Capture Perfect Photos of Kids, Pets, Sports, and Wildlife with the iPhone’s Burst Mode

Snapping the perfect photo is tough. Children, especially babies and teenagers, can be difficult to pose. Cats relish looking cute and then turning away just as you grab your camera. Action shots in sporting events are impossible to predict. And you never know when that unusual bird will choose to fly away. Miss the moment, […]

Sleep (Your Mac) More to Save Time and Power

What’s your desktop Mac doing when you’re not using it? Depending on your settings and usage habits, you could be wasting both power and your own time. We’ve found that some people have out-of-date beliefs about their Macs’ different idle-time states. Let’s set the record straight. First off, every Mac has three basic states: active, […]

How to Stay on Top of Your To-Dos in Apple’s Reminders App

Apple designed the built-in Reminders app as a list-keeping assistant for both macOS and iOS. You can add reminders of any sort to the default Reminders list, or you can create custom lists, like Groceries or Movies to Watch. Plus, if you’ve set up Family Sharing, you also have a shared Family list that everyone […]

Trash Files Instantly from the Keyboard

Every Mac user knows that you drag files or folders you want to delete to the Trash icon in the Dock. And you probably even know that you can select multiple items by Shift-clicking (for a sequential range of items in a list view) or Command-clicking (for an arbitrary set of items) and then drag […]

The Fastest Way to Invoke Apple Pay

When it’s an option at a cash register, Apple Pay is faster, easier, and safer than using a credit card. But accessing it from the Wallet app is way too slow! Here’s the trick to pull up Apple Pay quickly. In Settings > Wallet & Apple Pay, under “Allow Access When Locked,” enable Double-Click Home […]

The Quick Trick for Magnifying Your Mac’s Screen

No matter how good your eyes are, at some point there will be something on your Mac’s screen that’s just too small to see well. With just a minute of setup, you can take advantage of a macOS feature that lets you zoom the screen right where the pointer is. Open System Preferences > Accessibility […]

Don’t Get Burned by Bad Cables… Literally!

It can be hard to ante up for a quality Lightning or USB-C cable when just a little searching reveals cables that cost only a couple of bucks each. “Surely,” you might think, “the cheap cables might not be as good, but so what if they wear out sooner?” Points for frugality, but this is […]

Three Ways to Backup Your Mac

“To go forward, you must back up.” Sure, it was an advertising tagline for backup software from the 1990s, but it’s still true. When it comes to losing data, the question is not “if,” but “when.” If you store valuable information—whether personal or professional—on your Mac, or if you rely on your Mac to earn […]

9 Tricks that Make It Easier to Save Files on the Mac

There’s nothing sexy about the Save dialog in Mac apps. It’s not pretty, you can’t tweet from it, and Apple hasn’t changed anything about it in years. But every time you create a new document in a Mac app, you have to save it. Once in the Save dialog, you name your document, pick a […]

Make It Stop! How You Can Control Notifications on Your iPhone

Is every app on your iPhone or iPad constantly nagging you with notifications? It’s like a three-year-old saying “Look at me!” every few minutes, but on the plus side, a little work in the Settings app can quiet your device. And it won’t whine about being sent to time-out. To get started, go to Settings […]

The Single-click Trick to Declutter Your Mac’s Screen

Is your Mac’s screen cluttered with windows from different apps? Sometimes it’s handy to be able to see a couple simultaneously, but having too many apps visible is often distracting. There are a variety of ways to focus on a single app at a time, but here’s one of the easiest. Whenever you click on […]

How to Stop Annoying Screen Flipping on Your iPad or iPhone

Normally, it’s helpful when an app on your iPad or iPhone switches from vertical (portrait) to horizontal (landscape) as you rotate the device. But it can be annoying to have the screen orientation flip back and forth, such as when you’re reading while lying on your side and holding the iPhone at an angle. Luckily, […]

Peer Deep into Your Mac’s Soul with About This Mac

It’s easy to forget details about your Mac—what precise model it is, how much memory is installed, and so on. The quick way to remind yourself of the specifics is to choose About This Mac from the Apple menu. Obvious, we know, but it’s essential to remember when talking to tech support or trying to […]

Can’t Find an App on Your iPhone? Ask Spotlight or Siri!

It’s easy to find the apps you use regularly on your iPhone or iPad, but there’s little more frustrating than needing an app you seldom launch and not being able to find it. You could scroll through all the home screens on your device and hope you recognize the icon, but here’s a faster approach. […]

3 Shortcuts for Sharing Web Links between Your Apple Devices

The iPhone is great for quickly viewing a Web page on the go, but what if you later want to work with it on a bigger screen? Or, what if you come across an interesting article on your Mac over breakfast, but want to finish reading it on your iPad later in the day? There […]

How to Use Airline Boarding Passes on Your iPhone

Are you still using paper boarding passes when you fly? Sure, they work, but if you’ve ever panicked after accidentally putting a boarding pass in the wrong pocket, or if you’ve been embarrassed by holding up the line as you fumble through a set of boarding passes for multiple flights, consider giving mobile boarding passes […]

Track Down Rogue Apps That Are Slowing Your Mac

Does it seem like your Mac is running slowly? It’s always possible that you need more RAM, a speedy SSD to replace a slow hard drive, or even a new Mac. But you might just have a rogue app that’s hogging your Mac’s CPU. Here’s how to figure out if that’s the problem. The key […]

Four New Apple OS Features You Can Use Today

Apple just released new versions of all its operating systems—iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS—fixing bugs, plugging security holes, and, best of all, adding a few new features. Here are four things you can do once you’ve updated. (If you’re concerned that installing the updates may cause other problems, check with us first, but it’s best […]

Apple Tweaks iPad Product Line

New iPad replaces iPad Air 2 The most significant of Apple’s changes is the replacement of the iPad Air 2 with a new 9.7-inch iPad model called simply “iPad.” This latest iPad is extremely similar to the iPad Air 2, and although most of the changes are for the better, Apple cut a few features so as […]

Pin Frequently Used Web Sites in Safari Tabs

Everyone has a few Web sites that they check every day, or even multiple times throughout the day: a social network, a Web-based email app, a go-to news Web site, or a favorite online comic. The desire to access certain sites quickly and repeatedly isn’t new, of course. Over the years, Apple has added a […]