I explain what matters in plain English, with practical steps you can use and recommendations based on my experience helping clients.
Showing 217–234 of 589 articles
Shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple made it so your Apple Watch could unlock your Face ID-enabled iPhone when you were wearing a mask. Starting in iOS 15.4, Apple has taken the next step and enabled Face ID on the iPhone 12 and later to work even when you’re wearing a mask . If
Unfortunately, it’s all too common to end up with multiple cards for the same person in our Contacts app, either precise duplicates or versions that contain different details. Further muddying the situation, many of us have multiple contact accounts—such as from Google or Microsoft Exchange—and some
Whether you have guests who want to get on your home Wi-Fi network, customers who need to join your business network, or attendees who want to use your conference network, it’s always fussy to share the network name and password. If an iPhone user has your Apple ID email address in Contacts, their d
For years now, Apple has made transparency a part of the macOS interface, which has the effect of blending the menu bar into the background and making menus and some windows take on the background hue, as you can see on the left side of the illustration below. The effect is that each window on your
We all have old electronics tucked away in our drawers and closets. It’s hard to admit that a computer, phone, or peripheral that cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars years ago has little or no value anymore. That’s doubly true if it doesn’t work anymore and even more so if it becomes a fire
Normally, when you rotate an iPad, the screen flips from portrait (vertical) to landscape (horizontal) orientation as appropriate. Rotating an iPhone has the same effect in some apps, though many are written to work only in one orientation. If you ever end up in a situation where your device’s scree
We’ve become accustomed to our iPhones and iPads switching into Low Power Mode to preserve battery life, and you can enable it manually if you want to reduce power usage for a day. New in macOS 12 Monterey for recent models of MacBook Air and MacBook Pro is a similar feature, though you must enable
In iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, Apple added a feature that would have been even more welcome before the advent of the App Library: the capability to manage apps from Search. But it’s still handy as a way to delete or position an app you can’t find on a Home screen page. Swipe down from the middle of the Ho
It’s unfortunate that the most recent iteration of the Magic Mouse has its Lightning charging port on the bottom, making it impossible to use while charging, unlike the Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad, which both work fine when plugged in. Luckily, the battery does usually last a month or two and
For years now, the default keyboard on Apple TV has been "linear" meaning the keyboard is one long row, A to Z, so typing means swiping left and right a lot . Personally, I hate it. Fortunately, you can switch the keyboard to a "grid" layout if that works better for you. Go to t
There’s little more frustrating than running out of space, which always seems to happen at just the wrong time. Luckily, Apple makes it easy to check any time, before it becomes a problem. On the Mac, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu and click Storage. On an iPhone or iPad, navigate to Sett
The beauty of the iPhone camera is that it combines the ease of use of a point-and-shoot camera with the image quality of a DSLR. To take a picture, you simply open the Camera app, frame your shot, and tap the shutter button. Simple, but what’s happening behind the scenes is anything but. The iPhone
Do you like using full-screen mode on your Mac but hate having the menu bar disappear unless you move the pointer to the top of the screen? In macOS 12 Monterey, Apple has at long last added a setting to keep the menu bar visible at all times. Open System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar
In previous versions of iOS, you could change the systemwide text size to make all apps—at least those that support Dynamic Type—display text at larger or smaller sizes. (Most people who use this feature want the text larger so it’s easier to read with aging eyes.) In iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, however,
Before macOS 12 Monterey, if you wanted to sell, trade in, or give away your Mac, you had to boot into Recovery, erase the internal drive with Disk Utility, and reinstall macOS to ensure that the new owner would get a fresh start and couldn’t see any of your data. It was a bit of a tedious process.
Apple’s Find My technology is a lifesaver when it works, enabling you to locate and potentially retrieve lost or stolen devices. It’s not perfect, even with the addition of the Find My Network, which drafts other nearby Apple devices to relay the location of a lost device, but it’s a heck of a lot b
Some people find it hard to find the mouse pointer at times, particularly on a large screen or when working in Dark Mode or in apps with dark interfaces. You’ve long been able to increase the size of the pointer generally and also zoom it temporarily by shaking it, but in macOS 12 Monterey, Apple no
Autocorrect on iPhone and iPad is an essential feature for most of us. The idea is that Autocorrect learns as you use your devices, learning new words from you and making changes based on what it thinks you would say. But sometimes it goes awry: you typed a made-up word once and now it wants to use
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