Tips & Tricks

When you connect a power source to an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or MacBook, a familiar charging chime sound will trigger from the device, indicating that a cable is attached and the device is getting power. If you like hearing that auditory confirmation that a device is getting power, you can add the exact same … Read More

Apple Pay will default to using the first credit card or credit card added to an iPhone for purchases, even if you have added multiple cards. Your first card may not be the account you want to default charges to however, thus some users may wish to change the default card in Apple Pay.

Now that many of our Emoji characters have various skin tones in iOS and OS X, you may want to access and use the new diverse emoji icon set on the Mac. This is quite simple, but do note that not all Emoji have the diverse skin and hair color options.

The Mac Photos app allows for the creation of entirely new photo libraries, which means it’s easy to make a separate photo library if you want to keep some pictures outside of a primary image collection. This can be helpful for many reasons, whether to differentiate a personal photo library from a work picture library, … Read More

The iPhone Camera app includes a self timer function, a great feature for any camera that allows you to set a countdown timer before a picture is snapped. There’s many uses for the timer function, but it often allows for the photographer or camera owner to be in the picture frame as well, rather than … Read More

Apple has changed the Emoji characters in iOS and OS X to include many new diverse emoji variations. In the process of diversifying our Emoji keyboards, Apple also turned most of the default people emoji icons into curious looking yellow characters, which look a bit like LEGO characters meet The Simpsons. But once you understand … Read More

Some Mac users may occasionally run into issues with Finder, discovering that Finder will misbehave wildly, sometimes becoming very slow and unresponsive, crashing, or using inordinately high CPU. Given that Finder is a critical component of the Mac and nearly all Mac OS users rely on it for file system navigation, Finder trouble can be … Read More

Can’t remember where a file you recently opened was stored on the Mac, or where an MacOS X app you recently used was kept or originated from? Maybe you don’t know where something you recently used went to? No big deal, a simple keystroke modifier trick allows you to jump directly to the containing location … Read More

If you use VirtualBox to run guest operating systems within a virtual machine on the Mac, like Windows 10 or Ubuntu Linux, you may find yourself needing to resize the virtual disk size where the OS resides. This is often the case when you inadequately estimate how much space is required for properly installing in … Read More

The Mac received a great many changes with OS X Yosemite along with a notable visual redesign, but some of those changes and various transparent effects may be taking a toll on some users Mac performance with errant WindowServer behavior. This is typically demonstrated with the WindowServer process spiking into heavy CPU use for seemingly … Read More

Stacks offer a method of displaying folders or collections of multiple items in the Dock of the Mac. When clicked, the “Stack” will pop open and show the contents sprawling out of the Dock. Dock Stacks always display on the right-side of the Mac OS X Dock and they default to contain things like the … Read More

Newer iPhones have the ability to track fitness activity and motion and displaying that data in Health app and other applications. Fitness tracking is done by using a low-power motion coprocessor that determines steps, altitude gain and lost, and distance traveled, and many users like this feature as it represents an easy way to keep … Read More

Whether testing performance of an application, Mac OS X animations, or just out of general curiosity, you can measure the refresh rate in Frames Per Second of onscreen actions and animations on the Mac by using a free developer tool from Apple called Quartz Debug. Part of the Graphics Tools package of Xcode, Quartz Debug … Read More

If you ever need to set custom DNS or change the DNS settings on iOS devices for using an alternate domain name server or a faster one, you’ll probably want the DNS changes to take effect immediately, which requires the flushing of DNS caches on the iPhone or iPad. There are actually several ways to … Read More

With Messages app on the Mac now able to send and receive SMS texts messages alongside iMessages from the iPhone, amongst other configured chat protocols, it’s easy to stay in touch, but it’s also easy get overwhelmed or annoyed by the sound of incoming messages while you’re trying to do other work on the computer. … Read More

A fair amount of wireless routers choose not to broadcast their identity (called an SSID) as a simple security precaution, thus knowing how to join an invisible network from a Mac is important.

Now that the Mac windows green maximize button defaults to sending apps and windows into Full Screen Mode, a notably sized cohort of MacOS and Mac OS X users who perhaps didn’t know this behavior changed until accidentally finding out, are left confused with the following question; “how do I get out of full screen … Read More

If you find yourself adding up many numbers or just performing a continuous string of math that is critical to keep track of, you should know that the Mac Calculator app includes a paper tape feature. For those who aren’t familiar, a paper tape keeps a running trail of each item entered into a calculator, … Read More