Tips & Tricks

Want to mute a video that is blasting noise within an embedded Message? You can do that with a nice subtle trick. This works to silence embedded video sound in both the iOS and Mac Messages apps, both of which allow you to play embedded videos in Messages conversations without launching into a web browser.

If you’re a browser tab hoarder in Safari, you may find it helpful to close out of all other tabs while maintaining a specifically chosen active tab to be open. This offers a fast way for Mac Safari users to close out of tabs that are no longer needed, but without closing all other opened … Read More

Have you ever been recording a video or audio with QuickTime Player on the Mac only to have the application crash before you were able to save or edit the movie file? If so, you likely assume the video or audio file that was being recorded or was saved is now missing, but that is … Read More

Ever wondered what the best video player for Mac is? While there are droves of app options available to watch movies and video on Mac, rather than going on a wild video player fishing expedition we’ve helped to narrow down some of the best free video player choices for you.

The excellent Markup ability in iOS allows iPhone and iPad users to write, draw, and markup on any photo or picture stored on their device. This offers a nice way to highlight or emphasize something on an image, and while it can be used for fun it’s equally as useful for professional users as well … Read More

For those Mac users who often dump items into the Trash but forget to empty it on a regular basis, you can enable a new feature in MacOS which allows the Trash to automatically empty itself after 30 days. This can be a particularly nice feature if your Trash can is constantly bloated and taking … Read More

If you find yourself needing to type a trademark symbol, copyright symbol, or registered symbol on the iPhone or iPad, you can do so easily using either of the two methods below. The first trick to typing the trademark symbol “™”, the registered symbol, “®”, or the copyright symbol “©” will utilize the QuickType suggestion … Read More

We recently showed users how to download Windows 10 ISO for free from Microsoft, which can then be installed and run on a PC, in a virtual machine, or with Boot Camp on a Mac without activating. If you decide you want to keep Windows 10 and continue to use it with a full feature … Read More

Using Filevault on a Mac encrypts the entire hard drive and helps protect personal data from theft or unauthorized snooping. It’s a great security feature that many users enable when they’re first setting up their Mac, but some users may enable it or disable it later as well. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but … Read More

The latest versions of iOS for iPhone include an excellent Magnifier feature which can turn the iPhone camera and screen into a magnifying glass. This has many potential uses, but perhaps the most useful in day-to-day life is as a reading aid to read tiny text without squinting and straining your eyes. Instead, you can … Read More

Have you ever wanted to know what every single possible terminal command was on a Mac? You can list every terminal command available by turning to the command line. What you’ll see is a significant list of terminal commands with over 1400 possible commands to investigate and use, many of which are either helpful or … Read More

Using copy and paste on iPad and iPhone is easy, and much like copying and pasting on a desktop computer or Mac, you can copy just about anything to the iPad clipboard and paste it just about anywhere that will accept input. Whether you want to copy and paste a text clip, a photo or … Read More

Embedded video playing in Messages is one of the more subtly helpful and interesting features available on modern versions of iOS and Mac OS. Essentially what this means is that when you or someone else sends a video link through the Messages app, say a YouTube or Vimeo link, the thumbnail of the video that … Read More

The ‘ls’ command lists all files and folders in a directory at the command line, but by default ls returns a list in alphabetical order. With a simple command flag, you can have ls sort by date instead, showing the most recently modified items at the top of the ls command results. This trick applies … Read More

Some Mac users may wish to verify the integrity of their Time Machine backups before using a snapshot or backup to restore a Mac using Time Machine. This verification offers a simple way to know if the Time Machine backup data stored on an server or Time Capsule has been modified or corrupted, and can … Read More

The latest versions of iOS replaced the longstanding “Videos” app with a new app called “TV” that includes an all new interface to manage movies and videos downloaded to an iPhone or iPad. While the old Videos app made it simple to delete and remove movies from the iPhone or iPad, the new TV app … Read More

Need to reset the password on macOS Sierra? Maybe you forgot your primary admin user account password or maybe you’re working on someone elses Mac and you need to gain access to it. We’ll show you the easiest way to reset the password on a macOS Sierra based computer.

If you use the Mac Photos app for managing your pictures and you have a modern iPhone, you’ll likely have some (or many) Live Photos stored in your photo library. You can easily change any Live Photo on the Mac from the video picture form back into a still photo, and it’s fairly easy as … Read More