Tips & Tricks

If you have downloaded an ISO image of another operating system, say Ubuntu Linux or Windows 10, and you wish to turn that ISO image file into a bootable USB installer drive using a USB flash drive or USB key, you’ll find the most reliable way to copy or ‘burn’ the ISO to that target … Read More

If you regularly message in group conversations or mass texts with Messages app on the iPhone or iPad, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the group conversations are labeled by the contacts involved in the conversation, like “Bob, Jon, Bill”. While that’s certainly adequate and descriptive enough, a better approach can be to assign a specific custom name … Read More

There are some situations where knowing exactly what wireless networks a Mac has connected to and when that connection was last established can be helpful. We’ll demonstrate how to uncover a comprehensive listing of specifics about previously joined wi-fi networks on a Mac, which will include the last connection date and time (to the second!), … Read More

Apple Watch has a variety of fitness tracking and motivational features that are aimed at improving the wearers activity and health, or at least their awareness of it. One of the most notable features for Apple Watch users is the “Stand Reminder”, which, much as it sounds, is a gentle reminder to stand up every … Read More

Advanced Mac users may find it useful to know that DNS servers in Mac OS X can be set from the command line, without having to turn to the System Preferences Network control panel. While the GUI Network control panel is undeniably the easiest approach for most Mac users, the command line method offers benefits … Read More

If you spend a fair amount of time emailing from the iPhone, you’ve almost certainly come across a situation where you’ll be writing out an email, but need to get data or information from another email in your Mail inbox. That used to be a challenge, but modern versions of the Mail app in iOS … Read More

The Mac Photos app defaults to automatically launch whenever an iPhone, digital camera, or SD memory media card connects to the computer. This behavior can be helpful and desired by some users, but for many others, automatically opening the Photos app can be frustrating if not annoying. Fortunately, you can quickly stop the Photos app … Read More

When you’re engaged in a group conversation in Messages for Mac, you’ll notice the ‘To’ section lists the names of people participating in the group chat. While that’s certainly adequate for most situations, if you have a specific group chat going for a specific purpose, you can assign a name to any given group chat … Read More

Just about everyone has taken a picture that isn’t lined up quite straight, but iOS offers a nice simple way to quickly straighten any photo by tilting the image by a small degree. Whether an image is completely askew or just slightly tilted, you can can quickly correct the image and straighten it right within … Read More

Modern versions of Mac OS X include a built-in batch file renaming tool that allows Mac users to instantly rename large groups of files, folders, photos, or anything else residing on their file system in a single action. This bulk rename item utility is part of the Finder, meaning there are no add-ons, downloads, or … Read More

If you use Emoji characters often in Mac OS X, you’ll enjoy knowing there is a very fast keystroke to immediately access a special Mac Emoji character panel from anywhere text entry is possible in Mac OS. Additionally, you can navigate within this quick Emoji panel entirely with the keyboard, which makes typing Emoji on … Read More

Apple Watch offers quick and seamless communication methods, and one of the most used features for many users is the ability to instantly reply to inbound messages with quick pre-canned replies, emojis, or a dictated message. The quick replies in particular are very useful, and Apple Watch offers a variety of default replies for this … Read More

Need to know what applications are on any Mac? Mac OS offers a variety of ways to list apps that are installed on a Mac, and we’ll cover three different approaches to this: a basic listing of installed Mac apps which is sufficient for most user needs, an intermediate and more thorough listing of apps … Read More

You have likely noticed that downloading a free app from the iOS App Store triggers the ‘Enter Password’ dialog screen on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. While this is a valid precaution to prevent unauthorized users from installing apps onto an iOS device, it’s not always desired, particularly for shared iPads and iOS devices … Read More

When a user sets up a new Mac, there is a helpful option to use an iCloud ID and Apple ID to login and unlock the Mac. Users can also choose at any time to have their iCloud ID as their login for OS X too. While this is undoubtedly a helpful feature and it … Read More

Want to see a movie tonight? Wondering what the showtime are of a movie playing nearby? You can quickly find local movie showtimes by using the Spotlight search feature in Mac OS X. Yes you read that right, the same Spotlight that works as an app launcher and file search engine, can also uncover movie … Read More

Want to quickly delete a Messages conversation on Mac? The Mac Messages app maintains a transcript of conversations that have been carried out on the computer, thus when you open a message window to a particular sender, you’ll see the prior conversations, pictures, and other sent/received data in the same message thread. If you’d like … Read More

The Mac Photos app works well for most users, but occasionally a variety of hiccups can be encountered when interacting with photo libraries, ranging from crashes, to hanging on Photos app launch, a failed import, thumbnails missing from an image library, pictures missing from a library that was imported, or even a completely empty Photos … Read More