Wednesday, 01 May 2019 16:06
Clean Up Old Tabs in Safari in iOS with This Quick Trick
Written by Adam Engst
Every time you tap a link to open a Web page in Safari on your iPhone or iPad, it automatically opens a new tab. That’s fine until you realize that you have oodles of old tabs open, making it difficult to find any particular tab. To close all your old tabs in one fell swoop, […]
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Wednesday, 01 May 2019 16:05
Is Your Apple Watch Out to Lunch? Check These Settings
Written by Adam Engst
Is your Apple Watch failing to turn on its screen when you raise it, display notifications from your iPhone, or even update the time zone? watchOS has four modes accessible from Control Center (swipe up from the bottom of the screen) that are useful but can cause confusion if you forget to turn them off: […]
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Wednesday, 01 May 2019 16:04
Need to Merge Photos Libraries? Here Are Your Options
Written by Adam Engst
Photos makes it easy to create and switch between libraries. That’s good when photos need to be kept completely separate. For instance, a real estate agent might want to keep personal photos separate from house photos taken for work. But too much separation is annoying—you have to keep switching between libraries, and it’s easy to […]
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Wednesday, 01 May 2019 16:03
What’s the Deal with AMBER and Other Emergency Alerts on Your iPhone?
Written by Adam Engst
Have you ever gotten an emergency alert on your iPhone, telling you about an abducted child or public safety emergency? That’s the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system, at least in the United States, although some other countries have similar systems. The WEA system enables authorized national, state, and local government authorities to send alerts about […]
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Macs haven’t had removable storage for years, so when you want to move files between computers, you can use USB flash drives, email, Messages, AirDrop, or local file sharing. Those techniques are fine, but for a more efficient, effective, and elegant solution, try a cloud-based file sharing service. These services use special software to integrate […]
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Wednesday, 01 May 2019 16:01
Running Low on Space on Your Mac? Here’s How to Clear Unnecessary Data
Written by Adam Engst
SSDs are great—they’re fast, durable, and reliable—but they’re also expensive, which results in many of us not having as much storage built into our Macs as we’d like. Particularly for those who watch videos in iTunes or take a lot of photos, it’s all too easy to run out of space on your Mac’s internal […]
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Monday, 01 April 2019 14:08
Photos Not Syncing between Devices Properly via iCloud Photos?
Written by Adam Engst
iCloud Photos (which Apple previously called iCloud Photo Library) is wonderful when it’s working. Take some photos on your iPhone, and they appear on your Mac and iPad a minute later. Delete unnecessary shots and edit the others on your Mac, and your iPhone and iPad reflect those changes almost immediately. But what if changes [R30;]
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When you follow a link in Safari, you generally don’t know where you’re going to end up. That’s fine most of the time, but what if you’re concerned that a site might be trying to trick you into going somewhere malicious? Safari provides an easy way to look at the URL under a link. On [R30;]
Monday, 01 April 2019 14:06
Use Emergency Bypass and You’ll Never Miss a Call or Text from Important People
Written by Adam Engst
There’s little worse than missing an important call or text because your iPhone was in Do Not Disturb mode or because the Mute switch was engaged. If there are certain people—a spouse, parent, or child—whose calls and texts you always want to break through the cone of silence, iOS has a solution: Emergency Bypass. When [R30;]
Monday, 01 April 2019 14:05
A Quick Trick to Turn Your iPhone into a Magnifying Glass
Written by Adam Engst
It’s maddening to want to read a serial number or other bit of fine print that you can barely see. But fret no longer—your iPhone or iPad makes a fabulous magnifying glass! Assuming Magnifier is enabled in Settings > General > Accessibility > Magnifier, you can bring it up by pressing the Home button (for [R30;]
Monday, 01 April 2019 14:04
What’s with All These Dialogs Saying, “SomeApp is not optimized for your Mac”?
Written by Adam Engst
If you’re running macOS 10.13.4 High Sierra or macOS 10.14 Mojave, you may have seen a dialog that says an app isn’t optimized for your Mac. The message differs slightly between High Sierra and Mojave, with the High Sierra version telling you the developer needs to update the app to improve compatibility whereas Mojave saying [R30;]
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Monday, 01 April 2019 14:03
Is Your Photos Library Too Big? Here’s How to Move It to an External Hard Drive
Written by Adam Engst
SSDs are essential for ensuring optimal performance on a Mac, but because they’re expensive, many people don’t have as much built-in storage space as they would like. If your Photos library has grown to the point where your SSD is nearly full, it might be time to think about offloading it to an external hard [R30;]
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Collaboration is what all the cool kids—well, all the competitive businesses—are doing these days because it’s efficient and effective. See “Stop Mailing Files Around and Use Collaborative Apps” and for users of Apple’s iWork, “Collaborate with Colleagues in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.” Today we’re going to look at collaborating using Google’s Web-based productivity suite, Google [R30;]
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Monday, 01 April 2019 14:01
Easier Ways to Move the Cursor When Editing Text on an iPad or iPhone
Written by Adam Engst
In theory, it should be easy to move the cursor in text on an iPad or iPhone—just tap where you want the cursor to go, or press and hold until the magnifying circle appears over the cursor and then slide it around. In reality, it’s often fussy and annoying because our fingers are a lot [R30;]
Wednesday, 20 March 2019 13:03
Apple’s New AirPods Add “Hey Siri,” More Talk Time, and Optional Wireless Charging
Written by Adam Engst
If you use Apple’s AirPods, you’re probably a fan. But if you haven’t tried them, you may not realize what you’re missing. They pair quickly and reliably with all your Apple devices, provide excellent audio quality, and sit comfortably in most people’s ears (more so than the wired EarPods). The AirPods are Apple’s most popular [R30;]
Wednesday, 20 March 2019 13:00
Considering a New iMac? Wait No Longer—Updates Are Here!
Written by Adam Engst
The iMac has long been the core of Apple’s desktop lineup, but it hasn’t received any updates since June 2017. Now, however, Apple has quietly updated the 21.5-inch iMac with Retina 4K display and the 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina display while keeping prices the same. The bargain-basement non-Retina 21.5-inch iMac remains for sale, but [R30;]
Tuesday, 19 March 2019 10:32
Apple Updates iPad Lineup with new iPad mini and iPad Air
Written by Adam Engst
iPad mini lovers, rejoice! If you’ve been holding onto an aging iPad mini because of its small size, you’ll be happy to learn that Apple has at long last released a new 7.9-inch iPad mini with modern-day technologies. Joining it in the lineup is a new 10.5-inch iPad Air that turns out to be a [R30;]
Friday, 01 March 2019 13:08
Did You Know Families Can Share Mac and iOS Apps Purchased from the App Store?
Written by Adam Engst
Have you ever looked over your spouse’s shoulder and thought, “Hey, that’s a cool app.”? If you set up Family Sharing (in System Preferences > iCloud on the Mac, and in Settings > Your Name in iOS), you can download almost any app that someone else in your family has purchased on either the Mac [R30;]
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Friday, 01 March 2019 13:07
Choose between Archiving and Deleting Messages in iOS Mail
Written by Adam Engst
When you’re viewing a message in Mail on an iPhone or iPad, you get five buttons: Flag, Move, Archive or Delete, Reply/Forward/Print, and New Message. But what determines whether that third button is Archive or Delete? iOS hides that option in Settings > Passwords & Accounts > YourEmailAccount—the details then vary by account type before [R30;]
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Friday, 01 March 2019 13:06
Here’s How to Capture a Full-Screen Screenshot of a Web Page
Written by Adam Engst
You know that Command-Shift-3 takes a screenshot of the entire screen and Command-Shift-4 lets you pick a window, menu, or arbitrary selection for your screenshot. And Mojave introduced Command-Shift-5 to give you an interface to screenshots and screen recordings. But how would you capture a screenshot of a long Web page that requires scrolling? Rather [R30;]
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If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, you probably know that it can play music that’s related to a particular artist or track—just tell Siri, “Play a radio station based on the Beatles” to get a bunch of songs from the likes of the Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, and Elton John. That radio station will [R30;]
Friday, 01 March 2019 13:04
Ever Wanted to Get a Custom Email Address? Here’s How (and Why)
Written by Adam Engst
Some facts about ourselves are difficult or impossible to change, but your email address doesn’t have to be one of them. Switching to a custom email address might seem overwhelming, and it will take some time, but it’s not that hard or expensive (and we’re always happy to help if you get stuck). Why Consider [R30;]