iTunes Home Sharing is a great way to share music libraries and playlists with others, but if you don’t want everyone to be able to sort through the shared library, you can easily require a password in order to access the shared playlists. This is perfect for situations where some content may be explicit and not appropriate for everyone to hear or see in your iTunes library, and it’s also excellent for when you only want to share and stream music with yourself from one computer to another, but you remain on the same network with others. Even for more mundane playlists it can still be a good idea to implement the password in multi-Mac households, offices, or schools, plus, you can combine it with sharing only specific playlists to hide that terribly embarrassing early 90’s music collection from everyone else in the office.
Requiring a password to access shared iTunes media can either be mandated during the initial Home Sharing setup, or it can be added after the fact to either the entire library or specific playlists, here’s how to do that:
From iTunes, open Preferences and click on the “Sharing” tab
Be sure Sharing is enabled, then either specify to share either the entire library, or only selected playlists
To add password protection, check the box for “Require Password”, then enter a password that others will need to access the lists – if you intend to share the password with anyone else, do not use the same password here as you do with your administrator account or anything else
Close out of iTunes Preferences
The next time someone goes to connect to the iTunes share, they will need to enter that set password to see and access the playlists or library. This applies to everyone, whether they are connecting from another Mac or PC running iTunes, or an iPad, iPod touch, or iPhone on the same network.
Find My iPhone and Find My iPad are security features that make it simple to locate lost iOS devices by tracking them on maps through GPS. A potential problem is that after a device has been lost, or perhaps more accurately, after a device has been stolen, GPS or Find My iPhone can be turned off which thereby disables the Find My iPhone service’s ability to track the missing device. A great fix for that is to use iOS Restrictions to prevent Location Services from being turned off at all, which basically forces GPS and Find My iPhone to stay on all the time. This means that as long as the device is turned on, GPS will be on, making it trackable the entire time.
Find “Restrictions” and tap on it, entering the password if it’s already enabled. If Restrictions it not yet enabled, at the next screen tap on “Enable Restrictions” and enter a password to access the feature
Now scroll down to “Privacy” and tap on “Location Services”
Make sure Location Services are turned ON, then scroll to the very bottom to verify that Find My iPhone is also turned ON
Now go back to the very top (tap the titlebar to jump there), and choose “Don’t Allow Changes”
Exit out of Settings
With this configured, there is now an additional layer of protection for the device with GPS and Find My iPhone forcibly left on. And yes, this works the same on an iPad or iPod touch too, though the accuracy of the Find My service is not going to be as reliable on a wi-fi only device, and thus we’re focusing on the iPhone here.
It’s a good idea to use a different password for accessing Restrictions than you do for your lock screen password, and if you’re traveling, prone to losing devices, or in a high risk theft area, consider placing a lock screen message on the device with your ownership information on it, which makes it particularly easy to return should a nice person get ahold of the phone.
G-Form, the makers of extreme protective cases for iPads, MacBooks, and iPhones, is demonstrating the effectiveness of their latest iPhone 5 case by sending a device 100,000′ into the atmosphere with a weather balloon, and then letting it free fall and crash land back to Earth. As you probably guessed, the device survives just fine, thanks to the impact absorbing shell of the Extreme case line, but even knowing that makes the video embedded below fun to watch:
The ability to block incoming calls on the iPhone is missing on older versions of iOS, and though new versions of iOS can block calls, older devices are left withthe Do Not Disturb feature. Do Not Disturb is excellent, but it’s not really blocking unwanted calls, it just sets a time period where any calls won’t bother you.
So what can you do if you want to actually block a phone call on the iPhone? You have a few options. You can attempt to contact your cellular carrier and request a specific number be blocked, but not all carriers support that option and you’ll be spending plenty of time on hold and bouncing around tech support menus to even find out if it’s possible. That’s not really viable for evryone though, which leaves a few iOS features as the next best thing, allowing you to create your very own do-it-yourself “block” list of sorts that is centralized and configured to be easily ignorable and also easy to add to.
1: Create an “Ignore” Contact for Numbers & People to Block
Though it may seem completely counterintuitive to create a contact for the people or numbers you don’t want to accept calls from, it’s necessary if you want to ignore those numbers by way of software.
Open Contacts and tap the [+] button to add a new contact
Name it “Ignore” or something similar, and tap on the number field, add every phone number you wish to ignore to this newly created contact
2: Turn Off Alerts, Vibrates, & Use Silent Ringtones for the Call List
Now that you have the “Ignore” contact created, we’ll disable every alert sound, tone, and vibration for the contact, causing each number within that list to fall silent.
From the newly crafted “Ignore” contact, navigate down to the ringtone section, tap on it, and choose a silent ringtone. If you don’t have a silent ringtone handy, creating one takes just a moment or two with QuickTime Player
Next, tap on “Vibration” under Ringtone and choose “Nothing”
Now move on to text tones, and as the alert tone choose “None”
Finally, go to “Vibration” under Text Tone and choose “Nothing”
3: Adding New Numbers to the Blocked List
Got a phone call from a new number you want to “block” and not be notified of again? No problem
When the call is no longer active or ringing, tap the blue (>) arrow button next to the number in the Recents list
Scroll down and choose “Add to Existing Contact”, locate the “Ignore” contact and add the number to that list, causing all texts, calls, and alerts to be nonexistent for the caller
Having a centralized “block” contact like this is also far more preferable to creating a bunch of different contacts for all numbers you want to ignore, because it will keep your address book clean and you only have to adjust the alert settings once. Keep in mind that inbound calls and texts from these numbers are still going to come through to the phone, they just won’t alert you or bother you in any way, making them easy to ignore.
This is very much a workaround obviously, but until a true block feature is either implemented at the iOS level or universally allowed from cell providers, it’s really the only choice we have.
Retrieving a list of preferred wireless networks can be helpful when troubleshooting wi-fi problems, amongst other reasons too. If you’re looking to print out a list of wi-fi networks the Mac has used as preferred and connected to before, the following trick will do just that!
Managing slews of email can be one of the most challenging and time consuming parts of ones day, but with the help of VIP lists in iOS and OS X you can help to weed through some of the nonsense by simply having defined persons get precedent over others. On the desktop side of things, we’ve discussed using VIP in OS X’s Mail app before, including having the new mail notification and alert only notify you when a VIP email has come through, and you can do something quite similar on the mobile side of things too with iOS. By setting a custom Alert tone for VIP lists, you’ll know by sound alone if a message is important enough to warrant a quick response, before you even look at your inbox. Read more »
A new iPhone TV commercial titled “Dream” is running that focuses on the excellent Do Not Disturb feature of iOS, which allows you to block out certain hours where notifications, sounds, and alerts won’t bother you unless they’re from a pre-selected important list. The advertisement features the professional tennis player Williams sisters, playing table tennis against the narrator, which as other recent iPhone commercials, is Jeff Daniels voice, who says the following:
“Ever had a really cool dream? I’m having one right now. I don’t want to be disturbed, and I won’t, because before I went to sleep, I set this. Now my iPhone knows not to ring unless its important. Because disturbing this would just be… wrong.”
The ad is embedded below to view, and is airing on primetime TV now.
Ironically, the “Dream” commercial started airing right at the same time that a prominent Do Not Disturb bug came to light, whereby the feature wasn’t turning itself off automatically as scheduled to. That bug has been acknowledged by Apple and it resolves itself on January 7.
Ever wondered what maintenance is truly essential for a Mac? Maybe you’re wondering what the best backup solution is? Or maybe you just want to secure your Mac a bit more? Take the time for these simple digital resolutions to make your Mac perform better, be safer and more secure, plus give you some added peace of mind. We’ve broken these tips into three simple sections; system maintenance, file backups, and security measures, so follow along and your Mac will thank you for years to come.
2012 is at it’s end, and just like with our favorite Mac tip collections of the year, OSXDaily.com is looking back and gathering some of the most useful multi-trick collection posts for iOS, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch too. Again, we are aiming to give you the absolute most bang for your reading buck here by focusing on our favorite multiple tip roundup posts and so we’re skipping the single walkthroughs and guides that we post every day. Read through them all and you’ll be mastering iOS with must-know tips, typing tricks, genuinely useful Siri commands, better iPhone macro photography, faster website access, and much more.
6 Tips for Freeing Up Storage Space in iOS
Because of their smaller storage capacity, it’s easy to run out of storage on an iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Spend a few minutes with these tips though and you’ll be freeing up tons of space in iOS in no time at all.
8 Typing Tips for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch
Typing on the touch screen keyboards can be challenging, but you can type faster by using a variety of smart tricks for the iOS virtual keyboards
6 Tips to Improve Typing on the iPad
Speaking of typing in iOS, this a collection of ways that should improve your typing specifically for the iPad
7 Genuinely Great Uses for Siri
Siri is incredibly useful and can perform a lot more tasks than you may realize. If you aren’t using the iOS virtual voice assistant there is no better time to get started, you’ll be making hands-free phone calls, checking and replying to emails, getting movie times, and much more.
10 Tips to Reduce iPhone & iPad Personal Hotspot Data Use
The iPhone and iPad can both share their cellular internet connections and serve as a personal wi-fi router, but before you setup Personal Hotspot, consider these tips that can help you reduce your data usage so you can avoid costly overage fees.
3 Best Places to Sell Your Old iPhone
Did you get a new iPhone this year? If you have an old iPhone laying about, here are the three best places to sell it, letting you get the most cash for your old device. This is geared for iPhones, but it’ll pertain to iPads and iPods too…
2 Ways to Listen to Podcasts with Music App Again
The iOS Music app is often a better choice for listening to podcasts because it’s faster on many devices, and here are some simple ways to do that again after iOS 6.
2 Super Simple Tips to Get to Websites Faster in iOS
Sometimes the simplest tips are the most used, and these two are as easy as pie while letting you jump to websites faster than ever on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
With 2012 coming to an end, OSXDaily.com is looking back and gathering some of the most useful Mac multi-tip and trick collection posts from the year past. Yes, we post individual tips and walkthroughs every day, but we’re aiming to give you the most bang for your reading buck here by focusing on our favorite roundups, so take the time to read them all and you’ll be mastering a wide range of Mac topics. From general OS X tips that improve Mac productivity, little known keyboard shortcuts, to some more advanced tips for the command line, we’ve got something for everyone at every skill level, so read on and learn some new tricks for the new year! (Don’t miss our favorite iOS, iPhone, and iPad tip roundups too!)
4 Simple Mac Maintenance Tips
Maintaining your Mac is critical for optimal performance, but it shouldn’t be complicated. Here are a few super simple tips to follow to keep a Mac in tip-top shape.
9 Command Line Tricks for OS X You Should Know
Whether you’re an advanced user or just want to learn more about the command line that sits underneath OS X’s GUI layer, these terminal tricks are essential.
5 Quick Tips to Free Up Disk Space on a Mac
Everyone runs out of disk space sooner or later, but you may be surprised to find out where all your storage capacity has gone. Run through these quick tips and you’ll be freeing up tons of drive space on a Mac in no time.
9 Reasons a Mac is Running Slow, and What To Do About It
If your Mac feels like it’s running slower than it should, there are usually reasons why that is. We cover the 9 most common reasons Macs start to run slow, and more importantly, we tell you what to do about it so you can be back to normal again.
8 Tips to Protect a Mac from Viruses, Trojans, and Malware
Macs are much more resilient to viruses, trojans, and malware than Windows PC’s, but they’re not completely impervious. The good news is, Macs are extremely easy to protect against such baddies, and with some simple tips you can protect any Mac from almost all known threats.
11 Must-Have Free Apps for Macs
Whether you just got a brand new Mac or you just want to get some new apps, these 11 apps are essentials for any OS X user, and best of all, they’re completely free!
5 Tips to Make iTunes Look Normal Again
iTunes 11 completely changed the interface of Apple’s desktop media player and store, and while some people are OK with those interface changes, others would rather iTunes look familiar again. These tips will make iTunes 11 look normal again, so you won’t be fumbling around looking for podcasts, media, iOS devices, and that ever-useful sidebar.
21 iTunes Keyboard Shorcuts
Master iTunes with keystrokes for just about everything, from accessing libraries to controlling your media library and playing music.
8 Shortcuts to Navigate the Mac OS X Dock
Did you know the OS X Dock can be navigated with just the keyboard? Forget the cursor, you can launch and switch apps easily without ever lifting your hands from the keys.
If you’ve sent emails out with Siri before, you have probably noticed that Siri will often respond to the initial email request with an inquiry about what the mail subject or body should contain, making you respond with another phrase and continue a back-and-forth dialog with Siri until the to, subject, and message fields are completed. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that approach, but you can write complete emails with Siri much faster by using certain keywords in your speech commands.
The important keywords to use for complete mail messages are: “to”, “about”, and “and say”, and they must be used in a command format like so:
send email to [recipient] about [subject] and say [email body]
For example, to send a complete email addressed to “Danny DeVito” with the subject of “Taco Carts” and the body message of “I found the best taco cart ever” you would use a complete phrase with Siri like that shown below. The important keywords have been placed in bold to emphasize their placement in relation to the command:
Send an email to Danny Devito about Taco Carts, and say I found the best taco cart ever
Siri will write out the email as usual, but rather than requesting a body or subject from you again, it will fill everything in automatically, with the mail message immediately ready to send out. Siri will finish by asking if the message is ready to send, you can simply say “Yes” or tap the “Send” command on screen yourself.
This is significantly faster than the question and answer method that goes along with the standard “email name” command, give it a try with Siri yourself.
Siri is impressively useful in more ways than you may initially realize, don’t miss our other Siri tips to get more use out of the virtual voice assistant.
Finding the black MacBook is a bit like playing Where’s Waldo, it’s barely visible under the MacBook Pro stand. The photo was taken with an iPhone 5 32GB.
Send us your Mac & Apple setup shots! Email a good picture or two, along with a brief description of hardware and what the hardware is used for to osxdailycom@gmail.com
Minimally styled clock screen savers are fairly popular and we’ve shared a variety of them here before, but it’s hard to get more minimal than a binary clock. The aptly named BinaryClock is just that, a free and simple binary clock screen saver for OS X that has some nice color effects that change with the time. Binary clocks are also fun because the average person may look at it with utter confusion, while you’ll be able to read the time (and don’t worry, if you don’t know how to read binary clocks, we explain it simply below).
To install the quartz file as a screen saver, download the “BinaryClock.qtz” file from GitHub and save it to ~/Downloads or the desktop. Now launch System Preferences from the  Apple menu and choose Desktop & Screen Saver. Locate the BinaryClock.qtz file and then drag and drop it into the preview pane of the Screen Saver preference panel to install it. Alternatively, but perhaps better for most advanced users, you can just toss the .qtz file into ~/Library/Screen Savers/ to install it manually.
BinaryClock has a few configuration options regarding the screen savers color schemes, and you can choose to hide or show the numbers on the clock itself. Speaking of showing numbers, if you’re new to reading binary clocks it’s best to keep them shown until you get the hang of reading the time.
How Do I Read a Binary Clock Anyway?
Though it may look foreign, it’s actually easier to read than you may think at first glance. This screen saver makes it even more simple because it doesn’t include the time in seconds as well, but the basic idea is just a matter of adding the highlighted numbers in the top row to get the hour, and adding the highlighted numbers in the bottom row to get the minutes. The screenshot below demonstrates this with the numbers shown, and once you remember the positions of the numbers you can hide them and the method remains the same.
You’ll find that not all binary clocks are positioned exactly the same way, but the method of telling the time is the same whether the numbers are shown in columns or rows.
Update: Right after publishing this, we discovered a minor albeit important typo in the BinaryClock screen saver, where in the minutes the 4 is duplicated twice, the 2nd of which should be the number 2. Basically, if you show the numbers but don’t correct that in your head, then the time will be off by two minutes. Presumably that bug will be fixed by the developer quickly, but anyone with knowledge of Quartz Composer can also do it themselves easily.
Update 2: The aforementioned typo has been fixed, that was quick!
Did someone send an Emoji to your iPhone, iPod, or iPad and you have not the faintest of clues as to what it’s supposed to mean? With the vast array of emoji icons out there, you’re not alone, but there’s an excellent little-known feature that uses iOS text-to-speech to give a precise definition of the emoji icon in question, spoken right to you. We’ll show you exactly how to use the Speak function to define any Emoji character on iOS.
Snapchat is a very popular quirky picture messaging client for Android and iPhone that allows people to share pictures and have conversations that disappear after a very short time interval, after which the shared content is gone forever. The spontaneous and fleeting nature of the messages has given the app an interesting reputation that you can now enjoy on the desktop, despite not having an official client for Mac or Windows. Instead, with the help of Bluestacks (basically an Android app emulator), you can install and run Snapchat on a Mac or PC right now.
Some OS X apps are so great and so universally useful that they earn the title of “must-have” on just about any Mac, and we’re bringing you an essential list of these must-have apps that also happen to be completely free.
Whether you have a brand new Mac that needs some new apps and utilities to get it going, or you just want to expand your app collection to get more done and have some great new tools at your disposal, don’t miss this collection of some of the best free Mac apps out there. We’re covering eleven essential apps here, but don’t forget to add your own must-have recommendations to the comments!
External wireless keyboards can be connected to and used with iPhones and iPod touches through Bluetooth. This can help when typing anything of length, particularly if you’re not as fast a typer with the virtual keyboard, and it allows you to create an immediate (albeit tiny) workstation just about anywhere. There’s also a very nice software-side bonus to using an external keyboard with iOS too; the virtual keyboard disappears when an external keyboard is paired, letting you see the entire screen unobstructed while you type.
We’ll use an official and generic Apple Wireless Keyboard with an iPhone for the purpose of this walkthrough, but you can use any compatible Bluetooth keyboard and any other iOS device, whether it’s an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
If you’re anything like me, you waited until the absolute last minute to get Christmas shopping done and you’ve probably already raided the gift card rack at a grocery store to stock up on last minute presents. But don’t forget to take advantage go email-friendly gift cards from Apple’s iTunes Stores, Amazon, and if you’re shopping for an iOS user, just sending a whole slew of specific apps or media as gifts, even a gift card, right from the iTunes Stores on either a Mac/PC or iOS device – yes the latter means you can buy someone a gift as you are sitting on the couch watching them open other presents, the ultimate savior for last second shoppers.
Sending Apps, Movies, & Gift Cards from iTunes & App Store
You can also send anything from the App Store and iTunes Store as a gift, including apps, games, music, movies, TV shows, and books, and they will be billed to your iTunes account.
Send iOS apps as gifts and set a delivery time by going to any app, movie, or song, tapping Share > Gift > Set the recipient and delivery time – or send right away – and you’re good to go
Send iTunes Gift cards by launching iTunes, going to the iTunes Store, choosing “Buy iTunes Gifts” > select email or print delivery > enter the recipient and amount, and confirming the purchase
Amazon Printable & Emailable Gift Cards
Amazon sells just about anything imaginable which makes gift cards from there appropriate for just about anyone.
If you want to have something physical to wrap and put under a tree or into a stocking, both Apple and Amazon also let you print out gift cards in any dollar amount that can be redeemed online easily just as if it was bought from a store.
The emailable solutions are particularly helpful if you find yourself at a holiday event with an extra person or two you weren’t expecting, or if you’re just feeling a little more generous at the last minute and want to add another something to a present.
iTunes Home Sharing is a great way to share music libraries and playlists with others, but if you don’t want everyone to be able to sort through the shared library, you can easily require a password in order to access the shared playlists. This is perfect for situations where some content may be explicit and not appropriate for everyone to hear or see in your iTunes library, and it’s also excellent for when you only want to share and stream music with yourself from one computer to another, but you remain on the same network with others. Even for more mundane playlists it can still be a good idea to implement the password in multi-Mac households, offices, or schools, plus, you can combine it with sharing only specific playlists to hide that terribly embarrassing early 90’s music collection from everyone else in the office.
