Want to Push Some Buttons? Make the Most of Control Center in iOS

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Starting back in iOS 11, Apple made Control Center significantly more useful by letting you customize it more to your liking by adding and rearranging buttons. You can even remove a few of the default buttons if they’re just taking up space.

Opening and Closing Control Center

To open Control Center in iOS 11 and later on an iPhone X or later (the models with Face ID), swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen. For iPhones with a Home button that use Touch ID (including the just-released iPhone SE and the iPod touch), swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen.

On an iPad, you’ll swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen if it’s running iOS 12 or iPadOS 13; if it’s still running iOS 11, swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen.

If you swipe down to invoke Control Center, you can close it by tapping a blank area of the screen or by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. If you swipe up to show Control Center, close it either by tapping the top of the screen or pressing the Home button.

Interacting with Controls

In Control Center, you can interact with the various controls in two ways: tap or press and hold. Unfortunately, the interface provides no clues to alert you to how you should interact with any given item.

Start with a tap, but it’s always worth pressing and holding to see what options Apple might have hidden behind that button. Some buttons, like Camera, Do Not Disturb, and Flashlight, even react to both a tap (launching the app or turning on) and a press-and-hold (providing extra useful options).

What happens when you tap a button varies, but here are some guidelines:

  • Apps: A number of buttons, like Camera, Magnifier, and Stopwatch, open other apps instantly. Alas, you can’t pick just any apps to open in this way.
  • Toggles: Some Control Center buttons, like Screen Lock and Low Power Mode, are simple on/off toggles. Tap the button once to turn it on; tap it again to turn it off.
  • Sliders: Drag the sliders for Brightness and Volume to adjust the intensity of the setting.
  • Option screens: With a few of the buttons, like Screen Mirroring and Text Size, a tap opens another screen with more options.

What happens when you press and hold is more predictable. If you press and hold a button that has more options (or if you press and hold a “card,” which is what Apple calls the collection of buttons for networking and audio controls), another screen opens, showing controls for those settings. Some of those screens provide even more options—press and hold the networking card to expand it from four buttons to six, and then press and hold the Wi-Fi, AirDrop, or Bluetooth button to switch Wi-Fi networks, choose who can send you files via AirDrop, or connect to Bluetooth devices.

Customizing the Controls

To change which buttons are available in Control Center, go to Settings > Control Center > Customize Controls. The Customize screen is split into two sections: Include lists controls that are showing in Control Center, and More Controls contains inactive controls you can add.

Here’s how to switch things up:

  • Add a button: Tap its green plus button. It moves to the Include list. You can add as many buttons as you like. If you add so many that they don’t fit on the screen, you’ll have to swipe in Control Center to see the extras.
  • Remove a button: Tap its red minus button, and tap Remove. The button moves to More Controls.
  • Arrange buttons: For any button in the Include list, drag the grab handle on the right side up or down.

Pay attention to which buttons you find yourself actually using in Control Center and how often you use them. Then you can adjust which ones appear and where they’re located, so you can find them quickly whenever you open Control Center.

Interesting Buttons

Apple has a full list of all the controls in Control Center, but here are a few of our favorite optional buttons, and what to expect from them:

  • Apple TV: This button opens an Apple TV remote control that can replace your Siri Remote. It’s especially useful when you need to type a search string or password into the Apple TV.
  • Clock Options: Need to keep track of the time? Three buttons—Alarm, Timer, and Stopwatch—each open their corresponding screen in the Clock app so you can complete a timing task quickly. Timer is the most useful because it has a press-and-hold option that lets you start a timer without switching to the Clock app.
  • Magnifier: Tapping the Magnifier button takes you to a camera-like app designed to zoom in on something in the physical world so you can see it better. It’s helpful for seeing tiny type, such as serial numbers on electronic devices.
  • Notes: Tap to start a new note in the Notes app. Or press and hold to bring up a menu of choices for starting a new note with a checklist, a photo, or a scanned document.
  • Screen Recording: Want to make a movie of something you see on your iPhone or iPad’s screen? Tap the Screen Recording button to start a recording, then tap the red button in the upper-left corner of the screen to stop.
  • Text Size: This button brings up a slider for adjusting the size of the system font—this is the text in places like the Messages and Settings apps.
  • Voice Memos: This button opens the Voice Memos app when you tap it, but if you press and hold instead, you can start a new recording immediately or access recent recordings. If your yoga instructor doesn’t mind, recording a class is a handy way to recap workout instructions.

Only Apple can provide new controls for Control Center right now, so you won’t find any options for working with independent apps. But who knows—as with Siri, perhaps Apple will open Control Center up to developers in the future too.

(Featured image by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash)

Use the Mac’s Built-In Screen Sharing to Provide Remote Help

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Are you the person your friends and family members turn to for questions about the Mac? In normal times, those questions might come over dinner or at another in-person gathering, such that you could look directly at their Mac to see what was going on. Now, however, with everyone staying at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, answering those questions has seemingly gotten harder. But it doesn’t have to be that way, thanks to a built-in feature of macOS that you may not have known about: screen sharing.

With the Mac’s built-in Screen Sharing app, you can either observe or control another person’s Mac, anywhere on the Internet. They don’t even need to enable Screen Sharing in System Preferences > Sharing. (Don’t worry—there are multiple ways that Apple ensures that this feature can’t be used surreptitiously.)

Initiate the Connection

There are multiple ways to connect to a remote Mac for screen sharing, but two stand out as being particularly easy.

First, if you communicate in Messages with the person whose Mac you’re trying to control, make sure your conversation with them is selected, and then choose Buddies > Ask to Share Screen. The other person can also initiate the connection with you by choosing Buddies > Invite to Share My Screen.

Second, if Messages doesn’t work for you (those commands are often dimmed), or the other person doesn’t use Messages, there’s another option. Press Command-Space to open Spotlight and type “Screen Sharing”. The Screen Sharing app should be the top hit—press Return to launch it. (For future reference, it’s stored in /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/Screen Sharing.)

Then, in the dialog that appears, enter the person’s Apple ID, which is likely their email address, and click Connect.

Accept the Connection

Needless to say, macOS doesn’t allow anyone to connect to a Mac like this without permission. The other person needs to accept the connection request, which they do by clicking Accept in the notification that appears, likely in the upper-right corner of the screen. Obviously, clicking Decline immediately terminates the connection.

After clicking Accept, the other person gets yet another permission request, this time with additional options. They can once again choose to Accept or Decline, and choose between allowing you to control the screen or just observe them using it. And, of course, if you ever get a screen sharing request from someone you don’t know, you can always click Block This User to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Next, a little popover appears to alert the other person to the new icon on the menu bar. The blue menu bar icon constantly flashes while the connection is active so there’s no question that screen sharing is taking place.

So what’s in that menu? Commands for switching between controlling and observing (choose “Allow Name to control my screen” to toggle), mute the microphone (more on that shortly), pause screen sharing, and end the session.

Use the Connection

The Mute Microphone command in the remote Mac’s Screen Sharing menu is a hint—when you’re sharing the screen, the connection also provides full audio communication. This seems helpful, but in many cases, you’re already talking on the phone, at which point it’s helpful to mute the microphone on both sides. Or hang up the phone and stick with Screen Sharing’s audio.

For the most part, once you’re controlling someone’s Mac remotely, it’s just like using the Mac while sitting in front of it. You can move the pointer around, select icons and menus, open apps and documents, and so on. You may notice a slight lag or jitter as the screen draws, since updating it over an Internet connection is much, much slower than in person.

You do have a few special capabilities based largely on the buttons in the toolbar, however:

  • Toggle Control/Observe: When you’re controlling the remote Mac, you may find yourself competing for the pointer and keyboard with the other person. To let them “drive,” click the binoculars icon in the toolbar to switch to Observe mode. Click the arrow pointer to return to Control mode.
  • Resize the window: If you’re on a 13-inch MacBook Pro and trying to control a 27-inch iMac screen, it simply won’t fit. Luckily, Screen Sharing lets you resize the window so it does, although some interface elements may become too small to use easily. If that’s a problem, you can disable scaling by clicking the left-most Scaling button, after which everything on the remote screen will appear at normal size. You’ll have to scroll the window to see parts of the screen that are out of view.
  • Share Clipboard: By default, you’re sharing the Clipboard, so anything you cut or copy on your Mac will be transferred to the other Mac’s Clipboard, and vice versa. If that’s awkward, you can disable it and then use the commands in the Clipboard menu to get or send the Clipboard contents manually.
  • Take a screenshot: Normal screenshot controls don’t work for taking a screenshot of the remote screen, or rather, they’ll work on the remote Mac. To take a screenshot of what you see and keep it on your Mac, click the Screenshot button.
  • Transfer files: It’s not obvious, but you can move files back and forth between the two Macs merely by dragging them to and from the remote Mac’s window. You sometimes have to pause slightly for Screen Sharing to realize your pointer has left the remote Mac and is on your Mac, but as soon as you let up on the mouse button, the file copies. A File Transfers window shows progress and history.

When you’re done with your screen sharing session, you can shut it down by choosing End Screen Sharing from the remote Mac’s Screen Sharing menu or just close the window or quit the Screen Sharing app on your Mac. Remember that as soon as you do that, the audio connection will drop as well, so make sure you’ve said goodbye first!

(Featured image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)

Invoke Split View More Easily in Catalina

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Split View on the Mac helps you focus on your work in one app—perhaps a word processor—while providing access to one other app, like a Web browser. (Make sure “Displays have separate Spaces” is selected in System Preferences > Mission Control.) Before macOS 10.15 Catalina, you had to click and hold on the green full-screen button in the upper-left corner of any window, drag that window to one side of the screen, and click a window on the other side to put them side by side. Catalina makes this easier to discover: hover over the green full-screen button briefly and then choose Tile Window to Left of Screen or Tile Window to Right of Screen before selecting a window on the other side of the screen. If you don’t want a 50-50 split, drag the black divider bar between the windows to adjust the proportions. To leave Split View, move your pointer to the top of the screen to reveal the menu bar and then click the green full-screen button.

Split View Catalina

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Set Your Preferred Name and Photo for Messages in iOS 13

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In your list of conversations in Messages, you probably have lots of people who have generic icons next to their names or numbers. You likely look like that to other people as well, but a new feature in iOS 13 lets you share your preferred name and avatar picture with other iMessage users (blue-bubble friends). In Messages, first tap the ••• button and then Edit Name and Photo. Then, in the activity view that appears, tap Edit under your photo to select a new photo and set your name as you want it. Make sure Name and Photo Sharing is enabled before tapping Done. From now on, for any iMessage conversations, you’ll see a little banner at the top that asks if you want to share your name and photo. Do so and your recipient will get a prompt to replace whatever they’re seeing for you. (And if, as a recipient, you don’t want to accept the new photo, tap the X button at the right of the prompt.)

Photo in Messages

(Featured image by Daniel Frese from Pexels)

Troubleshooting Steps for When Your Mac Won’t Print 

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There’s little more frustrating than being unable to print a document when you need it. You choose File > Print, and nothing happens. Or, worse, macOS looks like it’s printing, so you focus on some other task, only to realize 20 minutes later that nothing has come out of the printer. Now what? Try these troubleshooting steps.

Check the Printer’s Print Queue App

Whenever you print, the printer’s Print Queue app appears in your Dock, named for the printer. (If it doesn’t, open System Preferences > Printers & Scanners, select the desired printer and click Open Print Queue.)

Print Queue Paused

In the Print Queue app, look at the status of the printer and the print job. First off, if you print to multiple printers, does the app correspond with the correct printer? If not, cancel the job by clicking the X button to its right, quit the Print Queue app, print again, and choose the correct printer from the Printer pop-up menu in the Print dialog.

The Print Queue app may also display a useful error message that tells you what’s wrong, such as the printer being offline or not connected. You may also see old print jobs stuck in the queue that are blocking the current job—delete them by clicking the X next to their names.

If something has caused the printer to be paused, click the green Resume button. That won’t work if the printer has paused itself due to a paper jam or low supplies—in such a case, resolve the problem first.

Check the Printer and Its Connection

Error messages may have given you a hint about problems with the printer itself, but they’re not always helpful. Verify the following:

  • Is the printer turned on? Doh! If necessary, turn it on. Also, try turning it off and back on—this resolves a surprising number of printing problems.
  • Is the printer connected? It should be connected via either USB or your Wi-Fi or Ethernet network—make sure the cables are plugged in and it’s on the same network as your Mac. Consider restarting your router if there seem to be communication issues.
  • Does the printer have paper in it? No paper, no printout.
  • Is there a paper jam? Printers usually squawk about paper jams. Clear it before trying again.
  • Are any ink or toner cartridges empty? Some printers are notorious for refusing to print if even one ink cartridge is empty, or even low. That can be true even if you’re printing only in black and a color cartridge is empty.

There’s one final check of the printer you can perform: printing a test page directly from the printer (check your printer’s manual for instructions). If that fails, the printer may need servicing.

Check Your Mac’s Printing Setup

The final place to look for a solution to printing problems is in your Mac’s printing subsystem. Problems here can be specific to your document or to its app, or they can be related to the printer driver.

For your first test, try opening your document in Preview as a PDF (in the document’s Print dialog, choose PDF > Open in Preview) and printing it from Preview.

Print to PDF

If that works, you know that your Mac can print, so the problem has to do with either the document or the app. To isolate the problem to the document or the app, print another simple document from the app. If that does print, you know the problem is with your document, but since you’ve already gotten a PDF to print of that document, your immediate problem may be already solved. If the problem is with the app, you’ll eventually need to solve it, of course. But most of the time, the problem actually lies with your printer driver.

It’s uncommon for driver updates to come outside of macOS updates these days, but check System Preferences > Software Update just to make sure. You can also check the printer manufacturer’s Web site for updates; Google on “printerNameAndModel Mac driver” to find what’s available. Compare that against what you see when you select the printer in System Preferences > Printers & Scanners and click the Options & Supplies button. If there’s a newer version, download and install it.

Canon Pixma Drivers

If installing a new version doesn’t work, try deleting the printer from Printers & Scanners and re-adding it. Select the printer in the list and click the – button at the bottom to delete it. Then click the + button and add it back.

No luck? Try deleting the driver and adding it again, but choose a different option from the Use pop-up menu at the bottom. Start with the name of the printer itself instead of Secure AirPrint to ensure you’re using the manufacturer’s driver instead of Apple’s. If that doesn’t make a difference, try again with Generic PostScript Printer or Generic PCL Printer—beware that they may not provide full functionality beyond basic printing. For the ultimate in trying something different, if it supports your printer, try installing an independent driver from the open-source Gutenprint project.

Alternate Drivers

One note: if possible, avoid using the Printer Sharing feature that’s been in macOS for years. It works, but it requires that the Mac doing the sharing be turned on and awake whenever anyone using the shared printer wants to print.

If you’re still stuck, go nuclear. Go back to the Printers & Scanners preferences, Control-click any printer, and choose Reset Printing System. As the warning dialog tells you, doing so will delete all your existing printers, scanners, and faxes, and any pending print jobs. You’re basically resetting your printing system to factory defaults, after which you’ll have to add printers back again.

Reset Printing System

One of these solutions will almost certainly solve your problem, but if not, give us a call!

(Featured image by Adam Engst)