Update: Modern iOS and iPadOS versions can scan QR codes with camera app on iPhone and iPad, detailed here. If you simply need to scan and read a QR code that may be a better approach, though Google Chrome on iOS also continues to offer the feature and thus the article below will discuss that.

QR Codes are the weird looking pixelated squares you sometimes see printed on signs or elsewhere, and while it’s a stretch to say they are widely used (or understood) they are ubiquitous in some areas. While the iPhone does not bundle a method of scanning QR codes by default, if you’re a Google Chrome user then you will find the latest versions of the iPhone Chrome app can scan QR codes for you.

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Perhaps one the most controversial aspects of the Touch Bar equipped MacBook Pro models is the removal of a physical hardware Escape key. Instead of being an always present physical Escape key, the new Escape key is a digital button on the Touch Bar screen which is usually visible but not always.

We’ll discuss using the Escape key on the Touch Bar of a Mac, and also how to make it appear if the Escape key is not visible for whatever reason.

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Want to see the size of a directory from the command line? You may have noticed that using the traditional ls command to list the contents of a a directory won’t necessarily show the total size of a directory. Instead, to see what the disk usage is for a specific directory you’ll want to use the dedicated du command, which will display disk usage statistics for any path or directory specified. We’ll show you how to use this command.

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Mac OS users who have modified their DNS settings may need to clear their DNS cache before the changes take effect. Additionally, sometimes name servers and domains may not resolve as intended if you have stale DNS cache on the Mac, another situation where resetting DNS cache can often be the solution.

We’ll show you how to flush out DNS cache in MacOS Sierra 10.12 and later.

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Apple has released the 5th beta versions of MacOS Sierra 10.12.4, iOS 10.3, tvOS 10.2, and watchOS 3.2 to users participating in the beta testing programs.

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Pages on Mac defaults to launching into a series of document opening panels and new document templates, but if you typically use Pages on the Mac to create new Pages files, you might appreciate launching the app directly into a new blank document instead.

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The Mac Photos app offers a Search feature which allows for searching for attributes in pictures, whether they are objects, things, descriptions of locations, places, or beings. This is just like the excellent Search feature in Photos for iOS in that you can search for a term or description and an album that matches those attributes will be returned, except it’s on the Mac desktop of course.

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Have you ever wanted to take a picture with your Mac webcam? Maybe you want to post a new profile picture to the internet or send a funny face to a friend or relative. Whatever the intention, it’s easy to snap pictures with a Macs built-in camera, allowing you to take selfies with your Mac. Exciting, right?

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Have you ever found a location or an interesting spot on a map that you want to share with someone else? Using the iPhone Maps app, you can easily mark a location on a map and then share that marked pin with someone else, giving them the exact pinned location. This great feature has many obvious purposes for directions, but it’s also a handy trick for many hobbies and professions.

Let’s show how to mark a location on a map using iPhone, and then how to share that pinned spot with someone else.

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Have you ever been in a situation where you know you want to find a JPEG file type and you know the name of the file, but you don’t want to search other document types on the Mac? You can use image specific file format search operators on Spotlight in Mac OS to help narrow down these type of searches, in this case we are limiting to JPG files.

This is a great little quick trick to search only JPEG files for a match via Spotlight, here’s how it works:

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Siri usually works great on iPhone and iPad, but sometimes Siri stops working or Siri may not work as intended. If you experience problems with Siri, this guide will walk you through troubleshooting Siri so that you can fix Siri to work on your iPhone or iPad again.

We’ll cover several effective troubleshooting tricks to fix common problems with Siri.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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