HomePod Mini and the newer HomePod models offer sound recognition features that can recognize smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors, and you can set these devices to send you a notification if either of these alarm sounds is detected by your HomePod.

With this feature setup, if your HomePod or HomePod Mini detects the sound of a smoke alarm or carbon monoxide detector, you will get an alert notification sent to your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. Sounds useful, right? Here’s how you can set this feature up.

Read more »

Firewalls serve as a network security mechanism to monitor and control incoming and outgoing traffic to your computer and the network, or internet. MacOS includes a software firewall that can be enabled manually for users who would like to use the feature, or who require it for whatever purpose.

The ability to use the firewall, toggle the feature on, and off, have relocated in System Settings, so we’re going to show you how to use the firewall in MacOS Ventura, and how to enable it or disable it as you see fit.

Read more »

The Apple Savings Account is available only to Apple Card holders, for now anyway, and while the interest rate on savings is competitive, one of the quirks of an Apple Savings Account is how you access the account itself.

There is no dedicated Apple Savings app, and not even a dedicated Savings tab within the Wallet app, and there is no website to login to where you can access your account or funds. So, how do you view your Apple Savings Account and how do you access it?

Like so many other features of modern iOS, where things are tucked away behind layers of obfuscation or in unexpected places, you’ll be forgiven if you opened an account only to be confused on how to access it, so here’s a tutorial to explain.

Read more »

Update: A third release candidate of MacOS Ventura 13.4 has been made available for Mac beta testers.

A second Release Candidate build of iOS 16.5, iPadOS 16.5, and MacOS Ventura 13.4 has been released by Apple to users participating in the public beta and developer beta programs for Apple system software.

Apple had previously stated that final versions of iOS 16.5, iPadOS 16.5, and MacOS Ventura 13.4 will be released to everyone this week, suggesting the second RC build must have caught some security issue or bug present in the first RC build of these releases.

The focus of iOS 16.5 and iPadOS 16.5 is the inclusion of a new LGTBQ+ pride wallpaper, and bringing a Sports tab to the News app. A variety of bug fixes are also included, and presumably security enhancements as well. MacOS Ventura 13.4 also gains a Sports tab in the News app, along with bug fixes and security enhancements.

Read more »

Occasionally you may find yourself in a situation where you are seeking to find what open TCP connections are in a listening state on a Mac. This can be useful whether you’re troubleshooting particular network issues, or simply looking to identify which processes are listening on specific ports on a Mac.

We’ll be using the command line lsof tool to find out what/who is listening on open TCP connections on a Mac, making this most appropriate for advanced Mac users who are comfortable with the Terminal and sudo.

Read more »

The iPhone Stopwatch feature is widely used by many people for everything from exercise, cooking, games, timers, health, and anything else requiring timing of durations.

You can switch the appearance of the Stopwatch in Clock app on iPhone to an analog face, complete with a standard watch face with moving watch hands. Analog stopwatches are preferred by many people, whether used for taking a pulse or interval timing workouts, amongst endless other use cases.

Like so many features on iPhone, the analog stopwatch face is hidden, tucked behind the digital stopwatch face, and it’s just as easy to overlook as it is to access.

Read more »

Command line aliases are very useful, allowing you to have command shortcuts for lengthier commands, and you can use them to replace one command with another as well. With zsh becoming the default shell in Terminal for MacOS, and a widely used shell in general thanks to Oh-My-Zsh, you may be wondering how to configure and use aliases with zsh shell.

Read more »

You may already know that you can get indoor temperature and humidity levels with HomePod Mini and the new HomePod using the Home app, but what you may not know is that you can also get this information from Siri.

Read more »

Many advanced Chrome users may occasionally need to change the user agent associated with the browser, typically for testing purposes. Whether you’re a designer, developer, student, tinkerer, novice, or expert, changing the Chrome user agent isn’t particularly difficult, but it is hidden within a section of Chrome that most users never interact with; the developer tools.

Here’s how you can change the user agent in the Chrome web browser, it works the same on Chrome for Mac, Windows, or Linux.

Read more »

Want to use ChatGPT on your iPhone? It’s easy to tap into the incredible power of ChatGPT from anywhere, as long as you have your iPhone with you. ChatGPT will generate human-like text and responses that is leaps and bounds far more impressive than anything offered by Siri (or Alexa for that matter), offering you an assistant for virtually anything you can think to ask a question of.

Despite what you may have read or heard elsewhere, you do not need to download any apps or use anything particularly fancy to access and use ChatGPT right on your iPhone. Using ChatGPT from iPhone is a lot easier than you may think, so let’s dive in and take a look.

Read more »

Apple has issued the release candidate builds of iOS 16.5, iPadOS 16.5, and MacOS Ventura 13.4. The RC builds are available to download now for developer beta and public beta users.

The final versions of iOS 16.5, iPadOS 16.5, and MacOS Ventura 13.4 will be released to the general public next week, according to Apple.

No major new features are coming in iOS 16.5 or iPadOS 16.5, but Apple notes that a new LGTBQ+ pride celebration wallpaper is included in the software update, along with a Sports tab in the News app, and various bug fixes. MacOS Ventura 13.4 also focuses on bug fixes and security enhancements, but does not include any new wallpapers. Full release notes are included further below.

Read more »

If you’re a Mac user running the latest versions of macOS system software, from Monterey 12, Ventura 13, or later, you can enable an optional Emoji quick-access feature that allows you to summon the Emoji picker instantly with the press of a single key on your Mac keyboard.

Read more »

Many users choose to save login information and passwords into the Google Chrome browser’s built-in password manager. Sometimes you may need to manually access the passwords or login information that is stored within the password manager, so we’ll show you how you can access and view saved password and login information in the Chrome web browser.

We’re focusing on viewing passwords in Chrome for the desktop here, including Mac, Windows, and Linux, but the process is basically the same for Chrome on Android and iPhone too.

Read more »

Apple is now offering a savings account, thanks to a partnership with Goldman Sachs. The savings account is currently available only to Apple Card users, so if you have not yet applied for an Apple Card and you wish to have an Apple Savings account, you’ll need to do that first.

Currently, the Apple Savings account offers a 4.15% yield, which is considerably higher than what is available through virtually any other bank savings account.

Setting up the Apple Savings account is hidden and not particularly obvious, so if you attempted to check this feature out before and failed to find anything about it, it’s not surprising. We’ll show you how you can setup the Apple Savings account on your iPhone with the Wallet app.

Read more »

If you ever find that Siri is cutting you off in the middle of you issuing a command to the virtual assistance, you may want to change the “Siri Pause Time” setting to a longer duration of time.

You can easily adjust how long Siri will pause for a command on the iPhone or iPad, which can help if Siri is not getting the full command request or not completing a note, reminder, or other task that you ask of it. This is also a useful setting to adjust if you speak slower than Siri expects, or if you’re using Siri in another language that is not your native tongue and tend to speak slower as well.

Read more »

It’s not terribly uncommon to encounter flashing lights and strobing effects in videos, and while they can be annoying for most people, flashing light can be particularly problematic for people with epilepsy.

Fortunately, the latest versions of MacOS offer a feature that will detect flashing lights and strobing lights in videos, and automatically dim them. This is a great accessibility feature, whether you’re simply annoyed by flashing lights or if they could cause a health problem.

Read more »

Quick Start is the fantastic feature that allows users to easily transfer data from an old iPhone or iPad to a new iPhone or iPad, seamlessly, wirelessly, and with minimal effort. While Quick Start typically automatically opens when you get a new iPhone or iPad and you’re beginning to set it up, it doesn’t always work that way, and sometimes it does not activate automatically, or at all.

Let’s discuss how you can troubleshoot Quick Start when it’s not working on an iPhone or iPad.

Read more »

The Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro and iPad Air is a game-changer in terms of making the tablet device even more productive, especially for people who are accustomed to using cursors and physical keyboards, power-users, and pros, as it brings a great trackpad and keyboard to the device.

Whether you are new to the Magic Keyboard for iPad or have been using one for a while, there’s a good chance you aren’t aware of the many trackpad gestures and tricks that are available for the handy hardware.

Here are some helpful tricks you can use for the Magic Keyboard for iPad, with trackpad tips and gestures, you’ll be improving your iPad usage in no time.

Read more »