A release candidate build for iOS 18.5, iPadOS 18.5, and MacOS Sequoia 15.5 is now available for users enrolled in the beta testing programs. For users not in the beta testing programs, what this basically means is that the final versions of these system software releases is coming soon, perhaps even next week.

macOS Sequoia 15.5 is expected to be mostly a bug fix update with some security patches, and no notable new features are anticipated.

iOS 18.5 and iPadOS 18.5 are mostly focused on bug fixes and security patches as well, but also include some minor changes like in-app settings toggles for the controversial Mail Contact Photos feature (along with a toggle for the frustrating Mail Categories feature), the settings of which also remain in the Settings app because redundant redundancy is redundant, and who doesn’t want multiple settings toggles in multiple locations for the same setting? Additionally, it’s now easier to see AppleCare warranty information in Settings app.

The biggest new addition to iOS 18.5, iPadOS 18.5, and watchOS is a new Progress Pride Flag wallpaper, which Apple says in a press release is made to “celebrate the strength and beauty of LGBTQ+ communities around the world”.

There are also release candidate builds of watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS, if you bother with running those.

The most recent stable builds of Apple system software are iOS 18.4.1, iPadOS 18.4.1, and MacOS Sequoia 15.4.1.

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Whether you have a HomePod or HomePod mini in your own house, or you’re visiting elsewhere with a HomePod, you can quickly and easily play music from Spotify or Apple Music on the HomePod from your iPhone with a simple physical proximity gesture.

This trick is so simple and useful but it’s not well known, and it’s literally just a matter of placing your iPhone in close proximity to the HomePod. You can obviously play music on HomePod and HomePod mini a variety of other ways too, from AirPlay or playing Music on HomePod with Siri, but it’s arguably much easier, doesn’t involve any menu navigation, and let’s be honest, with how unreliable Siri is (still, in 2025), it’s a much more reliable way to play music too.

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Amazon is back with more great deals on Apple products, taking $150 off the price of the M4 MacBook Air series in both 13″ and 15″ display sizes, up to $320 off the M4 MacBook Pro in select configurations, the latest iPad mini for $399, $100 off the M3 iPad Air, plus discounts on AirPods, AirPods Pro, and Apple Pencil Pro. Maybe you’re shopping for yourself, maybe you’re shopping for Mothers Day, maybe you’re just shopping in general, but why pay the standard retail price when Amazon is offering great discounts?

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If you’re an iPhone or iPad user, you might appreciate a feature that automatically switches your devices appearance from Light Mode to Dark Mode, and vice versa, automatically. Furthermore, you can set the automatic enabling of Dark and Light mode to follow sunset and sunrise, or a custom schedule, whichever you prefer.

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While many people find to-do lists to be useful, they can also be overwhelming if you have twenty items on the list. For some people, it might be easier to just have a single goal, task, or reminder, and that is the focus or important thing to remember, without any other distractions. That’s where One Thing comes in, which is a free simple Mac app that allows you to place any text (and emoji) into the Mac menu bar, whether that’s a task, goal, reminder, affirmation, or even a short sweet note to a loved one on their Mac.

There’s not a lot to One Thing for Mac, but as the developer describes its purpose, “Put your most important task or goal in the menu bar. Its presence there will help remind you without being annoying.” If that sounds good to you, then grab One Thing free from the Mac App Store, launch it, and away you go.

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Spotlight is the powerful search engine built into MacOS that allows you to quickly find any file or data on your Mac disk drives. Part of what makes Spotlight so fast is that it uses caches and temporary files during indexing to quickly refer to data on your Mac, but sometimes those Spotlight files can take up unusually large amounts of disk storage space. Spotlight metadata consuming a very large amount of disk space can happen randomly and has been reported by many Mac users over time, and though some of these issues were first noticed during beta development of MacOS system software, the bloated Spotlight metadata issue has persisted for some users into the stable builds of MacOS, including Sequoia.

If you have discovered the CoreSpotlight folder on your Mac to be taking up huge amounts of disk storage, read along and you’ll learn how to clear out and recover that disk space quickly.

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If you’ve ever wanted to browse your photo library a bit more efficiently, adjusting the thumbnail size in the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad can make a big difference. Whether you’re looking to see more images on the screen at once, or you prefer larger previews for easier viewing, changing the thumbnail size gives you more control over how your photos are displayed in iOS. This is a very simple adjustment to make that can make navigating through hundreds or even thousands of pictures faster and more comfortable, especially on devices of varying screen sizes, like the iPhone and iPad.

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Amazon is offering some really fantastic deals on Apple products right now, bringing the M4 MacBook Air to the lowest price available yet at $150 off retail, cutting $100 off the price of the M3 iPad Air models, taking $100 off the price of Apple Watch Series 10, and some whopper discounts on AirPods 4, AirPods Pro 2, and more. If you’re shopping for some new Apple gear, don’t pay full price when you don’t need to! Check out the deals below.

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Apple has issued the fourth beta version of iOS 18.5, macOS Sequoia 15.5, and iPadOS 18.5, for users participating in the beta testing programs for apple system software. There are also new betas available for watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS, if those are applicable to you.

No significant new features or changes are expected in any of these releases, suggesting they’re mostly aimed at bug fixes, security enhancements, and perhaps a few minor feature tweaks.

The latest non-beta versions of system software are currently iOS 18.4.1, ipadOS 18.4.1, and MacOS Sequoia 15.4.1.

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If you’re a heavy TikTok user, you probably already know that it’s fairly easy to
download videos directly from TikTok to iPhone using the app itself. But you’ve also certainly noticed that any video shared or saved from TikTok has a “TikTok” watermark on the video. If you wish to save a video from TikTok and not have the TikTok watermark shown, you can do that with a handy little free web tool, which lets you download the video minus any intrusive watermark visible.

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Mac OS X Jaguar 10.2 may have been released all the way back in 2002, but thanks to the InfiniteMac project, you can also run Mac OS X Jaguar on your modern Mac right now with just a web browser. Sure you might even have an old dusty Mac laying around in a closet that can run Jaguar, but if you’re just looking to play around with two-decade old operating system, opening a web browser is quite a bit easier, and that’s really all there is to it.

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Amazon is back with some great Apple deals, taking up to $150 off the retail price of brand new M4 MacBook Air series, up to $70 off the new M3 iPad Air, $70 off Apple Watch Series 10, and $70 off the Apple Watch SE 2. If you’re in the market for some new Apple gear, don’t miss these deals!

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Notifications arrive on the Mac as banners appearing in the top right corner of your display, but have you ever wished your could change the location of those notification banners and alerts? Maybe you’d prefer the notification banners to appear in the bottom right corner instead, or the top middle, or the bottom left? With a handy little third party Mac app called PingPlace, you can switch the location of notifications to elsewhere on the Mac screen, and it’s super easy to use.

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The latest iPhone models use a ton of auto-enhancing and software to adjust photos that you shoot with the camera, and much of that auto-editing happens immediately on-device after the camera snaps a photo, some of this is Deep Fusion, and some of it are numerous other features that Apple has incorporated into the iPhone camera software. While the results of iPhone Cameras auto-editing often look great, sometimes they don’t represent what you’re hoping to capture, and it’s not unusual for the iPhone Camera auto-editing photo feature to do things like remove the intensity of a sunset, or take pinks/reds/purples out of a colorful morning sky, or to ridiculously auto-enhance someones skin tone to the point where it looks unnatural or certainly not like the person’s complexion does.

One way to get around the auto photo enhancement and camera auto-editing features on iPhone is to toggle a feature on called “Prioritize Faster Shooting”, which as the name implies will prioritize taking more photos in quick succession in lieu of tons of auto-enhancements. The result is that photos captured on iPhone Camera will look less processed, and may be more representative of what you intended to capture with the lens in the first place.

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Amazon is offering up to $102 off the price of the brand new M4 MacBook Air series in select configurations and color options, in both 13″ and 15″ display sizes. The M4 series MacBook Air features an M4 chip with Apple Intelligence support, a Liquid Retina LCD display, 12MP camera with Center Stage, Touch ID, a backlit keyboard, all-day battery life, support for dual displays, and more. The two configurations we’re focusing on here are the upgraded models with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD storage, in Sky Blue color, with either the 13″ or 15″ display, but the 24GB RAM model is discounted notably as well in select color configurations. If you’re in the market for a new MacBook Air, why pay full retail price when you don’t need to?

• M4 MacBook Air 13″ – Sky Blue – 16GB / 512GB – $1097 (down from $1199)
• M4 MacBook Air 15″ – Sky Blue – 16GB / 512GB – $1307 (down from $1399)

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Have you ever downloaded an app to your Mac and been unable to open it? Typically if this happens you’ll get some kind of alarming message, stating something to the effect of “App Not Opened. Apple could not verify (app name.app) is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy” with two options; Done, or Move to Trash. But what if you trust the app and its developer, and you actually want to open that app anyway? Because of how strict Gatekeeper is in modern MacOS versions, including MacOS Sequoia and macOS Sonoma, you will need to take some additional steps to allow the Mac to open apps downloaded from anywhere.

Because this tweak requires modifying Gatekeeper permissions to be less secure, and using the terminal to do so, this is really only appropriate for advanced Mac users who wish to allow the “Anywhere” option for opening unverified third party apps that have been downloaded from anywhere, including apps that have not been verified by Apple, or produced by developers who did not go through the typical Apple verification process. If you’re a casual Mac user, you likely won’t want to make this change to your MacOS.

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Have you ever wanted to customize the cursor in MacOS? Perhaps you want to use a Windows-style white cursor on your Mac, or a grey 3d looking Linux style cursor, or even cursors from the Wii interface on your Mac? You can do all of that and more with a free app called Mousescape for Mac.

The Mac doesn’t offer a ton of cursor customization by default, though you can can change the Mac cursor to be larger, adjust the color with Accessibility settings, and turn on or off the shake-to-find feature, that’s about it. But that’s where Mousescape comes in, which allows you to use completely custom cursors on your Mac. Mousescape is easy to use, it’s free, and there are a variety of Mousescape cursor packs available to help you customize your experience. Let’s check out this fun little app.

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In what must be the most exciting thing to happen on a Monday since the prior Monday, Apple has released the third beta version of iOS 18.5, MacOS Sequoia 15.5, and iPadOS 18.5. These new thrilling third beta versions are available to the developer wizards participating in the beta testing programs of Apple system software, and other than roughly marking when the next software update is arriving for the average person, the release of a new beta version aren’t particularly relevant to most people who use Apple devices. Doesn’t matter, I’m covering it anyway.

If your excitement just to know there’s a third beta version available wasn’t enough, you just might erupt with joy when you discover that there are no major new features or changes included in these beta versions, suggesting they’re mostly for bug fixes and security patches. Maybe the most revolutionary feature of all time will be included before final release, but don’t plan on that. Maybe Siri will finally know when the full moon is? Probably not.

Aside from the riveting release of iOS 18.5 beta 4, macOS Sequoia 15.5 beta 3, and iPadOS 18.5 beta 3, you’ll even find new beta updates for watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS too, just in case you want to run beta software on those devices.

Beta software is intended for developers working on their apps and compatibility, but anyone, even non-developers, can run the beta releases if they enjoy a more bug-prone system software experience. If you prefer stable final releases, then the most recent builds are MacOS Sequoia 15.4, iOS 18.4, and iPadOS 18.4.

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