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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Check What Software Updates Have Been Installed in Mac OS X

Oct 25, 2011 - 4 Comments
Check installed software updates

Forget what Software Updates you’ve installed on a Mac? Maybe you need to check if a particular Mac workstation has installed a particular software update? With a little work, you can easily check which particular software updates have been installed before in Mac OS X. We’ll show you several different ways to get a list … Read More

Increase the Contrast of a PDF to Sharpen & Darken Text

Oct 24, 2011 - 21 Comments
Increase text contrast of a PDF to make it easier to read

With Preview you can adjust the contrast of a PDF, this makes the text sharper and darker, and for scanned files or dubious quality PDF’s this makes them significantly easier to read. The process of increasing contrast and sharpening text in a PDF is made quite simple with Preview app on the Mac, we’ll walk … Read More

Hide Mail from the Lock Screen in iOS

Oct 24, 2011 - 4 Comments
Hide Mail from the iOS 5 Lock Screen

Notification Center in iOS makes it easier than ever to see when new messages and mail comes in to your device, but if you receive sensitive or private emails on your iPhone or iPad, you may not want them showing up on the lock screen at all. If you’d rather not see any alert or … Read More

Delete Pictures from Photo Stream & iCloud

Oct 23, 2011 - 16 Comments
Delete Photos from Photo Stream in iCloud

If you’re set up to use iCloud with an iOS 5 device, you may have noticed that Photo Stream hosts your pictures online on iCloud.com and also syncs the pictures to the Photo Stream of your other devices. Apple will remove these pictures automatically after 30 days or after 1000 photos are uploaded, but if … Read More

Enable Private Browsing on iPad & iPhone with Safari in iOS 6

Oct 21, 2011 - 27 Comments
Private Browsing in Safari with iOS 5

iOS allows you to enable private browsing in Safari for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This feature is sometimes called “Incognito Mode” with other browsers, and essentially this lets you browse the web and visit web sites without saving a record of any browser history, cache, logins, or searches, and it prevents cookies from … Read More

Set iPhone Camera LED to Flash on Incoming Calls and Alerts

Oct 21, 2011 - 60 Comments
Flash the iPhones camera LED light on incoming calls or messages

The iPhone camera LED flash can be used to alert you to incoming calls, messages, and other alerts to your device. With this feature enabled, anytime a call or messages comes in the devices LED will flash repeatedly, even when the iPhone is on silent mode. This great feature offers an obvious visual cue with … Read More

Transfer Mac Apps from One Mac to Another

Oct 20, 2011 - 6 Comments
Transfer Mac Apps to Another Mac

With the addition of the Mac App Store, transferring applications from one Mac to another is made extraordinarily simple and can be done entirely through the App Store itself. This is due to the Mac App Stores licensing agreement, which allows you to download and install Mac OS X apps on all of your personal … Read More

How to Rename an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Oct 20, 2011 - 6 Comments
iPhone

A nice addition to iOS is the ability to rename your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch device directly on the device itself through the Settings app. This is a nice software feature which prevents users from having to go about changing the name with iTunes on a computer. Instead, the entire name adjustment is handled … Read More

Sync iMessage Across All iOS Devices: iPhone, iPad, & iPod touch

Oct 19, 2011 - 46 Comments
iOS Messages app icon

Now that you’ve set up iMessage, if you use multiple iOS devices you’ll want to be sure to sync your conversations across them all. For example, if you use an iPhone and have an iPad, you may want to have iMessage sync between the iPhone and iPad seamlessly. This is supposed to happen automatically as … Read More

Change Launchpad Icon Size in Mac OS X Lion from Large to Small

Oct 19, 2011 - 29 Comments
Shrink Launchpads Large Icon Size

Of all the Launchpad tips and customizations, one that has been greatly desired is the ability to manually adjust the icon size of apps. A tip sent in by Rohan Agashe moves us in that direction, allowing you to change the Launchpad icon size down from the large icons in OS X 10.7.2 to the … Read More

How to Set Up & Use iMessage on iPhone, iPad, & iPod touch

Oct 18, 2011 - 197 Comments
iOS Messages app icon

Want to use iMessage with iPhone or iPad? Of course you do! iMessage is the fantastic messaging service that is built directly into iOS from versions 5 onward, available for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac. iMessage is great because it allows you to send instant messages, text messages, pictures, video, contacts, and locations, across … Read More

Check Available Storage Space and How Much Space an App Uses in iOS

Oct 18, 2011 - 5 Comments
Check how much space an app uses in iOS 5

You can quickly find out how much storage space is available on your iOS device, and perhaps more useful, the amount of storage space currently being used. This same storage information screen also gives users details on how much space each specific app is taking up, and even shows how large your music, movies, and … Read More

Get the Hourly Weather Forecast in iOS 5 on iPhone & iPod touch

Oct 17, 2011 - 5 Comments
Hour by Hour weather forecast in iOS 5

If you’re on a modern version of iOS you have easily accessible hourly weather updates on iPhone, but if your iPhone is running a much older version of system software it’s a bit different. Fortunately the weather app in iOS 5 has been improved to include quickly accessible hourly forecasts, in addition to the percentage … Read More

Battery Life of iPhone 4S Draining Too Fast? Try Calibrating the Battery

Oct 17, 2011 - 64 Comments
battery life of iPhone 4 vs iPhone 4S

Some users are indicating the iPhone 4S battery isn’t lasting as long as expected, this comes alongside separate reports of iOS 5 battery life draining quicker than usual. While some of the 4S battery life complaints could be attributed to the aforementioned iOS 5 issues (most of which are easy to fix by adjusting settings), … Read More

Enable Motion Blur in Mission Control for Mac OS X Lion

Oct 17, 2011 - 27 Comments
Motion Blur in Mission Control on Mac OS X Lion

Mission Control in Mac OS X Lion has a hidden motion blur effect that can be enabled quite easily:

How to Increase Font Size in Safari on iPhone by Using Reader

Oct 16, 2011 - 5 Comments
Larger text on iPhone by using Safari Reader

Have you ever wanted to make the text size on a webpage bigger when you’re reading a web site on an iPhone? Some web pages are easy to read on iPhone, and some are not. If you find font or text sizes in Safari to be maddeningly small for some web pages when you’re reading … Read More

How to Use the Camera from Lock Screen in iOS 5

Oct 14, 2011 - 73 Comments
Use the camera from lock screen in iOS 5

Yet another great feature of iOS 5 is the instant camera access from your lock screen. This lets you quickly pull out your iPhone (or iPad and iPod touch of course) and take pictures without having to unlock the iPhone or clicking on the camera app. Here’s how to use this quick camera access trick … Read More

Hide Purchases from the App Store in iTunes, iOS, & Mac OS X

Oct 14, 2011 - 10 Comments
Unhide hidden purchases in the App Store

New to Mac OS X and iOS is the ability to hide purchases from appearing in the Mac App Store, iOS App Store, and the iTunes Store purchased items lists. This is great if you download tons of stuff but use only a fraction of apps, and you don’t want the other items clogging up … Read More

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