iTunes offers a simple way to track down and find duplicate songs in a music library, so if you find yourself hearing the same song every once in a while when listening to iTunes on a Mac or Windows, or after copying music to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, then it’s quite possible duplicate tracks are to blame.

It’s fairly easy for music libraries to contain duplicate songs and tracks, particularly as you build a collection over time. If you’re ripping CDs and importing music into iTunes, downloading songs from SoundCloud and the web, buying albums and songs from multiple sources like iTunes, Amazon, and elsewhere, it’s fairly easy to eventually end up with duplicate versions of the same song.

While iTunes has long has the capability of finding duplicate songs, the feature has been moved in modern versions of iTunes from version 12.0 and later, which has led many users to believe that you can’t find duplicate tracks with the app anymore. But that’s not the case, it has just been relocated.

Read more »

Rarely, owners of an iPhone X may discover their screen is unresponsive seemingly at random, where swipes and taps on the screen are either not registered at all, or they have a severe lag and there’s a notable delay before the touch interaction completes. Swipes and gestures suddenly have a huge lag, and taps on the screen either take moments to do anything, or are ignored entirely.

Sometimes, the iPhone X screen freezes completely, becoming entirely unresponsive to any engagement with the device at all.

These are rare issues but when and if they do happen to a user, it’s understandably annoying. Fortunately there’s a simple solution available, so if you discover that your iPhone X is randomly unresponsive and the screen does not appear to be working, you can fix the problem fairly quickly.

Read more »

Do you have some audio CDs laying around that you’d like to digitize and convert to mp3? Ripping a CD and turning the audio into MP3 or M4A tracks is remarkably simple with iTunes or Music app, and the process is he same on both a Mac and Windows PC.

Read more »

Using file tags can help to arrange, organize, and prioritize documents, files, and data. Now that iOS has a dedicated Files app for the iPhone and iPad, you might find it helpful to know that you can tag any items, files, documents, images, or anything else stored within the Files app of iOS, much like you can tag files in the Mac Finder. And perhaps best of all, if the tagged files are stored in iCloud Drive, they will sync to other iOS devices and Macs as well, with that same tag.

Tagging files in iOS is a simple process, but it’s easily overlooked. This tutorial will show you how to tag a single file, how to tag multiple files, and how to view tagged files in the iOS Files app.

Read more »

If you use the Calendar app on Mac and iOS, your calendar events will seamlessly sync between all Apple devices using the same Apple ID. While the iPhone and iPad have easy ways to display a Calendar in List View from iOS, the Mac doesn’t have the same simple toggle functionality to see a list of all events in the Calendar app. However, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible…

You can show a list of all scheduled Calendar events on the Mac with a little-known trick. While it’s certainly not obvious, it gets the job done and allows you to display a list of calendar events in Mac OS quickly.

Read more »

By default, if you sort a directory by name in the Mac OS Finder, you will find that both files and folders are arranged alongside one another based upon an alphabetical sorting of their names. This is great for many users, but if you have a large folder with many subfolders and files, it can make locating folders and differentiating between files and folders a little more challenging. A great solution to this is to use a little-known Finder feature that keeps folders on top of a name sorted directory list.

Maintaining folders at the top of a directory is a commonly used feature in the Windows PC world, but it’s just as useful on the Mac. Once you have enabled the setting, folders will appear first in any directory sorted by name, regardless of how that folder is viewed; list, icon, column, or cover flow.

Read more »

Macs no longer have internal DVD and CD-RW drives, but for Mac users who still need to use optical discs the Apple SuperDrive offers an external all-in-one USB solution that can read and write both CD and DVD discs, all you have to do is plug it into a USB port on the Mac and Mac OS will detect the SuperDrive. But that’s Mac OS, not Windows, and many Mac users also use Windows PC or Windows operating systems, so wouldn’t it be nice to use that Apple SuperDrive in Windows too?

But SuperDrive does not always work with Windows PC right away however, and sometimes the Apple SuperDrive either doesn’t function as expected, won’t accept a disc, or is not properly recognized in Windows, whether running natively on PC, or a Mac through Boot Camp, or a virtual machine either.

Whatever the scenario, if you’re trying to use an Apple SuperDrive with Windows and it’s not working as expected, try the steps below to get the SuperDrive functioning in Windows.

Read more »

As you likely know by now, Control Center is the customizable action screen on iOS that allows you to quickly adjust brightness, volume, wi-fi, bluetooth, music, AirDrop, access a flash light, Do Not Disturb mode, and much more. But if you have an iPhone X, than accessing Control Center will be different than what gesture you have long become accustomed to with other iPhone and iPads.

Read more »

If you’ve been using and creating Animoji on iPhone and sharing them with other people, you may have noticed that Animoji are saved and shared as video files in the .mov file format. But Animated GIF files are exceptionally popular, as they loop endlessly on any device or operating system they are received on, and plus animated GIF files can be easily posted and shared on the web and other social services. Thus you might be interested in converting Animoji into GIF format, which you can do directly on iPhone.

We’re going to focus on using a free iOS app called Shortcuts (Workflow) to convert the Animoji into GIF, because once the initial setup is complete it becomes quite easy to re-use.

Read more »

iPhone and iPad users can now customize Control Center to better suit their needs. For example, if you frequently use Voice Memos, Notes app, Stopwatch, Magnifier, or the Alarm feature, you can add those to Control Center for ultra-fast access from anywhere in iOS. Or if you never use the Flashlight feature or Camera via Control Center, you could remove those from Control Center too.

Customizing Control Center is a great way to personalize the quick-access controls which are available from anywhere in iOS, here’s how it works.

Read more »

Have you ever wanted to setup an auto-responder eMail message in the Mac Mail app? Autoresponders allow you to set an “out of office” auto-reply that gets sent automatically as a reply to any inbound email to the Mac Mail app. This is great solution for situations where you’re out of the office, away from a desk, or otherwise away from email for a while, whether it’s a vacation or maybe you just hate replying to emails. Whatever the reason, all inbound emails will get an automated response with the message of your choice.

Read more »

Apple has released the third beta version of iOS 11.3, macOS 10.13.4, and tvOS 11.3, to users engaged in the operating system beta testing programs.

Read more »

Apple has released iOS 11.2.6 for iPhone and iPad. The software update is intended to fix a bug that causes a specific Telugu character from crashing an iOS device. Additionally, the small system software update patches a bug where some third party apps are not connecting to external accessories.

Separately, Apple has also released macOS 10.13.3 High Sierra Supplemental Update, tvOS 11.2.6, and watchOS 4.2.4, with each of those updates also patching the same corresponding bug.

Read more »

Apple has released a Supplemental Update for macOS High Sierra 10.13.3.

The small system software update includes a patch aimed at addressing an unusual bug that could potentially cause a Mac app to unexpectedly crash when receiving a particular Telugu character.

Additionally, Apple has released iOS 11.2.6 along with updates to watchOS and tvOS to address the same bug for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

Read more »

The built-in iPhone speaker is fairly loud as is, but if you want your iPhone speaker to sound even louder than you’ll likely enjoy this tip.

By adjusting iOS Music equalizer settings, you can boost the sound output volume of music playing from the iPhone (or iPad and iPod touch) speakers, giving the impression of louder music.

Read more »

Safari for Mac can quickly give you stock price quotes for any ticker symbol right from the address bar, offering yet another way to keep track of equities for those who like to follow the day-to-day ride of the stock market.

Of course you can just google or web-search for a ticker symbol too, but a Safari feature called Safari Suggestions offers an ultrafast way of getting the price of a stock without having to search the web, all you need is the ticker symbol.

This is a super simple trick, here’s how it works:

Read more »

The Chrome web browser now allows you to mute any website completely. This is great if you often visit a website that frequently has auto-playing videos or auto-play audio that you’re constantly having to mute, or find and pause – a fairly common situation with many news and sports websites – since you can mute the entire site once, and you’ll then never hear another sound from that website again for as long as the mute is active.

Read more »

The iOS Files app and iCloud Drive offer a file system of sorts for the iPhone and iPad. One frequently used capability of file systems is the ability to rename files and folders as necessary, and as you might expect, the Files app for iOS offers this functionality too.

Read more »