Tips & Tricks

You’re probably aware of Live Photos by now, the interesting iPhone and iPad feature that transforms a regular image capture into a brief movie clip. But the latest versions of iOS support an assortment of exciting Live Photo effects, including an ability to easilyy create beautiful long exposure images. Long Exposure photography is typically left … Read More

If you’re an Android user and you wish you had iMessage on your device, you’ll be happy to hear about there is a solution that effectively brings iMessage onto an Android device. It’s called WeMessage, and it’s a third party effort that uses an interesting workaround to gain iMessage on Android devices.

SF Mono is a really nice monospaced font available to Mac users within Terminal and Xcode, but you may have noticed that SF Mono is not available outside of those two apps. If you’d like to use SF Mono font elsewhere in MacOS and in other Mac apps, follow the instructions below to install the … Read More

One way to increase security in the Google Chrome web browser is to enable strict site isolation, which causes each page renderer process to contain pages from only a single site at a time, effectively placing them in a per-site sandbox. Theoretically this could help to mitigate against certain security risks, like those posed by … Read More

If you want to show the Mac desktop quickly, the fastest way to do so is often with a keyboard shortcut to reveal the desktop. This approach will push aside all on-screen windows, apps, and other information, and show only the Mac desktop – all without closing any apps. These tricks can offer a fast … Read More

Is your Mac screen looking strangely orange from Night Shift being stuck on, even during daylight hours when Night Shift should be off? It may be rare and it’s not clear what causes Night Shift to sometimes get stuck enabled on a Mac, but when it does happen it’s pretty obvious because the screen colors … Read More

Need to get the line count of a text file or document? Counting lines of any file is easy at the command line, and the command for line counting is the same in all modern Unix based operating systems, meaning this line counting trick will work the same on Mac OS and Mac OS X, … Read More

All new iPhone models includes Siri access, the ever helpful (and sometimes goofy) virtual assistant that can perform tons of tasks by issuing simple commands by voice. But if you’re accustomed to accessing Siri by holding down a Home button and now you have a newer iPhone without a home button, like iPhone 11, iPhone … Read More

Ever picked up iPhone XS, XR, X and found Apple Pay credit cards on screen? Or have you pulled iPhone X out of a pocket or bag and discovered that Apple Pay is open on the lock screen? This is from a new Apple Pay access feature that iPhone X enables by default, which allows … Read More

iCloud Drive allows for easy cloud access and storage of data from Mac and iOS devices, and so having the ability to quickly get to iCloud Drive at any time via the Dock can be very convenient for many Mac users.

If you don’t want Siri to ever dictate, speak, or write out explicit language, you can disable bad language in Siri for iPhone and iPad completely. By disabling explicit language support in Siri, the virtual assistant will use asterisks to cover up curse words and bad language, like “s**t”, and will literally bleep explicit language … Read More

The Notes app in iOS is ever useful and offers a great place to store whatever little tidbits of text, checklists, pictures, doodles and drawings, shared notes with other people, password locked notes, and other data points you wish to preserve in some organized manner on an iPhone or iPad. And as for storing, the … Read More

AirPods are the new wireless earphones from Apple, they allow for completely wireless listening to music, interacting with Siri, answering phone calls, and interacting with music or audio. AirPods are particularly popular with iPhone users, but they work with most other iOS devices and Macs as well. If you got a new pair of AirPods … Read More

Some Mac users running older versions of MacOS system software may notice that after they plug an iPhone or a camera into their Mac, the computer starts running slower and, if it has a battery, the battery drains faster. Upon closer inspection with Activity Monitor on the impacted Mac, you might notice that a process … Read More

You can easily open any link found on the web into a new private browsing window on Safari for Mac, thanks to a helpful albeit little-known trick available in the web browser. For the unfamiliar, Private Browsing mode aims to protect private information and some degree of privacy by preventing websites from tracking search behavior, … Read More

The Touch Bar equipped MacBook Pro stores additional data for the Touch Bar and Touch ID sensor that is not erased by default if you format a Mac or reinstall MacOS system software. Thus, if you want to completely clear out and erase all Touch Bar data, you will need to manually intervene via a … Read More

If you regularly sleep your Mac, you may have noticed that sometimes the Mac will wake itself up and show a notification on the screen, even if the screen is locked and otherwise password protected with the login screen. These notifications that wake a Mac from sleep are called “Enhanced Notifications” and they can originate … Read More

Some Mac users may be interested in downloading and using an alternative developer-focused build of Safari called Safari Technology Preview. Safari Technology Preview is aimed at more advanced Mac users who want to get an early look at upcoming features and technologies in future final Safari builds. For example, Safari Technology Preview allows disabling autoplay … Read More