Split View is a useful feature in MacOS that lets you split the screen between two different apps or app windows, in complete full screen mode. Split View is appreciated by many users who find it to boost productivity and focus, particularly if they already enjoy and appreciate full screen app mode on the Mac. Split View remains a feature in MacOS Tahoe but it’s used in a slightly different way, and you could easily miss the nuance of the feature.
Apple is moving fairly quickly through this particular beta cycle, with beta 2 arriving already for iOS 26.4, iPadOS2 26.4, macOS Tahoe 26.4, and the rest of the OS 26.4 suite. The first beta debuted just a week ago.
Anyone enrolled in the beta testing programs can find and download the OS 26.4 beta 2 update now.
With an Apple event scheduled for March 4, it’s certainly possible that whatever new and updated hardware is released at that event will ship with OS 26.4 preinstalled or perhaps as an OS 26.4 update to install upon arrival, or soon after. This is just speculation of course, nobody outside of Apple knows exactly when new software updates will debut. There are also rumors of an interim OS 26.3.1 update that could arrive in the near future, and that could cover the same purpose with any newly launched hardware as well.
Some new features and changes are expected to be included in macOS Tahoe 26.4, ipadOS 26.4, and iOS 26.4, including support for RCS messaging with end-to-end encryption, new battery charging options for Mac, a compact tab bar option in Safari for MacOS and iPadOS, a slightly redesigned wallpaper settings section, and of course some bug fixes and security patches will likely be included too.
A fair number of iPhone users are complaining of problems with the keyboard in iOS 26. From typing lag, slow responsiveness, sluggish typing, incorrect characters, weird typos, entire words being corrected to the wrong word, aggressive autocorrect and autocorrection failures with typos, missed characters when typing words, and what those irritated say is a general decline in the keyboard experience of iOS 26.
If you’re experiencing problems with the iOS 26 keyboard on iPhone you’re not alone, and there’s a few tricks and workarounds that might help you improve the typing experience with iOS 26 for iPhone.
One of the major complaints of the new Liquid Glass design on macOS Tahoe is that it’s difficult to differentiate windows, and that there is so little contrast between the active window and a background window that it can be challenging for many users to tell them apart quickly. Tinkle attempts to help you immediately determine which window is active by adding a little glowing visual effect around the perimeter of the active window whenever the window focus changes. It’s simple, effective, and a handy accessibility tweak, particularly for Tahoe users.
Whether you click, tab, or keyboard shortcut your way through windows and apps, Tinkle can make it easy to determine what is in focus right away, by momentarily highlighting the currently active window.
Tinkle is a free download, works on macOS Tahoe (technically it’s compatible with macOS Ventura and later), and is open source:
Restarting and relaunching Spotlight on the Mac have been helpful troubleshooting tricks since the debut of the search engine to the MacOS platform. Often if you restart Spotlight, rebuild the index, or kill specific Spotlight processes, you can typically resolve many common issues with the MacOS search engine. Given the utility of relaunching the Spotlight process on the Mac, it’s reasonable to find new ways of doing so to be valuable in a Mac users troubleshooting arsenal, and what we’re going to cover here is a fairly unique indirect way to restart Spotlight on a Mac.
The Spotlight trick here is unorthodox and unexpected, and not necessarily what you would think would relaunch Spotlight, but it absolutely works.
Apple has scheduled an event for Wednesday, March 4, and it’s a good bet that updated hardware will be unveiled.
Somewhat unusually, Apple has scheduled the event for three different locations around the world; New York, London, and Shanghai.
Usually Apple just hosts events at their Cupertino Apple Park location, so making this a global simultaneous event in multiple cities is curious, and what that implies in terms of what is to be released or announced, is unknown.
A variety of Apple hardware is due for updates soon, though it’s unclear which if any will be released during this particular Apple event. Of course the rumor mill is very active on this matter, and while the rumor mill is usually loosely correct in what will be released, it’s not always correct about when things will be released.
Apple has released the first beta versions of macOS Tahoe 26.4, ipadOS 26.4, iOS 26.4, along with the rest of the OS 26.4 beta suite.
The new betas are available now to registered developers and soon after for public beta testers.
In the first beta builds, macOS Tahoe 26.4, ipadOS 26.4, iOS 26.4 all introduce a few changes and minor features, including things like end-to-end encryption for RCS messaging (for texting with compatible Android devices that are non-iMessage users), a redesigned wallpaper settings section in iOS/iPadOS, new battery charge options on macOS, video podcast support in the Podcasts app, the return of compact tab bar options in iPadOS and macOS, and more. Presumably bug fixes and security patches will also be included as well.
Apple has a special event scheduled for Wednesday March 4, in which it’s likely that new updated hardware will be unveiled, though it’s unclear if those new devices will ship with existing OS 26.3 versions or the upcoming OS 26.4. Since Apple usually goes through multiple iterations of beta development before releasing a final version, 26.3 is more likely, unless the 26.4 updates are accelerated or the updated hardware doesn’t ship until late March.
The freshly released macOS Tahoe 26.3 update has resolved an accessibility issue where the “Reduce Transparency” feature was not working properly on the Mac. Before macOS Tahoe 26.3, toggling the switch on would leave considerable transparent effects, including in sidebars, headers, titlebars, search boxes, and more, leading to situations where text would overlap and interface elements would be washed out with blurry colors and interface elements. Now with macOS Tahoe 26.3, this issue, which had surfaced originally in 26.1 and 26.2, has finally been resolved.
The Liquid Glass redesign of macOS Tahoe has received significant criticism from the Apple user community, often because of perceived reductions in usability, legibility, and user experience. With all of the translucent and transparent interface elements, many Tahoe users initially used an Accessibility feature called “Reduce Transparency” to make the interface easier to read and interact with, but in a bizarre turnaround or bug, the Reduce Transparency feature was broken in macOS Tahoe 26.2 and 26.1 leaving tons of interface elements transparent and difficult to interact with.
If you have been annoyed with the excessive transparency and visual chaos of the macOS Tahoe interface, you’ll want to update to macOS Tahoe 26.3 again as soon as possible, so that you can use the newly effective Reduce Transparency Accessibility toggle.
Apple has released MacOS Sequoia 15.7.4 and MacOS Sonoma 14.8.4 as system software updates for the Sonoma and Sequoia operating systems, focusing on security patches for Mac users who are not running macOS Tahoe.
Apple has released macOS Tahoe 26.3 for all Mac users to install as a software update. macOS Tahoe 26.3 focuses on bug fixes and security enhancements, and are recommended to install for all Tahoe users.
Mac users who are running Sequoia or Sonoma will find smaller security patch oriented updates available for those system software versions instead.
iOS 26.3 for iPhone and iPadOS 26.3 for iPad have been released by Apple for all supported devices. The software updates aim to provide important security updates and bug fixes.
If you’d like to maintain and ad-free AI experience, you might want to consider using Claude, which offers free AI tools, web chat, and clients for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, all of which are free from advertising clutter.
Why are you mentioning this? Well, you might have seen that OpenAI has recently announced that ChatGPT would start rolling out ads within your AI chats and conversations. And if you’re a Google user, you likely already have noticed that Google Gemini features ads littered around its AI content too. Displaying advertising can provide a way for services to be available for free (like the website you’re reading right now), but there’s a big difference between small websites using ads to offer free material, and a huge mega-corporation using advertising for not only revenue, but also data profiling, gathering, and tracking.
Apple has moved on to the Release Candidate phase of the beta cycle for macOS Tahoe 26.3, iOS 26.3, and iPadOS 26.3. The new RC builds are available for users participating in the beta programs.
Release Candidate builds indicate the end of the beta testing period, absent any major bugs or issues, and also serve as a way of determining that a public software update release is close. With the RC build released today, it’s reasonable to expect that the final versions of iOS 26.3, iPadOS 26.3, and macOS Tahoe 26.3, could be released within the next week or two.
No major new features or changes are expected in any of these software updates. It’s unclear which bugs are resolved in the latest RC builds, but there are some prominent frustrating issues that have irritated a large number of OS 26 users. (For example, Tahoe Mac users are hoping Reduce Transparency actually works again, but don’t hold your breath given Apple has released multiple updates without fixing that problem).
It is rumored that new MacBook Pro M5 models will be released in the near future, possibly even next week by press release, and it’s likely that macOS Tahoe 26.3 will debut to support that new hardware.
If your iPad is running iPadOS 26, you might have already experimented with Windowed App mode which allows apps to be in self-contained windows, allowing for windowed multitasking more like a desktop operating system interface. That’s obviously quite a different experience than the traditional iPad interface, which was more single task oriented with a focused app view of one single app running in full screen.
If you’d like to switch from Windowed app mode or Stage Manager back to Full Screen app mode, read along and your iPad will be running full screen apps again by default in no time.
Apple has released important software updates to a variety of older devices, including older model Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watch’s. These new updates are released as macOS Big Sur 11.7.11 and macOS Catalina Security Update 2026-001 Catalina, iOS 16.7.14, iPadOS 16.7.14, watchOS 10.6.2, watchOS 9.6.4, and watchOS 6.3.1.
According to release notes from Apple, these software updates extend necessary device activation certificates, allowing for services like iMessage and FaceTime to continue working after January 2027. Without installing these updates, device activation, FaceTime, and iMessage services, will stop working. This makes these updates important to install on any eligible device, though there’s about 11 months technically before the features stop working.
Specific devices eligible for these updates include many that have not otherwise been updated or supported in quite some time, including:
Apple Watch, as watchOS 10.6.2, watchOS 9.6.4, watchOS 6.3.1: Series 1, Series 2, Series 3, Series 4, and Series 5, Series 6, Series 7, Series 8, SE, SE 2, and Ultra
Mac, as Security Update 2026-001 Catalina and macOS Big Sur 11.7.11
iPhone & iPad, as iOS 16.7.14 and iPadOS 16.7.14 : iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPad 5th generation, iPad Pro 9.7-inch, and iPad Pro 12.9-inch 1st generation
The updates included in these new software updates appear to be the same patch that was included in iOS 12.5.8 for the iPhone 5s and iPhone 6 series.
If you have an older model iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch, you’ll want to check to make sure you don’t miss these updates, or those issued the week prior, with the same patch.
Image Capture has long been a preferred method of getting photos from an iPhone to a computer or external drive, but something I have run into fairly often over the last several years is that Image Capture occasionally randomly disconnects the iPhone during an image transfer. This obviously ends the image transfer in a failure, and it can be difficult if not impossible to figure out where the transfer left off and then begin again, leading to a hassle as you begin another transfer of images, and so on. When this happens, you’ll see an error message that is direct in statement but void of causation, saying simply that “Camera disconnected while importing”.
Having your iPhone disconnect while trying to transfer photos with Image Capture is obviously incredibly annoying, so you’ll be happy to hear there might be a very easy fix for this, though the solution is probably not what you might expect.
With macOS Tahoe 26 and newer, you can change and customize the color of your folders as seen within the Finder. This is a fun way to customize the look and feel of using your Mac, and yet it’s simple to implement.
You are not hallucinating, and you did not step into a time machine; yes, this is really an article about iOS 12 updates on the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus!
If you or a loved one have an older model iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, or iPhone 6 Plus, or original iPad Air, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, or iPod touch 6th gen, you’ll want to fire up Software Update and install the latest available system software version on those devices so that they will be able to continue using core device features.
Specifically, iOS 12.5.8 and iPadOS 12.5.8 include updated certificates to allow older iPhone and iPad models to continue using iMessage, FaceTime, and device activation features, after January 2027. Without installing these updates, those core features will stop working at the beginning of next year as the necessary certificate in prior versions then expires.
