The iPad Magic Keyboard includes backlit keys, which make for easier visibility in lower light situations, and add a nice visual flare to the hardware keyboard as well.
With the latest versions of iPadOS, you can easily change the backlit keyboard brightness levels through Control Center. But first you must enable the keyboard backlighting option, so let’s review how this all works.
The Notes app on modern iPhone and iPad system software versions includes a handy feature that lets you scan text directly into the notes app. The text you want to scan can be printed or handwritten, and the scanning is done directly within the Notes app instantaneously. After the text is scanned into the Notes app, you can edit it as needed at any time if you’d like to.
This is a great feature if you want to digitize a collection of anything that is printed or handwritten, be they letters, family recipes, receipts, manuscripts, books, magazines, flyers, or just about anything else you can imagine.
SHA512 hashes are often used to determine data integrity, whether for matching a downloaded file to an original on a server, or for command output, or to make sure a file transfer was successful, or not tampered with.
Checking a SHA512 hash is pretty easy on a Mac, thanks to bundled command line tools that are preinstalled on any semi-modern MacOS installation. We’ll cover two different methods to check and verify SHA512 hash on the Mac, using both the shasum command, and openssl command.
If you’re a Discord user, you may have noticed that the Discord app starts automatically when you startup the Mac. Some Mac users may prefer that Discord does not launch itself on system boot, and thus may want to stop this from happening.
For the unfamiliar, Discord is a popular app for communicating, whether through voice calls, video chat, messages, group chat, communities, and much more through Discord servers. While it’s commonly used by gamers for streaming and communicating while playing, it’s also widely used by many other online communities.
“¡I need to type an inverted exclamation point!” the Mac user said… Indeed, the upside-down exclamation point ¡ is frequently used in Spanish and some other languages and thus it makes sense why you’d need to type the character, but if you’re using an English keyboard you may be wondering how you can type the upside down exclamation point character.
Fortunately the Mac makes this super simple. Typing the inverted exclamation point, or sometimes called the inverted bang, upside-down bang, or upside-down exclamation mark, is as easy as it gets
Live Text is useful and interesting feature that allows users to select any text, words, or numbers found within an image, and then copy, define, lookup, or search for that selected text. For iPhone and iPad users, this can be convenient for many obvious use cases, but for some users it can also be frustrating as the text selection tools may show up when attempting to adjust a photo, or when you don’t want to actually select text within a photo or picture.
If you would like to turn off Live Text on iPhone or iPad, read along and you’ll have the feature disabled momentarily.
All iPad models have the ability to search within apps for matched text. This includes searching within PDF files, notes, Safari, Chrome, and more. Since many iPad users come from a Windows background, they associate Control-F or CTRL-F with find and search, and thus are looking for a similar keyboard shortcut on their iPad to perform searches like this.
If you use an iPad with a physical keyboard, like the iPad Magic Keyboard, iPad Smart Keyboard, or any other external keyboard or keyboard case for iPad, you’ll be thrilled to know there is a search and find function that is basically identical to Control-F for the iPad, iPad Pro, iPad Air, and iPad Mini.
The fourth beta versions of macOS 12.4 Monterey, iOS 15.5, and iPadOS 15.5 are available to users participating in the beta testing programs for Apple system software.
Additionally, new betas are available for Apple Studio Display, tvOS 15.5, and watchOS 8.6 as well.
Any active user in the developer beta or public beta testing programs can get the latest beta builds on their eligible devices now.
These are not expected to significant updates with any major new features, but it’s more likely the beta builds will fix bugs and include security patches for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and the other Apple operating systems.
The Live Text feature available in modern MacOS releases allows Mac users to select text from within images and photos, but some users may find this feature to be more annoying than helpful, and thus may want to turn Live Text off on their Mac. This may be particularly true for some designers and image editors who spend a ton of time editing photos and images and find the Live Text selection tools to be cumbersome in their workflow.
If you’d like to disable Live Text in MacOS, read along and in no time you’ll have the feature off. And of course you can always turn it back on again if you change your mind.
Ready to automate Mac app downloads and installs? If you’re setting up a new Mac, you probably know how tedious it is to manually navigate to a bunch of different developer websites, and to individually download and install all the Mac apps you may want. This is a necessary but time consuming procedure for setting up a new Mac, particularly when you’re using apps not found on the Mac App Store.
And here is where the MacApps.link service comes in handy, by bundling a bunch of different Mac applications of your choosing together into a single executable command string that you can toss into the Terminal, then go about your business while the apps are downloaded and installed onto the Mac. Basically you’ll be automating the download and installation of a ton of popular Mac apps.
For example, let’s say you have a brand new MacBook Pro for work, and you want to install your typical workflow setup of Chrome, Firefox, Chrome Canary, Skitch, Fantastical, GitHub, IntelliJ, BBEdit, Sketch, Docker, The Unarchiver, CyberDuck, iTerm2, iStats Menu, BarTender, VLC, Steam (I swear it’s for work boss!), Atom, Slack, Discord, Zoom, and Skype… that’s a ton of different websites and developers to go to manually to install apps from right? With the MacApps.link service, you simply select all those apps from their list, get the install link, toss it into the Terminal, and let run the command to completion. Easy peasy.
The backlit keyboard on iPad Magic Keyboard typically lights up the moment you attach the Magic Keyboard to the iPad Pro or iPad Air. But sometimes that doesn’t happen, and sometimes the iPad Magic Keyboard backlighting does not work.
Usually this is an easy fix however, so don’t freak out if you find the backlit key illumination is not working as expected with your iPad Magic Keyboard.
The iPhone has a nice optional health feature called Headphone Notifications, that aims to protect your hearing from loud music and sounds.
What exactly does Headphone Notifications do, you ask? In layman’s terms, the feature notifies you if you’ve been listening to loud audio via headphones. How does your iPhone know if your music is too loud, you ask? Basically, your iPhone analyzes your headphone audio levels, and checks if you’ve reached the recommended 7-day audio exposure limit. This is a feature that some users may really want to enable, while other users may not want the headphone notifications and wish to turn them off.
¿ Need to type the inverted question mark from your iPhone or iPad? Whether you’re learning a foreign language, speak another language fluently, or simply need access to the ¿ punctuation character for any other reason, typing the inverted question mark symbol is very easy from iPhone or iPad.
We’ll show you two ways to type ¿ on the iPhone and iPad, using the onscreen keyboard and also using a hardware keyboard.
Zoom is the popular virtual meeting platform used widely by many companies, institutions, schools, providers, groups, and friends, and while Zoom meetings usually work great, occasionally some Zoom users will have a failure to connect to a meeting, and Zoom will show error codes when either attempting to join a meeting, or to login to their Zoom account.
If you’re seeing Zoom error code 1132, error code 5003, error 3160, error 1001, or similar Zoom connection errors when joining a Zoom meeting or signing into your Zoom account, read along for troubleshooting methods to resolve the problem.
The Notes app is popular for keeping bits of data, jotting down information, maintaining lists, storing text, photos, and so much more. It’s completely reasonable to want to create a local backup of notes from the Notes app, but you may be unsure of how to accomplish that.
We’ll discuss a few ways to backup Notes on the Mac, from using iCloud, to exporting the notes as a PDF file, to getting the notes data into a more broadly compatible file format, to creating local backups of the Notes SQL database.
Some Mac users running MacOS Sierra and MacOS High Sierra have found they’re unable to login to an Apple ID or iCloud through System Preferences, or access iCloud.com in Safari. Additionally, Apple websites requiring usage of an Apple ID from Safari fail with a ‘Safari Can’t Open Page’ error “because Safari can’t establish a secure connection to the server ‘idmsa.apple.com’.”
If you’re experiencing any of the following type of error message on MacOS High Sierra or macOS Sierra, you should be able to fix them by installing an Apple certificate in Keychain Access:
MacOS iCloud System Preferences error “You can’t sign in at this time. Try signing in again.”
Safari error with iCloud.com “Connection error : iCloud encountered an error while trying to connect to the server.”
Mac Safari error with any site using Apple ID: “Safari Can’t Open the Page : Safari can’t open the page ‘https://idmsa.apple.com’ because Safari can’t establish a secure connection to the server ‘idmsa.apple.com’
Many Mac users who are either bilingual or learning another language may need to type the upside-down question mark.
The inverted question mark punctuation is found in Spanish as well as some other languages, and so if you’re either typing in another language or just need access to that punctuation, you certainly aren’t alone in wondering how to type the inverted question mark in macOS.
Apple has issued the third beta versions of macOS Monterey 12.4, iOS 15.5, iPadOS 15.5, tvOS 15.5, and watchOS 8.6. Additionally, a beta version of the Apple Studio Display firmware has been released, which apparently aims to improve the monitors camera resolution and sharpness.
Anyone participating in the Apple system software beta programs can download the third beta of system software on their enrolled device, and the updates are available to both developer betas and public beta users.
No significant features have been found in the beta versions thus far, meaning the beta releases very well may focus on bug fixes and security enhancements, rather than adding anything new to the various operating systems.
