Mac users have long been able to use various tricks to lock the screen of their computers, but with macOS Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave (and anything from High Sierra 10.13.x onward), a simpler and faster option is now available on the Mac with an official Lock Screen feature.

With the new Lock Screen feature, you can instantly lock down a Mac through a system-wide menu option, or with a keyboard shortcut. Once Lock Screen has been enabled, a proper user login and password must be entered before the Mac can be accessed again. This is an excellent privacy and security feature, and one that Mac users should familiarize themselves with if they frequently use their computers in a public setting, be it at work, school, home, or anywhere else they may want to password protect their computer to prevent unwanted access.

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Apple has released the second beta build of macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 to Mac users participating in the beta testing program.

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Need to quickly compare two files for differences? The command line ‘diff’ tool offers a great choice for users comfortable with the Terminal. Diff allows you to easily compare two files, with the command output reporting back any differences between the inputted files.

The diff command is available by default on the Mac, and it works the same in Linux and other unix operating systems as well, just in care you were wondering, and for Windows users it’s quite similar to how the ‘fc’ file compare tool works.

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Apple has released iOS 11.3 beta 2 to iPhone and iPad users engaged in the iOS beta testing program. Apple also released the second beta of tvOS 11.3, and later released new second beta of macOS 10.13.4 as well.

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Want to quickly focus your attention on the active application in Mac OS by hiding all other windows? There’s an excellent little-known keyboard shortcut and menu item that does exactly that, and when executed properly you will hide literally every window and open application on the Mac except for the currently active application.

This is an incredibly useful keyboard shortcut and feature if your Mac screen is overloaded with a million windows and apps and you want to quickly dismiss unused background apps, without having to quit them or arrange any other windows. All this does is hide the inactive application windows, it doesn’t close anything, so you can easily get to the hidden apps again if need be.

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Have you ever wished you could view all of your geotagged pictures on a map? With the Mac Photos app, you can do exactly that by accessing a handy map of all images containing geotagging and GPS data, each displayed on a nice navigable map, right within the Photos app of Mac OS.

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Want to listen to music via a 3.5mm audio source, while simultaneously charging an iPhone? That used to be easy, but all new iPhone models have done away with the longstanding headphone jack, which once allowed users to easily connect their iPhone to home stereo systems, car stereos, headphones, and other speakers and audio interfaces via the 3.5mm AUX port, while still maintaining the availability of the Lighting charger port.

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Using copy and paste is a routine part of most peoples Mac workflow, so if suddenly the Copy and Paste feature stops working or the clipboard appears stuck, you can imagine why that’s annoying.

Don’t stress out, most issues with nonfunctional clipboards and copy and paste on the Mac can be resolved with a series of fairly simple troubleshooting steps.

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iMessage Stickers are the goofy virtual stickers that iPhone and iPad users can place all over their messages. But what if you want to remove a message sticker that has already been slapped onto a message or picture in the Messages app of iOS? Well you can do that too, even if it’s not particularly obvious at first glance.

Removing stickers from an iMessage message can be helpful if one or more of the stickers is obstructing a particular message or image from being readable or viewable, or even if you just decide you don’t want a particular sticker covering a message anymore.

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Macs can use nearly all keyboards built for Windows PC, whether they are USB or Bluetooth, but you may notice that the layout of some of the modifier keys are different on a Mac keyboard from the layout of a Windows keyboard. Specifically, the WINDOWS and ALT key of a Windows keyboard are switched compared to the Mac keyboard layout of OPTION/ALT and COMMAND keys. This can lead to erroneous keyboard shortcuts or other unexpected key press behavior when using a PC keyboard with a Mac.

A simple solution to this problem is to remap the Windows and ALT key and the command and option/alt keys on the Windows PC keyboard connected to the Mac, so that the keyboard layouts will mimic expectations based on the standard Apple modifier key layout, rather than what it says on the PC keyboard. For most Mac users who connect a PC keyboard to their Mac, this will dramatically improve their typing experience when using a PC keyboard.

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Many users with iOS 11 are noticing that their iPad and iPhone will randomly capitalize words that were typed in the middle of sentences. For example, a sentence May look Like This with Randomly capitalized Words for No apparent reason, requiring Many manual Corrections Of what you have Typed.

The random capitalization issue has been around since iOS 11 debuted and has yet to be resolved, but there are a few workarounds that may be of assistance if you’re deeply annoyed by having typed words capitalize themselves at random.

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You can now change the email address used as your Apple ID from third party emails to an @icloud email address, if you so desire. This means if your current Apple ID email login is something like “BloatedPetriDish99@hotmail.com” you can change it to an Apple domain like @icloud.com. Note this is completely different from changing the Apple ID used on an iOS device, because the intention here is keeping the same account data but simply changing the login email, rather than using a completely different and unique account.

But there’s an important catch: this is a one way street and you can’t change the email address back to a third party email address after you switch it to an Apple domain.

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Rarely, iPhone users need to enter DFU mode to initiate a low-level device restore with the help of a computer and iTunes. Entering DFU mode on iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus is different than getting into DFU mode on earlier iPhone models, so if you’re an owner of one of these devices you might want to get acquainted with how to put these models into DFU mode.

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If you’re buying a used iPhone or repairing an iPhone, you may wonder if you can find out if the iPhone was bought as new, is a refurbished model, or is a replacement device provided by Apple via a service request.

Wonder no more, you can use an interesting device model identifier trick to discover if an iPhone is new, refurbished, a replacement, or even personalized by engraving. This can be helpful information for buyers of used devices, if you’ve received a device as a gift or hand-me-down, if you’re troubleshooting or repairing an iPhone, and more.

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Siri for iOS can now play short daily news digests by request, allowing you to quickly hear news recaps from some popular mainstream news outlets and media sources. This is a handy feature if you want to get a quick blurb about what’s apparently newsworthy on a given day, and it works the same on iPhone and iPad.

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Apple is airing new iPhone commercials to show off the Animoji feature of iPhone X. Animoji are animated emoji icons that are unique to iPhone X, and they use the devices front facing camera to mimic the facial expressions and mouth movements of the person creating an Animoji on their iPhone. In the two new Animoji ads, an alien animoji does karaoke to a Childish Gambino song, and a dog animoji does karaoke to a Migos song.

The Animoji iPhone X commercials will apparently run during the Grammy awards first, and will likely continue running on TV and online from there. Additionally, a new iPhone X commercial demonstrating the devices portrait lighting selfie mode is also airing now.

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You probably know the various different methods for how to force quit apps on the Mac by now, but a lesser known capability is that Mac OS allows you to force quit multiple apps at the same time. This can be a great trick when troubleshooting, as well as a just a nice way to quickly force a few different apps to exit if you don’t want them open anymore.

For example, if you want to force quit out of both Safari and Chrome concurrently, you could to that. Or if you have multiple Mac apps that are acting up and stuck on the ‘not responding’ beachball, you could cause them to each force quit at the same time.

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Type to Siri for iOS allows you to interact with Siri by typing text commands on an iPhone or iPad, using either the onscreen software keyboard or an external keyboard.

All of the Siri commands you’re used to using work through Type to Siri, it’s just the command entering process that is different as you quite literally type out a query or command and then Siri responds as usual.

Type to Siri on iPad and iPhone is an incredibly useful feature for myriad reasons, whether you just prefer to type, can’t use voice commands with Siri, have an accessibility setup where typing is more practical, or perhaps just because you like the idea of having a smart command line of sorts that is backed by a little virtual assistant.

Sound good? Then let’s turn on the Type to Siri feature in iOS so that you can use Siri with a keyboard on an iPad or iPhone.

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