If you have recently installed MacOS Monterey and regret doing so for whatever reason, perhaps incompatibility with some critical applications, general instability, or experiencing some other problems with MacOS Monterey that make it unworkable for you, you may be interested in downgrading from MacOS Monterey back to macOS Big Sur, or whatever the prior macOS release was.

Downgrading macOS Monterey involves erasing the Mac, reinstalling macOS, and then using Time Machine to restore the data, and that is the method we will cover here. The process is a bit different on Intel Macs versus Apple Silicon Macs.

Read more »

Email signatures are appended to the bottom of emails sent when used, and if you routinely use the Gmail app on iPhone or iPad, or have it created an email signature for Gmail using the Gmail web client, by default it will carry over to your usage of the same Gmail account used on the Gmail app for iPhone or iPad. However, you may wish to have a custom Gmail signature for when using the Gmail app in iOS or iPadOS, perhaps indicating that you’re using a mobile device, kind of like the default iPhone email signature.

Read more »

Do you want to stop your Apple Watch from locking automatically every time you take it off the wrist? This can be easily done by disabling a feature called Wrist Detection on your Apple Watch. And of course if this is disabled on your watch, you can turn it back on.

Read more »

Do you want to add some songs that are locally stored on your Windows PC to your desktop iCloud Music Library? This could be music that you downloaded from the internet or just any other song you have that’s not available on Apple Music. You can get this done using iTunes.

Read more »

Are you seeing a constant spinning icon indicator on your Home Screen, next to the wi-fi, location, and battery icons in the upper right corner?

The spinning loading icon shows up when the iPhone or iPad is attempting to contact a remote server, or load data. It looks like a spinning wheel made up of little dashes, and when it has gone haywire it will rotate endlessly, never going away.

If you see the spinning wheel icon while you’re on the Home Screen of the iPhone or iPad, it is likely because something on the Home Screen is attempting to use the internet.

Read more »

The iPad Air 5 with an M1 chip is a pretty great new iPad and it comes with a collection of nice new wallpapers too, but who says you need to buy a new iPad just to enjoy the wallpaper?

You don’t. Instead, you can grab the full sized iPad Air 5 wallpapers right now, and use them on any device at all.

Read more »

Full screen mode on the Mac defaults to hiding the menu bar, and while you can swing your cursor to the top of the screen to reveal the menu bar, some Mac users may prefer to have the menu bar always visible when in full screen mode.

If you’d like to keep the menu bar always visible when in full screen mode of macOS, follow along to see you how to make the appropriate settings adjustment.

Read more »

Universal Control allows a single mouse and keyboard on a Mac to control additional Macs and iPads, simply by dragging the mouse cursor over to those screens or devices. It’s a fantastic feature for Mac users who have several Macs and an iPad or two, and it can really help propel productivity to a new level.

We’ll walk through which devices support Universal Control, how to enable it, and how to use the excellent feature on Mac and iPad.

Read more »

Wondering how you can check the health status of an SSD drive in your Mac? Thanks to a third party app called DriveDX, determining the health of a Mac SSD and other disk drives is easier than ever.

Read more »

Apple has released macOS Monterey 12.3 to Mac users running the Monterey operating system.

Notably, macOS Monterey 12.3 includes support for Universal Control, the hotly anticipated feature that allows a single mouse and keyboard to to control multiple Macs and iPads. To use Universal Control with macOS Monterey and iPad, all connected devices must be running macOS 12.3 or later, and iPadOS 15.4 or later. The feature is enabled by default.

MacOS Monterey 12.3 also includes other small refinements, dozens of new Emoji icons, and bug fixes, making it recommended for all Mac users running the macOS Monterey operating system. Note that macOS Monterey 12.3 removes Python 2 from macOS, so you’ll want to make Python 3 the default or find an alternative solution if you rely on python.

Separately, Apple released iPadOS 15.4 for iPad, iOS 15.4 for iPhone, tvOS 15.4 for Apple TV, and watchOS 8.5 for Apple Watch.

Read more »

Apple has released iPadOS 15.4 for iPad, along with iOS 15.4 for iPhone, and macOS Monterey 12.3 for Mac.

iPadOS 15.4 includes support for Universal Control, the feature which allows sharing a mouse and keyboard between a Mac and iPad, support for Face ID with a mask, a gender neutral Siri voice option, iCloud Keychain notes, an Apple Card widget, along with dozens of new Emoji icons including a troll, pouring glass, coral reef, pregnant man, person with crown, beans, and much more.

Read more »

Apple has released iOS 15.4 for iPhone, and iPadOS 15.4 for iPad. The new software updates for iPhone and iPad include a variety of new features, along with security enhancements and fixes.

iOS 15.4 includes iCloud Keychain notes, official support for using Face ID when wearing a mask, a gender neutral Siri voice option, an Apple Card widget, a stalking warning during AirTags setup, support for COVID EU digital vaccine passports, support for contactless payments using tap-to-pay, and dozens of new Emoji icons.

Additionally, macOS Monterey 12.3, watchOS 8.5, and tvOS 15.4 are also available.
Read more »

If you use WhatsApp as your primary messaging app, chances are that over time your photo library can become cluttered with images and videos from WhatsApp. This shouldn’t be a concern however, since WhatsApp makes it easy for users to manage the content shared via the app.

Read more »

Apple released new green color options for iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 at the March 8 event, and aside from the enclosure being green colored, the green iPhones also include new green default wallpapers. How harmonious!

But you don’t have to order a green iPhone just to get the green wallpapers.

Read more »

Do you watch a lot of YouTube videos on your iPhone and iPad? If you’re someone who likes to fiddle around with the video quality settings rather than sticking to the one that’s automatically set by YouTube, you may have noticed that things have changed in the YouTube app on iPhone and iPad.

Read more »

Want to password protect your important Pages, Keynote, and Numbers documents, right from your iPhone or iPad? Thanks to a handy feature in the iWork productivity suite, you can easily encrypt your documents, right from iOS or iPadOS (or Mac), requiring the proper password to be entered before the documents can be opened by anyone.

Read more »

If you want to remove the entire Shortcuts menu bar icon, you’ve probably already tried dragging the item out and removing it the typical way, only to find it not disappear. It turns out if you want to remove the Shortcuts menu bar item on MacOS, you’ll need to take a few extra steps.

We’ll show you how to remove the Shortcuts icon from the menu bar on Mac, and also show you how to remove items from the Shortcuts menu if you simply want to declutter the Shortcuts menu or have found repetitive entries in there.

Read more »

Do you want to make sure your important documents created in Pages, Keynote, or Numbers are safe and secure? If so, you may want to encrypt them with a secure password, which will protect the document from unauthorized access. If you’re looking to password protect your iWork documents, macOS makes it pretty easy.

Read more »