Tips & Tricks

Voice Messages are a great feature in Messages for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, that allow you to record yourself speaking and send that audio as a message. This can be fantastic for hands-free texting and communication (say, when walking, biking, driving, etc), if you simply prefer talking to texting, if you want to convey more … Read More

The iPad Magic Keyboard is ultra popular for good reason, and it’s easily the best accessory available for iPad. With the excellent functionality of a full-size backlit keyboard combined with a great trackpad, Magic Keyboard brings productivity potential to the iPad that is otherwise missing for many users. Plus, Magic Keyboard looks great, with a … Read More

If you use git on the Mac platform, you likely have come across DS_Store files in a git repository. These can be annoying and clutter a git repo, and you may even run into unnecessary conflicts due to .DS_Store files being maintained in git repos, where you may see error messages like “The files .DS_Store … Read More

You can now easily check your AppleCare warranty coverage right on the iPhone or iPad, for not only your device, but also any other devices that are paired to it, like AirPods or Apple Watches. All Apple devices come with a one year limited AppleCare warranty, but many users opt to purchase the optional various … Read More

If you ever find yourself needing to know a history of a specific Macs assigned local IP addresses, you can find this potentially helpful networking information from the command line. This trick will report all local IP addresses which have been used by a Mac, and, very helpfully, it will also offer the specific date … Read More

If you have some frequently used applications on the Mac that you routinely launch from the Finder, you can customize the Finder toolbar to include those apps. This offers a helpful alternative to launch frequently used apps that is Finder specific, and can be particularly handy for apps that you only use for drag and … Read More

While AirPlane Mode for iPhone has been around since the earliest days of the device, many users still do not understand how the feature works, or why it is potentially useful. With that in mind, we’re going to review a variety of genuinely useful reasons you may wish to use AirPlane Mode on an iPhone. … Read More

Knowing the number of CPU cores a particular Mac has can be useful for performance optimization, stress testing, compatibility, and to otherwise make informed decisions about system performance on a Mac. For example, maybe you want to make sure you have multiple cores available to run a virtual machine, or you want to spawn a … Read More

Gaia GPS is a popular app amongst outdoor enthusiasts, but one of the apps downsides is that it tends to drain a lot battery life on your iPhone. If you wish to save battery life and optimize how long you can use Gaia GPS for on your iPhone when out on an adventure, whether it’s … Read More

The latest versions of Microsoft Edge web browser for iPhone and iPad, and the Bing search engine itself, include integrated AI-powered chatbots that can be accessed and queried at anhy time. Why not take advantage of these powerful AI features and give them a try yourself? The Bing GPT chatbot is highly competent, offering yet … Read More

Apple Watch has the ability to take screenshots, but for new Apple Watch devices and users, the screenshot feature is actually disabled by default. If you wish to enable the screenshot feature on Apple Watch, and learn how to take screenshots on Apple Watch, read along.

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.