Apple has released iOS 12.2 for iPhone and iPad. The latest iOS update includes a handful of new features, bug fixes, and security enhancements, and is therefore recommended for iPhone and iPad users to install on their devices.

iOS 12.2 features new Animoji character icons for compatible iOS devices, support for a new Apple News Plus paid subscription service, and resolutions to various bugs and issues. The full release notes accompanying the iOS 12.2 download are further below for those interested.

Separately, Apple has updated other system software as well with a simultaneous release of tvOS 12.2 for Apple TV, MacOS Mojave 10.14.4 update for Mac along with Security Update 2019-002 for High Sierra and Sierra, and an update to watchOS for Apple Watch.

Read more »

If you open iTunes and expect to access your local music library collection, you might be perplexed when you find that a music library is not immediately visible. Instead, launching modern versions of iTunes goes directly to the iTunes Store. Some iTunes users then attempt to access their iTunes music library by selecting the ‘Music’ dropdown menu but still are unable to find their local music library. Not to worry, if you can’t find your local music collection in iTunes, we’ll show you how to quickly access the local music library in iTunes on the Mac or Windows PC.

Read more »

Wondering what the battery level of AirPods? There are a few easy ways to check the remaining battery life of AirPods, and we’ll show you a few ways for how to quickly determine how much battery life you have left on AirPods that are synced with an iOS device.

Read more »

Using Screen Time in iOS allows for time limits to be set on app usage on an iPhone or iPad, even allowing for time limits on entire app categories like social networking. Setting up Screen Time requires a passcode to be set to access the Screen Time settings, and there are certainly times where an iPhone or iPad user may need to change the Screen Time password in iOS. Maybe someone sneakily watched you enter the passcode and is now entering it themselves to override an app limit, or maybe you’re simply changing your passcode used in general. Whatever the reason, changing the Screen Time password in iOS is easy.

Read more »

Want to format your emails for some extra style and pizazz on the Mac? If you want to change the style and format of emails in Mail for Mac to customize the appearance of any email composition, forward, or reply, you’ll find there’s an optional and handy email formatting toolbar that can be made visible and used at any time in Mail on the Mac.

The Mail Format bar will give you controls to change and set email font family, font size, font colors, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, align left, align center, align right, insert bulleted and numbered lists, indent and outdent, and more.

Read more »

AirPods are the incredibly convenient wireless headphones available from Apple that setup easily with an iPhone or iPad, but many AirPods users will likely want to use their AirPods with a Mac too.

Setting up AirPods to work with a Mac is usually very simple, made especially easy if the AirPods are already configured to work with an iPhone, but you can manually connect the two if need be as well. We’ll show you how to easily setup and use AirPods with a Mac.

Read more »

Apple has released an updated version of their AirPods wireless headphones today.

The new AirPods include performance improvements for faster connect times and longer talk time. Additionally, the new AirPods support “Hey Siri” for hands-free voice initiated interaction with Siri.

Read more »

Finished with a virtual machine and you want to delete it from VirtualBox? Maybe you setup a VM you no longer need, or cloned an OS VM and want to remove it, or perhaps you’re simply aiming to free up disk space by removing virtual machines from VirtualBox, whatever the reason it’s a simple process to delete a virtual machine from VirtualBox.

The instructions we’ll cover here work for completely removing an OS and deleting the associated virtual machine from within VirtualBox on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux. We’ll also show you how to delete a virtual machine from VirtualBox by using the command line.

Read more »

Apple has released updates to the iMac lineup, offering notable speed improvements to the desktop computer.

Read more »

Apple has released two new hardware updates to the iPad lineup; a new iPad Air 10.5″ model, and an updated iPad mini 7.9″ model.

The new iPad models will be appealing to many users for differing reasons, as the iPad Air 10.5″ is a step closer to an iPad Pro in many ways, while the iPad mini 7.9″ is the smallest and most portable iPad.

Read more »

Apple has released the sixth beta version of MacOS Mojave 10.14.4 and iOS 12.2 for users engaged in the beta testing programs for Apple system software. Both developer beta and public beta builds are available.

Read more »

Spotify defaults to automatically adjusting music quality when streaming songs. That default music quality setting is recommended for most Spotify users, but some audiophiles may like to manually adjust the streaming music quality in Spotify to be either lower or higher as desired. As you’ll see it’s fairly easy to make changes to Spotify music quality on iPhone, iPad, or Android.

Read more »

Some CarPlay users may prefer to use Google Maps on CarPlay, instead of Apple Maps. Using Google Maps on CarPlay is simple, and you can easily replace the maps icon on a CarPlay unit with Google Maps (or even Waze) if desired. We’ll show you how to add Google Maps to CarPlay and also how to replace Apple Maps with Google Maps if it’s your preferred mapping, navigation, and directions tool.

Read more »

iPhone and iPad users relying on Screen Time can choose to turn off the Screen Time passcode on an iOS device. This makes it so that you or anyone else can override Screen Time restrictions without having to enter a passcode on the device.

Note turning off the Screen Time password is completely different from disabling Screen Time on iPhone or iPad entirely. Turning off the password simply allows interaction with Screen Time without a passcode being entered, whereas disabling Screen Time turns off the feature completely.

Read more »

Want to change the name of your AirPods? You can quickly change AirPods name from the Settings app of the synced iPhone or iPad.

Read more »

Apple has announced that their annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) will take place starting on June 3 and extend through June 7. The developer conference is to be held in San Jose, California, and tickets for attending developers will cost $1599.

While WWDC is aimed almost entirely at developers, it also traditionally offers the first look at upcoming operating systems and software efforts from Apple. Thus it’s widely expected that the next major versions of system software for Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV are set to be announced and debuted on June 3. Assuming Apple follows the same versioning system as prior years, this suggests that June 3 will see the first public unveiling of iOS 13, MacOS 10.15, WatchOS 6, and tvOS 13.

Read more »

Have you ever been typing on a Mac laptop keyboard and noticed that hitting the spacebar sometimes randomly inserts double spaces between words? Or maybe you’re typing some other letter and randomly two of that key is doubled-typed? Some MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and MacBook users have discovered this happens seemingly at random, where hitting a key or the spacebar actually inserts two spaces or two characters instead of one, which is a nuisance at best and problematic at worst.

Mystery double key presses are a well-documented issue with some MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and MacBook computers, and while it’s not clear what causes the issue or how widespread the problem is, if you’re encountering the double typing issue yourself, you may find a settings change in Mac OS can help reduce the frequency, or even fix it entirely. We’ll also cover a few other possible troubleshooting options for addressing double typing issues on Mac laptops.

Read more »

As you may have noticed, a prominent microphone button is visible on the iOS keyboard for iPhone and iPad, which when tapped will use voice-to-text to dictate spoken text to the iOS device in lieu of typing. Some users may never use the microphone button, while others may accidentally tap on the mic button, in which case it can be desirable to remove the microphone button from the keyboard on iPhone and iPad completely.

Read more »