Sync

This iOS repair post is presented by iMobie AnyFix.

Apple hardware enthusiasts enjoy a lot of problem-free usage. That’s one of the reasons we love our gadgets. But occasionally things go wrong. When faced with a disabled device, the first instinct may be to seek professional repair help, or to hurl the thing at a wall. The good news is, neither action may be necessary. A tool like iMobie AnyFix can remedy more than 130 system issues with iPhones, iPads, iPods and Apple TVs — with just a few clicks (and zero tech skills).

Nothing ruins a good movie like sound that’s completely out of sync. But thanks to iOS 13 and tvOS 13, you will no longer have to suffer that when watching video on your Apple TV.

A new feature lets you synchronize wireless audio devices so they’re perfectly matched.

Cardhop, the polished contact management app for Mac from the makers of Fantastical, has finally made the leap to iOS.

The app makes it easier than ever to find contacts and, more importantly, keep your contact lists in order. It looks great, is incredibly fast, and works with all of your existing contacts on iOS.

One of the key features Apple left out of iOS 11 is finally entering the beta testing phase among developers.

Apple added iCloud support for Messages to iOS 11.3 beta 1 today, which should be a huge help in saving space on most iPhones once it finally launches for the public.

Apple has confirmed that it is working closely with Microsoft to resolve an issue with Mail syncing in iOS 11.

Some users have discovered that they are unable to send emails using their Exchange or Outlook accounts since updating their devices. Apple promises a fix will be available in a future iOS 11 release.

Apple has made a couple of changes in iOS 11 that make it more difficult for cops to get into your iPhone. We discovered one of those last month, and now another has been uncovered by security software developer ElcomSoft.

It makes it even more difficult for law enforcement to obtain the data on your iPhone, even if they have your fingerprint.

Google is introducing a new tool to Google Drive that will make it easy to back up and sync the most precious data on your Mac.

You’ll gain the option to upload your most important folders to the cloud — leaving out the data you don’t need to keep — then restore them on a new machine when you upgrade.

For all the convenience of mobile technology, it can be a drag having to keep our devices juiced up. Whatever your situation, we’ve rounded up some top shelf charging upgrades that’ll offer new ways to juice up your most-used devices. We’ve got a universal Lightning dock, a wireless charging station for Apple Watch, a set of extra long set of Lightning cables and super sleek USB charging hub for your car. Everything’s going for a healthy discount, read on for more details:

As many of us use Google calendar to manage our daily lives, it’s an important thing to get this wondrous scheduling solution on our iPhones and iPads to better able to access it on the go.

Several third-party calendars, like the ever-useful and visually stunning Fantastical 2, use the iOS system for connecting to and synchronizing your calendars from Google to your mobile device.

Usually this works without a hitch, especially with newer iOS versions; you simply add an account and the calendar events you input on the web will show up on your iPhone, and vice versa.

When that doesn’t work, however, the settings you need to tweak can be a bit unintuitive. Here’s what they should look like for the best two-way Google to iOS sync.

OS X will get a new Photos app next year that will keep all your pictures in sync across all your devices. It will work with the iOS 8 Photos apps on iPhone and iPad to match up your full-res photographs, your albums and even the edits you make to your pictures.

The changes are a ways off, but fret not -– if you use Adobe’s Lightroom Mobile, you can enjoy this fabulous cross-platform photo synchronization right now.

I have at least three apps set to auto-upload my iPhone photos whenever I reach a Wi-Fi connection. That’s three apps running in the background and using bandwidth to send my pictures up to the cloud, and they all run in addition to Apple’s own Photo Stream.

There’s nothing really wrong with this system: After all, bandwidth over Wi-Fi isn’t limited, and redundancy is good. But what if you could somehow consolidate all these services, and at the same save all your iPhone photos to a folder on your Mac? That’s what we’ll do today, with PhotoStream2Folder and a few other apps. We’ll take your Photo Stream, grab all the photos and save them to a folder on your Mac, then auto-upload them to Flickr, Dropbox and anywhere else you want.

Evernote’s elephant logo is curiously appropriate. Not because it never forgets your notes, but because the service is slow, lumbering and hard to control. Now, thanks to a complete redesign of the backend servers, one aspect has improved. Sync is now, according to Evernote CEO Phil Libin, four times faster.

The native calendar app on your iPhone or iPad is pretty great, and since it’s built right into iOS and the info is on your iPhone, not the internet, you have access to all your calendar events even when you’re offline or can’t find a network signal.

Now, many of us use Google Calendar to schedule our stuff. Personally, I like that I can sync my calendars across the web and my iOS devices, and share events with other Google Calendar users. But I’ve always wanted to have my events on my iPhone’s Calendar app, too, for the whole “can’t find a network” reason above.

It’s pretty easy, really, to get it all to sync together.

1Password, the popular password manager from AgileBits, has today been updated to finally support Wi-Fi syncing between Mac and iOS devices. The update also adds the ability to change the built-in browser’s user agent, and improves support for the latest iOS 7 firmware.

The best, obvious financial solution is one that automatically performs accounting tasks as funds are spent without the need for human input. But until such a system exists that actually works, we’re stuck with having to record our spending habits manually.

Still, it could be worse; at least there are solutions out there like the iOS and Mac MoneyWiz app pair to make the task somewhat less odious. Heck, sometimes it almost feels like fun.

Tasket is a service that syncs your Google Tasks list with your iOS Reminders list. It performs this magical feat pretty much flawlessly, using a Microsoft Exchange server to do the syncing, and letting you add and remove tasks from pretty much anywhere.

Cult of Mac reader, Josh K, asks:

If I download a podcast episode when I am out and about, then get home and sync my iPhone, I find when it is finished syncing, whatever episodes were downloaded have been removed. And I have to either download them again or manually sync them.

How can I make this process easier or stop the phone taking the recently downloaded episodes off every time I sync?

Unfortunately, there’s no simple fix for this one, so you’re going to have to choose, Josh: either sync via iTunes or manage podcasts on your iPhone. I’m not able to find a solution which lets you do both. Here’s what I recommend.

OmniFocus for iPhone got an update today which lets it refresh itself in the background, in what is probably a foreshadowing of things to come in iOS7. It uses the now-familiar workaround of location-based updates, which lets an app download data in the background when you arrive or leave a predefined location.

Evernote has today rolled out a new Reminders service to its clients on the Mac, iOS, and the web. The new service rolls three of Evernote’s most-requested features into one, delivering in-app and email alarms, quick note-based to-do lists, and the ability to pin notes to the top of your note list.

Music streaming services like Spotify and Rdio are great because you get to listen to as much music as you want, without having to pay for it. They’re especially great on roadtrips, and if you have a car with Ford’s SYNC AppLink platform you can now keep the tunes cranking on your drive without touching a thing.

Spotify just updated its app to include Ford SYNC AppLink support. To get Spotify in your Ford all you have to do now is log into your premium account on your iOS device and connect to SYNC AppLink. You can manage all your music and playlists with SYNC’s voice-controls so you won’t get distracted while thumbing through albums in search of that new JT album.

Intuit has today released QuickBooks Online for the iPad, a free app that allows QuickBook subscribers to manage their customers, invoices, estimates, and expenses on the go. Intuit’s customers have been increasingly turning to mobile devices to manage their finances, so its new iPad app is sure to be a big hit.

You know about Magnetyze, right? It’s a system that lets you charge an iPhone 4/S or Galaxy S3 without the need for a cord. Pop your iPhone into the provided case, then drop the case on the magnetic charging base and your iPhone will charge (and sync) — it works kind of like the MagSafe power adapter on a MacBook. It’s really cool on the S3, because the Magnetyze case replaces the S3’s original back, so there’s almost zero extra bulk. Neat.

Use Simplenote to take and search notes on your iPhone or iPad? Love Evernote? Then you’re going to be totally stoked about Simple-For-Ever, a service which syncs the two accounts.

With the latest iOS 6 update, all your iPhone using buddies around the world are going to start syncing their Contacts to their Facebook account, hoping to automate what can be a fairly tedious process. Unfortunately, if you haven’t set your Facebook account settings to get your real email address into the sync information, your friends are going to just get a useless @facebook.com email address attached to your contact on their iPhone, and no one wants that.

Fortunately, there’s a way to fix this problem, and make sure Facebook’s secret switch to their own branded email addresses in your Facebook contact information doesn’t go any farther than it already has.

I have to admit, I’ve been a big fan of the Stickies app that Apple has included with its operating system since way back in System 7.5. It’s fantastic to be able to have a little floating place to type notes and keep track of things right on the Mac, without having to resort to anything as mundane as an actual sticky note.

The one thing Stickies hasn’t had was a good way to access those notes when away from the computer. With OS X Mountain Lion, however, you can make this happen using Notes and iCloud.