Embedded video playing in Messages is one of the more subtly helpful and interesting features available on modern versions of iOS and Mac OS. Essentially what this means is that when you or someone else sends a video link through the Messages app, say a YouTube or Vimeo link, the thumbnail of the video that is shown is actually playable directly within the Messages app – no need to open a web browser, you can just tap and play the video directly.

Read more »

The ‘ls’ command lists all files and folders in a directory at the command line, but by default ls returns a list in alphabetical order. With a simple command flag, you can have ls sort by date instead, showing the most recently modified items at the top of the ls command results. This trick applies to the ls command output in Mac OS / Mac OS X, Linux, BSD, as well as Bash in Windows.

Read more »

Some Mac users may wish to verify the integrity of their Time Machine backups before using a snapshot or backup to restore a Mac using Time Machine.

This verification offers a simple way to know if the Time Machine backup data stored on an server or Time Capsule has been modified or corrupted, and can be a helpful troubleshooting trick for some situations.

Read more »

The latest versions of iOS replaced the longstanding “Videos” app with a new app called “TV” that includes an all new interface to manage movies and videos downloaded to an iPhone or iPad. While the old Videos app made it simple to delete and remove movies from the iPhone or iPad, the new TV app offers a less obvious method of removing video from an iOS device that is unique to deleting things inside the TV app.

We’ll show you two different ways how to delete a downloaded movie from the TV app within iOS.
Read more »

Need to reset the password on macOS Sierra? Maybe you forgot your primary admin user account password or maybe you’re working on someone elses Mac and you need to gain access to it. We’ll show you the easiest way to reset the password on a macOS Sierra based computer.

Read more »

If you use the Mac Photos app for managing your pictures and you have a modern iPhone, you’ll likely have some (or many) Live Photos stored in your photo library. You can easily change any Live Photo on the Mac from the video picture form back into a still photo, and it’s fairly easy as we’ll demonstrate.

Read more »

Curl is the powerful command line utility that allows you to transfer data to or from a server or URL. One common function used by developers is to make a POST request with curl, which is what we’re going to cover here.

Read more »

Read Receipts in iMessage allow the sender of a message to know when a recipient has received it, and both the Mac OS and iOS Messages apps support this feature when communicating with other iMessage users. But many Mac users don’t want to send Read Receipts to everyone, and with the latest versions of Mac OS you can now selectively choose who to send read receipts to. In practice, this is basically the same as turning on Read Receipts for specific contacts on iPhone and iPad, except it applies to reading and sending iMessages from the Messages app on the Mac.

Read more »

Want to add some music of your own music that is playing on your iPhone to your Instagram story? Using a fancy little trick, you can easily play a song and have that song recorded as a background soundtrack for an Instagram Story video that you post to the social network.

Read more »

Mac users with an Apple Watch can unlock their Mac by simply wearing their watch, thereby bypassing the need to enter a password at the boot and login screens. This great feature makes logging onto and unlocking a Mac remarkably easy and quite fast for Apple Watch wearers, but you’ll have to enable it first.

Read more »

Wondering how to play Live Photos in the Photos app on Mac? Fortunately it’s quite simple, and there’s no use of 3D Touch or any funky tricks necessary.

In fact, in some ways it’s actually easier to play a Live Photo picture video in Photos for Mac than it is when viewing Live Photos in Messages for Mac, and you just need to hover over the picture in Photos app to get the Live Photo to play.

Read more »

Siri in iOS now supports third party apps, meaning Siri can interact with apps like PayPal, Skype, Uber, and others that have chosen to include support for the Siri virtual assistant. In practice this allows you to ask Siri to do something like “send $10 to Bob using PayPal” or “Get me an Uber to the airport”. We’ll show you how to enable third party Siri support in iOS for iPhone and iPad.

Read more »

Did you know you can download a Windows 10 disc image free from Microsoft? This is seemingly little known, but yes you can download a complete legitimate Windows 10 ISO without registering or even having a product key, and you can install and run the entirety of Windows 10 using the image too.

Read more »

Have you ever wanted to record a movie directly into iMovie on Mac? It’s easy to capture live video from a Mac built-in camera and have it instantly imported into iMovie, from there you can edit it with the iMovie tools, incorporate it into another video project, or export the recorded movie as a file or to various social media sites.

Read more »

If you use TextEdit on Mac for your simple word processing and quick plain text editing needs like a Notepad equivalent from the Windows world, you’ll likely appreciate that the latest versions of Mac OS support tabbed windows in TextEdit. This can dramatically reduce window clutter in the TextEdit app, just like tabs work elsewhere.

Read more »

Apple has released the first beta versions of iOS 10.3 and MacOS 10.12.4 to eligible users participating in the beta testing programs. The new beta builds arrive a day after the final versions of iOS 10.2.1 and MacOS 10.12.3 were released to the general public.

Read more »

Apple has released iOS 10.2.1 for all compatible iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. The update includes multiple bug fixes and security enhancements and is therefore recommended that users install the system software update.

Read more »

Apple has released MacOS Sierra 10.12.3 update for all Mac users running the Sierra operating system. The system software update is said to improve stability and security on the mac and is therefore recommended for all users to install on their compatible hardware.

Separately, Apple has also released software updates to iOS 10.2.1, tvOS 10.1.1,and watchOS 3.1.3 as well as smaller software updates available for users of Mac OS X El Capitan, Yosemite, and Mavericks.

Read more »