Many users who send PDF documents with sensitive data back and forth will password protect the files from their Mac so that only authorized users can read and access the data contained within the document. This is fairly common with everything from contracts to accounting and financial records, and it’s equally common to sometimes require … Read More
Mac users who have multiple user accounts on a single machine may sometimes wish to hide a specific user account from appearing on the login screens of OS X. This is fairly common for systems administrators who want to hide an admin account that can be used for direct or remote troubleshooting, but it can … Read More
The Safari web browser has always included an ability to delete all web history, site data, searches, and cookies on a Mac, but the latest versions of Safari for Mac OS make this task even easier and offer a bit more control with four possible options, allowing users to perform removal of web browsing history … Read More
Modern versions of Safari for Mac OS have the ability to initiate private browsing mode on a per-window basis, allowing you to easily open a new private browsing session in Safari at any time. This is a marked difference from how Private Browsing worked previously in Safari on the Mac, which converted all browser windows … Read More
Messages on iPhone and iPad can grow to take up considerable storage space over time, particularly for users who frequently send and receive multimedia on an iPhone. Each photo taken with an iPhone camera can easily consume 4MB, and movies will take up even more space, and it’s not unusual for an iPhone user to … Read More
Want to hide some photos on iPhone and iPad? Everyone likely has a few photos sitting on their iPhone they’d rather nobody else see, whether it’s embarrassing selfies, poorly filtered or edited pics, a picture of a receipt or personal paperwork, or anything else in the realm of private photos. Those pictures can make showing … Read More
Have you ever wanted to share an iPhone picture with someone, but you’re concerned about them flipping through your camera roll and finding other photos you’d rather not share? If you want to limit that you have a few options available, but because the iPhone doesn’t have a specific ability to lock onto a single … Read More
Every app in the iWork suite offers optional password protection of files created, modified, or opened within their respective application. In practice, this means that no user will be able to open or access the file and view the contents on their Mac or iOS device without entering the password first. Password protecting iWork documents … Read More
The login screen of OS X defaults to showing the account pictures and user names of all accounts on the given Mac. This is undoubtedly convenient for most users as it makes logging into accounts much faster, but for situations where a Mac requires higher security, users may wish to hide user account names from … Read More
Nearly all web browsers default to keeping a list of recent searches which are easily retrievable as part of the browser history. Safari shows this recent search list when the URL bar is clicked into with the cursor, revealing the 10 most recent web search terms or phrases. That recent search list can be convenient … Read More
iOS allows users to control what apps can access the images and photos stored on their iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This is handled through the Privacy settings and offers granular control over which specific third party applications are allowed to pull images from the Photos app, Camera Roll, and also whether or not they … Read More
You can block callers from contacting you on your iPhone, and not only will it block their inbound phone calls but also any text messages or FaceTime communication attempts. This is obviously useful for so many reasons, whether it’s to avoid a nuisance or a weirdo, and it’s simple to use. One interesting thing to … Read More
“Do Not Track” is an effort to increase privacy on the web, when enabled it sends a ‘do not track’ (DNT for short) request along with your web browsing, basically asking the web sites and services to not follow activity across the web. Because it’s entirely optional right now, not every website or service respects … Read More
Those of us who regularly use AirDrop on the iPhone or iPad and leave the function frequently turned on for share requests may want to take a moment to adjust a simple privacy setting for the feature, allowing your iOS device to be only discoverable by Contacts. This prevents AirDrop requests coming in from random … Read More
Frequent Locations is an intelligent feature on the iPhone that allows the device to track where you go and learn what places are frequently visited. Once the iPhone has determined some locations that are most common, say your home or work, the iPhone will then report to you some personalized data about that location, like … Read More
The Messages app is the native instant messaging client for Mac OS X which supports everything from iMessage, Facebook chat, to other instant messaging services. You can block specific contacts from sending your Mac any iMessages too, though you’d be forgiven for missing the addition of the feature or for simply overlooking it when scouring … Read More
iPhone and iPad users have the option to enable a “Do Not Track” setting on their iOS devices for Safari, a feature that is aimed at limiting targeting and tracking of web browsing behavior by various web services. When turned on, this causes Safari to make a DNT request to each page it visits for … Read More
If you’ve ever joined a public wi-fi network and noticed the Finder sidebar is suddenly filled with other unfamiliar computers and network shares, and then curiously clicked on one of them, you’ve probably discovered that most of these computers have a user ‘Public Folder’ accessible to you and everyone else. This folder is included with … Read More
