Apple has issued the second beta versions of macOS Monterey 12.5, iOS 15.6, and iPadOS 15.6. The second beta builds are available to users enrolled in the various beta testing programs for Apple system software.

There’s no expectation of significant features or changes in these beta releases, and presumably they’ll just be standard bug fix software updates.

Next week, Apple is holding their annual WWDC conference, where macOS 13, iOS 16, and iPadOS 16 are expected to debut, and that’s likely where Apple is putting the majority of their system software development efforts.

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iPad users with a Magic Keyboard, Smart Keyboard, or external keyboard can use a keyboard shortcut to launch Quick Notes on the iPad from anywhere. This may be preferable to some users than using the swipe gesture to use Quick Notes on the iPad.

If you’re familiar with using the fn+Q keyboard shortcut to summon Quick Notes on the Mac, then you’ll find this iPad trick to be familiar and easy, except you use the Globe key and Q key on the iPad.

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Wondering how you can restart, shut down, or force restart an iPad Mini 6? If you’re new to Apple devices without Home buttons, you may be unfamiliar with how to perform these common tasks on your new mini tablet.

The new iPad Mini 6 is redesigned to resemble a small iPad Pro or iPad Air, complete with slim bezels, and that means no Home button on the device. That also means there are new approaches to initiating a force restart on iPad Mini 6, restarting the iPad Mini 6th gen, and shutting down the device too. Once you learn the steps and perform them a few times, you’ll find the procedure is pretty simple and easy to remember.

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Want to play Fortnite on your iPhone or iPad again? You can do that for free, thanks to Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Fortnite is one of the most popular online games ever made, but because of the drawn out Epic v Apple legal battle, Fortnite was officially pulled off of the App Store, making the game unavailable to iPhone, iPad, and Mac users. But not anymore, thanks to the magic of cloud gaming.

While playing Fortnite in a browser has been possible for a while with GeForceNow from Nvidia, now a new offering is available from Microsoft that allows users to play Fortnite on their phones and tablets again, courtesy of Xbox Cloud Gaming.

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Have you ever been in the situation where someone set an alarm on their iPhone or iPad and it is blaring away, but perhaps they aren’t nearby to turn it off, or maybe you want to let them continue sleeping or something similar?

If you use Family Sharing, you’ll be happy to know that you can silence a family members alarm on their device, with just a simple Siri command from your iPhone or iPad. You don’t even need to touch their device.

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Modern versions of iOS for iPhone default to incoming phone call alerts being shown as a small banner across the top of the screen when the iPhone is in use, but you may recall that earlier versions of iOS had incoming calls take up the full screen, making them very obvious and impossible to miss an inbound call.

If you or someone you know would prefer the old style full screen incoming call display, perhaps because they’re missing calls or just don’t care for the banner, you can make a settings change to return to the old style where inbound calls appear on the full screen of iPhone. And of course you can change it back again to the modern default of showing as a compact banner that can be dismissed with a swipe.

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If you regularly use split screen mode on iPad to view two apps side-by-side, and one of those apps is Notes, you may appreciate this little trick that allows you to center a Notes window, hovered above the split view.

To use this trick, you must have the Notes app open as one of the split screen view apps. The rest is super simple once you learn how it works.

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Owners of a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar may occasionally run into an issue where the Touch Bar gets stuck on a “Touch ID to Log In” screen, often with a Safari icon, displaying even if Safari is not the foremost app on the Mac.

Tapping on the ‘Cancel’ button on the Touch Bar doesn’t do anything, and the “Touch ID to Log In” message persists on the Touch Bar. You can attempt to put your finger on the Touch ID reader to login (to whatever mystery site or login is requesting the login… if you trust not knowing), but even that doesn’t dispel the message from being stuck on the Touch Bar.

There’s a pretty simple remedy to this issue, and you can fix a stuck “Touch ID to Log In” message on a Mac Touch Bar relatively easily with just a few steps.

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Want to SSH into your Mac, from your iPad? SSH is pretty easy to setup, so if you’d like to have Terminal access of an iMac from an iPad Pro, for example, you’ll be up working in no time at all.

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Occasionally, Mac users may notice that icons in the Finder of MacOS or the Dock of MacOS either display as generic icons, or the icons do not align with what they should (for example, seeing a generic document icon instead of a PDF thumbnail, or seeing a VLC icon instead of a zip archive icon, or seeing a generic application icon rather than Safari icon).

If you experience an issue with the icon display on the Mac, you can manually clear the icon cache, which will force the icon cache to rebuild, thereby resolving the inaccurate display of icons on the Mac.

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Would you like to snap iPhone photos in silence? As you know, the iPhone and iPad makes a camera shutter sound whenever you take a picture. The sound effect offers auditory feedback to acknowledge that a photo was taken, but there are times where you’d probably like to have the camera be silent too.

You may already be familiar with the traditional method of turning off the camera sound on iPhone by using the mute switch. Using the mute switch on the side of the iPhone will disable the shutter sound effect and allow you to take quiet pictures, but in some countries, like Japan, the mute switch does not silence the camera sound. This is due to privacy laws in Japan that make it so that you can not take another persons photo without their permission.

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If you have a new iPhone SE 3 (the 2022 model) you may be wondering how to perform common troubleshooting tasks, like force restarting the iPhone SE, or shutting it down and turning it off, to initiating a standard restart on the device.

These procedures are simple once you learn how they work, so read along to discover the processes for the latest iPhone SE model.

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If you want to turn off the backlight on the iPad Magic Keyboard connected to your iPad Pro or iPad Air, it’s pretty easy to do. Some users may wish to do this to avoid the distraction of the backlit keys, or to save battery life on their connected iPad.

You likely already know by now that the backlit keyboard will turn itself off and on automatically based on ambient lighting conditions, so if you’re in a very bright room the backlight will turn off, and in a dim room it will turn itself on. But what if you want to turn it off even in a dark room or dark environment? And what if you want turn the backlight on for the Magic Keyboard regardless of what environment you’re in? We’ll show you how to turn off and on the backlighting feature of the iPad Magic Keyboard.

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The Apple Studio Display is a beautiful monitor and screen, both visually and in terms of the picture quality.

But sometimes the Apple Studio Display misbehaves, and problems can happen with it that require the Apple Studio Display to restart. Maybe the sound has stopped working properly or at all, the web camera is frozen, or the resolution won’t change. With no physical buttons on the Apple Studio Display, how do you restart the screen? It’s a little comical, but the solution to reboot the monitor is easy enough.

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Apple has released the first beta versions of iOS 15.6, iPadOS 15.6, and macOS Monterey 12.5 to users enrolled in the beta testing programs.

The new beta builds come just after the final versions of iOS 15.5 and iPadOS 15.5 along with macOS Monterey 12.4 were released to the public.

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As you may know, the iPhone and iPad camera can scan a QR code simply by pointing the devices camera at a QR code. Easy enough, right? Well, not if it doesn’t work. Sometimes users may find that QR code scanning is not working on their iPhone or iPad camera, and this can be an understandably frustrating experience.

Fortunately, it’s typically a super easy fix to get QR code scanning working again on iPhone and iPad cameras. Read along and you’ll be back to scanning QR codes in no time.

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Some Mac users have found that a directory called AppleInternal is sitting in the root of their Macintosh HD. The folder itself is empty, but is not removable through the typical means.

/AppleInternal is apparently used by Apple for internal development purposes, and thus likely has no benefit or reason to be installed on an average users Mac. Why it is included on some MacOS installations with new Macs (and apparently some reinstalls too) is a bit of a mystery, since these are not Apple employee computers.

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Apple has released iOS 15.5 for iPhone, and iPadOS 15.5 for iPad.

The software updates include a few minor features and changes, along with security updates. The full release notes are listed below.

Additionally, Apple released macOS Monterey 12.4 for Mac, an Apple Studio Display update which requires the 12.4 macOS update, along with updates to Homepod, WatchOS, and tvOS.

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