Tips & Tricks

HomePod Mini and the newer HomePod models offer sound recognition features that can recognize smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors, and you can set these devices to send you a notification if either of these alarm sounds is detected by your HomePod. With this feature setup, if your HomePod or HomePod Mini detects the sound … Read More

Firewalls serve as a network security mechanism to monitor and control incoming and outgoing traffic to your computer and the network, or internet. MacOS includes a software firewall that can be enabled manually for users who would like to use the feature, or who require it for whatever purpose. The ability to use the firewall, … Read More

The Apple Savings Account is available only to Apple Card holders, for now anyway, and while the interest rate on savings is competitive, one of the quirks of an Apple Savings Account is how you access the account itself. There is no dedicated Apple Savings app, and not even a dedicated Savings tab within the … Read More

Occasionally you may find yourself in a situation where you are seeking to find what open TCP connections are in a listening state on a Mac. This can be useful whether you’re troubleshooting particular network issues, or simply looking to identify which processes are listening on specific ports on a Mac. We’ll be using the … Read More

The iPhone Stopwatch feature is widely used by many people for everything from exercise, cooking, games, timers, health, and anything else requiring timing of durations. You can switch the appearance of the Stopwatch in Clock app on iPhone to an analog face, complete with a standard watch face with moving watch hands. Analog stopwatches are … Read More

Command line aliases are very useful, allowing you to have command shortcuts for lengthier commands, and you can use them to replace one command with another as well. With zsh becoming the default shell in Terminal for MacOS, and a widely used shell in general thanks to Oh-My-Zsh, you may be wondering how to configure … Read More

You may already know that you can get indoor temperature and humidity levels with HomePod Mini and the new HomePod using the Home app, but what you may not know is that you can also get this information from Siri.

Many advanced Chrome users may occasionally need to change the user agent associated with the browser, typically for testing purposes. Whether you’re a designer, developer, student, tinkerer, novice, or expert, changing the Chrome user agent isn’t particularly difficult, but it is hidden within a section of Chrome that most users never interact with; the developer … Read More

Want to use ChatGPT on your iPhone? It’s easy to tap into the incredible power of ChatGPT from anywhere, as long as you have your iPhone with you. ChatGPT will generate human-like text and responses that is leaps and bounds far more impressive than anything offered by Siri (or Alexa for that matter), offering you … Read More

If you’re a Mac user running the latest versions of macOS system software, from Monterey 12, Ventura 13, or later, you can enable an optional Emoji quick-access feature that allows you to summon the Emoji picker instantly with the press of a single key on your Mac keyboard.

Many users choose to save login information and passwords into the Google Chrome browser’s built-in password manager. Sometimes you may need to manually access the passwords or login information that is stored within the password manager, so we’ll show you how you can access and view saved password and login information in the Chrome web … Read More

Apple is now offering a savings account, thanks to a partnership with Goldman Sachs. The savings account is currently available only to Apple Card users, so if you have not yet applied for an Apple Card and you wish to have an Apple Savings account, you’ll need to do that first. Currently, the Apple Savings … Read More

If you ever find that Siri is cutting you off in the middle of you issuing a command to the virtual assistance, you may want to change the “Siri Pause Time” setting to a longer duration of time. You can easily adjust how long Siri will pause for a command on the iPhone or iPad, … Read More

It’s not terribly uncommon to encounter flashing lights and strobing effects in videos, and while they can be annoying for most people, flashing light can be particularly problematic for people with epilepsy. Fortunately, the latest versions of MacOS offer a feature that will detect flashing lights and strobing lights in videos, and automatically dim them. … Read More

Quick Start is the fantastic feature that allows users to easily transfer data from an old iPhone or iPad to a new iPhone or iPad, seamlessly, wirelessly, and with minimal effort. While Quick Start typically automatically opens when you get a new iPhone or iPad and you’re beginning to set it up, it doesn’t always … Read More

The Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro and iPad Air is a game-changer in terms of making the tablet device even more productive, especially for people who are accustomed to using cursors and physical keyboards, power-users, and pros, as it brings a great trackpad and keyboard to the device. Whether you are new to the Magic … Read More

Some Mac users may wish to install GCC onto their MacOS computers. GCC, which stands for Gnu Compiler Collection, is a commonly used compiler with support for C, C++, Objective C, Go, Fortran, Ada, and more languages, and is frequently used for compiling command line programs, writing software, and more, whether for computer science classes … Read More

Apple uses Rapid Security Response Updates to deploy critical fixes to security issues, and these updates are pushed to your iPhone or iPad automatically by default. While this is generally a good thing, since these little micro-updates are installed to protect your device from critical security issues, and installing them does not even require the … Read More