want to add it. Agree and say “yes” when it asks if you have a QR code. Then just scan the code and enter a name for the unit.

Done. You can voice control right away.

(See? I said it was simple! )

I have four Alexa/Echo devices scattered around the house, and 15 plugs and switches which amounts to about half the wifi nodes the router runs with all the time.

Before you ask:

Smartdevices run on 2.4 Ghz wifi, and not on 5, 5.1 or 6.

They use less than a watt if they are just waiting around for a command.

No they don’t slow down anything.

Finally, it’s not all a bed of roses – there are thorns now and then. Reliabilty is high but not perfect and every now and then one may drop off. They are easy to pick back up. Plugs, in particular will reset if you just unplug them and then plug back in. Recent wall switches have a reset-button.

Both switches and plugs have physical buttons, so in an emergency you can still turn things on and off.

Obviously there’s more to all this, but some friends asked me to write just enough to give them the gist of here it. Well, there it is