Another day, another iOS beta! Apple has released iOS 11.4 beta 6 to those iPhone and iPad devices enrolled in the iOS beta testing program. This build arrives a few days after beta 5 of iOS 11.4 was released for the same devices.

If you are currently beta testing iOS, then iOS 11.4 beta 6 is available to download now from the Software Update mechanism found within the Settings app.

iOS 11.4 beta appears to mostly focus on minor bug fixes and enhancements, though testing of the Messages on iCloud feature is included as well. iMessages in iCloud aims to improve syncing of iMessages across devices by maintaining all Messages and iMessage content directly in iCloud. Previously, Messages in iCloud was being tested in prior iOS builds but was removed before they shipped tot he public.

The current final stable builds of macOS and iOS are currently versioned as iOS 11.3.1 for iPhone and iPad and macOS 10.13.4 High Sierra along with Security Update 2018-001 for Macs.

It’s fairly routine for Apple to issue several beta releases of system software before issuing the final version to the general public. Most assumptions are that the final release of iOS 11.4 (and macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 for that matter) will arrive sometime near WWDC 2018 on June 4.

If you want a podcast to automatically stop playing after a designated period of time, the little-known Sleep Timer feature in Podcasts for iPhone or iPad is for you. Much like the name implies, Sleep Timer will play a podcast until a specified time completes, or when the current episode is done playing, and then the podcast automatically stops playing.

Sleep Timer on Podcasts for iOS is great for people who like to listen to podcasts before sleep, while going to bed, while exercising, on a consistent commute, or performing other tasks where it’s appropriate to end a podcast in a determined amount time.

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Some Mac users really enjoy full screen mode for apps and windows, so much so that they might want to make Mac apps open in full screen mode automatically.

While there is no system wide setting in Mac OS to make apps default to opening in full screen mode, there is a workaround trick that will allow many apps to open directly into full screen mode on the Mac.

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Emails often contain remotely loaded content, and most email clients, the Mac Mail app included, will default to automatically loading those remote images and remote content into an email. This is convenient and desired by many as it makes HTML and rich emails appear as intended, including things like HTML signatures.

But loading of remote content in email messages can also be undesirable for some Mac users, because remotely loaded content can also be used by an email sender to serve as a read receipt, or even as an attack vector by unscrupulous types (as we see right now with the efail GPG scare). Finally, some Mac users may want to disable remote loading of content in emails because it can reduce bandwidth usage, which can be helpful for cellular plans and low speed internet connections.

We’ll show you how to disable loading of remote content found in email messages within the Mail for Mac app.

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Apple has released the fifth beta version of iOS 11.4 beta, macOS 10.13.5 beta, in addition to tvOS 11.4 and watchOS 4.3.1.

Users enrolled in the Apple system software beta testing programs can find the latest builds available to download now.

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If you’re traveling through areas of weak cellular signals and generally poor reception, you can save a significant amount of iPhone battery life simply by toggling the AirPlane Mode feature on. That may sound weird, but it really works, with the idea being that when an iPhone has an intermittent cell signal, the cellular modem continuously searches for another available cell tower, which happens to use a lot of battery power. Thus, the solution is to simply stop the iPhone from looking for a cell signal if you’re not going to have one anyway.

This trick is pretty straightforward, here’s what you need to remember:

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Signal is the popular encrypted messaging app that lets you send and receive encrypted messages across platforms, including Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS. This makes Signal an excellent choice if you’re a Mac user or iPhone user that also wants to instantly communicate in a secure manner with someone else on a Mac, PC, Android, iPad, or iPhone. Signal also supports encrypted voice-over-IP for voice calls, image and media messaging, and a variety of other nice features for communication, and for maintaining some security, like auto-deleting messages.

If you’re on a Mac, or Windows PC, and you want to setup Signal on your computer to communicate with other Signal users, the walkthrough below will detail the process.

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Have you ever opened an iMessage conversation on iPhone to discover that the messages are out of order? If so, you’re not alone. While it can be annoying to have the Messages appear out of order in the Messages app of iOS, it’s usually a simple fix to get them to be in proper sequential order again. And yes, this applies to the Messages app on iPad as well, so while our focus is primarily on iPhone the techniques to resolve messages appearing in the wrong order is the same on other iOS devices too.

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The Notes app for Mac is a great place to jot down notes, lists, tasks, tidbits of information, URL and links that you don’t want to bookmark, gather collections of pictures and other info, password protected notes, and much more. And thanks to iCloud Notes, you can also automatically have those notes sync to other Macs and to/from iOS devices like your iPhone and iPad too.

But what if you want to save a note as a separate file, or share a note with someone outside of the Apple ecosystem? What if you want to save or export a note as a PDF file so that the notes full contents are preserved just as they were maintained in the Notes app?

Fortunately you can easily export any note from Notes app as a PDF file, which can then be saved, sent, shared, or stored just about anywhere.

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The Messages app of iPhone and iPad will hold onto basically all text messages and iMessages that have been sent and received through the app on that particular device unless the message threads were either deleted manually, automatically removed, or not not restored through a backup. This means you can browse through very old messages on any iPhone or iPad if necessary, just by opening the Messages app of iOS, choosing a message thread, and scrolling up to view older and older messages through that particular chat history.

But scrolling up to read through old Messages can be a slow and tiresome process. Fortunately a simple tip can help speed up the task and help to view old messages on an iPhone or iPad.

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Did you know the iPad keyboard can be moved around on the screen? Many iPad users may not be aware that the iPad onscreen keyboard can be relocated, either sliding it up or down on the display to whatever location works best for how they type and interact with the iPad keyboard.

And yes the iPad keyboard can be moved around as a whole unit, without splitting the keyboard, though you can move the split keyboard to a new location if desired as well.

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Many people may think of the Mail Drop feature as iCloud-only, but Mac users can enable the convenient Mail Drop feature for other non-iCloud email accounts that are setup in Mail for Mac OS. This allows you to use the excellent Mail Drop feature for sending and receiving large files with just about any email account that you add to Mail app on the Mac.

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Apple has released iOS 11.4 beta 4 alongside macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 beta 4 to users enrolled in the respective beta testing programs.

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Portrait Camera mode is a nice feature available to some of the newer iPhone models. As the name implies, it’s ideally suited for taking portraits of people, animals, or objects, and it uses a digital blur to create a depth effect on captured images.

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Speakerphone is a commonly used feature that allows an iPhone phone call to play the sound output through the devices speakers rather than only the ear speaker or headphones. Many people use speakerphone as a method of hands-free phone usage, for when their hands are occupied with other tasks, or even for allowing a phone call to be heard by multiple people in a room. Speakerphone on iPhone is very easy to use, but if you’re new to the iPhone platform it’s possible that you’re not familiar with how it works, how to active speakerphone, and how to turn it off once it’s on.

Many iPhone users likely already know how to use speakerphone, so this article is obviously not for you if you’re adept in this stuff. Instead this is aimed at newer and beginner iPhone users who are less familiar with some of the features of the device.

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If you’re a gaming fan and have an affinity for retro Nintendo Mario fun, then the ridiculously silly third-party hack called Jelly Mario is sure to brighten your day.

Jelly Mario basically takes the classic Nintendo Super Mario Brothers and wildly adjusts the physics so that everything is a squishy, bouncy, pliable, jelly mess, and the gameplay result is pure chaos and fairly entertaining. It’s kind of like playing QWOP meets Mario after visiting a Kool-Aid Acid Test and drinking a bit too much of the punch.

Best of all, you play the entire thing in your web browser, so you can just bounce around with it and not need to download or install anything.

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Extended Attributes are metadata components that can be unique to specific files and file types on Mac OS. Those extended attributes can be anything from identifying data about the file itself, to quarantine information, origin data, label information, amongst other types of metadata.

Sometimes, advanced Mac users may review extended attributes for a file, or even wish to remove extended attributes from a file or directory for a variety of reasons, and either of those tasks can be accomplished through the command line with the bundled xattr tool in Mac OS. This tutorial will walk through how to both view and remove extended attributes from a file on a Mac.

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Field Test Mode on iPhone allows users to get detailed information on their cellular signal and cellular connection, and has long been a popular alternate method of displaying the cell signal on iPhones as a number instead of the signal bars or dots. Field Test Mode is undeniably for more advanced purposes, but some casual iPhone users found value in it as well in order to find a consistently reliable cellular signal.

But ever since iOS 11 and later and new iPhone models, Field Test Mode is different from how it used to be, and if you enter Field Test Mode in iOS 12 or iOS 11 you will not immediately see the numerical dBm cell signal indicator replacing the bars.

Not to worry, you can continue to see the cellular signal as numbers on iPhone with Field Test Mode in iOS 13, iOS 12, or iOS 11, it just works a bit differently than it did before in prior versions of system software.

Read on to learn how to access Field Test Mode in iOS 11.x or newer on any new iPhone, including iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max, iPhone XR, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone X, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 7, and others.

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