Want to get the weather report for another location in iOS quickly? You can grab weather details from Spotlight on the iPhone or iPad quickly and easily.

This offers a nice alternative to adding new locations to the Weather app, searching the web for weather reports, or to using Siri (which requires voice) and it works for just about anywhere as long as you can type out the name and remember the proper spelling.

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The most recent versions of MacOS have an iCloud feature which allows the Desktop and Documents folders on a Mac to be synced to iCloud Drive. This allows a Macs desktop and documents folders to be accessed from other Macs, iOS devices, or iCloud. A fair amount of users turn this feature on when updating or installing MacOS High Sierra or Sierra, but later some Mac users may wish to disable iCloud Desktop & Documents folders.

It’s easy to turn off the iCloud Desktop & Documents feature on MacOS, but in doing so you may find that your files are no longer on your computer. That can be alarming since it may be incorrectly interpreted as data loss.

We’ll show you how to turn off iCloud Desktop & Documents on MacOS and then how to get your files back from iCloud and back onto your local Mac again.

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Apple has released the sixth beta versions of iOS 10.3.3 and macOS Sierra 10.12.6. The beta updates are available now for users enrolled in the beta testing programs for system software, but who are not on the iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 beta builds.

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Mission Control offers a way to see all open windows on a Mac easily and from a single screen, but if you have a ton of windows open then the thumbnails shown in Mission Control can be quite small. Thus, you might be wishing you could see a larger preview of the thumbnail preview tile as seen in Mission Control. Well it’s your lucky day and that wish has been granted.

You can use a great little trick to instantly get a larger preview of any thumbnail window seen in Mission Control using none other than Quick Look. Yes, the same Quick Look that allows you to see previews of files and items in the Finder can also preview your Mission Control windows.

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Pixelmator for Mac is a powerful photo editing and image manipulation app which makes for an excellent Photoshop alternative. Even better, the latest versions of Pixelmator come with a couple of optional Extensions for Photos app on the Mac that bring some interesting and fun capabilities into the Photos app editing tools.

Enabling these Pixelmator Extensions in Photos app will give you a set of powerful retouching capabilities and distortion tools that are easy to use, and can be accessed directly from Photos app without launching Pixelmator.

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Rarely, an iPhone touch screen stops working or becomes unresponsive to touch. It’s obvious when this happens, you’ll touch the screen and nothing happens, swipes will be ignored, taps don’t do anything, and other touch on the screen doesn’t register any behavior. It’s clearly annoying if the iPhone screen is no longer working and not responding to touch, and it’s not subtle.

If your iPhone touch screen is not working, read on for a helpful series of troubleshooting steps that may help to fix the problem. The nonworking touch screen issue could caused by several things, sometimes it’s software related, some crud on the screen, damage to the iPhone touch screen or iPhone itself, or perhaps some other issues as well. Read on to learn more.

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Have you ever received a Messages sticker in iOS from someone and thought “wow that’s an amazing sticker, I wish I knew where it came from!”?

Well if you and your friends are among the people who use the fun Messages Stickers feature in iOS, you might be wondering where each others stickers plastered into your iMessages are originating.

Wonder no more, iOS Messages offers a simple way to tell you exactly where a sticker originated from so that you too can have the same stickers available in your Messages app on iPhone or iPad, so that you can smack them all over iMessages too.

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Apple has opened the public beta testing program for macOS High Sierra 10.13, the next major version of the Mac operating system.

MacOS High Sierra Public Beta is now available to download and install for any user who is interested in beta testing the system software. However, be forewarned that beta system software is notoriously less stable and unreliable compared to final versions, and is thus not suited for primary hardware or critical workstations for the vast majority of Mac users. Beta software is most appropriate for advanced users, enthusiasts, developers, designers, and early adopters.

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Some Mac users may need to install Java into macOS Sierra or MacOS High Sierra. Typically the need for Java is for specific app usage, particular app compatibility, or for developers, and it’s worth mentioning that most Mac users won’t need to bother installing Java at all. For those that do need Java however, you will find it’s easy to get onto the latest versions of MacOS.

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If you ever use an iPhone to connect to a speaker system, car stereo, headphones, or microphone, or stereo via Bluetooth, you may have been in a situation where you have an active phone call on the iPhone but want to change from the Bluetooth audio source, be it speakers or headphones.

It’s easy to switch the iPhone from Bluetooth audio and continue the call uninterrupted, without losing the call, without losing any audio, without turning off Bluetooth, without disconnecting the Bluetooth device, and without having to hang up or call back. Done properly there will be no interruption as you disconnect from Bluetooth and switch back to the iPhone.

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Apple has released the fifth beta versions of macOS 10.12.6 and iOS 10.3.3 to users participating in the relevant beta testing programs.

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Did you know the iPhone or iPad can read aloud anything that is on screen? The Speak Screen feature of iOS is helpful for many reasons, but in order to use it you must first enable the ability within the device settings, and then learn how to use the speak function.

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Apple has opened the public beta testing program for iOS 11, launching iOS 11 Public Beta to all users who are interested in running the latest beta system software on their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

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iOS Messages includes the Invisible Ink feature which allows people to send obfuscated messages to and from iPhone and iPad. The invisible messages arrive visibly obscured, and the content of the invisible message can only be revealed by swiping a finger on the blurred message(s) to temporarily reveal the message text, image, or video. And yes, that means invisible messages can send not just as invisible text, but also as invisible photos and invisible videos too.

Invisible Ink offers simple privacy in a fun way to share secrets or otherwise personal information through the Messages app of iOS without having them be visible to an onlooker. The feature is part of the Message Effects set and is available on releases of iOS for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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If you’re a fan of Apple history and iPhone lore (the iPhone is 10 years old this year!), you’ll enjoy watching this trio of video clips featuring various interviews with some of the original iPhone team members who were tasked with developing the project.

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“Photos Agent” is a little Photos app helper process that often runs on the Mac, it’s for Photos app users and it handles background tasks like downloading and uploading to iCloud Photo Library, downloading and updating Photo Streams and shared streams, and other related iCloud Photos and Photos app tasks.

For users who don’t use Photos app on the Mac, nor any of the iCloud Photos or iCloud Photo Library features, you may find it annoying or problematic if the “Photos Agent” process appears and starts taking up a large amount of system resources, from CPU, to bandwidth, and disk I/O, and you may want to attempt to stop Photos Agent from consuming resources in such a matter.

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Have you ever wished you could access a mapping application from the command line? Now you can with Mapscii, which is sort of like Google Maps or Apple Maps but for the Terminal, with all of the mapping data rendered in ASCII text and characters.

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Whether you’re moving a file over to iCloud Drive or copying a file to iCloud Drive from the Mac, you may want to know the upload progress as the file is transferred to iCloud.

Fortunately the Mac Finder makes this easy, and you’ll be able to see the status of uploads to iCloud Drive from several locations in the file system. We’ll show you four different ways to check iCloud Drive upload progress on the Mac so that you can watch file transfers as they go from the local file system to iCloud.

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