Want to read some classic literature? Or rather, would you like to hear some classic literature read to you? Apple has released a free set of audiobooks for classic novels, including Pride and Prejudice, The Time Machine, Frankenstein, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Secret Garden, and Winnie the Pooh.

Each of the audiobooks is narrated by a celebrity, and is available for free as a download from the Apple Books app for iPhone or iPad, or the iTunes app on Mac or Windows. If you choose to download the audiobooks to a mobile device like an iPhone or iPad, then they could make for some great road trip listening as you venture out for the holidays or a weekend adventure.

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Formatting an SD card from a Mac is simple and quick thanks to the Disk Utility application. This is a commonly required task before an SD card or Micro SD card can be used as a storage medium for another electronic device, or even to remove any data stored on the SD card.

This tutorial will show you how to format an SD card or Micro SD card in MacOS with the Disk Utility app.

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Rather than updating apps individually, Mac users can wield a convenient feature of the App Store that initiates a bulk software update to every app installed from the Mac App Store, all with a single click. This makes the process of installing available software updates for Mac apps a bit easier and quicker, since there’s only a single action you’ll need to perform to start the batch update to apps.

This article will detail how to update all Mac apps from the Mac App Store.

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Want to make your own custom Memoji on an iPhone? Of course you do! Memoji are the custom version of Animoji, the quirky cartoony digital avatars available in the Messages app for new iPhones.

The fun thing about Memoji is that you can create a completely customized Memoji that can look like almost any character you set your mind to, with custom hair styles, skin, eye wear, head wear, eyes, lips, brows, nose, and many smaller customizations for each defining trait. You can make a little cartoon avatar of yourself, or of a character, or just create a completely unique avatar. After you make a Memoji, then using Memoji is the same as using Animoji, but first you have to create one to use.

This tutorial will show you the process of setting up and making your own unique Memoji on an iPhone.

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Apple has released a new beta for iOS 12.1.3 and macOS Mojave 10.14.3, along with a second beta for tvOS 12.1.2. The new beta versions are available for developer testing initially, and are typically soon followed by public beta releases.

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You can easily delete Screen Time limits that have been set for apps or app categories on an iPhone or iPad, allowing unlimited time usage of the app or app category again, or to re-define a more specific Screen Time limit.

For the unfamiliar, Screen Time is a feature of iOS that allows for setting time limits on app usage, either for individual apps or even for entire categories of apps. It’s incredibly useful for iPhone and iPad usage, whether you simply want to reduce your own usage of a particular app or type of app, or perhaps especially for parents and childcare providers who want to limit device time.

This guide will show you how to delete a time limit that has been set on an app, or entire app category, through Screen Time in iOS. This works the same to remove Screen Time limits whether they’re set on an iPhone or iPad.

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Apple has released iOS 12.1.2 to resolve several issues with some newer iPhone models. Specifically, iOS 12.1.2 resolves issues with eSIM activation on iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max, and also resolves some cellular connectivity issues with those same model iPhones in certain geographic regions. It’s possible that iOS 12.1.2 also includes other bug fixes or changes that are not specifically mentioned in the release notes.

Update for 12/20/2018: Apple released an updated build of iOS 12.1.2 for iPhone, the new build is 16C104.

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The Mac has many visual animations that draw on screen as you perform various actions throughout the operating system, whether it’s the zooming in and out of opening Mission Control, or sliding between desktops in Spaces, amongst others. These provide for some enjoyable visual eye candy, but some users may find the animations cause motion sickness, or serve as unnecessary glitz.

If you want to disable animations in Mac OS, you can toggle a setting called Reduce Motion that greatly diminishes the interface animations on the Mac.

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Want to enable a word counter in Pages on iPad or iPhone? The Pages app for iOS includes an optional word count service that will constantly update as you type and edit any document within the Pages app for iOS. Curiously, enabling the word counter on Pages for iOS is different on iPad and iPhone, but this article will show you how to enable the feature in either version.

While this may not be useful to all Pages users, many writers, authors, editors, and students rely on word counters for various reasons, and a word counter can help to easily determine the length of a document, manuscript, newsletter, or any other file that may be worked on in the word processor app.

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The Mac App Store defaults to auto-playing videos, but if you’re not a fan of autoplaying video let alone in the Mac App Store, you can disable that capability.

When you turn off video autoplay in the Mac App Store, the videos accompanying apps will still exist, but they must be played manually.

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You can add a second person to Face ID for authentication on an iPhone or iPad. Alternatively, you can use this same feature to add your own face again but with a vastly different appearance. For example, maybe you want to add your spouses face to Face ID so they can unlock your iPhone or iPad too, or maybe you alternate between your regular appearance as a perfectly coiffed supermodel woman and dressing up as a disheveled Santa Claus. Whatever the case, you can add a second face or alternate appearance to Face ID authentication in iOS.

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Want to cut back on social networking use? Or perhaps you want to reduce time spent with social media on a family iOS device? The iPhone and iPad new Screen Time feature can make that easier than ever before, by allowing you to put a time limit on social networking usage to a chosen time limit per day.

For example, perhaps you want to set a 15 minute daily time limit for social networking usage so that you or someone else don’t waste an hour a day mindlessly browsing through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or anything similar. That’s exactly the kind of limitation you can put into place on social media use with the Screen Time feature in iOS.

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Do you feel like battery life has worsened since updating a Mac laptop to MacOS Mojave? Some Mac users have discovered their battery life has reduced after updating a MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air to MacOS Mojave 10.14.x, or just that battery life seems to drain faster than expected.

Here we will discuss a few possible reasons for reductions in battery life, as well as offer some helpful tips to improve battery life on Mac laptops running MacOS Mojave.

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Have you ever wished you had a Linux command line on an iPad or iPhone? With iSH you can get pretty close to accomplishing that goal. iSH Shell is a Linux shell for iOS that uses an x86 emulator to run a simplified version of Alpine Linux on an iPad or iPhone. You can even install packages and additional software directly into iSH with the Alpine package manager, offering access to the world of command line tools like wget, curl, python, git, and much more.

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If you’re a Safari web browser user, and you also use the popular Dark Mode appearance theme on Mac OS, then you may have noticed that it’s a bit more challenging to determine if a Safari browser window is in private browsing mode or not.

It turns out there is still a visual cue to indicate that Safari is in Private Browsing mode, it’s just a much more subtle visual cue when Dark Mode is enabled on the Mac.

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Apple has released the first beta versions of iOS 12.1.2 and macOS 10.14.3 for users participating in the system software beta testing programs. The initial beta builds are currently available to those in the registered developer beta testing programs, but typically the public beta rolls out soon after.

Additionally, Apple has rolled out the first beta builds of watchOS 5.1.3 beta 1 and tvOS 12.1.2 beta 1.

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TextEdit, the default text editor bundled with MacOS, now supports a dark mode theme, which basically inverts the color display of the text editor so that white text appears on a dark background, rather than the default black text on white background. This makes working in TextEdit at night or in low light conditions a bit easier on the eyes, just like the system-wide Dark Mode MacOS feature in general does.

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Looking for some great gift ideas for this holiday season? We’ve got a collection of tech gadgets and accessories that are sure to be of interest to the geekier folks on your shopping list, perhaps yourself included.

Browse through the list below and see if something catches your fancy. Sure you could always splurge on a snazzy MacBook Pro or anything else at the Apple store at Amazon too…

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