• June 4, 2024

    Quickly Catalog Books or Other Named Items on Shelves

    If you have trouble finding particular items across multiple shelves of books, labeled boxes, or anything else that’s clearly identified with a text name, take carefully composed photos that capture all the titles without glare. Later, you can search for any text in those photos to find them—tap the Search button in Photos on the iPhone or iPad, or use the Search field in Photos on the Mac. Pho... Read more
  • May 28, 2024

    Apple’s iCloud Keychain Password Management Is All Many People Need

    Apple’s iCloud Keychain Password Management Is All Many People Need

    We constantly recommend using a password manager like 1Password, BitWarden, or Dashlane. But many people resist ... Read more
  • May 16, 2024

    Display an Album of Photos on Your iPhone or iPad Lock Screen

    A popular feature of iOS 16 was the Photo Shuffle option for customizing the iPhone Lock Screen. It used machine learning to select photos in four categories—People, Pets, Nature, and Cities—and rotated through them when you tapped, on lock, hourly, or daily. If you didn’t like the automatic selection, you could pick photos manually, but it was clumsy. In iOS 17 (and iPadOS 17, which also added... Read more
  • April 16, 2024

    How to Sync Your Text Messages across All Your Apple Devices

    Although many of us think of Messages as an iPhone app, Apple’s platform integration lets you read and reply to conversations in Messages on other Apple devices, including the Mac and iPad. All your devices must have the correct settings to make this work reliably. We regularly hear from users who don’t see all their messages on all their devices. If that’s you, check these settings:
  • April 11, 2024

    Looking for Apple Manuals? Check the New Documentation Site

    Apple publishes a multitude of manuals and tons of technical documentation for its products on its support site, but until recently, it could be challenging to find something specific because the search engine on Apple’s site is poor. For a better path into Apple’s online support materials, check out the company’s new Read more
  • March 28, 2024

    For the Best Mac Webcam, Use Your iPhone

    The near-ubiquity of videoconferencing is a lasting effect of the pandemic. The ease of gathering a group virtually usually more than makes up for the downsides. Despite that, many people still appear in video calls with low-resolution, poorly lit video that makes the call less effective. A better webcam is an easy way to improve your video, and the best readily available webcam may already ... Read more
  • February 27, 2024

    How to Search Directly in Your Favorite Websites from Safari’s Search Bar

    We’re all accustomed to searching the Web generally in Safari by typing in the search field and pressing Return or tapping Go. Most of us are also familiar with the search suggestions that Safari shows below the search field as we type. But did you know that Safari has a feature that lets you use the search field to search directly within your favorite websites, so you don’t have to wade thr... Read more
  • February 20, 2024

    You Can Now Have Zoom Meetings on an Apple TV

    When Apple introduced tvOS 17 last September, an eagerly awaited feature was its support for FaceTime calls, using Continuity Camera on an iPhone or iPad to equip an Apple TV with the necessary camera and microphone. FaceTime on the Apple TV requires a second-generation Apple TV 4K or ... Read more
  • February 15, 2024

    Use iOS 17.3’s Stolen Device Protection to Reduce Harm from iPhone Passcode Thefts

    Last year, a series of articles by Wall Street Journal reporters Joanna Stern and Nicole Nguyen highlighted a troubling form of crime targeting iPhone users. A thief would discover the victim’s iPhone passcode, swipe the iPhone, and run. With just the passcode, the thief could quickly change the victim’s Apple ID password, lock them out of their iCloud account, and use apps and data on the iPho... Read more
  • February 13, 2024

    Annoyed by Inline Predictive Text Suggestions? Here’s How to Turn Them Off

    In a slight nod to the hype surrounding generative AI, Apple added inline text prediction capabilities to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. They can be helpful, particularly on the iPhone and iPad, where it’s often much easier to tap the Space bar than to finish typing a word or sentence. But that’s less true on the Mac, where a fast typist can be slowed down or derailed by the suggestions, and some p... Read more