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 […]

Mark and Navigate to Arbitrary Locations in Maps

Sure, you know how to search for a place or address in Maps, and you probably even know that you can ask Siri to “Take me home.” But sometimes you want to go somewhere that doesn’t have an address, or where the address you can find doesn’t match the precise location you need. For instance, […]

How to Install Fonts into Font Book

Back in the 1980s, the thing that set Macs apart from PCs more than anything else was the Mac’s support for different fonts. Over the years, font formats and how you work with fonts have changed, though things have remained fairly stable since Mac OS X became mature. However, despite the fact that there are […]

Make the Most of the iPhone’s Panorama Mode

You’re hanging out at the beach at the end of a relaxing day on your tropical vacation and the light glancing off the water is perfect. You whip out your iPhone and snap a few shots, but they don’t capture the grandeur of the moment. You need a panorama. Luckily, the iPhone’s Camera app has […]

Get New Finder Windows to Open Where You Want

Does it bother you when you open a new Finder window and it doesn’t show up where you expect or in the right view? Here’s how you fix that. Press Command-N, and get the window looking exactly as you want it in terms of position, size, and view type. Then, before doing anything else, close […]

Share Your Location Temporarily while Traveling

If you’re traveling a long distance to visit an iPhone-using friend or family member, you can reduce anxiety related to arrival time or pickup plans (and perhaps provide amusement) by sharing your location temporarily so they can watch your progress. The easiest way to do this is to go into a Messages conversation with that […]

Put a Web Site on Your iOS Home Screen

If you have a Web site or Web app that you use all the time on your iPhone or iPad, you can make accessing it as easy as any iOS app by making it an icon on your Home screen. Open the site in Safari, tap the Share icon, and tap Add to Home Screen. […]

How to Restart a Frozen Mac

by Adam Engst The frozen Mac—it shouldn’t happen, but it does. If you should be so unlucky as to find your Mac completely locked up and unresponsive to the mouse or keyboard, you may wonder how you can restart it. The trick is to hold the power button down for 5 seconds, which will force your […]

Customize the Finder Window Toolbar for Supercharged Features

by Adam Engst Many Mac users don’t realize just how customizable their Macs are, and a part of the Mac interface that’s simultaneously among the most useful and the most overlooked is the toolbar that appears in every Finder window. By default, the toolbar contains buttons for navigating back and forth, changing the view, arranging the […]

Use Tabs in Apps in Sierra

by Adam Engst We’ve all become accustomed to opening Web pages in separate tabs in Safari, Google Chrome, and Firefox. And in OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Apple gave us the capability to open different folders in tabs in Finder windows, making it easy to work in multiple folders with limited screen real estate. In macOS 10.12 […]

Use Quick Look to Peek inside Files and Folders on Your Mac

by Adam Engst Finder icons sometimes hint at what’s inside, but if you find yourself opening file after file to look at the contents quickly, OS X has a little-known feature just for you: Quick Look. To give it a spin, find a file in the Finder, click it once to select it, and press the […]

Use Trackpad Mode When Editing Text on an iPad or iPhone

by Adam Engst In theory, it should be easy to move the cursor in text on an iPad or iPhone—just press and hold until the magnifying circle appears over the cursor and then slide it around. In reality, it’s often fussy and annoying. Apple came up with a better solution starting in iOS 9: trackpad mode. […]

Understanding the Relationship between Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C

by Adam Engst Apple’s new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models rely on a new kind of connection port: Thunderbolt 3. Unfortunately, while this switch is great from a technical standpoint, it has caused confusion in the Mac world. Let’s sort it all out. The root of the confusion is the fact that Thunderbolt 3 uses […]

Taking Screenshots: Three Tricks for the Mac and One for iOS

by Adam Engst Did you ever want to capture what’s on your screen, or at least a part of it? Screenshots aren’t just for technical writers trying to document app behavior—you might also use them to provide feedback on a photo, to document an error message for someone who helps you with your Mac, or to […]