If you spend a lot of time in and out of Zoom meetings, you may have experienced an awkward situation where someone’s microphone is defaulting to being unmuted when they join a Zoom meeting, and something personal or unprofessional gets broadcast out to the entire meeting.

To avoid this embarrassing situation yourself, you can toggle a setting in Zoom to automatically mute your microphone upon joining a meeting, which prevents you from having to quickly toggle mute as soon as you join a meeting if you aren’t quite ready to talk, or if you have other stuff going on around you. This is a nice privacy feature that many users will appreciate, particularly if they’ve had an open microphone hiccup in the past.

We’ll cover how to set Zoom to automatically default to muting your microphone whenever joining a Zoom meeting, whether you’re using Zoom on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android, or Windows.

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If you’re an iPad, iPad Pro, or iPad Air user, and you are trying to draw with your finger on the iPad on Notes app (or elsewhere with Markup) but find that it’s not working, there’s a simple explanation and solution to this problem.

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Have you ever wanted to quickly send a message on WhatsApp to a random phone number that you haven’t added to your contacts? And perhaps you just want to send that text through WhatsApp without adding them to contacts? You’ll be happy to know this is possible, with a bit of a workaround, thanks to the good old Shortcuts app on iPhone and iPad.

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Do you want to stop your HomePod Mini or Homepod from installing updates automatically? Perhaps you prefer to manually update HomePod, or you’re the kind of person who likes to make sure there aren’t any user reports of issues before updating your devices? Fortunately, Apple gives users the option to disable automatic updates for the HomePod mini and Homepod, if desired.

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Mac users can quickly open Control Center in macOS with the help of a keyboard shortcut. And to make matters even better, the same keyboard shortcut works to open Control Center on any iPad using a keyboard too.

If you’re a frequent Control Center user on MacOS or iPadOS, you should appreciate this tip.

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Do you want to share a reminder, or a list of reminders with someone? Perhaps, you may want to send a shopping list to your a roommate, or a to-do list to your colleague? Sharing Reminders is pretty easy to do from the iPhone and iPad, provided the person you’re trying to send to has an Apple account.

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Apple has announced an event for March 8, 2022, at 10 AM PST. The event will be virtual, taking place at the Steve Jobs theater from the Apple Park Cupertino campus.

Rumors surrounding the lead-up to the event suggest a round of updated hardware is expected to be unveiled, including updates to the iPad Air, 13″ MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and perhaps iPhone SE. Of course these are just rumors so what actually is announced remains to be seen.

It is reasonable to expect that iOS 15.4, iPadOS 15.4, and macOS Monterey 12.3 will be released to the public on or near the event date. Those new operating systems include support for Universal Control on Mac and iPad, a variety of new Emoji icons, support for iPhone using Face ID with a mask, an EU Covid digital vaccine pass, and more.

Those interested in watching the Apple event can go to Apple.com at 10am on March 8 to watch live, or go to this YouTube link, or use the YouTube embed below.

Some privacy conscious WhatsApp users may which to enable disappearing messages for a particular text message thread or conversation. By turning on the disappearing messages feature, the messages in the chat will vanish automatically from all parties in the chat, at the specified time frame.

This feature can be useful for many obvious reasons, so let’s see how you can make messages disappearing automatically in WhatsApp on iPhone, iPad, or any other device.

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Apple has released the fifth beta versions of macOS Monterey 12.3, iOS 15.4, iPadOS 15.4, watchOS 8.5, and tvOS 15.4 to users enrolled in the beta testing programs for device system software.

The new beta versions continue to refine the beta experience, and are available now to download for developers and public beta users.

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If you’re creeped out or bothered by the Street View cameras for Google Maps and Apple Maps taking pictures of your house, you can request for Google Maps or Apple Maps to hide, blur, and censor the address. When the request has been approved, the home address gets pixelated or blurred, effectively blocking any identifying imagery of the house.

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Get a fancy new MacBook Pro 14″ or 16″ model with the powerful M1 Pro or M1 Max chip? These are feature packed laptops with plenty of oomph, and there are also some unique aspects to the hardware.

Let’s take a look at some specific tips and tricks for the new MacBook Pro 14″ and MacBook Pro 15″ models, with either M1 Pro or M1 Max chips.

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The Mac includes a command line interface to run and interact with Shortcuts app. This could be potentially useful to some macOS users who rely on the Shortcuts app for scripting and automation, and who spend a lot of time in the Terminal

The currently available shortcuts command line flags include ‘run’, ‘list’, ‘view’, and ‘sign’, but note that with the exception of ‘list’, they will all launch the Shortcuts app in the GUI on the Mac.

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The latest versions of WhatsApp for Mac and Windows allow you to use WhatsApp on the computer without having a phone that is connected to the internet. For example, you can continue to use WhatsApp on a Mac while your iPhone is updating system software and offline during that process, or you can use WhatsApp on the computer and turn off your phone if you just want some peace and quiet. This works exactly the same with WhatsApp on Mac, Windows PC, iPhone, and Android, but of course we’ll be focusing on the Mac and iPhone side of things here.

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Picture-in-Picture video mode is a popular feature that allows you to watch a video in an overlay panel while doing other stuff on your iPhone or iPad. While using Picture in Picture with YouTube should work for most users as expected (even without the YouTube Premium subscription), not everyone can get it working. Fortunately, we’ve found a workaround for getting Picture in Picture mode working on iPhone or iPad, by using Shortcuts and a third party app.

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The Apple HomePod Mini and HomePod is quite popular, and for many users it’s their first smart speaker. If you’re new to these devices, you may be unfamiliar with how some of the basics works, like playing music on HomePod mini.

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Have you ever wanted to send a confidential email, or an email that expires after a while? With Gmail for iPhone and iPad, you can easily do just that, choosing to send confidential emails that are passcode protected, and that expire in a set amount of time after they reach the recipients inbox. Additionally, the confidential emails can’t be forwarded, copied, or printed, or downloaded. Sound useful? Let’s see how this works in the Gmail app for iPhone and iPad.

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Some Mac users use bootable install USB drives for updating or installing MacOS Monterey onto a computer. If you’re wondering how to make a bootable macOS Monterey installer drive, we’ll walk through the process.

This is generally for more advanced users, typically who wish to use a bootable installer drive for erasing and formatting a Mac, clean installing, troubleshooting purposes, or updating multiple Macs to macOS Monterey without having to re-download the installer. For most users, the simplest way to install Monterey is the standard upgrade path.

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Beta testers in the Apple system software programs will find iOS 15.4 beta 4, iPadOS 15.4 beta 4, and macOS Monterey 12.3 beta 4 available to test on their enrolled devices.

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