Apple has debuted iPadOS 26 today, complete with some notable new features and changes to the iPad operating system. First to notice is the new numerical versioning system, with iPadOS 26 jumping many version numbers ahead of the current iPadOS 18 version, following a numerical system much like Microsoft used to use for Windows (remember Windows 95, Windows 98, ME (Millenium Edition), Windows 2000, etc?). This is in line with versioning changes to the entire Apple operating system suite as well, including iOS 26, MacOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and tvOS 26.
Apple has announced iOS 26, the next version of system software for iPhone. And yes you read that correctly, it’s iOS 26 – twenty six – jumping way ahead from iOS 18, to follow year numbers.
It’s not just iOS that is facing the numerical versioning change, it turns out that Apple is labeling all future versions of system software together with year numbers. This means you’ll see MacOS 26 (macOS Tahoe), iOS 26, iPadOS 26, tvOS 26, watchOS 26, and visionOS 26.
If you’ve been a reader of OSXDaily for a while you almost certainly have seen us mention some of the fun web apps that allow you to run full fledged versions of operating systems in your web browser, from Mac OS 9, Mac OS 8, or Mac OS 7, to even Windows 1.0.
Many of the Classic Mac OS side of things have been the work of the Infinite Mac project, and now Infinite Mac has revamped their homepage to make it easier than ever to run many different classic versions of Mac OS or NeXTSTEP directly in your web browser.
If you’re a Mac gamer and you love free games, you won’t want to miss out on this deal; Borderlands 2, the classic popular first-person action RPG shooter, is free to download this weekend on Steam (until the morning of June 8 at 10am PDT). And because it’s on Steam, you’ll be able to play Borderlands 2 on a Mac, Windows PC, or Linux machine.
Borderlands 2 is a quirky space western dystopian science fiction themed action RPG shooter that has some neat cell-shaded graphics, a compelling story, and some odd humor and characters too. The game is set in a fictional world and is story driven action roleplaying, so don’t be expecting a quick game of Minesweeper.
So, why not grab Borderlands 2 for free while it’s available this weekend?
Father’s Day is coming up, so perhaps you’re shopping for that, or shopping for yourself. In any event, don’t miss these great deals from Amazon, whether you’re getting a gift for yourself or a loved one. With great deals on the latest iPad mini, MacBook Air, AirPods, AirPods Pro with Hearing Aid functionality, Apple Watch, and AirTags, there’s something for everyone.
AirPods Pro 2 with Hearing Aid Functionality – $169 (down from $249)
AirPods Pro 2 include high-end features like hearing aid functionality, high fidelity sound, active noise cancellation, water resistance, sweat resistance, Spatial Audio, custom fit, transparency mode, ear detection, Siri commands, and a USB-C charging case.
AirPods 4 are on sale for just $99, cutting 22% off the $129 retail price. These are wildly popular headphones for a reason, and not just because of the iconic stylish design of the wireless earbuds. AirPods 4 include features like gesture support, Spatial Audio, voice isolation for phone calls, water resistance, sweat resistance, Siri commands, and a USB-C charging case.
CodeEdit is an increasingly popular, free, open source native code editor for Mac that offers a super lightweight and speedy alternative to other code editors for Mac like Xcode, Zed, Visual Studio Pro, and other similar apps and IDEs. CodeEdit offers a fast experience that feels like it was built for MacOS, with many of the expected features you’d like in a code editor, with support for basically any programming language, syntax highlighting, autocompletion, Git integration, plugin support, and a clean lightweight experience. What’s not to like?
Font Smoothing is a longstanding feature in MacOS that aims to make rendered screen text more legible, and it works by subtly blending the edges of display fonts with the background by using anti-aliasing. The idea is to reduce the jaggedness of screen text, but in practice nowadays it basically makes screen fonts on the Mac look slightly more bold if enabled, and less bold or even thin if disabled. Some users may prefer the look of one or the other, depending on the type of displays they’re using with their Mac, and some users may prefer to manually adjust font smoothing, or even turn it off completely. In modern versions of MacOS there is no longer a simple preferences toggle within System Settings to disable or enable font smoothing, however.
If you’re running macOS Sequoia, MacOS Ventura, macOS Sonoma, MacOS Big Sur, or macOS Monterey, and you want to disable font smoothing (or enable it), you can do so with the help of a super easy to use free app called “Font Smoothing Adjuster”.
iCloud Private Relay is a fantastic privacy feature that is part of the iCloud+ subscription that helps to protect your internet activity and browsing by obfuscating your IP address (via using a temporary IP address) and encrypting your DNS lookups, so that third parties can’t see what websites you’re visiting. The end result is that you gain some additional privacy on the internet, as it makes it more difficult for trackers and data miners to build a profile on you. If you’re an iCloud subscriber and Safari user, you should certainly consider using iCloud Private Relay, and it’s quite easy to enable on the Mac (for what it’s worth, enabling and using iCloud Private Relay on iPhone and iPad is also easy, and recommended).
We’re going to walkthrough how you can enable iCloud Private Relay on the Mac to better protect your online privacy.
Amazon isn’t letting up on the great deals, with the M4 Macbook Air 13″ model now being offered at just $812 for the base 13″ model with 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and Midnight color. You can also get great deals on other colors, but the cheapest by far is the dark Midnight color at the moment. Similarly, the upgraded 15″ 24GB/512GB model in Starlight at a $273 discount for just $1326!
And if the MacBook Air is not enough power for you, the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro 16″ model with M4 Max chip, 48GB RAM, and 1TB SSD is discounted by $559 for just $3,440, down from $3999.
If you’re a Mac user and you’ve ever opened Activity Monitor to explore why your Mac might be feeling slow, it’s likely that you’ve seen a few processes running that could be using a lot of CPU, energy, or memory, in particular cloudd, cloudphotod, photolibraryd, and nsurlsessiond. So what the heck are these processes that are running anyway?
If you’re just looking for some quick info; cloudd, cloudphotod, photolibraryd, and nsurlsessiond are basically background processes that are part of the MacOS experience for users who rely on iCloud, iCloud Photos, and other cloud-related features on the Mac. These processes will typically become active after installing a new system software update, or sometimes after simply rebooting a Mac, but you can also see them running during iCloud syncing, after enabling iCloud Photos, if a shared iCloud Photo Library is updating, and when performing other syncing activity related to iCloud.
Let’s go ahead and dive into each of these MacOS procesess to better understand what they are, why they might be running, and whether or not you should be concerned about their behavior.
The M4 MacBook Air is available at some all-time lowest prices from Amazon, with a whopper of a deal taking $160 off the base model 13″ 16GB/256GB and $260 off the 15″ 24GB/512GB models. If you’ve been thinking about getting a new MacBook Air in either 13″ or 15″ screen sizes, these deals are fantastic and available right now.
The M4 MacBook Air features the super-fast M4 chip that supports Apple Intelligence, easy-on-the-eyes LCD display in 13″ or 15″, dual external display support, 12MP camera with Center Stage, MagSafe charging, two USB-C ports, Touch ID, backlit keyboard, all-day battery life, and is available in multiple color options including Sky Blue, Midnight, Starlight, Silver. You’ll find the biggest discounts available on select configuration and color options, so toy around on the Amazon options until you find what you want.
Apple Watch Series 10 is a fantastic smart watch, with excellent fitness tracking features, heart rate monitor, ECG, crash detection with emergency SOS, fall detection with Emergency SOS, activity tracking, ovulation tracking, GPS, pinch gestures, water and sweat resistance, voice control, Siri commands, all-day battery life, and more. The Apple Watch Series 10 features a 42mm always-on display as well, making it a perfect choice for most people seeking out an Apple Watch.
AirPods Pro 2 with Hearing Aid Functionality – $199 (down from $249)
AirPods Pro 2 are not only widlly popular wireless earbuds, but these headphones offer advanced features like hearing aid functionality, active noise cancellation, high fidelity sound, water and sweat resistance, Spatial Audio, custom fit, transparency mode, ear detection, a USB-C charging case, and more.
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.
Gamers everywhere are happy that Fortnite is back for iPhone and iPad users, but there’s no Mac client in sight (yet anyway). That doesn’t mean you can’t play Fortnite on the Mac though, because if you have an Apple Silicon Mac, and you’re comfortable running some mods and tweaks, you can get the iOS/iPadOS version of Fortnite running on MacOS with the help of two free tools, FnMacAssistant and Sideloadly.
FnMacAssistant is an app that basically patches the Fortnite IPA file (for iOS and iPadOS) so that it can run in MacOS. Sideloadly is an app that basically lets you sideload apps onto a Mac, and in this case, you’d be sideloading Fortnite. Thus, by combining the two apps, and being comfortable with performing a tweak or two, you’ll have Fortnite running on the Mac.
One of the more curious features of Apple Watch is how the Compass Backtrack feature automatically activates and takes over the Apple Watch screen during workouts, seemingly at random, or even every time a “Hiking” workout or sometimes any outdoor workout of any sort is selected or initiated. Given that the vast majority of hikers, trail runners, joggers, and walkers will typically be on an obvious path or trail, and that trails are fairly obvious to follow, it’s a little unnecessary for Nanny Watch to kick in automatically with a retracing system that takes over your Apple Watch face. Additionally, what nearly every Apple Watch owner wants to see during a workout and probably why they bought an Apple Watch in the first place, is to view typical workout stats, like duration of workout, distance covered, and heart rate information. Nonetheless, Apple Watch does not want you getting lost while walking at your local dog park, and so the Compass will automatically activate with the Backtrack feature and your entire Apple Watch screen is suddenly displaying mostly useless information that is irrelevant to your workout.
The Backtrack feature is probably pretty useful if you routinely go hiking in the backcountry off trails, or if you’re navigating a complex maze of a trail system network where everything looks the same, but both of those are fairly rare for most leisurely hikers, who typically hike on obvious trails that are typically out-and-backs or loops.
macOS Sequoia is a pretty solid operating system with some great features like iPhone Mirroring, and while performance is fantastic for most, not all users are experiencing the speediest of experiences. If you feel like macOS Sequoia is running slower than your Mac was on prior operating system versions, you might appreciate some of these tips to speed up the MacOS experience, and make macOS Sequoia feel a bit faster.
These tips can be relevant to any Mac user, whether running an M4 chip or M1 chip, but may be of particular value on older Macs, where performance concerns are typically more relevant compared to the latest and greatest hardware.
Amazon is continuing to offer some great discounts on MacBook Air models, but by far the best deal is on the upper end 24GB RAM and 512GB SSD model with 15″ display, where you can save $235 off the retail price, bringing the price down to $1364 down from $1599. If you’re been shopping for a top-of-the-line 15″ MacBook Air and don’t want to pay full price, enjoy this 15% discount from Amazon. Other display sizes, memory configurations, and color options are also discounted, though not necessarily at the same rate as the best deal on the upper-end 15″ model.
M4 MacBook Air features the speedy and energy efficient M4 chip with Apple Intelligence support, LCD display in 13″ or 15″ size options, dual display support, 12MP camera with Center Stage, Touch ID, backlit keyboard, all-day battery life, MagSafe charging, two USB-C ports, and is available in various RAM and storage options, as well as in Sky Blue, Midnight, Starlight, Silver color options.
AirPods Pro 2 with Hearing Aid Functionality – $199 (down from $249)
AirPods Pro 2 offer advanced features like hearing aid functionality, active noise cancellation, high fidelity sound, water and sweat resistance, Spatial Audio, custom fit, transparency mode, ear detection, a USB-C charging case, and more.
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.
For the majority of existence for iPhone, anytime that music, podcasts, audiobooks, or media was being played on the device but the screen was locked, a volume slider was visible on the iPhone Lock Screen.
The volume slider made it easy to see what volume something was playing at, and also made it very easy to control the volume precisely of whatever was playing, without having to use the volume up or down buttons.
Strangely, Apple removed the constantly visible volume slider from iPhone Lock Screen a while back, but now the feature has quietly returned, albeit it is disabled by default and now appears as a setting in a curious location, Accessibility.
We’re going to show you how to get the volume slider back on your iPhone Lock Screen again.
Amazon is offering nice discounts on the M4 MacBook Air series, in either the 13″ or 15″ screen sizes. You’ll find the best deal on the 24GB RAM models ($198 off the 24GB / 512GB model in 13″!), but there are discounts available on all memory/storage configurations and color options (Sky Blue, Midnight, Starlight, Silver).
M4 MacBook Air features the speedy and energy efficient M4 chip with Apple Intelligence support, LCD display in 13″ or 15″ size options, dual display support, 12MP camera with Center Stage, Touch ID, backlit keyboard, all-day battery life, MagSafe charging, two USB-C ports, and more.
If you’re shopping for a MacBook Air, these are great discounts off the retail price, and cheaper than even the educational discount offered by Apple.
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.
The “Hide My Email” feature on iPhone is incredibly useful, allowing you to create random unique email addresses that forward to your real email address inbox. This feature can help protect your privacy by allowing you to sign up for apps or services without sharing your real email address, while enhancing security from phishing attempts, and also reducing spam.
Hide My Email is a very useful feature, but for some users, they may be aware of the feature but have no idea how to use it, and trying to find or access the feature is a challenge in and of itself. That’s what we’re going to address here.
