Spotlight is the fantastic search engine built into OS X and iOS, and while most people associate Spotlight searches with finding documents on their Mac or launching applications, the feature set has expanded dramatically since OS X Yosemite. One of the more useful tricks found within the revised Spotlight search is the ability to search for local places, which includes everything from restaurants, coffee shops, businesses, or just about anything else that could be found through Yelp or an Apple Maps search. Best of all, the entire search for a local listing can be done from anywhere on the Mac.

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The Mac Messages app has long had the ability to change the text size and font of your messages and conversations, but the adjustment functions have changed a bit in modern versions of MacOS system software, including Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, OS X El Capitan and Yosemite. In Messages under Mac OS X, you now have the option to increase or decrease the size of the San Francisco or Helvetica Neue system font used in conversations, but there is no longer an ability to change the actual font face or font weight.

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If you’ve ever tried to give directions to someone when you aren’t that good at it, or maybe aren’t entirely sure where you are let alone how to get there, you know how frustrating of an experience that can be. Fortunately you can avoid that situation entirely now though thanks to a great location sharing feature on the iPhone, which lets you send your current location on a map immediately to someone else. The recipient can then route directions exactly to your location, or at least locate you on a map and know where you and your iPhone are located.

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Nearly every email server has a file size limit, typically ranging between 10MB and 40MB, and any file attached to an email larger than that will typically bounce or not send. Apple has come up with an interesting solution to this problem, calling it Mail Drop.

Essentially, MailDrop will automatically detect when a large file has been placed in an email, and ask if you’d like to use Mail Drop for the attachment rather than trying (and failing) to send it through the email server. When you approve of the MailDrop request, the file is uploaded to an iCloud server where the recipient will receive a download link to the file attachment, rather than a direct email attachment. If that sounds confusing it’s really not, the entire thing is basically automated, and it works quite well.

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The iOS Mail app has long included a variety of ways to be notified of new emails, whether it’s the standard notification for all new messages, or having a unique alert set to specific VIP contacts. Perhaps even better is a feature added to recent versions of iOS that allow for individual email thread alerts, meaning you can be notified when a single designated email conversation gets a reply from any of the recipients.

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Autofill is one of the more useful features of Safari that automatically fill online order forms and logins, whether it’s a name, shipping address, login and password, or even payment and credit card information.

Of course, if you change any of that information like an address or payment details, that old autofill information filling up forms in Safari is no longer accurate or relevant. In these situations, you’ll want to clear out the unnecessary autofill details from Safari to update to the proper address. Making these changes to Safari Autofill is really easy to do in Mac OS X.

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Want to see a Preview panel in Mac Finder windows so that you can get a glance at what images and files look like before opening them? Modern versions of MacOS allow for this handy Preview feature in the Finder.

Longtime Mac users may be aware that the Column view of the Mac OS X Finder has long been popular with users who like to see a preview of what image or document they are selecting in the Finder. Up until recently, this handy preview panel was limited to the Column view however, and if you wanted to see documents or files in a list or icon view of the Finder, it wasn’t there. That changed with modern MacOS releases, and now you can have a Mac file system preview panel available with every single Finder window if you’d like to, including in icon view.

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Apple has released the second beta version of OS X 10.10.1 to those registered with the Mac Developer Program and the Yosemite Public Beta. The update arrives as build 14B23 and is a relatively small download, weighing in around 300MB.

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The popular Microsoft Office suite is available as a free download for iPhone and iPad owners, and the latest versions no longer requires an Office365 subscription to use, create, and modify documents. The iOS releases of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Powerpoint are fully functional for basic tasks, providing a welcome experience for iPhone and iPad owners who rely on Microsoft Office for work, school, or home use. Additional advanced features can be accessed with a subscription to the Office 365 service.

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The Pangu 8 jailbreak utility is now available to Mac users who wish to jailbreak an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 8, iOS 8.0.2, or iOS 8.1. Jailbreaking is generally best reserved for advanced users who have a compelling reason to jailbreak their hardware, though the Pangu8 utility is easy to use, untethered, and preinstalls Cydia.

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All users should have their own Apple ID, which is tied not only to an iCloud account, Messages, FaceTime, App Store, iTunes, iBooks, and Passbook with ApplePay, but in new versions of Mac OS X an Apple ID can also be used to log into a Mac user account too. Because each Mac user should have their own unique Apple ID for their own devices, it can sometimes be necessary to change an Apple ID associated with an iOS device or, in this case, a Mac running MacOS X.

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Modern versions of Safari for Mac OS have the ability to initiate private browsing mode on a per-window basis, allowing you to easily open a new private browsing session in Safari at any time.

This is a marked difference from how Private Browsing worked previously in Safari on the Mac, which converted all browser windows and tabs that are open in Safari into privacy mode. Now, you can open an individual Private window, and each tab within a Privacy Mode active window will be it’s own unique private session. Any other open or active Safari windows will remain as normal browsing sessions.

Using the new per-window Private Browsing mode feature of Safari is really easy in Mac OS and you have two ways to launch into a new private window; either with a menu item, or a keyboard shortcut. This article will show you how to use Private Browsing mode on Safari for Mac.

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Accidentally deleting photos from an iPhone or iPad happens and it’s not a fun feeling to know that you may have lost a photo or group of images you wanted to keep. Fortunately the latest versions of iOS support an automatic recovery process that allow you to restore deleted pictures, directly from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. The photo recovery feature is fairly forgiving, giving you a reasonable timeline where restoring a lost picture is possible.

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Group messaging is one of those features that’s great when you want to be in a group conversation, and completely annoying when you don’t want your iPhone to be included in a barrage of group text messages. A new feature in iOS aims to relieve the latter situation, when your iPhone or iPad is being stormed by an onslaught of incoming messages from a group conversation that you just happen to be included in, allowing you to selectively mute a specific group chat in the Messages app of iOS. This is basically a message sender or message thread specific Do Not Disturb available in iOS, and it works great.

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iTunes 12 brought about some fairly significant user interface changes to the media player app, one of which is the size of the font shown in playlist and music views. The new default iTunes font is smaller with tighter padding between list items, and accordingly it can be difficult to read for some users. But unlike most places in OS X, iTunes does offer an ability to change the size of onscreen fonts, which can help make that playlist and music text more readable.

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The iPhone 6 Plus is easily the best smartphone I’ve had and I would highly recommend it to anyone for a variety of reasons, notably the wonderful screen and stellar battery life. While there is plenty to rave about, sometimes sharing what’s not to like can be helpful to others who are thinking about making a purchasing decision too. So after using the iPhone Plus for a few months, here are some of my unexpected findings and thoughts about the biggest iPhone ever made.

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Many Mac users who rely on Mail app for accessing their emails in Mac OS are in the habit of navigating emails with their mouse, double-clicking an email, closing it, then repeating to go to the next message. A lesser known option is to use the keyboard to navigate within Mail messages of Mac OS X, which can be considerably faster for many users once they learn the tricks of how to use it. Not only can you navigate between emails this way, but you can also reply, send, forward, mark as unread, and perform many other Mail functions directly with a keystroke.

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Apple has released the first beta of iOS 8.1.1 to those participating in the iOS Developer program. The update arrives as build 12B432 and is said to include multiple bug fixes, as well as performance improvements for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Being a minor release, it is unlikely that iOS 8.1.1 will include any new features.

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