Some of the more privacy conscious Mac users out there might put tape over their webcam or use apps like Oversight to detect camera activity. While either of those approaches can be satisfactory for many users (or considered totally paranoid and overboard to others), many advanced Mac users in the security community go a step further and just outright disable their Macs front-facing web camera. This article will show you how to completely deactivate the front FaceTime camera on a Mac.

Read more »

The popular WhatsApp messenger allows you to mark conversations as unread or read on iPhone. This can be helpful if you want to reply to a message later by emphasizing it’s unread, or perhaps you inadvertently opened a message in WhatsApp but want to keep it marked as unread. Similarly, maybe you want to ignore a WhatsApp chat and mark it as read so that it no longer appears as a new message.

Marking WhatsApp messages as read or unread is really easy on iPhone thanks to a simple gesture, let’s walk through how to perform this handy trick.

Read more »

iOS Photos has an excellent search feature that allows users to search for identifiable objects, places, and attributes in your pictures. For example, you could search for “beach” or “rock” or “dog” and all images in Photos app that match those terms will show up in predefined sorted albums on the iPhone or iPad.

The searched images includes any photo in your album or camera roll, meaning any picture taken with your iPhone or iPad as well as those saved to your devices will be indexed and searchable using this great trick.

Read more »

AirDrop is the fastest and most convenient way to wirelessly send files from an iPhone or iPad to a Mac. While AirDropping from iOS to Mac OS is easy, how it works may not be particularly obvious to some users, and many people don’t know the feature exists at all. Learning to use AirDrop to send files from an iPhone to a Mac is easy, and it offers a simple and reliable way to transfer photos, videos, notes, and other files between nearby devices.

Read more »

Apple has released new beta versions of their operating system suite, including MacOS 10.12.4 beta 4, iOS 10.3 beta 4, and watchOS 3.2 beta 4.

Read more »

All iPhone models have a built-in GPS device which aids in navigation and allows for pin-point precision for location detection. While most users who interact with location and navigation features on their iPhone will be using the Maps applications, it can also be helpful to get exact GPS coordinates for latitude and longitude, perhaps for placing into a dedicated GPS tracker or for finding particular coordinates for a location on a map.

We’ll show you how to retrieve and display GPS coordinates on iPhone using native applications, there are no third party apps or downloads required.

Read more »

You can easily add new widgets to the iOS Widget by using 3D Touch on the iPhone. This offers what might be the quickest way to add a widget to your iOS Widget panel.

Read more »

Have you ever been using Apple Maps for directions on a long car ride and wanted to know where you could easily stop for gas or for food along the route? The latest versions of Apple Maps for iPhone allow exactly that, offering a simple way to find gas stations, fast food, and coffee along your journey, while still maintaining the directions to the originally planned destination.

The next time you’re using Apple Maps for directions on your iPhone, try this out, it’s really quite nice.
Read more »

The Photos app in Mac OS aims to manage all images found within the application, including pictures copied from an iPhone or memory card into the Photos app and those imported into the app as well. But have you ever wondered where those actual Photos files are stored on a Mac?

We’re going to show you how to locate the image files that are contained within the Photos app on Mac OS. This is specific to Photos app, if you don’t use the Photos app to manage pictures on your Mac then your photos will not be stored within the applications package library and instead you’d likely find them through Finder in the generic Pictures folder or elsewhere in Mac OS.

Read more »

Locking your Mac screen with password protection when you step away from the computer is always a good idea, but the newer MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models do not support the traditional lock screen keyboard shortcut. This doesn’t mean you can’t lock the screen quickly on a Touch Bar MacBook Pro however, and in fact with a little customization you can actually lock the Touch Bar Mac even faster than one without Touch Bar.

Read more »

Though Mac users don’t usually have to worry excessively about “camfecting” malware and spyware, some security conscious users may find it nice to know if a process or application is attempting to access their computers web camera or microphone.

With the help of a free third party security utility called Oversight, you can have your Mac alert you anytime an application or process tries to activate either recording device on the computer.

Read more »

The new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar model includes a Touch Bar screen in lieu of the standard hardware function keys and escape key. Removing the Escape key may not be a big deal to some Mac users, but for many pro users having no hardware escape key could be considered a major frustration or nuisance.

Before you get too bummed out by not having a hardware escape key on your fancy new MacBook Pro, know that the latest versions of MacOS allow you to modify a select group of other keys to become a hardware escape key instead.

Read more »

Apple has released the third beta versions of its operating system suite, including iOS 10.3, macOS 10.12.4, watchOS 3.2, and tvOS 10.2.

Read more »

Have you found an Instagram picture you want to save to your iPhone? You have probably noticed that Instagram doesn’t offer a direct way to download photos, but if you want to save a picture for sharing, backing up, or setting as a wallpaper, there are a few ways to accomplish this in iOS.

Read more »

Facebook has decided that Facebook users would enjoy having auto-play videos automatically play sound as they scroll through their feed. Of course not everyone likes to be auto-blasted with audio and sound from auto-play videos, so some Facebook users may wish to stop auto-playing sound with videos shown in their feed.

Read more »

Apple has a new iPad Pro television advertising campaign that markets the iPad Pro as a computer replacement.

Read more »

Want to mute a video that is blasting noise within an embedded Message? You can do that with a nice subtle trick. This works to silence embedded video sound in both the iOS and Mac Messages apps, both of which allow you to play embedded videos in Messages conversations without launching into a web browser.

Read more »

If you’re a browser tab hoarder in Safari, you may find it helpful to close out of all other tabs while maintaining a specifically chosen active tab to be open. This offers a fast way for Mac Safari users to close out of tabs that are no longer needed, but without closing all other opened tabs and windows.

Read more »