For the majority of existence for iPhone, anytime that music, podcasts, audiobooks, or media was being played on the device but the screen was locked, a volume slider was visible on the iPhone Lock Screen.
The volume slider made it easy to see what volume something was playing at, and also made it very easy to control the volume precisely of whatever was playing, without having to use the volume up or down buttons.
Strangely, Apple removed the constantly visible volume slider from iPhone Lock Screen a while back, but now the feature has quietly returned, albeit it is disabled by default and now appears as a setting in a curious location, Accessibility.
We’re going to show you how to get the volume slider back on your iPhone Lock Screen again.
Amazon is offering nice discounts on the M4 MacBook Air series, in either the 13″ or 15″ screen sizes. You’ll find the best deal on the 24GB RAM models ($198 off the 24GB / 512GB model in 13″!), but there are discounts available on all memory/storage configurations and color options (Sky Blue, Midnight, Starlight, Silver).
M4 MacBook Air features the speedy and energy efficient M4 chip with Apple Intelligence support, LCD display in 13″ or 15″ size options, dual display support, 12MP camera with Center Stage, Touch ID, backlit keyboard, all-day battery life, MagSafe charging, two USB-C ports, and more.
If you’re shopping for a MacBook Air, these are great discounts off the retail price, and cheaper than even the educational discount offered by Apple.
FTC: OSXDaily is an affiliate partner with Amazon, meaning if you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment which goes towards keeping the site running.
The “Hide My Email” feature on iPhone is incredibly useful, allowing you to create random unique email addresses that forward to your real email address inbox. This feature can help protect your privacy by allowing you to sign up for apps or services without sharing your real email address, while enhancing security from phishing attempts, and also reducing spam.
Hide My Email is a very useful feature, but for some users, they may be aware of the feature but have no idea how to use it, and trying to find or access the feature is a challenge in and of itself. That’s what we’re going to address here.
Amazon is offering some really great deals for Memorial Day Weekend, so whether you want a big discount on the iPad mini 7, Apple Watch Series 10, or a MacBook Air M4 model, don’t miss out on these deals.
Apple Watch Series 10 – $299 (down from $399)
Apple Watch Series 10 has excellent activity and fitness tracking, heart rate monitor, ECG, crash detection with emergency SOS, fall detection with Emergency SOS, ovulation tracking, GPS, pinch gestures, water and sweat resistance, voice control, Siri commands, all-day battery life, and more, and features a 42mm always-on display.
If you’re running macOS Sequoia or macOS Sonoma, you might occasionally find yourself in a situation where you need to flush the DNS cache on your Mac. This can be necessary to fix DNS related issues or errors, to clear out outdated DNS settings or records, to resolve issues with certain websites, or even to have the results of a modified hosts file or some other networking component to take effect. Knowing how to flush DNS cache on MacOS can be helpful for troubleshooting some network issues without needing to reboot the entire Mac too.
While flushing DNS cache is perhaps most relevant for more advanced Mac users, it’s fairly easy to accomplish with the execution of a simple Terminal command string.
Fortnite, the wildly popular online action game, is back on the App Store for iPhone and iPad users to download and play. The app has returned after Apple removed the popular game roughly five years ago while Apple and Epic engaged in an expensive drawn out legal squabble, which ultimately ended up disappointing and irritating consumers, gamers, kids, and parents who spent a lot of money with in-app purchases, more than anything else. If you have any interest in the legal aspects of the Epic v Apple case (I don’t!) you can bore yourself to sleep on Wikipedia, but if you, your family, or your kids are just interested in playing the popular game, you can download it again right now from the App Store.
For the unfamiliar, Fortnite is an incredibly popular online game that blends competitive action, shooting, building, and general mayhem in a large interactive environment. Up to 100 players engage in battle royale while they wander around a map that is ever-changing and full of silliness and entertainment, complete with fun cartoony graphics and a unique social component. It’s not unusual to have Fornite players jump on a game with a friend, or even group of their friends, and hang out in a digital space while they play the games, and it’s particularly popular with kids and parents for a reason.
Fortnite is currently available for iPhone and iPad only, but there used to be a Mac application for the game as well, though it remains to be seen if Mac users will get to enjoy the game again on their computers.
If you have a gaming console or controller nearby, don’t forget to connect your Xbox One controller to iPhone or iPad so that you can use it to control Fortnite, as external controllers work really well with the game and typically improve players performance.
Did you know that your internet service provider default DNS servers almost certainly track and log your online activity? Basically this means that every time you visit a website or use an internet-connected application from your Mac, iPhone or iPad, your ISP is aware of that. Many ISP’s will not only log and track your online activity gathered through DNS lookups, but some will sell that data and share it with partners and data brokers too.
One way to get around this is to use a privacy focused DNS service, like Surfshark DNS, which is a free DNS offering that emphasizes privacy and does not track or log your online activity. There are other free DNS services like this out there too, including Cloudflare DNS, and Apple’s own iCloud Private Relay offering also uses a custom DNS with privacy protections, but having more options is always a good thing, so let’s review how you can setup the privacy protecting Surfshark DNS on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad
Continuity is a broad set of features for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, that make using all three of the devices together as seamless and easy as possible. Many of the Continuity features also will undoubtedly improve your workflow, making using MacOS, iOS, and iPadOS even better together.
We’re going to focus on six of the most useful Continuity features available for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. For some of you, these will be familiar, while for others they might be new to you. Either way, they’re worth trying out and checking how these fantastic Continuity features can fit into your workflow and device usage.
iPad mini 7 is a powerful miniature tablet that features the A17 processor with Apple Intelligence support, 8″ LCD display, a 12mp front and rear camera, 128 GB storage, USB-C charging, and support for optional Apple Pencil Pro. iPad mini is offered in multiple color options at this 20% discount price, taking $100 off the retail price. Score a great deal while you can!
Amazon is cutting up to $170 off the retail price of the M4 MacBook Air, with deals offered on both 13″ and 15″ display sizes. The 13″ MacBook Air now starts at $849, while the higher-end 15″ model is at $1428. Choose your display size, the color of your choice, and the RAM / storage configuration you’d like, and enjoy a great discount. The MacBook Air features an M4 chip with Apple Intelligence support, LCD display in 13″ or 15″ size, 12MP camera with Center Stage, Touch ID, backlit keyboard, all-day battery life, dual display support, MagSafe charging, two USB-C ports, and more.
FTC: OSXDaily is an affiliate partner with Amazon, meaning if you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment which goes towards keeping the site running.
Remember Network Utility, the handy tool for Mac that was bundled with the operating system since the origins of Mac OS X? With Network Utility, you had an easy graphical interface to commonly used network tools like ping, netstat, nslookup, traceroute, finger, port scanning, and whois. But for reasons unknown, Apple removed Network Utility from MacOS after Catalina, and while you can copy that older Network Utility application to a modern MacOS version and get it to run with this trick, if you don’t have a Catalina or older Mac laying around to copy the original Network Utility.app from, that isn’t going to work for you.
This is where Neo Network Utility comes in, it’s a free tool from Devon Technology that replaces Network Utility on modern MacOS versions. Neo Network Utility has all the same features of Network Utility, plus a handy connection speed testing tool too.
A fair number of MacBook Pro users with Touch Bar equipped Macs have discovered the Touch Bar stops working or goes black after installing a MacOS update. Given that the Touch Bar serves as Function keys, F1, F2, F3 etc keys, as well as toggles for adjusting brightness, system audio, and accessing many MacOS and app features, and even serves an Escape key for some Touch Bar Macs, having the Touch Bar vanish and fail is not particularly great. Even if you disabled the Touch Bar to have it simply display system toggles, having it disappear completely is still frustrating, because there’s no other way to access those toggles on the keyboard.
If your Touch Bar is not working or the Touch Bar vanished on your MacBook Pro, particularly after installing a system software update to MacOS, read along to troubleshoot the issue.
Many Mac users are reporting that “System Data” is taking up huge amounts of disk storage capacity on their Macs. While this issue is reported more commonly with MacOS Sequoia, some users find the bloated System Data storage on older versions of MacOS as well. In many cases, the “System Data” in MacOS is taking up unusually large amounts of disk storage, with reports ranging in size from 100GB to even 500GB. With how small the SSD storage capacity is on Mac’s and how much of a huge premium Apple charges to have more local storage, something consuming such a large amount of disk capacity is understandably frustrating and concerning. Even if you have an upgraded 1TB drive, having “System Data” take up 100GB to 500GB of that is obviously unreasonable and ridiculous.
Not everyone reports having an inordinately large “System Data” folder in macOS. In fact, many users have System Data that takes up a reasonable amount of storage, around a few GB to perhaps 10 or 20GB. This article is intended to address the Mac users who have excessively large “System Data” capacities on their Mac, and offer a discussion and some solutions around the problem.
Amazon is taking up to $173 off the price of the new M4 MacBook Air series, in both 13″ and 15″ display sizes, and in a variety of RAM, SSD storage, and color configurations (Sky Blue, Midnight, Starlight, Silver).
The M4 MacBook Air features an M4 chip with Apple Intelligence support, LCD display in 13″ or 15″ size options, dual display support, 12MP camera with Center Stage, Touch ID, backlit keyboard, all-day battery life, MagSafe charging, two USB-C ports, and more.
If you’re shopping for a MacBook Air, these are great discounts off the retail price, and cheaper than even the educational discount offered by Apple.
FTC: OSXDaily is an affiliate partner with Amazon, meaning if you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment which goes towards keeping the site running.
macOS Sonoma 14.7.6 and MacOS Ventura 13.7.6 have been released by Apple for Mac users who are not running the MacOS Sequoia operating system. These updates focus exclusively on security updates, with no other changes or features.
The release of MacOS 14.7.6 and 13.7.6 comes alongside the MacOS Sequoia 15.5 update that was simultaneously released.
Additionally, software updates are available for iPhone and iPad as iOS 18.5 and ipadOS 18.5, iPadOS 17.7.7, along with updates for watchOS 11.5, tvOS 18.5, and visionOS 2.5.
MacOS Sequoia 15.5 is now available as a software update for Mac users running the Sequoia operating system. The system software update includes bug fixes and security enhancements, but does not appear to include any new features or other major changes.
Additionally, Apple has also released MacOS Ventura 13.7.6 and macOS Sonoma 14.7.6 for Mac, along with iOS 18.5, iPadOS 18.5, iPadOS 17.7.7, watchOS 11.5, tvOS 18.5, and visionOS 2.5.
iOS 18.5 for iPhone and iPadOS 18.5 for iPad have been released by Apple. According to the release notes accompanying the update download, the software updates primary focus is the introduction of a new Pride Harmony LGBTQ wallpaper. Additionally, parents will now receive a notification when the Screen Time passcode is used on a childs device, and the updates include a variety of bug fixes and security enhancements to iPhone and iPad.
Separately, MacOS Sequoia 15.5 update is available for Mac, along with updates to MacOS Ventura 13.7.6, macOS Sonoma 14.7.6, iPadOS 17.7.7, and updates for watchOS 11.5, tvOS 18.5, and visionOS 2.5.
As an iPhone or iPad user you’re undoubtedly familiar with using Dark Mode and Light mode for the interface, and you might even have automatic dark/light mode enabled on your device. But some users may like to use light mode in some apps, and dark mode in other apps, like when editing in the Photos app. With a little hidden settings adjustment, you can make the Photos app editor always stay in Dark Mode (or Light Mode) on your iPhone or iPad, regardless of what your broader system setting for the interface appearance is.
Using the Photos editor in Dark Mode all the time might be easier on the eyes or simply preferable for some users, while others may prefer to always edit in Light Mode even if they’re using Dark mode systemwide otherwise. And you can also switch back to the default setting, which will place the Photos Editor in whatever appearance mode you have selected.
Amazon is back with some really great deals on Apple products, taking 20% off the iPad 11th generation model making it just $278, 20% off the iPad mini 7 for just $399, 17% off M3 iPad Air models, and they’re cutting 15% off the price of the M4 MacBook Air series which now starts at $849, plus 25% off the Apple Watch Series 10 bringing it down to just $299, and more.
Whether you’re shopping for Mothers Day gifts, or yourself, or for any other occasion, there’s no reason to pay full retail price when Amazon is offering such generous discounts.
iPad 11th Gen – $278 (down 20% from $349)
The 11th generation iPad model features an A16 chip, 11″ LCD Retina display, 128GB storage, 12MP front and rear cameras, Touch ID on the power button, and solid all day battery life. The deal price is currently available on the pink model currently but stock and pricing at Amazon changes quickly so check out the other color options as well.
