The Mac operating system has several system level temporary folders which contain temp files used by MacOS itself along with various Mac apps. This temp folders are not intended to be user facing, but in some rare situations an advanced Mac user may find themselves requiring to locate the temp folder and maybe even to muck around in there, whether for systems administration purposes, troubleshooting, digital forensic purposes, or another specific reason.

This tutorial will show you where the temp folders are located on Mac OS and how you can access them.

Read more »

Do you miss having a Home button on the iPhone X? Maybe your Home button isn’t working as expected, or is broken on an iPhone or iPad? Or maybe you’d just find it easier to tap on the screen to mimic a Home button press rather than using the hardware button? You can enable a virtualized onscreen Home Button to use instead with the help of a great Accessibility feature called AssistiveTouch.

Read more »

Apple has released iOS 12 developer beta 8 for users enrolled in the iOS beta testing program. iOS 12 beta 8 arrives just a few days after iOS 12 beta 7, which was quickly pulled down due to performance issues. Therefore, any users actively running the prior iOS 12 beta should probably install iOS 12 beta 8.

Read more »

The iPhone X may be the most elegant and beautifully designed iPhone in years, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. While most users have no complaints about the iPhone X itself, there are some frustrations and annoyances that can continually pop-up for some iPhone X owners.

Among the most common iPhone X hassles are accidentally dialing 911, accidentally taking screenshots of the lock screen, and accidentally activating Apple Pay at the lock screen. Notably, each of these issues relates to the myriad functions assigned to the Power / Lock button, depending on how it is pressed.

But don’t be annoyed, because each of complaints can usually be fixed (or addressed), as we’ll show you with a few simple settings adjustments and tips.

Read more »

Apple has released iOS 12 beta 7 and macOS Mojave beta 7 to users enrolled in the developer beta testing programs. Typically a developer beta build is released first, soon followed by the accompanying public beta builds.

Read more »

If you have previously installed Homebrew to a Mac and have now decided that you no longer need or want the command line package manager, you can uninstall Homebrew from MacOS and completely remove Homebrew and all installed packages and formula from the Mac.

This tutorial will walk through how to completely uninstall Homebrew from a Mac, meaning it will remove the entire package manager itself, along with removing the brew and cask commands, along with the various software packages that may have been installed. Notably, this is completely different from simply uninstalling individual packages with Homebrew, which is how you’d remove a particular formula from the package manager.

Read more »

Xcode is the software development suite for Mac that allows developers to build apps for MacOS, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS. The vast majority of developers and Xcode users will download the Xcode application suite from the Mac App Store, but that’s not the only option available to download Xcode, and if you’d rather download Xcode as a DMG or XIP file directly from Apple, then those options are available as well.

Additionally, it can be helpful to know how and where to download specific older versions of Xcode, also as .xip or .dmg files.

This article will show you where and how to download Xcode from Apple as .xip or .dmg files, as well as from the Mac App Store, and also show you where to download old versions of Xcode from, including direct links to old Xcode versions hosted by Apple.

Read more »

The Location Services capabilities of iPhone and iPad allow the devices to use onboard GPS, Wi-Fi, cell tower location data, and Bluetooth to determine the location of the iPhone or iPad. With iPhone, this location data can be pretty much exact, placing the location of the iPhone (and potentially you) perfectly on a map thanks to GPS and cell tower triangulation, and it’s impressively accurate with iPad too. Many iOS apps rely on location data to function properly, for example the various map applications rely on device location data to be able to accurately route directions to and from destinations, you can easily share your current location with someone through Messages, and weather apps use location data to gather location relevant weather data. But not everyone is thrilled with their location being used by apps or the iOS operating system, and some users in high security or privacy-important environments may wish to completely disable Location Services on their iPhone or iPad.

This article will show you how to disable all Location Services on an iPhone or iPad, preventing geographic location data from being gathered or used by all apps and most iOS services too.

Read more »

Modern versions of Mac OS ship with System Integrity Protection (SIP) enabled by default, which aims to protect critical system folders by locking them down, and the vast majority of Mac users should always keep SIP enabled for that added protection. Nonetheless sometimes Mac users must disable SIP in Mac OS in order to modify something within a protected system directory for various reasons, and some may leave the feature off either intentionally or accidentally. All Mac users should have SIP enabled for the security benefits it offers, thus if you need to turn on the System Integrity Protection feature, you’re in the right place.

This tutorial will show you how to enable System Integrity Protection (SIP) in MacOS.

Read more »

Many iPhone and iPad users like to play YouTube videos in the background, often for listening to music or listening to a podcast or talk show. For example, maybe you found a great song on YouTube that you want to enjoy while playing a game, or while practicing a foreign language, or maybe you simply want to listen to the YouTube video in the background while you’re doing anything else. Playing YouTube videos in the background of an iPhone or iPad is desirable for many reasons, but it’s no longer as simple as just pressing play and then returning to the Home Screen of iOS.

This tutorial will show you several different ways to play YouTube in the background on an iPhone or iPad, and the methods discussed work in both iOS 12 and iOS 11.

Read more »

Mac command line users may have noticed that FTP is missing from the latest versions of MacOS system software, but despite ftp not being included in newer versions of system software by default, you can still install ftp on Mac OS if you need to use an ftp client or run an ftpd server for whatever reason.

Read more »

Want to get remove a Reminder on an iPhone or iPad? Then you’ll probably want to delete it. The Reminders app is one of the most commonly used default apps on the iPhone and iPad, whether for simply reminding a user about a particular thing or event, or as an active to-do list, or any other purpose. Equally as common as using Reminders app is that many people will mark a reminder item as a complete when they’re finished with it. That’s fine, but marking a reminder as complete doesn’t actually delete the reminder from the list on an iPhone or iPad, and so the reminder will persist in the Reminders app list it originated in, and sometimes it may resurface in unexpected ways when interacting with reminders later.

This walkthrough will show you a few easy ways on how to quickly delete a reminder from the Reminders app of iPhone and iPad, rather than simply marking it as completed, or ignoring it after completion. This will completely remove the reminder.

Read more »