Need to create a new Apple ID? You can easily do so from anywhere using a variety of methods, which we’ll discuss below. Most people will likely have created an Apple ID at some point during the setup of an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or using iTunes, but if you haven’t done that, or if you need to create a new Apple ID for some other reason, that’s easily achieved.

An Apple ID is necessary to use just about any Apple service feature, including iCloud, iTunes, App Store, Music, and much more. It’s also what you’ll use to sync data to and from your Apple devices, and what stored iCloud data like contacts and messages are linked to. Accordingly, an Apple ID is really important if you want to participate in the Apple ecosystem, whether used on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or even Windows with iTunes.

Read more »

Did you sign up for Apple News+ as a paid service or trail and want to cancel the subscription? You can easily stop the Apple News Plus monthly $9.99 subscription fee if you are no longer interested in using the Apple News Plus service.

For the unfamiliar, Apple News Plus is a paid subscription service from Apple that charges $9.99/month for access to hundreds of magazines and newspapers through the “News” app on iPad, iPhone, and Mac. The Apple News Plus paid service is in addition to the freely available magazines and papers available through the Apple News app, and is being heavily promoted within the News app with a free trial period.

Read more »

Have a Numbers file that you need to convert to an Excel document? Numbers spreadsheets and files can be easily converted to Excel files, with the resulting Excel file being either a .xls or .xlsx format that is compatible with Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet applications.

This tutorial will show you how to quickly convert a Numbers spreadsheet file to an Excel file on a Mac by using the Numbers app, which is free and comes with every Mac.

Read more »

Apple News sends notifications to the Mac by default, splashing a steady stream of “news” alerts across the desktop, onto the locked screen, and into Notification Center of MacOS. If you don’t want to see these frequent Apple News notifications on the Mac, you can disable them completely for the News app.

Read more »

If you want your iPhone or iPad to be silent for a while and not beep, buzz, chime, and pester you with notifications and alerts, then Do Not Disturb mode is for you. Do Not Disturb is an excellent feature which places the iPhone or iPad into basically a silent mode, where all inbound calls, messages, alerts, notifications, and other activity is temporarily silenced and prevented from reaching the screen. Critically, the iPhone or iPad will still get messages, phone calls, email, and notifications, they just won’t make any appearance on the device while Do Not Disturb mode is enabled.

You can place an iPhone or iPad into Do Not Disturb mode manually and quickly at any time, and likewise you can easily toggle the feature off at any time too. If you’re unfamiliar with the excellent do Not Disturb feature of iOS, read on to learn how to use it.

Read more »

Apple has released the third beta versions of iOS 12.3 and macOS Mojave 10.14.5 for users enrolled in the beta testing programs.

Separately, new beta version of tvOS 12.3 and watchOS 5.2.1 are also available for beta testers.

Read more »

Want to change the tracking speed of the cursor on a Mac? Maybe you want your mouse to move around on the screen faster? Perhaps you want the Mac trackpad to move the cursor slower?

You can manually change the tracking speed of either a mouse or trackpad connected to a Mac, and you can even have different tracking speeds for a mouse as you do for a trackpad, a handy trick for users who have both input methods in use on their Mac.

Read more »

Have you ever looked in the iPhone Storage section of your iOS Settings and discovered that the Photos section shows that it’s taking up storage space, but you don’t have any Photos in the Photos app?

If you have deleted the photos from your iPhone but the iPhone Storage section shows that Photos are still on the device, there’s probably a good reason for that, and it’s not a bug. Read on to learn more about what causes this problem, and how to fix this issue so that storage is not taken up by photos that were deleted.

Read more »

You can run the very first version of Microsoft Windows 1.0 with almost no effort, and right in your web browser! If you’re feeling like experiencing what the Windows PC world was like in 1985, then you’re in for a real retro treat.

Read more »

If you’re using a Mac with Hey Siri voice activation enabled but you’d like to turn the voice listening feature off, you’ll find that it’s easy to selectively turn off Hey Siri while still leaving the usual Siri invocation methods enabled in MacOS.

Read more »

If you’re an iPad owner who uses Google Chrome web browser with an external keyboard connected to the iPad (Bluetooth or otherwise), you might appreciate learning a variety of handy keyboard shortcuts to help using Chrome and navigating within the app for iPad.

This collection of keyboard shortcuts for Chrome on iPad works with basically any iPad, iPad Pro, iPad Air, or iPad Mini, and with basically any keyboard connected to the iPad, whether it’s an Apple Smart Keyboard, Bluetooth keyboard, or a keyboard case.

Read more »

Want to make the fonts and text on your iPhone or iPad a bit easier to read? Then you might want to try out the Bold Text option available in iOS, which might improve text legibility for some users. Also, some people might simply prefer the way the bolder text looks throughout apps, and want to try it out for that reason alone.

Whether you just like the look of bolder text, or if you find the screen text on an iPhone or iPad to be difficult to read or the fonts to be a bit thin, enabling the bold fonts setting in iOS can make a big difference for some users ability to read text on screen. As the name implies, Bold Text quite literally bolds most of the onscreen text in iOS found in apps and throughout iOS itself, sort of like you would bold text yourself in a word processor app except that it applies everywhere, making the fonts and text far more legible for many users, particularly those who are not a fan of the default font weight and size.

The bold text option is available for both iPhone and iPad and is quite easy to enable, here’s how you can use it.

Read more »

Mac users who have switched from the Windows platform may be accustomed to hitting the F5 function key to refresh a web browser, web site, or webpage. The F5 key is used as refresh or reload in most Windows web browsers, so when Windows users switch to Mac they might be wondering what the equivalent refresh button is on the Mac, since hitting F5 on the Mac either usually adjusts keyboard backlighting or does nothing at all.

We’ll cover the F5 key equivalent on the Mac for most web browsers that you’ll encounter, so if you’re a recent Windows switcher you should find this guide particularly helpful.

Read more »

Want to know what the air quality index is at a particular destination? The Apple Maps app on iPhone and iPad can give you this information.

Those who are concerned about air quality will find it useful to know that the Maps app on iPhone and iPad has an optional feature that allows you to see the Air Quality Index (AQI) and accompanying color code directly in the Maps app, but first you must enable the feature, and have a compatible version of iOS system software on the device. This is obviously helpful for planning trips and maps routes for groups who impacted by air quality, and offers another way to see air quality information on an iOS device.

Read more »

Have you ever noticed that dedicated iPad keyboards do not have an Escape key? If so, you might be wondering how to type the Escape key on an iPad keyboard. iPads using an external keyboard, whether it’s an external Bluetooth keyboard, a Smart Keyboard, a brand like Brydge, Zagg, Logitech, or any other dedicated iPad keyboard, will often find there is no Escape ESC key at all. Sometimes there’s either nothing at all, like on iPad Pro Smart Keyboards, or on some iPad keyboards you might find a square button that when pressed will take you to the iPad Home Screen.

So, how do you type the Escape key on an iPad, iPad Air, or iPad Pro keyboard then? Despite often not having an ESC key, you can type it on most iPad keyboards, and we’ll show you several different ways that you can type Escape on iPad using a variety of options.

Read more »

Have you ever wished your Mac would update MacOS system software on its own? If you’d like to take a hands-off approach to updating your system, you can enable automatic MacOS system software updates. With this feature enabled, not only will your Mac automatically check for new system software updates, but it will download and then automatically install the macOS updates too.

Read more »

Have you ever been reading an article in Safari on an iPhone and wished you could be reading the same article on your larger screened iPad instead? Rather than email or message yourself the article link, this is a perfect situation to use the wonderful Handoff feature for. Handoff allows you to quite literally hand an app session from one device to another, and Handoff works with MacOS and iOS devices. For our purposes here, we’ll be showing you how to use Handoff to pass a webpage from Safari on an iPhone to an iPad, but it works the exact same going the other direction too.

Read more »

Need to delete a virtual machine from Parallels or Parallels Desktop Lite? Removing a virtual machine can be necessary when you’re finished using a particular environment, operating system, or VM for any reason, and it’s also common to remove unneeded virtual machines to free up disk space.

Here’s how you can easily delete a virtual machine in Parallels and remove it from the Mac (or Windows PC).
Read more »