Did you know that, by default, your Mac search queries entered into Spotlight, Safari, Siri, Lookup, and #images, are sent to Apple? While this information is anonymized so as not to be identifying, and Apple says it’s used to improve search results, many Mac users may not want this search information being shared with Apple at all. Additionally, privacy enthusiasts may find these type of data collection efforts to be undesirable.
Fortunately, you can easily turn off “Help Apple Improve Search” setting on the Mac to stop sharing your searches with Apple from Safari, Siri, Spotlight, Lookup, and #images search.
Siri has been considerably improved in recent MacOS versions, mostly because it’s now linked to ChatGPT. One of the other recent changes to Siri in modern MacOS versions is that it’s now easier to access the “Type to Siri” feature, no longer being relegated to an Accessibility setting that has to be enabled separately like it is in earlier versions of Mac system software.
With macOS Sequoia 15 and newer, Type To Siri can be accessed from anywhere on the Mac with a simple keypress. If you haven’t used this feature on your Mac yet, take a moment to learn about it and give it a go.
Some MacOS Sequoia users have discovered that the com.apple.mediaanalysisd directory in MacOS is taking up very large amounts of disk storage capacity with cache files.
If you have discovered your Mac disk space has reduced since installing or updating to MacOS Sequoia, the inordinately large com.apple.mediaanalysisd cache file issue could be to blame. A variety of Mac users have reported the directory being filled with 15GB+ of data, with some users noting 50 GB, 80 GB, even 140GB of cache files, filling users entire disk drives with the cache bundle files.
Let’s review what the directory is, and how to recover your disk storage space.
You may occasionally find a situation where a question mark icon appears in the Mac Dock, sometimes it’s even several question mark icons. If you click on the question mark icon in the Dock, nothing happens. What is the question mark? Why is there a question mark icon in the Dock? How do you remove or fix it? We’re going to answer these questions and resolve this issue.
The second beta versions of iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and MacOS Sequoia 15.3, are now available for users participating in the beta testing programs for Apple system software.
There are also second beta versions of watchOS 11.3, tvOS 18.3 and visionOS 2.3, if you’re a developer testing software for those devices and operating systems.
While the prior updates to these OS versions focused on additional Apple Intelligence features, it appears these beta versions are focused more on bug fixes and other general improvements. The exception to that is MacOS Sequoia 15.3 beta includes support for Genmoji creation on the Mac.
Apple has released iOS 18.2.1 for iPhone users, and iPadOS 18.2.1 for iPad users. The new software updates are said to include important bug fixes, and are therefore recommended for all users to install.
No published security updates are included in the release, and it’s not entirely sure what the specific bug fixes are either.
At the moment, this is the only new software update available for Apple devices, but it’s possible bug fix updates will arrive for other devices later.
If you’d like to start the new year with some binge watching, you can enjoy a free weekend of all-access to Apple TV+ films and shows starting on January 3 and continuing through January 5.
The free weekend is available on any device where you can stream Apple TV+, all you will need is an Apple ID to access the free weekend. This means basically any iPhone, Mac, iPad, Apple TV, Vision Pro, smart TV’s from LG, Samsung, Sony, Vizio, TCL, Roku, Amazon Fire TV equipped devices, Chromecast, Google TV, Playstation, and Xbox consoles can all access or stream the free Apple TV+ content this weekend. You can also watch online through a web browser at tv.apple.com if you prefer.
Apple TV+ offers a selection of shows and movies, including Apple TV+ originals, ranging from The Morning Show, Ted Lasso, Silo, See, For All Mankind, Foundation series, Slow Horses, Presumed Innocent, Disclaimer, Shrinking, Bad Sisters, Disclaimer, Dark Matter, Fly Me to the Moon, The Family Plan, Wolfs, The Instigators, and more.
Apple TV+ typically costs $10/month, and while the selection of shows and movies might be less than you’d get on something like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Max, Disney+, or the ten thousand other streaming service options, some people really enjoy what Apple TV+ has to offer. I personally haven’t watched any shows or content from Apple TV+ so I can’t vouch for any of it, but you can always visit Rotten Tomatoes Apple TV section to see how other people rate the shows.
It’s not clear if a subscription automatically starts after the free weekend, so you might want to schedule a cancellation of the service for the end of January 5 if you don’t want to accidentally start paying Apple even more money than you already do when you buy new devices or subscribe to iCloud to backup your iPhone.
If you’re interested in learning more, check out the Apple press release. Otherwise, enjoy your binge watching!
Want to start the new year off with a great fitness tracker to help motivate your workouts and track your health stats and vitals? Then don’t miss this great deal on the all new Apple Watch Series 10 is available for just $329 in select color and band options, available right now on Amazon.
Maybe you wanted an Apple Watch for Christmas and didn’t get one, or maybe you just want to treat yourself or a loved one, whatever the reason, why pay full price from Apple when Amazon is offering an 18% discount for the same product?
Apple Watch Series 10 offers a 42mm always-on display, excellent fitness and activity tracking features, heart rate monitor, ECG capability, crash detection, fall detection with SOS, ovulation tracking, GPS, one handed pinch gesture support, water resistance, voice control, and so much more.
You might find that certain band and color options ship sooner than others, so check out the various options that are available at the great discounted price, and make your shopping decision depending on your urgency.
Start the new year off right with an excellent fitness tracker, and you can even get three months of Fitness+ for free to further motivate your fitness and health journey.
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AirTags are the compact easy to use tracking devices from Apple that allow you to keep track of your personal belongings, car keys, even pets, packages, and other interesting uses. AirTags leverage the Find My network of millions of other Apple devices to help pinpoint the locations of AirTags, and you can make them play sounds and use Precision Finding with ultra-wideband technology to find exactly where the AirTag’d item is, making finding lost possessions easier than ever before.
Apple usually sells the 4-pack of AirTags for $99, but right now Amazon is offering an amazing deal for a 4-pack of AirTags for just $69.99.
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.
While you’re visiting family this holiday season, if you’re the family tech guru you might get asked some questions about iPhone. This year, why not be a little more proactive and sit down with someone less tech savvy, and with a few tweaks, improve their iPhone experience?
OpenAI, the company behind the popular ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool, has introduced a new phone-based ChatGPT client experience. By calling 1-800-ChatGPT (1-800-242-8478), you are able to have a phone conversation with ChatGPT to get AI answers by phone.
Essentially the phone line for ChatGPT means that you can access and use ChatGPT entirely by voice, and without data or an internet connection. All you need is a phone line, whether that’s a land line, or a cell phone.
Apple recently introduced a completely new redesign for Mail app on iPhone including a Mail Categories feature that many users have strong opinions about, and along with that design change are new large prominent sender profile icons, which sit next to every item in the inbox. These large prominent mail sender icons squeeze the Mail interface on iPhone making it more difficult to read who an email is from, along with obscuring much of the mail subject, and hiding most much of a mail message preview, making the Mail app on iPhone more difficult to read, scan, and use for many iPhone users. Mail sender icons will show the contact photo of a sender if that’s available, but since that’s usually not the case with most emails, you end up with large random thumbnail icons that just obscure the Mail interface.
Fortunately, much like you can disable the annoying Mail Categories feature that was introduced to iPhone, you can also disable the obnoxious large prominent Mail sender icons and contact photos as well, making your Mail inbox easier to read again, restoring Mail to the classic appearance that had been mostly the same since the beginning of iPhone.
The iPhone has pretty great battery life, especially when they’re brand new devices, but like all electronic devices that are battery powered, over time and with usage the battery on iPhone will drain down. If you are new to iPhone, you may be wondering how you can check the remaining battery life of iPhone, and fortunately it’s a simple task.
To check the battery life on your iPhone, you can do any of the following.
Many Mac users, IT staff, and systems administrators like to have on hand full MacOS installers, for both current and prior versions of MacOS system software. Additionally, many advanced Mac users and IT professionals need to have readily available MacOS IPSW firmware files for performing restores to Apple Silicon Macs, for virtual machines, even for deployments, troubleshooting, or just simply reconfiguring and setting up a Mac. This is where the free Mist tool comes in, which makes it very easy to download any available MacOS IPSW firmware file, or any available version of MacOS installer.
While we maintain an updated list of all available versions of MacOS installers to download, and we’ve covered similar apps to Mist before like MDS, the Mist offers another option and perhaps an easier to use interface than MDS, and without some of the features of MDS that many more casual users won’t need. Plus, you can grab MacOS firmware IPSW files too, and that’s super handy. Mist is remarkably easy to use, here’s how it works:
Apple has released the first beta versions of iOS 18.3, MacOS Sequoia 15.3, and iPadOS 18.3, for users enrolled in the beta testing programs for Apple system software.
The upcoming updates are now in beta testing, and are expected to focus on bug fixes and security enhancements as usual. Some new features are likely to be included as well, with perhaps the most notable addition thus far being the introduction of Genmoji on the Mac.
If you have recently opened the Mail app after updating to iOS 18.2 or iPadOS 18.2, you likely discovered that Mail now defaults to a Mail “Categories” view, showing distinct mail category inboxes; “Primary”, “Transactions”, “Updates”, and “Promotions”. Presumably Apple chose to redesign everyones inbox and enable Mail Categories by default on iPhone and iPad because they thought users would like their email app to be redesigned and having to take additional steps to see all of their emails, but the Mail category feature is already causing frustration with many users who do not want to fumble through a new complicated user interface that hides many emails from immediate view, let alone see their emails sorted into categories and often erroneously so.
There are many complaints about the Mail categories feature, from making the Mail interface worse or more confusing, emails no longer being listed in chronological order with the newest emails on top, emails can be incorrectly labeled or categorized improperly, some users lament it’s harder to find their emails, some say the new Mail Categories interface is cumbersome and annoying to switch between multiple categories to see all of your emails, and many users simply prefer the standard default Mail interface that has existed forever on iPhone and iPad with all emails shown in a single inbox that they manage on their own.
If you want to turn off the annoying Mail categorization feature in iOS 18.2 on iPhone, read along to learn how to do that, and to get the much loved easy to use old Mail app inbox style back again.
Some iPhone users may be interested in learning what the battery cycle count is on their iPhone. A battery cycle is counted when a full charge and discharge cycle has completed, and this number can help to determine battery usage, health, as well as longevity.
Up until recently and with the latest model iPhone devices, this was a more cumbersome process, where checking battery cycle count by looking at iPhone Analytics Data was one option, and using third party apps, or even a Mac, was another. But if you have an iPhone 15 or newer, it’s now easier than ever to determine iPhone battery cycle count right on your device, and with minimal effort.
A handy app-specific security feature is available for iPhone and iPad that requires authentication with Face ID or a passcode before a chosen app can be launched. Essentially this lets you lock any iPhone or iPad app with Face ID or a passcode, and this lock applies even if your iPhone or iPad is already unlocked in general. Features like this are quite popular with security and privacy advocates, but are also useful for the average iPhone and iPad user too for many different scenarios.
The app lock feature works with both Face ID and with a Passcode, so whichever authentication method you use on iPhone or iPad you will find this available. If you are not familiar with how this feature works, read along and you’ll quickly find out how simple it is to enable and lock apps on your device.
