• December 29, 2020

    Pinch to Zoom in All Photos View in iOS 14

    Photos in iOS 14 provides four views of your library: Years, Months, Days, and All Photos. For the first three, Photos picks representative images that may not include particular shots you’re looking for. The All Photos view shows everything, but it can be overwhelming. What’s not apparent is that you can navigate All Photos more easily by pinching in to shrink the thumbnails and then pinching ... Read more
  • December 21, 2020

    A Quick Shortcut to Create an Instant Slideshow from a Folder of Images

    You probably know that you can select an image in the Finder and press the Space bar to preview it in a Quick Look window. And you may know that you can use the arrow keys to preview other files in the same folder without closing and reopening the Quick Look window. But did you know that if you select multiple images in the Finder and hold down the Option key when pressing the Space bar, the Fi... Read more
  • December 17, 2020

    Did You Know That Your iPhone Can “Name That Tune”?

    Several years ago, Apple bought a company called Shazam, which made an app that identified songs by listening to the music playing nearby. Since then, Apple has built Shazam into Siri in iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS. Most recently, Apple added it to Control Center in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 as well, so you can invoke it without speaking. To use Shazam, whenever you want to identify a song that’... Read more
  • December 1, 2020

    Overwhelmed by Apps? Use iOS 14’s App Library to Manage Your Home Screens

    Many of us have been using iPhones for years, and apps we bought or downloaded long ago molder in corners of our Home screens. Even if you haven’t played Flappy Bird in years, its pixelated icon still stares glumly at you every time you peer at its Home screen, and it’s far from alone. To find out how many apps you have, go to Settings > General > About and look next to Applications. So w... Read more
  • November 30, 2020

    Use These Settings to Show or Hide Filename Extensions

    On the Mac, nearly every file has an extension, a set of characters after a period that indicates what type of file it is and determines which app opens it. So, .png indicates a PNG graphic that opens in Preview by default, .pages denotes a Pages document, and .docx identifies a file as belonging to and opening in Microsoft Word. Plus, the extension for all applicati... Read more
  • November 23, 2020

    How to Make Sure Your iPhone Doesn’t Make Noise in the Night

    You likely know that you can use Do Not Disturb to prevent random notifications on your iPhone from waking you at night—it’s easy to set a Do Not Disturb schedule for your usual sleeping hours. Another setting in there is important but often overlooked. If you ever use your iPhone during those Do Not Disturb hours—perhaps to read a book while a partner or roommate is asleep—you don’t want it to... Read more
  • November 19, 2020

    What’s MDM, and Why Is It Useful for Organizations?

    For those who work in organizations, regardless of size, you know how much effort is involved with coordinating a group’s technology. It can take quite some time to set up a new Mac, iPad, or iPhone with all the right apps, settings, and logins. And that’s just to get started—on an everyday basis, maintaining solid security practices is essential, and support requests are inevitable. The sol... Read more
  • November 16, 2020

    Don’t Worry about an Occasional “Not Charging” Message on Your MacBook

    Starting with macOS 10.15.5 Catalina, Apple introduced a battery health management feature that improves your battery’s lifespan by adjusting charging patterns to reduce the rate at which the battery chemically ages. (Find it in System Preferences > Energy Saver > Battery Health.) One thing to... Read more
  • November 12, 2020

    Home Screen Widgets Take Center Stage in iOS 14

    A significant new feature in iOS 14 is Home screen widgets, information-rich tiles that share space on a Home screen with app icons. iPhone users familiar with Google’s Android smartphone operating system have long clamored for widgets because they provide quick information at a glance, without having to launch an app or swipe right on the Home screen for Today view. In fact, you could think... Read more
  • November 4, 2020

    New Back Tap Feature in iOS 14 Provides Two Customizable Shortcuts

    We all have things we do regularly on our iPhones, whether it’s checking the weather, searching Google, or invoking the magnifier. Apple has long provided ways of making your most common actions easier to access. You might put an app on your Dock, open Control Center, or take advantage of the triple-press Accessibility shortcut. With iOS 14, Apple has opened up a new and customizable way of tri... Read more