News, Tips, and Tricks
For Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, and Apple Watch.
Did You Know You Can Make a Video of Anything on Your iPhone or iPad Screen?
You know how to use the Camera app on your iPhone or iPad to take a video, but did you know that you can also record a video of what happens on the screen of your device? That’s useful if you’re trying to explain the steps of some technical process to a friend or show...
Use macOS’s Guest Account to Protect Your Privacy from Temporary Users
We’ve all had it happen. “Can I use your Mac for a minute to check my email?” The answer can be “Yes,” but to keep people from poking around on your Mac, have your visitor log in as Guest. To enable the Guest account, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups....
Can’t Remember When Your Warranty Expires? iOS 12.2 Lays It Out
With luck, you should never need to check your iPhone’s or iPad’s warranty status. But bad things do happen to good devices. In iOS 12.2, Apple has just made it easier to figure out if your device is still under warranty or covered by AppleCare+. Go to Settings >...
Running Low on Space on Your Mac? Here’s How to Clear Unnecessary Data
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...
Clean Up Old Tabs in Safari in iOS with This Quick Trick
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...
Photos Not Syncing between Devices Properly via iCloud Photos?
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...
Is Your Apple Watch Out to Lunch? Check These Settings
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...
Apple’s New AirPods Add “Hey Siri,” More Talk Time, and Optional Wireless Charging
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...
What’s with All These Dialogs Saying, “SomeApp is not optimized for your Mac”?
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...
Collaborate with Colleagues in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote
We talked last month generally about real-time collaboration and why it’s so efficient and effective—see “Stop Mailing Files Around and Use Collaborative Apps.” Now we’re going to explain how to start collaborating in Apple’s iWork suite of apps: Pages, Numbers, and...
Need to Clear Space on an iPhone or iPad? Here’s How to Do It in iOS 12
Little is more frustrating than running out of space your iPhone or iPad. You can’t take new photos, you can’t download new apps, some things may not work at all, and iOS will nag you repeatedly about how you can “manage” your storage in Settings. Luckily, over the...
Winter Weather Warning: Keep Your Tech Toasty!
When it’s cold out, you can always throw on a sweater to stay warm. But your electronics are more reptilian—they can get sluggish or even fail to work in freezing weather. (No, that’s not what iPod Socks were designed to fix.) Worse, charging batteries at low...