Did you know you can handwrite messages and notes in Messages for iOS 10 on your iPhone? With this feature you can scribble out a little note or sketch a simple drawing and send it along to any recipient.

Unlike some of the more obvious new Messages features in the latest versions of iOS that have buttons and toggles immediately visible in the Messages app, the handwriting ability is a little hidden. We’ll show you how to reveal the handwriting option so that you can send doodles and notes over iMessage.

Read more »

Apple has released the third beta version of iOS 10.1 to users participating in the beta testing programs.

Read more »

The new iPhone models don’t have a physical clicking Home button, and instead it senses pressure and gives haptic feedback instead, similar to how 3D Touch works on the screen and on Mac trackpads. If you decide you want to change how that Home button click feels, you can adjust the Home button click strength and feedback in a settings option of iOS.

Read more »

Rarely, the Mac App Store may report erroneous app download statuses or even offer a malformed file leading to an app that doesn’t launch or is partially downloaded. These situations are almost always the result of an interrupted or corrupted download, but can occur in some other scenarios as well.

Sometimes simply deleting the app in question can resolve any surrounding difficultly, but on some occasions that isn’t possible or isn’t effective. These type of unusual errors can typically be resolved by manually clearing out the Mac App Store cache, and then re-downloading the app, or re-visiting the Mac App Store. This tutorial will walk through completing that process.

Read more »

Spotlight, Safari, Siri, Maps, and other apps on the Mac use your location during searches to help suggest particular activity. For example, if you’re searching in Spotlight for “coffee” on the Mac, you may find that nearby coffee shops are displayed, allowing you to search local listings directly from Spotlight search in Mac OS. These are known as location-based suggestions.

Using location for search suggestions is obviously useful for many reasons, but some users may rather not have their location accessed for suggesting various search items and activities, thus we’ll show you how to disable location-based suggestions on the Mac (or turn the feature on if you do want access to this ability).

Read more »

Having an iPhone screen full of notifications from messages, calls, and apps can be a little obnoxious. Fortunately the latest versions of iOS on the newest iPhone models support a great little hidden feature which allows you to immediately clear all notifications from an iPhone.

Read more »

If you have bought an iPhone 7 Plus or iPhone 7 for AT&T, you’ll find the device does not come unlocked. Fortunately, if you paid in full for the iPhone 7 you can easily unlock it with AT&T by using a simple iTunes process.

Read more »

The Notes app in iOS now allows you to share notes with other iPhone, iPad, and Mac users over iCloud. This Note sharing feature is extremely useful, enabling other invited people to view and edit the same shared note that you are using in a collaborative fashion, and of course other people can invite you to view and change their notes as well. The use cases for this are vast and cooperative notes are easily one of the more useful features added to the Notes app in quite some time, so let’s review how to share Notes with other people using the latest versions of iOS.

Read more »

Apple is now automatically downloading macOS Sierra to Macs that are running a prior version of Mac OS X and which are compatible with Sierra. While this may be convenient to some users, not everyone may want to have macOS Sierra show up unexpectedly, or use their bandwidth to download a large file without explicit approval, thus we’ll show you how to stop macOS Sierra from automatically downloading to a Mac.

Read more »

The all new Messages app in iOS is quite busy and full of new features and abilities, and a major new component is the wild world of Message stickers and apps. Stickers are basically little images and icons you can slap all over a message thread, and iMessage apps can be everything from simple photo manipulations to full fledged games, all embedded in the Messages app of an iPhone or iPad. They can be chaotic or a lot of fun, maybe even a bit of both, so let’s review how to download, install, and use Messages stickers and Messages apps in iOS 10, iOS 11, or later.

Read more »

Some Mac users who have updated to macOS Sierra have felt their computer is running slower than it should be. If you have noticed a performance hit after upgrading to macOS Sierra, there is likely a good reason for it, and it’s even more likely to have a simple solution.

Read on to learn why macOS Sierra may be running slow (some MacBook users notice their Mac is hot and fans are blasting away too), and what you can do about it.

Read more »

Apple has released the second beta versions of iOS 10.1, watchOS 3.1, and tvOS 10.0.1.

Additionally, the public beta version of the earlier released macOS Sierra 10.12.1 beta 3 is available.

Read more »

Apple redesigned some fundamental features with iOS 10 on iPhone and iPad, including where the music controls are found in Control Center, slide-to-unlock, and the newly hidden Shuffle and Repeat controls in Music app itself.

If you’re new to iOS 10 and thought that Control Center removed the music controls, it’s likely because the new way to access play, pause, skip, and adjust volume is easily overlooked. Not to worry, accessing Music from Control Center is really easy once you learn where to look!

Read more »

Apple has released macOS Sierra 10.12.1 beta 3, the new build arrives as 16B2338c.

Read more »

For the vast majority of Mac users, macOS Sierra is a nice upgrade that goes without a hitch. For a small number of users, macOS Sierra presents a unique variety of problems that are impervious to all troubleshooting attempts, even reinstalling Sierra or a clean install. If you fall into the latter camp, or just decide that macOS Sierra just isn’t working out for you, you can downgrade from macOS Sierra to OS X El Capitan or Mavericks by using a Time Machine backup made beforehand.

Read more »

The Apple Watch battery lasts a while, and most users will place the Apple Watch onto the charger or into Night Stand mode if they’re letting it sit for a while, but sometimes you might want to actually turn the Apple Watch off completely. Maybe you’re putting the watch into longterm storage or sending it off, or maybe you aren’t using it, whatever the reason, powering it off can be appropriate.

This article will show you how to turn off Apple Watch, and also how to turn it back on again.

Read more »

One of the great new Safari features in new versions of iOS is the ability to search through your browser tabs using a keyword. For those of us who basically live in a web browser with a billion tabs open, this is incredibly useful, as it makes retrieving and narrowing down Safari tabs significantly faster on an iPhone or iPad since you can just search for a keyword match.

This tutorial will demonstrate how to use this excellent Tab Search feature in Safari for iOS.

Read more »

Want to hide the Siri menu icon but still have Siri enabled on the Mac? This approach offers a way to reduce menubar clutter on a Mac, while still retaining the Siri assistant functionality and each of its useful commands. With the Siri menu bar icon hidden, you can still access Siri on the Mac by using the defined Siri keystroke or through the Dock icon.

This tutorial will show you how to both hide the Siri menu bar icon on the Mac, and how to show the Siri menu bar button on the Mac.

Read more »