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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Google is offering their Gemini Advanced AI model for free to students, along with 2TB of free storage. This is a limited time offer where students must sign up by June 30, 2025.

Students will need a valid .edu email address to be able to signup for the deal.

Google says you can use Gemini Advanced for help with your writing, homework, exam preparation, creation of videos, and more. Students will also get 2TB of free storage for using with Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos.

According to Google, the free access for an additional year, you’ll have to re-verify your student status, presumably with the .edu email address, before the next school year starts.

• Head over to Gemini.google Students to get access

How long Google will offer the free Gemini Advanced AI access for students is unclear, but if you’re a student and want access to Gemini Advanced, this is worth checking out.

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Amazon is back with some fantastic deals right now, including taking $100 off the price of the Apple Watch Series 10 bringing the price down to $299 from $399. Plus, there’s $200 off the iPad Pro M4 13″ models and $100 off the 11″ model, a discount on the new iPad Air M3 models, a great discount on AirPods 2 with hearing aid features, and more.

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Auto-clickers are sort of niche software, typically associated with repetitive tasks with data entry, gaming, or software testing, but have gained some broader popularity with many people working from home. If you need an auto clicker for Mac, there are a variety of free autoclicker options built for MacOS, and we’ll point you to a few of those options here.

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Apple has released iOS 18.4.1 update for iPhone, along with iPadOS 18.4.1 for iPad. The software updates include a few bug fixes and important security patches, making them recommended to update.

Additionally, iOS 18.4.1 includes a bug fix for a particular issue with CarPlay not connecting properly in some situations. If you have been experiencing problems with CarPlay and your iPhone, this update just may resolve that issue.

Separately, you’ll find MacOS Sequoia 15.4.1 update available for Mac, along with updates to watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS.

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Apple has released MacOS Sequoia 15.4.1 as a software update for Mac users running the Sequoia operating system. The update focuses exclusively on security updates and bug fixes, and contains no new features.

Separately, Apple also released iOS 18.4.1 for iPhone, iPadOS 18.4.1 for iPad, and updates to tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS, and those updates also focus on bug resolutions and security fixes.

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The latest versions of Safari for Mac have changed how a person might find SSL certificate information for a particular website, something that is commonly needed in web development, information security, and developmental web work in general. While in prior versions of Safari you could simply click on the little padlock icon next to the domain name in the address bar, Apple seems to have removed that padlock icon, thereby removing that as an easy way to get SSL certificate details for any domain.

If you work in web development, information security, web work, hosting, IT, tech support, devops, systems administration, or any number of other technical fields that rely on functioning SSL certificates and verifying them, you might want to know how to find and view the full SSL certificate information details in modern versions of Safari for Mac, and that’s what we’ll show you here.

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Amazon is offering some fantastic deals on various Apple products, including the AirPods Pro 2 with Hearing Aid Functionality, Apple Watch Series 10, and the M4 series of MacBook Pro models.

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If you’re the type of person who likes to maintain Inbox Zero, or who recently went and tidied up their Gmail inbox to get every email marked as read, you may come across a frustrating situation where Gmail shows 1 unread message, and you simply can’t locate that unread email message in Gmail.

If you find yourself experiencing this, read along and we’ll how you how to find that unread email message in Gmail, whether in the Gmail app or Gmail website, so that you can read it or mark it as read, and get back to a 0 inbox.

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New betas are available as iOS 18.5 beta 2, MacOS Sequoia 15.5 beta 2, and iPadOS 18.5 beta 2, for users who are participating in the beta testing programs for Apple system software.

No notable new features or major changes are expected in these beta versions, at least thus far, suggesting they’re likely focused on smaller enhancements, bug fixes, security patches, and maybe some additional refinements or improvements to Apple Intelligence since that has been a focus of Apple with iOS 18 and MacOS Sequoia. There are also new beta versions of watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS available for users testing those.

The most recently available stable builds of system software are MacOS Sequoia 15.4, iOS 18.4, and iPadOS 18.4.

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If you follow AI news, or even tech news, you might have heard of DeepSeek by now, the powerful Chinese Large Language Model that has capabilities rivaling ChatGPT while having dramatically lower training costs. DeepSeek is designed for advanced reasoning, with general purpose natural language and ChatBot abilities, task competency, research, while also being excellent for coding, code generation, and logic, making it a powerful AI tool in general, and potentially for your workflow. While you can run DeepSeek anywhere through the web, and you can also download and run DeepSeek through an app on your iPhone or iPad using the DeepSeek Cloud, another option is available for Mac users; running DeepSeek LLM locally on your Mac.

DeepSeek being run locally can be useful for many Mac users, whether you’re a developer, researcher, or someone simply curious about exploring AI and LLM utilities. One of the most significant benefits of using and running DeepSeek locally is that it’s offline, giving you the benefits of the DeepSeek LLM without relying on cloud services (that are linked to China, whatever you make of that), and offering more privacy and potential freedom to customize and fine-tune the model for your particular use cases.

You must have an Apple Silicon Mac to be able to run DeepSeek locally. In this case we’re going to use a free tool for Mac called LM Studio to be able to quickly setup and use DeepSeek on a Mac. While all of this sounds complicated, and AI and LLM tech can be overwhelming to newcomers, this setup process is really quite easy, as we will walk you through it.

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Apple has been busy mucking with the design and functionality of the Mail app, this time bringing Mail Sender Icons to the Mac Mail app. With this new introduction to clutter the Mail interface, you’ll see a Contact Photo or mail sender icon next to the mail sender name, subject, and preview of the mail content. Whether or not you enjoy the Contact Photos in Mail app may depend on who and what you get emails from most often, and while some users may enjoy the mail sender icons others may not like them at all. If you’re in the latter camp, you will be thrilled to discover that you can disable the Contact Photos from appearing as mail sender icons in Mail app for Mac.

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Amazon is back with some nice deals on select Apple products, including a big discount on Apple Watch SE 2, and some nice discounts on brand new M3 iPad Air, M4 MacBook Pro models, AirPods Pro with hearing aid functionality, and more.

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One of the more interesting features to arrive on iPhone lately is the Ambient Music player, which, as the name implies, plays ambient music. This neat audio feature was introduced with iOS 18.4, and the Ambient Music Player offers four different ambient music types to play; Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Wellbeing.

While the Ambient Music Player is free to use, and it seems to be related to Apple Music, it’s unique in that it doesn’t play through the Music app, nor is there a dedicated Ambient Music app to play through either. Instead, the Ambient Music Player on iPhone is mysteriously hidden as an optional part of Control Center, so it’s very easy to overlook or not even notice. Nonetheless, if you like subtle beats and music playing while you work, focus, or rest, you might appreciate and enjoy this feature, and you’ll want to take a moment to see how it works.

Read along and we’ll show you how to add the Ambient Music players to your iPhone Control Center for quick and easy access.
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Perhaps you recently saw that Apple had released the iPhone 16e and drooled with envy at the iPhone 16e default wallpaper, which sort of looks like a drop of Liquid Metal (why did macOS Sequoia autocorrect capitalize “Liquid Metal”? Who knows, but it did it again, so let’s go with it) or maybe a water droplet suspended in air.

But you don’t need to spend $600 on a new entry-level iPhone just to get a new wallpaper, you can download the full resolution version right now and throw it on your current iPhone, an Android, iPad, Mac, or Windows PC.

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The Mail app for iPad has been updated to include the Mail Categories feature with iPadOS 18.4. The Mail Categories feature is intended to automatically sort your email inbox within the Mail app into particular email categories, including “Primary”, “Transactions”, “Updates”, and “Promotions”, along with a mostly hidden “All Mail” option.

While the intention may be to clean up and sort the email inbox for users, in practice many users find that the Mail Categories are prioritizing ancient useless emails (like months old DoorDash promotions) and hiding useful recent emails from real people (like emails from family, friends, colleagues). Additionally, the Mail Categories feature places additional layers of interaction between your email inbox within Mail app and being able to actually see all of your emails. For these reasons, amongst others, some users may wish to disable the Mail Categories feature on iPad (You can also disable Mail Categories on Mac Mail app and turn off the feature on iPhone Mail too).

If you want to return the Mail app on iPad back to it’s easy classic interface and disable the Mail Categories feature, we’ll walk you through how to do it, because the setting for this is not in the Settings app.

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