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Need to Back Up or Export a Messages Conversation? Try PDF or iMazing
Occasionally, we hear from a client who needs to document a Messages conversation with timestamps, perhaps as part of a lawsuit. The only way to do that on an iPhone or iPad is to take a series of screenshots, but if you have a Mac, there are additional options. The easiest approach is to select the conversation, choose File > Print, and save it as a PDF. If you need a different format, try ... Read more -
Quickly Put Lots of Files in a Folder with One Command
Imagine that you’re working with a bunch of files, and you want to put a set of them in a new folder. You could stop what you’re doing, make a new folder, select all the files, and drag them into the folder, like an animal. Or you could take advantage of a slick Finder command that Apple added in macOS 11 Big Sur. Simply select the files you want to put in a folder, Control-click one of them, a... Read more -
Manage Email Faster in Mail by Swiping
We all get too much email, and while Mail can’t help you get less (other than by making it easy to unsubscribe from mailing lists), it does provide shortcuts for processing your mail more quickly. Regardless of whether you’re using iOS, iPadOS, or macOS, you can swipe on messages in the message list to perform various actions—some of which you can customize. It’s an efficient way to work throug... Read more -
Get Some Color (On Your Mac) This Summer with the Color Picker
If you’re over 40, you probably remember the point in The Wizard of Oz where the movie switches from black-and-white to Technicolor (and if not, go see it!). It wasn’t the first color film, but the vibrant images of Dorothy’s ruby slippers, the yellow brick road, and the Emerald City helped make the movie a classic. On the Mac, whenever you want to fill a drawing with color, colorize ... Read more -
Picking Group Meeting Times Is Easy with Crab Fit
Various calendar services let you schedule a meeting based on invited attendees picking preferred times from a set of specified options—Doodle is the most well-known. But the problem with such services is that you have to know which dates and times are likely to work for the people you’re polling. If you want to set up an hour-lon... Read more -
Do You Keep Losing Your Pointer on a Large Screen? Try This Tip for Finding It
A large screen—or several screens!—increases productivity by helping you see more content at once. It’s a big help to refer to a Web page in one window while writing in another, for instance, or to check your calendar while composing an email. But the more screen real estate you have, the easier it is to lose track of the tiny pointer arrow. Happily, Apple added a clever trick for finding the p... Read more -
Copy and Paste between Your Apple Devices with Universal Clipboard
Everyone is accustomed to using the Copy and Paste commands on the Mac, but fewer people know that you can also copy and paste between your Mac and your iPhone and iPad. Apple calls this feature Universal Clipboard, and it’s so deeply integrated into macOS, iOS, and iPadOS that it can be easy to miss. You won’t find a switch for Universal Clipboard or any other mention of it in System Preferenc... Read more -
The Best Characters to Use When Naming Files and Folders
Back in the early 1980s, DOS filenames couldn’t be more than 8 characters long with a period and a 3-character extension. That was limiting, so when Apple developed the Mac operating system in 1984, it allowed longer names and eliminated the need for an extension, although Mac OS X’s Unix roots meant a return of the filename extension in 2001. Since then, filename restrictions have loosened to ... Read more -
How to Recover from Overzealous Auto-Correct Curly Quotes
Most of the time, it’s appropriate when an auto-correct feature turns single and double hash marks into single and double curly quotes. However, there are times when the curly quotes are awkward for some reason or actively wrong. For instance, hash marks indicate feet and inches, as in 5′ 6″. You could attempt to disable the auto-correct feature or copy and paste a hash mark from some other pla... Read more -
Put Files in the Mac’s Trash Using the Keyboard
You know that you can drag files or folders to the Trash icon in the Dock for later deletion. And you probably know that you can select multiple items on the Desktop or in a Finder window by Command-clicking each one in turn (Shift-click to select a sequential range of items in a list view), after which you can drag them all to the Trash. But there’s no reason to expend effort mousing if you pr... Read more