Until somewhat recently the idea of pairing a Bluetooth trackpad, mouse, or keyboard with an iPad is something that would have had people looking very confused indeed. But we live in exciting times, and all modern iPad devices running modern iPadOS versions have proper pointer support for trackpad and mouse, and full support for keyboards, complete with many keyboard shortcuts and handy tricks.

You can even create a budget iPad desk workstation setup if you’re so inclined.

As ever, there are some caveats to consider here. But fear not – we’re going to run through what you need to get up and running, and then the most important part; what you actually need to do to start using a pointing device other than your finger, and to use a physical keyboard instead of the onscreen virtual keyboard, all with your iPad.

Read more »

A significant Safari bug has been disclosed publicly by FingerPrintJS, impacting Safari 15 on MacOS, iOS, and iPadOS.

Read more »

Do you frequently connect to multiple Wi-Fi networks from your Apple Watch, say at work, school, coffee shops, airports, or other networks that aren’t yours? If so, you may want to safeguard your privacy by using private MAC addresses for the public Wi-Fi networks you connect to. Much like you can do so on iPhone and iPad, you can use a feature to randomize the MAC hardware address of your Apple Watch when connecting to wi-fi networks.

Read more »

Did you know that some third-party apps installed on your iPhone or iPad can access your Apple Music library? Of course, they can only access it if you granted access for some reason, but you may have forgotten about it. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to check all the apps that have access to your Apple Music, and if you wish, to remove access for those apps too.

Read more »

Do you want to customize the text messages sent as an auto-reply for incoming calls to iPhone while you’re driving? This allows you to buy some time while you keep your hands on the steering wheel and focused on the road, letting the caller know you’re currently driving. Customizing the auto-replies for Focus modes / Do Not Disturb mode is easy.

Read more »

Don’t want Apple Watch to always be listening for the “Hey Siri” command? You can turn off Siri on Apple Watch if you want to stop it from listening to you, ready to take your commands.

We’ll show you how to turn off the Siri listening feature Apple Watch, which still allows you to use Siri if manually activated, and also how to turn off Siri completely so that the entire feature is not available on Apple Watch. Finally, we’ll also show you how to delete your Siri history and voice commands from Apple servers.

Read more »

While Apple just released iOS 15.2.1 and iPadOS 15.2.1 update for all users, they also released the second beta version of iOS 15.3 and iPadoS 15.3 for users enrolled in the beta testing programs for Apple mobile system software.

Additionally, new beta versions of watchOS 8.3 and tvOS 15.3 are also available to users beta testing system software on those devices.

iOS 15.3 beta 2 and iPadOS 15.3 beta 2 presumably include minor bug fixes and adjustments to the operating systems for iPhone and iPad.

Read more »

Apple has released iOS 15.2.1 for iPhone along with iPadOS 15.2.1 for iPad.

The iOS 15.2.1 and iPadOS 15.2.1 updates are relatively minor and includes a bug fix for an issue with photos loading over iMessage, an issue with CarPlay apps, and offers a security fix for an issue with HomeKit. If any other issues are addressed, they are not mentioned in the release notes.

Read more »

If you’re a Mac user with a Touch Bar equipped MacBook Pro, you may be wondering how to show the F keys, or function keys, like F1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6, f7, f8, f9, f10, f11, or f12 on the Touch Bar.

As you likely know, by default the Touch Bar screen changes all the time depending on what app is open on the Mac, unless you disabled the Touch Bar anyway to always show the Control Strip to show things like the escape key, brightness, Mission Control, sound controls, Siri, etc. But you can also set Touch Bar to show the Function keys, or simply see them temporarily.

Read more »

Apple has issued the second beta build of macOS Monterey 12.2 to users participating in the beta testing programs for system software for the Macintosh.

There are no obvious major changes or features in macOS Monterey 12.2 beta 2 as of yet, so it’s assumed the release will focus on fixing bugs, issues, and problems with MacOS Monterey.

Universal Control, the feature that allows a Mac to control other Macs and iPads with a single mouse and keyboard, is expected to arrive sometime in Spring of 2022, though it’s uncertain if that will be included in macOS 12.2 or a later macOS Monterey release.

Read more »

WORDLE is an increasing popular word game that is spreading around everywhere, and if you spend much time on social media you may have already seen a screenshot of someones score or streak.

The gist of WORDLE is fairly simple; players are tasked with guessing a five letter word, and the game gives clues by indicating which letters are either in the word (yellow), or in the right place (green). Letters not in the word appear as dark gray. You only get six guesses per day, and the WORDLE puzzle regenerates a new puzzle every day for everyone.

Read more »

Disappointed you can’t use Sidecar on your Mac and iPad? Thanks to Free-Sidecar, you can expand Sidecar compatibility to additional iPad and Mac models that are otherwise not officially supported by Apple for the feature.

Sidecar is one of the most useful features for Mac and iPad users, allowing an iPad to serve as an external display for a Mac. It’s makes for convenient dual screen setups just about anywhere, whether at your desk or while traveling, and it’s fantastic. One downside to Sidecar is that the the device compatibility is somewhat limited to select newer model iPad and Macs – officially, anyway. But that’s where Free-Sidecar comes in, expanding the compatibility so you can use Sidecar on additional older devices.

Read more »

If you’re coming to the Mac from the Windows world, you may be wondering how you can quickly create a text file in a folder in MacOS. In Windows, you can simply right-click and choose to create a new text file in whatever directory you’re located in, so how can you do something similar on a Mac?

It turns out there are many ways to create a new text file in a folder on the Mac, so let’s take a look at a few different approaches.

Read more »

Content Caching is a unique Mac feature that can be extremely useful if you have several Apple devices in your home. It can be used to save your internet data, speed up downloads, and even iCloud data access, by caching things like iOS, macOS, or iPadOS software updates on the Mac, which then get distributed from the server Mac to eligible devices on the network – rather than having to download them again from Apple. This feature used to be restricted to macOS server, but Apple pushed it out to consumers with the macOS High Sierra update a few years ago.

Read more »

Did you know that Siri on Apple Watch can read out all the messages you receive, and even reply to them without having to take your iPhone out of your pocket? As long as you have a second-generation and newer AirPods or compatible Beats wireless headphones, you’ll be able to take advantage of this feature with your Apple Watch.

Read more »

Do you want to use a different Game Center account on your iPhone and iPad, perhaps to restore the progress of some games that you play? Fortunately, this is not nearly as hard as you may think, and you can do this within a matter of seconds.

Read more »

If you’ve owned a variety of Apple devices over the years, you may eventually get to a point where you have sold, handed down, or traded away some of those older Macs, iPhones, iPads, or other Apple hardware. Whatever the situation, once a device is no longer in your possession, you should remove the devices you’re no longer using from your Apple account for security reasons. Plus it’s just good practice to clean out devices that are no longer yours so they are not associated with your Apple ID anymore.

Read more »

Spotlight Search is enabled by default on the iPhone Lock Screen, along with Today View. This may be convenient for some users, but for others it’s either annoying, unnecessary, or a potential privacy breech as anyone who picks up the iPhone can see and search through your apps, calendar, and other personal data.

While the lock screen search and Today view doesn’t reveal everything an unlocked iPhone does, it can still be too much for some users. And of course for others, they may just find the feature to be annoying and to activate unintentionally, for example if you ever fidget with an iPhone in your pocket and then pull it out, you may notice Spotlight is searching for some gibberish text when you look at the screen.

If you want to turn off the search feature and remove search and today widgets on the locked screen of an iPhone, read along.

Read more »