With new iOS versions (iOS 15, iPadOS 15, iOS 14, iPadOS 14, iOS 13, iOS 12, iOS 11, and later), the new Control Center toggles for turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth do not actually turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on an iPhone or iPad. Instead, if you hit the buttons for disabling Wi-Fi or Bluetooth in Control Center, the iPhone or iPad will disconnect from wi-fi or Bluetooth, but not actually turn off those wireless services on the iPhone or iPad. This can cause some confusion for obvious reasons, and many users are left wondering why wi-fi or Bluetooth is not actually turned off on their devices, or how to turn off wi-fi or Bluetooth in iOS 11 and newer completely.

You can still turn off wi-fi and disable Bluetooth on an iPhone or iPad with iOS 11 and newer, but rather than use Control Center to turn the wireless features off, you must go to the Settings app to disable either.

Read more »

The App Store in iOS will now automatically play video previews of apps while you navigate through the App Store on an iPhone or iPad. These video previews can offer a helpful look into what an app does or may look like, but they can also be distracting, cause battery to drain faster than otherwise, lead to unintentional bandwidth and data usage, and be annoying if you’re not inclined to enjoy automatically playing videos of iOS apps you may or may not have any interest in.

Users can disable video auto-playing in the iOS App Store by adjusting the appropriate settings on their iPhone or iPad.

Read more »

The Messages screen in iOS 13, iOS 12, and iOS 11 is busier than ever before, displaying a row of colorful icons and iMessage apps on the bottom of every conversation in Messages on iPhone and iPad. While some users will love the quick access to their gifs, message stickers and apps, not everyone is satisfied with having a row of brightly colored app icons and the app drawer showing up with their Message conversations, and many professional users have sought out a way to disable or remove the Messages app icons from the iOS communication client.

If you’d like to hide the Message app icons in iOS 13, iOS 11, or iOS 12 on an iPhone or iPad, you can do so with a little trick that hides the app drawer.

Read more »

Apple has released iOS 11.0.2 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices running iOS 11. This is the second small bug fix update for iOS 11 that aims to patch various bugs and offer improvements to the operating system, making it recommended for users who are running a prior version of the iOS 11 release.

Users can download iOS 11.0.2 for compatible iPhone and iPad hardware through either the Settings app on their devices, via iTunes on a computer, or they can install the update manually by downloading and using IPSW firmware files for iOS 11.0.2 linked below.

Read more »

Some Mac users like to perform a clean install when a new operating system is released. Usually this is reserved for more advanced users, as a clean install means the hard drive is formatted and completely erased, removing the existing Mac operating system, and erasing all contents, data, files, applications – everything from the Mac is completely removed. This allows the new macOS High Sierra installation to be blank, kind of like if the computer were brand new, thus the name “clean install”. Users who opt for clean installations of macOS usually perform extensive manual file backups and then copy their important data over after the installation is complete, and then they must manually install all their applications again.

This tutorial will walk through how to perform a clean install of macOS High Sierra (10.13+).

Read more »

Accessing Night Shift quickly has changed in iOS 11 and iOS 12 and while Night Shift is still easily accessible via Control Center on iPhone and iPad, users will have to dig just slightly deeper to reveal the Night Shift setting toggle and be able to enable and disable the feature through Control Center.

Read more »

If you have managed to get your hands on the coveted SNES Classic Edition, you’re probably interested in learning how the new optional suspend point save system works. Suspend Points allow you to save any game from anywhere, at any time, rather than only at a dedicated save point or by using the in-game save menus on Super Nintendo games. On SNES Classic, suspend points are a lot like saved states on an emulator, so if you have experience with those this should be pretty familiar to you.

Saving from anywhere in any game on the SNES Classic Edition with Suspend Points is super easy, but it may seem a little counterintuitive at first because it relies on using the systems reset button. We’ll review how this system works to save games from literally anywhere in a game, and also how to resume those saved games on the Super Nintendo Classic.

Read more »

Auto-Brightness is a screen setting on the iPhone and iPad which causes the device to automatically adjust the display brightness depending on ambient lighting conditions. For example, if you’re outdoors or in bright lighting, the screen would adjust to be brighter so that it is more visible, and if you’re in a dim room or outdoors at night, the screen would adjust to lower the brightness so that the screen isn’t as glaringly bright. Auto-brightness in iOS also can improve battery life by adjusting the brightness of the iPhone or iPad display down as the ambient lighting permits.

Some users like to turn off auto-brightness, or to make sure that auto-brightness is enabled on their iPad or iPhone. However, as of iOS 11 and iOS 12, the auto-brightness setting has been relocated from the standard Display settings area to deeper within the settings of iOS. This has led some users to think that auto-brightness was removed in iOS 11 and iOS 12, but in fact the setting was merely relocated.

Read more »

The iPhone camera will now default to taking pictures in a new HEIF format, rather then JPEG. This camera formatting change to HEIF came in the latest versions of iOS (15, 14, 13, 12, 11 and newer), but some iPhone users may prefer to have the camera continue to snap photos in JPEG format for broader compatibility with sharing, copying to a computer, and more.

We’ll show you how you can change the iPhone camera default image file type so that the iPhone will shoot pictures in JPEG format again. We’ll also cover a trick for leaving HEIF image format enabled but have those HEIF images automatically convert to JPEG files upon transfer to a computer.

Read more »

The iPad features an excellent app switcher complete with a nice look and a multitude of nice multitasking features, as well as the ability to perform critical functions like force quitting apps.

This article covers force quitting apps on any iPad, iPad Pro, iPad Air, and iPad mini, as long as it’s running a modern version of system software. We’ll show you how to force quit out of an app on the app switcher for iPad that comes with iPadOS 14, iPadOS 13, iOS 12, iOS 11, and later releases.

Read more »

Apple has changed how to forcibly restart an iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, with the device now relying on a sequence of three button presses to complete the hard reboot procedure.

If you’ve been trying to forcibly reboot an iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus to no avail, it is because all of the prior methods to hard restart an iPhone no longer work with iPhone 8 models. The new approach to a force restart or hard reboot – sometimes called a hard reset – is relatively easy, once you learn how it works on the new devices anyway.

Read more »

Some Mac uses like to create a bootable USB installer drive for macOS High Sierra. A bootable install volume of macOS 10.13 allows users to perform a variety of tasks including formatting and clean installs, updating multiple Macs from the same USB flash drive installer (and without re downloading), and to use as a troubleshooting boot drive should the need arise, amongst other benefits for advanced and more technical users.

This walkthrough will detail how to make a bootable USB install drive for macOS High Sierra.

Read more »

Apple has released the first beta versions of iOS 11.1, macOS High Sierra 10.13.1, tvOS 11.1, and watchOS 4.1. The initial beta releases of system software are for developers only, but public beta versions of eligible system software beta builds will likely become available later.

Read more »

Many Mac users who are attempting to download macOS High Sierra from the Mac App Store will find that a small 19 MB version of “Install macOS High Sierra.app” downloads to the /Applications folder of the target Mac, rather than the complete 5.2 GB Installer application for macOS High Sierra. This is annoying because it prevents a single download from being used on multiple computers, plus the small installer requires an internet connection during usage to download the rest of the High Sierra update files. Additionally, the tiny 19 MB incomplete installer prevents users from being able to create a macOS High Sierra USB installer drive or other custom update options available through the command line, like skipping the APFS update.

This tutorial will show you a workaround trick that allows Mac users to download the full macOS High Sierra “Install macOS High Sierra.app” file at 5.2 GB with the complete installer tool set and all dmg files and associated Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/ tools, rather than the tiny incomplete truncated installer at 19 MB.

Read more »

Most users are able to install iOS 11 onto an iPhone or iPad without any incident, and they are ready to enjoy the best new features available in the new system software version. But that’s most users.

Unfortunately, problems may arise during an iOS software update, either when attempting to install, or with a failed installation, or various issues occurring after the iOS 11 update has completed. The good news is almost all issues can be fixed with a little troubleshooting effort.

Read more »

Apple has released iOS 11.0.1 as a bug fix update for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. iOS 11.0.1 arrives just a week after the wide release of iOS 11, suggesting some notable bugs were discovered in the prior release and are being addressed in the small point release software update.

Read more »

MacOS High Sierra is now available as the latest Mac system software update from Apple, but instead of jumping right into the installation process you might want to take a few moments to properly prepare for the macOS High Sierra operating system update.

We’ll review a few simple steps you can take before diving into macOS High Sierra. Let’s begin!
Read more »

Apple has released the final version of macOS High Sierra, available to download now for the general public. The new software update includes a variety of refinements and enhancements to the Mac operating system, along with a handful of new features.

Read more »