D. Griffin Jones - page 10

You can use a feature called Guided Access to lock down your iPhone to a single app before you hand it to a kid or someone else. You might want to let your offspring play a game, or pass your phone around for controlling music, or hand it off to show someone a video … but you probably don’t want them going rogue and reading your texts or calling your mom.

In Accessibility settings, you can enable Guided Access to limit your iPhone to a single app before you hand it off. It’s a kind of quick and dirty “guest mode.”

This will help you keep your phone — and your privacy — safe. You can even disable features like the volume buttons and set up time limits.

I’m going to show you five ways you can instantly boost your productivity on your Mac. You might not have thought your Mac was capable of these advanced features. But in my opinion, the Mac’s reputation for being un-customizable is misunderstood. Three of these tips depend on apps that will add radical new system features to your computer.

I’ll show you how to get instant window snapping on the Mac, powerful screenshot and recording tools, a clever clipboard manager that should be built into macOS, a simple tip for opening apps faster, and a smart time-tracking tool that’ll keep you productive.

It’s easy to zoom in on your Mac display and get a closer look at your screen. If the text is just too small to read, or perhaps you’re making some graphics and you need pixel-perfect alignment, a simple tweak to your Mac settings is all you need.

Using your Mac’s Zoom feature, you can hit a keyboard shortcut or use a multitouch gesture to zoom in on your screen. I’ll show you how to use this handy feature. Plus, I’ll cover Hover Text and Display Scaling, two more features that help you embiggen the words on your Mac screen.

How can you take better pictures with just your iPhone? You should get comfortable with the world’s handiest camera so you can capture memories that will last a lifetime. After all, more and more people are leaving behind family point-and-shoot cameras for the smartphones in their pockets.

If you know the ins and outs of photography, you don’t need the latest and greatest to take gorgeous shots. In fact, the winner of the 2020 iPhone Photography Awards took the prize-winning picture on an iPhone 4!

No matter what phone you have, here are my top iPhonography tips for the casual and curious.

Last week, I wrote a story incorrectly concluding that a full Linux desktop environment would soon run on Macs with Apple silicon. This was a misunderstanding of the facts.

While some of the work in the Asahi Linux project has been worked into Linux Kernel 6.2, and while Linux 6.2 will be adopted by the next major versions of Ubuntu and Fedora, this does not mean that Apple silicon Macs will be able to boot into these desktop environments.

The CultCast host Erfon Elijah finally got our hands on the coveted HomePod 2 speakers. He put the 2023 model head-to-head with the 2018 model the way it’s meant to be enjoyed: in a stereo pair.

The new HomePod comes loaded with new features: smart home connectivity, a brighter top panel, a U1 chip, temperature and humidity sensors … but the big question is, how does it sound?

People never thought it would happen. People didn’t think it was possible. But in an update to Windows 11, you will be able to send and receive iMessages and manage your notifications through a PC.

This update comes through the Windows Insider program, which offers users prerelease versions of the desktop operating system for beta testing and software development. Microsoft ships updates to Windows annually in the fall, so this feature may arrive for everyone later this year.

After a long wait, Pokémon Sleep will finally become a reality this summer. The game will combine sleep tracking with the enduringly popular collect-a-thon game series. And, while the smash-hit mobile game Pokémon Go promotes outdoor exercise, Pokémon Sleep will reward users for getting a full night of shut-eye.

The game, for iPhone and Android devices, is being developed by Japanese game studio Select Button in partnership with Niantic, the developer of Pokémon Go.

A little-known feature in macOS lets you share your Mac’s screen to someone else’s Mac directly from iMessage — no third-party apps or downloads required.

It’s great if you need to give tech support to a family member in a pinch; often you just need to see what’s happening instead of counting on what your dear old father is trying to describe over the phone. Get him to share his screen with you, and you likely can solve his problem quickly.

Even better, it’s not complicated setting up screen sharing on a Mac like it is on a PC. It takes only a few clicks in the Messages app. Let me show you all around this awesome hidden feature.

I have four top tips for Mastodon users after spending a few months on the hot new social media platform. There’s a healthy community of Apple writers, developers, creators and fans — even Phil Schiller — who have all jumped ship from Twitter.

I’ve previously written a detailed guide to getting started. I’ll start with some brief advice on picking an instance and move on to the pro tips I’ve picked up.

Add your COVID-19 vaccine card to Apple Wallet on your iPhone, and you can leave your physical card safe at home. Some places may require proof of vaccination to enter, like international airports, concert venues and cruise ships.

If your health care provider can share data with the Apple Health app, and if digital cards are considered valid proof of vaccination where you’re going, and if the stars are in the right place, too, you just might be able to go all-in on Apple Wallet. Let me show you how.

Shift Happens, a book about keyboards, is now 400% funded on Kickstarter. This makes it the second-most funded non-fiction book ever on the crowdfunding site. The book, by designer/writer Marcin Wichary, “tells the story of keyboards like no book ever before, covering 150 years from the early typewriters to the pixellated keyboards in our pockets,” according to the project website.

Shift Happens is available on Kickstarter until March 9. Donate $150 and you can get the two-volume hardcover set inside a slipcase.

You can use your iPhone (or even your Apple Watch!) as a remote for your Apple TV. It’s a convenient feature when you’ve lost the remote in the couch cushions — the Siri Remote really ought to have a built-in AirTag, right?

Even if your remote’s not gone missing, sometimes it’s sitting on the table way over there and you don’t want to interrupt a show by asking for someone to pass it to you. Or maybe, someone is intentionally hogging the remote and you want to pause the video yourself. Either way, it’s really easy to do from an iPhone or an Apple Watch.

Correction: This story was based on a misunderstanding of the facts. We published a correction to set the matter straight. Read that instead of the story below.

Linux has officially added support for Apple silicon in its latest release. Ubuntu and Fedora, two of the most popular distributions of Linux, will soon be integrating this feature.

While it’s still early for Apple silicon support, and not all computers with M-series chips will work, this is a significant milestone for Linux users. Computer scientists, programmers and hobbyists have not yet been able to fully take advantage of Apple’s powerful new hardware.

iOS 16 brings the most radical change to the iPhone Lock Screen yet. In the new operating system, you can customize and totally transform the look and feel of your phone. If you liked the themed custom Home Screens people were putting together using Shortcuts and Widgetsmith, you’ll love the level of creativity you can express with customized Lock Screens in iOS 16.

Read on to see all the features of the new iOS 16 Lock Screen.

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There are a few hidden gestures on your iPhone that you absolutely need to know. You’re typing out a long text on your iPhone and you need to go back to fix a typo. Tapping on the screen to move the cursor feels like a shot in the dark — but there’s a secret gesture to move around and select text.

Here are three top iPhone tips for your weekend. Also in this article: how to select and delete a bunch of emails, text messages, anything in a list at once; and the secret gestures that undo and redo. Like, for example, if you accidentally delete a bunch of emails.

The Apple Health app on your iPhone will help you track your medications. It has a lot of advanced options for all kinds of medicine — you can set up schedules, log your activity and even get advice on drug interactions. If you can connect with your health care provider through the Health app, setting it up is incredibly simple. Otherwise, you can just scan the label on the bottle using the camera to import it.

Let me show you how to get started.

Apple issued an important software update recently — and we’re not talking for iPhone, Mac, iPad or Apple Watch. It’s 2023, so it’s for something way more esoteric: a power cable.

Yes, the USB-C to MagSafe 3 Cable comes with a tiny computer inside of it that needs software updates, for some inscrutable reason.

In order to be approved for Apple Pay Later, the company’s own buy now, pay later service, individuals will need to be loyal Apple customers. The service has strict hoops you need to jump through: Apple will check your spending at Apple Stores, purchases and subscriptions on the App Store, Apple Cash payments, Apple Pay history and more.

Even if you work for Apple, you may only be approved for a $1,000 loan. The feature continues to undergo internal testing after being delayed since September, according to Bloomberg.

iPhone battery dying faster than you’d like? You can see exactly what’s using up your iPhone battery in the Settings app. It will show you which apps use more power than others, what services run in the background, and what drains your battery most over the course of the week.

If you suspect your phone doesn’t last as long as it used to, or notice that it’s charging very slowly, this will help you diagnose the problem.

Keep reading to find out whether you should quit all your iPhone apps when you’re done using them (you shouldn’t) and how you can keep apps and email from running in the background.

A lot of healthcare providers have terrible websites. Apple’s Health app, on the other hand, is very well organized and intuitive to use. You can add your medical records to the Apple Health app for easy access to all your health history, medications, test results and data. If your healthcare provider supports this feature, it’s incredibly convenient having all your information in one place. Once it’s in the Health app, you can easily add medication reminders and share your information with doctors, close family members and friends.

I’ve juggled between a few healthcare providers and I’ve never found one with a comprehensible, user-friendly website. If you have the right healthcare provider, and the stars are in the right place too, you should be able to connect them.

You can instantly translate text anywhere on your iPhone and Mac. You don’t need to futz around retyping or copying text into a Google Translate tab — you can select text and get translations from 11 languages wherever you are.

It’s extremely fast and it works everywhere: not just text on the web, in email and in apps; but also inside pictures, videos and directly from the camera, too. Let me show you how it works.

What pulled Apple away from Intel? In a new interview, Apple executives Tim Millet and Bob Borchers reveal why the company shifted to making its own Mac chips.

Plus, they shed light on what they’re doing to make the Mac a gaming platform once again, how the Apple silicon architecture can make it happen, and when the best time is to buy a new Mac.

How do you use BeReal, one of the top new social media apps? It’s simple: You and your friends get one (and only one) opportunity to post a picture a day, all at the same time. You can see what everyone’s up to in this small slice of the day.

It’s a social media app like no other. Let me walk you through what it’s like to create an account and use BeReal.

You can use Google reverse image search to find a higher-resolution (and higher-quality) original version of an image online. If you’re putting together a presentation, making a YouTube video or writing a blog post, you want the highest quality versions of every image. You might feel stuck if you only have a low-quality picture and you need to fill a bigger space.

Google reverse image search will let you upload a photo and find matches all around the web. You can find out where it’s from to cite the source and save the uncompressed original image. Let me show you how Google Reverse Image Search works.