An ever-increasing number of people have hearing loss due to exposure to loud noise and age. If you’re in that group, but don’t yet need hearing aids, try using your AirPods to help you hear better in certain situations. iOS’s Live Listen feature uses your iPhone’s mic to pick up specific sounds and then sends [R30;]
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Thursday, 01 August 2019 13:05
Need to Restart a Mac That Has Frozen? Here’s How
Written by Adam Engst
It’s extremely uncommon for a Mac to freeze or crash these days, but it can happen. What should you do if your Mac locks up and becomes completely unresponsive to the mouse and keyboard? The trick is to press and hold the power button until the Mac turns off. Wait 5 or 10 seconds, and [R30;]
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Thursday, 01 August 2019 13:04
What Can You Store in Apple’s Wallet App? Credit Cards, Boarding Passes, Tickets, and More!
Written by Adam Engst
Have you wondered what you can do with the Wallet app on your iPhone? Although it started out life called Passbook, Apple soon realized that the only sensible name was Wallet. That’s because it stores digital versions of roughly the same sort of things you might put in a physical wallet: credit and debit cards, [R30;]
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Thursday, 01 August 2019 13:03
Learn How to Autofill SMS Login Codes in iOS 12 and Mojave
Written by Adam Engst
An ever-increasing number of Web sites boost their security via two-factor authentication (2FA), which requires you to type in a short numeric code to complete a login after entering your username and password. It’s a big win because that code is generated on the fly and is good for only a short time (often 30 [R30;]
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Apple has put a lot of effort into Mail, providing lots of features you can employ to get through your email more quickly. But one of the most effective ways to improve your email productivity has nothing to do with an app. Instead, train yourself to write better email and you’ll cut down on a [R30;]
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At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference on June 3rd, the company unveiled the next versions of all its operating systems—macOS 10.15 Catalina, iOS 13 (and a new iPadOS), watchOS 6, and tvOS 13–along with the much-anticipated new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR. Nothing that was announced will ship until later this year—probably September—but we wanted […]
Monday, 03 June 2019 09:08
Customize Your Mac’s Dock for Increased Productivity
Written by Adam Engst
By default, Apple populates your Mac’s Dock with all sorts of apps and arranges them in a particular order. But there’s no rhyme or reason to the defaults, and you shouldn’t be afraid to add, remove, and rearrange apps on your Dock. To add an app, drag its icon from the Applications folder to the […]
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Monday, 03 June 2019 09:07
Use Dropbox’s Selective Sync to Save Space on Small Drives
Written by Adam Engst
If you’re like many of our clients who use Dropbox intensively, you have a desktop Mac with a large drive and a MacBook with much less drive space. How do you prevent your large Dropbox account from overwhelming the laptop Mac’s available storage? The answer is Dropbox’s Selective Sync feature. On the MacBook, click the […]
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Monday, 03 June 2019 09:06
A Quick Way to Check Battery Levels on Your iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods
Written by Adam Engst
Apple’s Batteries widget is a little known but highly useful tool for quickly assessing which of your small Apple devices is lowest on power—something you may wish to do when traveling with only one charging cable. To access it, switch to Today view on the iPhone, accessible by swiping right on the Home screen or […]
Do you sometimes find it difficult to read articles on your iPhone because of ads, banners, extraneous layout, social media icons, and too-small fonts? We certainly do, and there’s often a quick fix for the myriad ills of modern Web pages: Safari Reader. Whenever you see the Safari Reader icon to the left of the […]
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Monday, 03 June 2019 09:04
Catching up with Apple in May: New MacBook Pros, New iPod touch, OS Updates
Written by Adam Engst
Apple is well known for its splashy media events, now usually held in the Steve Jobs Theater at the company’s new Cupertino campus. But Apple reserves such events for major announcements. Smaller announcements, such as minor updates to particular product lines, operating system updates, or new repair programs, get only a press release, if that. […]
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Monday, 03 June 2019 09:03
5 Reasons Why You Should Be Using a Password Manager
Written by Adam Engst
We often recommend using a password manager like 1Password or LastPass, but we’ve gotten a few questions asking why we’re so adamant about this. Lots of people think that all they need to do to keep their online accounts secure is create a single password with some numbers, often switching a lowercase L with a [R30;]
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Monday, 03 June 2019 09:02
Have a Recent Apple Laptop? Here’s What You Need to Know about the Butterfly Keyboard
Written by Adam Engst
When Apple introduced the 12-inch MacBook in April 2015, the machine was the thinnest Mac ever, with a tapered design that starts at a mere 3.5 mm and grows only to 13.1 mm. A change from previous laptop models that made such an incredibly thin design possible was a new keyboard that swapped a scissor-style [R30;]
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Monday, 03 June 2019 09:01
For Faster, Easier Photo Sharing, Try an iCloud Link
Written by Adam Engst
It’s easy to share a single photo from your iPhone or iPad with a friend, but if you want to share a bunch of photos or lengthy videos, sending them in Messages or Mail might not work or could impact your (and your recipients’) data caps. In iOS 12, Apple added a clever feature that [R30;]
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Wednesday, 01 May 2019 16:08
Can’t Remember When Your Warranty Expires? iOS 12.2 Lays It Out
Written by Adam Engst
With luck, you should never need to check your iPhone’s or iPad’s warranty status. But bad things do happen to good devices. In iOS 12.2, Apple has just made it easier to figure out if your device is still under warranty or covered by AppleCare+. Go to Settings > General > About, where you’ll find […]
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We’re seeing an uptick in email phishing attacks purporting to come from Microsoft about Office 365. They’re quite convincing messages that tell users that their credit card payment has failed, that an account needs renewing, or that a password needs to be confirmed. Needless to say, they’re all complete scams, and clicking a link in […]
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Wednesday, 01 May 2019 16:06
Clean Up Old Tabs in Safari in iOS with This Quick Trick
Written by Adam Engst
Every time you tap a link to open a Web page in Safari on your iPhone or iPad, it automatically opens a new tab. That’s fine until you realize that you have oodles of old tabs open, making it difficult to find any particular tab. To close all your old tabs in one fell swoop, […]
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Wednesday, 01 May 2019 16:05
Is Your Apple Watch Out to Lunch? Check These Settings
Written by Adam Engst
Is your Apple Watch failing to turn on its screen when you raise it, display notifications from your iPhone, or even update the time zone? watchOS has four modes accessible from Control Center (swipe up from the bottom of the screen) that are useful but can cause confusion if you forget to turn them off: […]
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Wednesday, 01 May 2019 16:04
Need to Merge Photos Libraries? Here Are Your Options
Written by Adam Engst
Photos makes it easy to create and switch between libraries. That’s good when photos need to be kept completely separate. For instance, a real estate agent might want to keep personal photos separate from house photos taken for work. But too much separation is annoying—you have to keep switching between libraries, and it’s easy to […]
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Wednesday, 01 May 2019 16:03
What’s the Deal with AMBER and Other Emergency Alerts on Your iPhone?
Written by Adam Engst
Have you ever gotten an emergency alert on your iPhone, telling you about an abducted child or public safety emergency? That’s the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system, at least in the United States, although some other countries have similar systems. The WEA system enables authorized national, state, and local government authorities to send alerts about […]
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Macs haven’t had removable storage for years, so when you want to move files between computers, you can use USB flash drives, email, Messages, AirDrop, or local file sharing. Those techniques are fine, but for a more efficient, effective, and elegant solution, try a cloud-based file sharing service. These services use special software to integrate […]
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Wednesday, 01 May 2019 16:01
Running Low on Space on Your Mac? Here’s How to Clear Unnecessary Data
Written by Adam Engst
SSDs are great—they’re fast, durable, and reliable—but they’re also expensive, which results in many of us not having as much storage built into our Macs as we’d like. Particularly for those who watch videos in iTunes or take a lot of photos, it’s all too easy to run out of space on your Mac’s internal […]
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