Tips & Tricks

TextEdit is a reasonably decent text editing app that has been bundled along with just about every version of OS X since the beginning. If you’ve ever opened an HTML file with TextEdit you have probably discovered the app actually renders the HTML code, displaying the formatted text, rather than displaying the source itself. This … Read More

MTU stands for Maximum Transmission Unit, and a larger MTU size generally increases efficiency of a network connection because each packet carries more data, but sometimes the default MTU sizes (often 1500) will cause issues with some networks and needs adjusting. If you need to change the MTU size on a Mac, you can do … Read More

Want to know exactly how much storage photos are taking up on your iPhone or iPad? Opening the Photos app in iOS will tell you how many total photos are within the different picture albums and Camera Roll, but how much space do the pictures actually take up? If you want to know the actual … Read More

If you need to get a new IP address from a router that any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or other iOS device is connected to, you can either set a manual IP address or, what’s likely more relevant to most people, you’ll want to renew the DHCP lease directly from the wi-fi router itself. Renewing … Read More

Converting images to new file formats is very easy thanks to a variety of tools built directly into OS X (and most Linux distributions). Though the easiest method uses Preview for converting images, there’s a command line option that uses the same sips tool we’ve discussed before to perform batch resizing from the command line. … Read More

Most Bluetooth accessories don’t have battery indicators located on the device itself, and that includes the Apple Wireless Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad. Rather than waiting for the battery to run low, thereby causing the devices connection to weaken, stop registering movements, clicks, or certain behavior, you can choose to manually intervene by periodically … Read More

Have you noticed that when you’re browsing through folders on the Mac that icons are actually previews of images and even live playable videos? This sure makes the OS X Finder snazzy looking, but in some situations where tons of images and video files are contained within single folders, it can have the unwanted side … Read More

The default iOS setting for iPhones is for message alerts to chime with the text tone twice, in a two minute interval. While the repeat text message alert sounds, notifications, and vibrations on the iPhone can be helpful for some people, those of us who are basically glued to our phones tend to experience quite … Read More

Emoji icons are a lot of fun and special characters can be extremely useful, but the standard way of opening the character viewer panel isn’t the smoothest in the world. Fortunately, OS X has an excellent bundled menu bar option that can be enabled to allow for extremely fast Emoji and character access, letting you … Read More

Those who use external Bluetooth devices with a Mac, whether it’s a keyboard, mouse, headset, or anything else, are probably aware that connection strength between the device and the computer is going to directly impact how usable the device is. The next obvious question then is, how do you check the strength of such a … Read More

Moving email around between inboxes in the iOS Mail app is easy, and perhaps sometimes it’s too easy, because accidentally moving or archiving mail messages seems to be an ongoing issue for many. In fact, one of the most frequently asked questions I get from newcomers to the iPhone or iPad is “where did my … Read More

Your iPhone is a smartphone, and if it isn’t making you smarter as well then you just aren’t using the devices included features to it’s full potential. Here are three super simple tips that let your iPhone make you smarter, these will be perfect for educators, learners, students, or really, just about anyone – unless … Read More

Have you ever gotten a new album or podcast, synced it over to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, then when you went to play the songs you discovered they were grayed out in the Music app? The album is there, the song title is there, but because the song is grey you can tap … Read More

iTunes Home Sharing is a great way to share music libraries and playlists with others, but if you don’t want everyone to be able to sort through the shared library, you can easily require a password in order to access the shared playlists. This is perfect for situations where some content may be explicit and … Read More

Find My iPhone and Find My iPad are security features that make it simple to locate lost iOS devices by tracking them on maps through GPS. A potential problem is that after a device has been lost, or perhaps more accurately, after a device has been stolen, GPS or Find My iPhone can be turned … Read More

The ability to block incoming calls on the iPhone is missing on older versions of iOS, and though new versions of iOS can block calls, older devices are left withthe Do Not Disturb feature. Do Not Disturb is excellent, but it’s not really blocking unwanted calls, it just sets a time period where any calls … Read More

Retrieving a list of preferred wireless networks can be helpful when troubleshooting wi-fi problems, amongst other reasons too. If you’re looking to print out a list of wi-fi networks the Mac has used as preferred and connected to before, the following trick will do just that!

Managing slews of email can be one of the most challenging and time consuming parts of ones day, but with the help of VIP lists in iOS and OS X you can help to weed through some of the nonsense by simply having defined persons get precedent over others. On the desktop side of things, … Read More