Apple now has the exclusive rights to “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, which means if you’d like to watch the Christmas classic from 1965 this holiday season, you’ll need to watch it through the Apple TV+ service. Fortunately, Apple TV+ offers a free seven-day trial, so you can sign up for the free trial long enough to enjoy “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and then cancel the service if you’d like to.

The Apple TV+ app is included on every Apple device including Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, and the entire streaming service is also available on the web to any device with a web browser (meaning any Windows PC, Linux machine, Chromebook, Android, etc) can also watch the Christmas show.

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Instagram is a very popular photo sharing and video sharing social network where users post photos, videos, reels, and stories, but, curiously, by default Instagram does not upload the highest quality photos or videos. Instead, a buried settings option allows you to enable high quality uploads of photos and videos to Instagram.

If you feel like your videos, photos, and reels are a little blurry or pixelated once they upload to Instagram, or the quality is lower than you’d like it to be, then turn on this hidden setting for instagram to enable the highest quality uploads for videos and photos.

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Apple deals continue for the holiday shopping season, with many items receiving nice discounts from Amazon. And, delivery is still available by Christmas for most! Check out the Apple section at Amazon and browse around, and glance at the deals we have highlighted below.

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Extensions and Quick Actions in MacOS allow you to enable and disable additional features in places like the Sharing menu, Touch Bar, and contextual menus in the Finder. For example, you can add or remove Markup options, Quick Actions, Sharing options, photo editing options, and much more. These are a popular feature for many Mac users, but the latest versions of MacOS make customizing these features a challenge, because many users can’t find the settings, and are left wondering where Extensions and Quick Actions are located on the Mac now.

Like so many other curious or outright baffling settings relocations in macOS Sonoma / Ventura, Extensions has come along for the ride, and if you can’t locate Quick Actions or Extensions in macOS Sonoma and macOS Ventura System Settings you certainly aren’t alone.

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Amazon is back with more great deals on select Apple gear, bringing nice discounts to Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Ultra 2, iPad 10th gen, iPad Air, and more, and delivery is available before Christmas.

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Due to the nature of how Hey Siri on iPhone works, Siri is basically always listening to you and your surroundings, if the Hey Siri feature is enabled.

This is necessary to hear the “Hey Siri” activation word so that Siri knows to pick up the command you give to it, and the always on / always listening functionality is no different from how other voice activated devices work, be they from Apple, Amazon, Google, or otherwise. For iPhone users, this is sometimes made obvious by Siri talking randomly or activating on its own.

If you don’t want your iPhone to be listening to you, or rather Siri to be listening to you, then you’ll want to turn off the listening feature, either temporarily or completely. We’ll show you how to do both.

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If you’re accustomed to using iCloud to keep your photos synced between your iPhone, Mac, or even Windows PC, you may not be familiar with the process of transferring pictures off of the iPhone without using iCloud.

This tutorial will walk through the steps required to get pictures from your iPhone to your computer, without using iCloud.

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Mac users enrolled in the beta testing program for macOS Sonoma will find 14.2 available as a release candidate. Release Candidate builds are typically the final version in the beta cycle, suggesting a release of macOS Sonoma 14.2 to the general public is imminent.

Additionally, Apple has issued RC builds for other beta system software including iOS 17.2 RC, iPadOS 17.2 RC, watchOS 10.2 RC, and tvOS 17.2 RC.

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Apple has issued a release candidate (RC) build for iOS 17.2 for iPhone and iPadOS 17.2 for iPad. Release Candidates are typically the last of the beta development cycle, unless some additional significant bug or security issue is found, suggesting that the final version of iOS 17.2 and iPadOS 17.2 will be coming in the near future.

iOS 17.2 includes the Journal app, the ability to add stickers to iMessages from the long-press menu, and a variety of other bug fixes and security enhancements.

Additionally, Apple released macOS Sonoma 14.2 Release Candidate, along with RC builds of watchOS 10.2, and tvOS 17.2.

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Want to boost your Mac productivity with some super useful keyboard shortcuts? Here are four of them that every Mac user should know and memorize, where you’re sure to get plenty of use from.

From switching between apps, windows, jumping into any directories, or force quitting, read on!

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If you have an iPhone or iPad you may already be familiar with adding widgets to the Home Screen of iOS and iPadOS, but a lesser known trick is that you can create a stack of widgets that you can flip through to see different widgets and data.

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Shopping for some Apple gear this holiday season? Why not save some cash and take advantage of Amazon’s ongoing deals for Apple hardware. We’ve rounded up a handful of great deals on the M3 MacBook Pro 14″ & 16″, M2 MacBook Air 15″, iPad Air, iPad mini, AirTags, Apple Watch Series 9, external hard drives, and more.

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Zoom lovers and Zoom telecommuters rejoice, you can now join and start Zoom meetings directly from your Apple TV. That’s right, Zoom now has an Apple TV app, allowing you to participate in Zoom meetings from your couch and put your videoconferencing on the big screen.

All the standard Zoom features are included, including the ability to start and join Zoom meetings, calendar integration, ability to send invites, you can read the in-meeting chats, join breakout rooms, and all the other major Zoom essentials.

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This is a cool little convenience feature that is not widely known; the Messages app on iPhone and iPad will prompt you to send photos if someone asks for them.

The Messages app has become significantly more intelligent in the latest versions of iOS and iPadOS for iPhone and iPad, and now, alongside the usual QuickType text suggestions, emoji suggestions, and auto-correct suggestions, your iPhone will also prompt you to ‘Choose Photos’ if someone sends you a message requesting photos or pictures.

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iOS 17.1.2 has been released for iPhone users, along with iPadOS 17.1.2 for iPad. The small software update includes security fixes and is recommended for all users to install onto their eligible devices.

It is unclear if any bug fixes are included in the release, as none are mentioned in the release notes, which are included further below.

Separately, Apple has also issued macOS Sonoma 14.1.2 update for Mac.

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macOS Sonoma 14.1.2 update has been released for Mac users running the Sonoma operating system. The software update includes unspecified bug fixes and security enhancements, and is recommended for all Mac users running Sonoma to install. Full release notes are included below.

Separately, Apple has also released iOS 17.1.2 update for iPhone, and iPadOS 17.1.2 update for iPad, both of which also include security updates.

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Dark Mode is a popular visual option for many Mac users who wish to change the appearance of their computers interface. If you’re new to the Mac, or even just new to the more modern operating systems like Sonoma and Ventura that use System Settings, you may not be familiar with how to activate and enable Dark Mode in macOS.

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If you’re wondering how you can set the default web browser in macOS Sequoia & Sonoma to something else, maybe to Chrome, Firefox, Brave, or perhaps even back to Safari, you’ll find that it is relatively easy to do so. However, like so many other adjustments and tweaks to the latest macOS versions, it is different compared to prior versions of macOS and Mac OS X and what you may be accustomed to.

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