Tips & Tricks

Tips and tricks for all things Apple! Whether you want to learn tips for a Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or much more, you will find many tricks, tips, tutorials, and excellent walkthroughs for Apple devices and software here.

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Respond to Incoming Phone Calls with Automatic Message Replies on iPhone

Nov 27, 2012 - 19 Comments
Reply to a phone call with Messages

The iPhone gained a handy feature that is now standard in iOS which allows you to quickly respond to an incoming phone call with a preset text message. This is a perfect solution if you’re busy in a meeting, classroom, driving, or in any other situation where you can’t take a phone call, but the … Read More

Use iPad as an External Monitor with Air Display Free

Nov 27, 2012 - 12 Comments
MacBook Air with iPad running Air Display as an external display

Air Display is a great iOS app that turns an iPad into an external display for just about any Mac or Windows PC. It’s been around a while, but now there’s a new free version available that lets you try out a full featured ad-supported version before buying the regular version, offering an excellent way … Read More

Improve Listening to Music in iTunes with 3 Quick Preference Adjustments

Nov 26, 2012 - 13 Comments
Improve listening to music with iTunes

Listening to music in iTunes can be improved significantly by taking a moment to make three quick adjustments to preferences. Enabling these options takes a few seconds and will be valid for both Mac OS X and Windows: Open iTunes preferences from the iTunes menu Choose the “Playback” tab and check the box to enable … Read More

Use Siri as a Calculator

Nov 25, 2012 - 10 Comments
Siri as a calculator

Don’t want to unlock your iPhone and launch the Calculator app? Bummed that iPad doesn’t even have a default Calculator? No big deal, because Siri can function as a regular old calculator, and it has the obvious added bonus of being handsfree. To have Siri calculate equations for you, just feed Siri numbers and thanks … Read More

Batch Resize a Group of Pictures from the Command Line with sips

Nov 25, 2012 - 7 Comments
Batch resize group of pictures with sips

Though most Mac users will likely prefer to use Preview to batch resize images because of the ease of use, advanced users often like to go with the command line for repetitive tasks. We’ve discussed sips before as a way to resize, rotate, and flip images, but if sips is combined with wildcards it can … Read More

Quickly Zoom In & Out of Maps with a Tap

Nov 22, 2012 - 12 Comments
Quickly zoom out in Maps on iOS with a tap

Surely everyone with an iOS device knows that Maps can be zoomed out by using a two-finger pinch gesture, and zoomed in by using a two-finger spread gesture, and repeating either gesture will continue to zoom the screen in or out as desired. While the gestures are pretty quick, you can zoom in or out … Read More

Add a File Extension to a Group of Files from the Command Line in Mac OS X

Nov 22, 2012 - 11 Comments
Add file extension to a group of files in Mac OS X

The quickest way to add a file extension to a group of files that don’t currently have one is by using the command line in Mac OS X. In the example below, we’ll add a “.txt” extension to all files in a single directory, but subbing .txt in the command string will add a different … Read More

FaceTime Over Cellular Expands to More AT&T iPhones, Check if Yours Works Too

Nov 21, 2012 - 6 Comments
Facetime over cellular on iPhone

AT&T appears to be rolling out FaceTime over cellular connections to more iPhone users on their network. MacRumors was first to discover the quiet change in AT&T policy, and the potentially eligible devices include iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPad 3, and iPad 4, with at least a 3G HSPA+ (AT&T’s so-called 4G) connection. Typically, FaceTime … Read More

Use Remote Disc to Share a CD/DVD Drive Between Macs

Nov 21, 2012 - 12 Comments
Remote Disc on a MacBook Air

Now that Mac Mini, iMac, MacBook Air, and Retina MacBook Pro have moved away from carrying internal SuperDrives, owners of these newer Macs will possibly get more usage out of the Remote Disc feature than ever before. For those unfamiliar, Remote Disc does pretty much what it sounds like, allowing one Mac to share and … Read More

What to do When iTunes Won’t Detect an iPhone, iPad, or iPod

Nov 20, 2012 - 164 Comments
Tips for when iTunes won't detect an iPhone

You’ve plugged an iPhone into a computer, and nothing happens. You look in iTunes, and the iPhone, iPod, or iPad isn’t there. Great, now what? What in the heck is going on? Don’t worry, there are usually a few simple solutions that will resolve the problem and et your computer to detect the iPhone or … Read More

Change Spotlight Search Priority in iOS

Nov 20, 2012 - 4 Comments
Change Spotlight search priority in iOS

The iOS Spotlight Search feature defaults to showing Contacts from a devices address book as the top search results, which may be helpful, but that same feature already exists when searching through Contacts anyway. What if you want to show matching apps first instead? Or maybe you want to list emails or messages as the … Read More

Use iPhone & Siri as a Tip Calculator

Nov 19, 2012 - 21 Comments
The iPhone becomes a Tip Calculator thanks to Siri

Breaking out the Calculator app can be too time consuming, and while there’s no shortage of tip calculator apps for the iPhone, why download another app if you don’t need to? The next time you’re at a restaurant and want to quickly calculate an appropriate tip according to the bill, all you have to do … Read More

Send an iMessage as a Text Message Instead from iPhone

Nov 18, 2012 - 29 Comments
Send an iMessage as a text message

iMessage is an undeniably great service for free messaging between iPhones, iOS, and Mac OS X, but it’s not flawless, and sometimes an iMessage will fail to send if you’re on a low cellular signal or have insufficient bandwidth. Additionally, there are times when trying to send a message through iMessage is slower than sending … Read More

Improve iOS Maps with a Simple Settings Change to See More Locations & Streets

Nov 18, 2012 - 4 Comments
See more in iOS Maps with smaller labels

The iOS Maps app has received a fair amount of flack, some of which is completely overblown and some is completely legitimate. One of my personal peeves with iOS Maps is the apparent lack of location data shown on screen when looking at a region, which can appear remarkably sparse when compared to the equivalent … Read More

How to Disable Javascript on iPhone & iPad

Nov 18, 2012 - 3 Comments
Disable Javascript in Safari for iPhone and iPad

If you want to turn off Javascript support in Safari for iOS, all you have to do is flip a Setting on your device. Disabling Javascript may be desirable for a variety of reasons, whether it’s to reduce crashes with certain error prone webpages or to stop some obnoxious ads, and it’s also a decent … Read More

Record Audio Output from a Mac the Easy Way with WavTap

Nov 16, 2012 - 12 Comments
Capture Mac audio easily with WavTap

Recording audio playing out from a Mac isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but that’s exactly what WavTap aims to resolve with a remarkably simple menu bar item. It makes capturing a Macs audio output extremely simple, leaving you with an audio file that you can then. WavTap is also completely free, which makes … Read More

How to Run Firefox OS Simulator

Nov 16, 2012 - 7 Comments
Firefox OS Simulator

Mozilla, the makers of Firefox (yes, the web browser), are working on a mobile operating system called Firefox OS. It’s based entirely on HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and is currently at very early stages of development, with an appearance that’s kind of like iOS meets Android with a side of Ubuntu. Whether or not Firefox … Read More

Stop Software Update from Bugging You in Mac OS X

Nov 15, 2012 - 35 Comments
Swipe to Ignore a Software Update Notification

Keeping software up to date is one of the top maintenance tips for Macs, but sometimes those Software Update notifications can be just plain annoying. Whether you’re just trying to focus on work, or the update that’s bugging you is irrelevant to your needs, here is every possible way you can stop software updating from … Read More

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