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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Arrange Notification Center by Time in OS X

Aug 26, 2012 - Leave a Comment
Arrange Notification Center by Time of Alert in Mac OS X

The default setting for Notification Center in both Mac OS X and iOS is to sort alerts from apps manually, a setting which doesn’t make much sense if you use Notifications as a timeline of events and want the most recent always on top. Fortunately, changing Notification Center to arrange alerts by time is as … Read More

Place a Call on Hold with iPhone

Aug 25, 2012 - 9 Comments

Did you know you can put calls on hold on iPhone? This suspends the phone call without hanging it up, but it prevents you from being able to hear the individual on the other end and they can’t hear you either. It’s a slightly hidden feature that you won’t see at the normal phone options, … Read More

Navigate & Flip Through Open Browser Tabs with Gestures in Safari 6

Aug 24, 2012 - 7 Comments
Flip through browser tabs in Safari

Safari 6 has a great new way to quickly navigate through open browser tabs using gestures. To access the new tab preview screen, either use a two-fingered pinch inwards, or click the little box on the far right of the tabs: Once in tab previews, use a two-finger gesture left or right to flip between … Read More

How to Disable & Clear Auto-Fill in iOS

Aug 24, 2012 - 2 Comments
Clear and disable AutoFill in iOS

Auto-fill is one of the more useful features in iOS since it prevents you from having to use the slow touch keyboard to re-enter logins and passwords and contact information like email addresses or phone numbers. The obvious problem with auto-fill though comes with shared iPads (or iPods/iPhones), where multiple people may be using the … Read More

How to Make a Silent Ringtone to Ignore Specific Callers to Your iPhone

Aug 23, 2012 - 8 Comments
iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini

Though you can send calls directly to voicemail and mute incoming calls, you can’t really block a specific caller on the iPhone. Rather than keeping your phone on silent all the time, you can selectively mute only specific callers by using a special silent ringtone and assigning it to a Contact you want to ignore. … Read More

Show the Remaining Battery Time Indicator Again in OS X Mountain Lion

Aug 22, 2012 - 22 Comments
Battery Time Indicator in OS X Mountain Lion

OS X Mountain Lion changed the battery indicator for mobile Mac users, removing the option to show the remaining battery life time and instead displaying only a percentage, like iOS. For those of us who live on the go and rely heavily on battery life, knowing the actual remaining battery capacity in hours is much … Read More

Turn Off Auto-Save in OS X Mountain Lion & Mavericks

Aug 22, 2012 - 19 Comments
Ask to Save Files instead of Using Auto-Save in OS X

If you don’t like the Auto-Save feature of OS X, you’ll be pleased to discover that turning it off system-wide on a Mac is just a matter of checking a settings box within OS X Mountain Lion and OS X Mavericks. This will disable the automatic saving behavior for all files across all documents on … Read More

How to Enable & Use Twitter Integration in Mac OS X

Aug 22, 2012 - 10 Comments
Setup and use Twitter in Mac OS X

Twitter is deeply integrated into the Mac now with the latest versions of OS X, and that means you can send tweets from just about anywhere once it’s set up and configured. If you went to System Preferences hoping to find a panel to set it up and walked away confused, don’t worry because enabling … Read More

Assign Unique Ringtones to Contacts on iPhone to Know Who’s Calling

Aug 21, 2012 - 4 Comments
Set a custom ringtone per contact on iPhone

You can make your iPhone life a lot easier by assigning custom ringtones to contacts. This makes it easy to determine who is calling before you even see the caller ID, letting you either rush to answer the phone or continue snoozing and ignore the call. With how easy it is to make ringtones for … Read More

How to Enable “Do Not Track” in Safari for the Mac

Aug 21, 2012 - 6 Comments
Enable Do Not Track privacy feature in Safari

Do Not Track is a new privacy feature in Safari 6 that causes Safari to tell certain websites to not track you online as you browse the web. This prevents social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, from tracking you across the web, and it also causes ad servers and analytic services to not follow … Read More

Manage eMail Better with VIP Lists and VIP Notifications in OS X Mail App

Aug 21, 2012 - 1 Comment
VIP Inbox in OS X helps to manage email overload

It seems everyone is overwhelmed by email these days, with every inbox piling up humungous lists of messages that are usually not too important. If you’re tired of the email onslaught and use the Mac Mail app as your email client, you can use the VIP feature to better manage your mailbox. Senders tagged as … Read More

Use Field Test Mode to See True iPhone Signal Strength as Numbers Instead of Bars

Aug 20, 2012 - 71 Comments
iPhone cell signal bars are shown as numbers rather than bars with Field Test mode

Field Test Mode is a hidden feature on the iPhone which allows you to see technical details of the device, the most useful of which is the true cell signal strength displayed as a number rather than the traditional signal bars or dots. We’ll show you exactly how to enter Field Test Mode, as well … Read More

Change the Save Location from iCloud to Local Mac Storage on Mac

Aug 20, 2012 - 8 Comments
Turn Off Documents & Data for iCloud

The latest versions of Mac OS feature deeper iCloud integration than ever before on the Mac, a feature that is extremely convenient for syncing things likes desktop Notes, desktop Reminders lists, documents, emails, bookmarks, and whatever else with iOS devices, but it can also be frustrating when you’re just trying to save a file in … Read More

When Was Your Mac Built? How to Find The Make & Model Year of a Mac

Aug 20, 2012 - 17 Comments
Find Out When a Mac Was Made

You’ll often hear Mac users reference their machines by a model and the build year (for example, Mac Mini 2010, or MacBook Pro 2016), or by a timeline within the year it was released (iMac mid-2011 model). Sure some Mac users just have an amazing memory for this stuff, but everyone else can retrieve the … Read More

Test & Compare Mobile Broadband Speeds on iPhone & Android with Speed Test

Aug 18, 2012 - 6 Comments
Test iPhone Mobile Broadband Speed

Ever wondered just how fast a 3G, 4G LTE, or Edge network is on your iPhone or Android? Using a free app called Speed Test you can easily test and compare the mobile broadband speed of your smartphone (or cell equipped iPad) with others, whether they’re on AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, or any other network. … Read More

Convert Any Audio or Video File to an iPhone Ringtone Easily with QuickTime

Aug 18, 2012 - 11 Comments
Trim the clip to a ringtone size portion in QuickTime

Want to concert an audio file to an iPhone ringtone? That’s easy to do on the Mac, thanks to QuickTime. Yes the video player! This also allows you to concert audio tracks of video files to ringtones too. Sure, most people use QuickTime Player as a way to watch movies, but using it’s Export function … Read More

How to Trim Video on iPhone & iPad Quickly

Aug 17, 2012 - 7 Comments
Trim Video right on the iPhone

Recording video is one of the great features of the iPhone and iPad, but before you send that movie out to a friend, copy it to a computer, or upload to YouTube, you can make some quick edits right in iOS to clip the video. This is helpful if you want to shorten the video … Read More

How to See Accessibility Options in Mac OS X Instantly from Anywhere with a Keystroke

Aug 17, 2012 - 2 Comments
Accessibility Options panel in OS X

Mac OS X makes it easier and faster than ever to access and tweak Accessibility Options from anywhere on the Mac, thanks to a new keyboard shortcut. The Accessibility panel allows Mac users to quickly toggle zoom, VoiceOver, sticky keys, slow keys, mouse keys, screen contrasts, screen invert, and more, depending on what version of … Read More

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