How-To

Set your Apple Watch time a few minutes ahead of the actual time and you might trick yourself out of running late every day. This is an officially supported feature, not a hack that will produce cascading, annoying side effects. And it doesn’t require you to set your smartwatch out of sync with internet time, which can also cause problems.

What will you gain? By running your Apple Watch a few minutes fast, you might nudge yourself to rush out the door a little earlier. And that might be enough to get you somewhere on time rather than late. If tardiness is a frequent problem for you, this little anti-procrastination tweak could save your skin.

One data breach could be all it takes for someone to steal your identity. If you want to know how to protect yourself from identity theft, a handful of habits go a long way.

Identity theft strikes when someone steals your personal details to commit fraud in your name. Think Social Security numbers, credit card details, that kind of thing. The fallout can drain your bank accounts and wreck your credit. And you could spend months untangling the mess. 

This guide breaks down the practical steps that actually reduce your risk of identity theft.

If Apple Translate doesn’t offer the languages you need, you can set Google Translate as your iPhone or iPad’s default translation app. Google’s translation app supports 249 languages, whereas Apple Translate currently can handle only 19.

Google’s broad scope comes in handy if you regularly read materials written in languages that Apple Translate doesn’t cover. And Google Translate is not the only alternative translation app for iPhone.

Conventional wisdom says that an iPhone that’s been dropped in water should immediately go into a bowl of dry rice to absorb the excess moisture. Turns out that’s rubbish advice for dealing with a wet iPhone.

Worse yet: It’s actively bad for your device. Here’s what to do instead.

Managing passwords is and always has been a giant pain, but passkeys offer a better way. They are an advanced system that automatically signs you in to online services using your phone’s Face ID (or Touch ID) or your computer’s password.

Switching to biometric authentication or your device’s password means one less thing to remember. Plus, passkeys work without fiddling around with a password manager.

The technology promises a simpler, more convenient and more phishing-resistant way to log in. However, getting started can still feel confusing. Here’s how passkeys work and how to use them across your iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Your iPhone can become a remote control for your iPad. It’s a convenient way to control a film or TV show playing on the tablet without having to get up off the couch.

And this doesn’t require a third-party application. All you need is Control Nearby Devices, a feature built into iOS and iPadOS.

Here’s how to do it.

The MacBook’s trackpad is one of the best you can get on any laptop, and Apple’s excellent gestures make it even better. You can swipe or tap with two or three fingers to nimbly jump around macOS, switching between Spaces, viewing all app windows and more.

But as a Mac power user, I wanted my trackpad to do even more. So I used BetterTouchTool to add custom gestures for managing tabs, arranging windows and speeding up other repetitive tasks.

I’ll show you what I did, and how you can use BetterTouchTool to turbocharge your productivity with custom Mac gestures.

You can get the time without even looking at your Apple Watch using a little-known feature called Taptic Time. Simply hold two fingers on the device’s screen, and the watch will tap out the time on your wrist.

This is handy if you’re in a meeting and need to know the time, but you don’t want to look rude checking your watch. Or maybe you’re in the middle of a presidential debate.
Whatever the situation, turning on this little-known Apple Watch feature — and familiarizing yourself with how it works –can come in handy.

Nothing illustrates the power of Apple’s ecosystem like the Continuity features that help your Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch work seamlessly together.

Thanks to Continuity, your iPhone can serve as your Mac’s webcam — and you can remotely control your iPhone from your Mac. You can start an email on one device and instantly pick it up on another. You can use the same keyboard and mouse with a Mac and iPad, copy and paste across devices and more.

These features flex the power of Apple’s hardware and software — and they would never be possible on a PC.
In this post (and the accompanying video), I will show you some of the time-saving, annoyance-busting Continuity features you can enjoy when you go all-in on the Apple ecosystem.

With automatic mail categorization in Apple Mail, you can organize your emails and keep your personal inbox less cluttered. It’ll intelligently put all your newsletters, receipts and promotions into separate folders.

If you struggle keeping up with your inbox, this feature is a great way to make your email easier to understand at a glance.

Keep reading below or watch our quick video.

Apple kept the iPad’s Split View feature alongside the new multitasking stuff in iPadOS 26, despite what you might have read online. And setting it up is as easy as a couple of flicks of your finger.

Here’s how to keep using Split View on your iPad. Apple even made a video that demonstrates what to do.

If you want to know the fastest and easiest way to send someone photos, videos, files and so, so much more, you should know how to AirDrop. There’s no need to send an iMessage — Apple’s slick AirDrop feature will immediately send and open the content on someone else’s iPhone (or other Apple device). There’s no middle step.

AirDrop works iPhone-to-iPhone, iPhone-to-Mac, iPhone-to-iPad, Vision Pro-to-Mac — any combination and permutation of two Apple devices. And, if your friend has a Google Pixel 10, you can AirDrop with them, too!

Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about how to take advantage of AirDrop.

After using Macs for years, I’ve come across several macOS features that most people overlook or quickly dismiss. But these incredibly useful Mac features have become an integral part of my daily workflow. They help me manage files, navigate my Mac more efficiently, breeze through repetitive text and more.

Even if you have been using macOS for years, chances are you are not using all of its features. And these should become part of your Mac repertoire.

Traveling is a lot easier if you can keep track of your stuff with AirTags in your luggage. Placing one in your bag lets you make sure it’s with you all the way along your journey. And if the worst happens, an AirTag can help you quickly find a lost item.

Read on for my tips on traveling with AirTags.

The HomePod operating system occasionally needs updating, because the device is a lot more than a simple speaker — it’s a computer. Here’s how to make sure your Apple smart speaker has the software version released this week. The new HomePod Software version 26.6 is a simple bug-fix update, but it’s still worth installing. Who wants bugs? 

If you depend on automatic updates, it’s possible your smart speaker hasn’t yet installed the update. Here’s how to do so manually.

You’re happily listening to music on your AirPods when the audio suddenly gets yanked away by a Bluetooth speaker. Don’t get frustrated. Make a quick tweak to your iPhone settings, and it’ll never happen again.

Here’s what to do.

You can turn multiple Live Photos shot on your iPhone into a video. Simply select a group of Live Photos taken in a burst, and you can create a single, stitched-together video that you can save to your library and share on social media. It’s a much more accessible way to enjoy those little snippets of video. 

Here’s how it’s done.

Out of the many dozens of options, which is the coolest Apple Watch face? Every time I see someone wearing an Apple Watch, I try to scope out which watch face they use. Nine times out of 10, they use either the Modular face or the Photo face (with a Sport band).

This is despite the Apple Watch offering dozens of watch faces, allowing for all kinds of customizability.

If you want to spice up and individualize your Apple Watch, here are the best and coolest faces. And in our video, I rank every watch face on a tier list.

In a pinch, you can charge your AirPods with your iPhone. This feature can prove very convenient if you know how to use it. You can also use your iPhone to charge your Apple Watch, or even another iPhone.

Here’s how to take advantage of this capability.

You can ping a lost Apple Watch from your iPhone, giving you an easy way to find your misplaced wearable.

If you take your Apple Watch off at the end of the day, forgetting to throw it on the charger, you might not remember where you left it the following morning. Luckily, you can find a lost Apple Watch from your iPhone. Here’s how it works.

Apple added the Share Item Location feature to its Find My app to let AirTag users securely share the exact position of a tracking tag attached to lost luggage with an airline.

Here’s how to use the feature to show an airline employee that your bag is actually just outside Concourse C in the Atlanta airport, not in Denver, where they think it is. They can even see the exact position of the luggage.

Update: Apple released the first iOS 27 public beta on Monday.

The iOS 27 public beta is coming soon — if Apple’s previous release pattern holds up, it could hit your iPhone any day now. Developers have been having all the fun since early June, playing around with Siri AI and the new Liquid Glass slider while the rest of us waited. Now, that wait is almost over.

Once the public beta drops, which should be more stable than the initial developer betas, anyone can install iOS 27 for free. But your iPhone does need some prep first, and there are a few reasons you should think twice before hitting the Install button.

Beta remorse is real. Maybe an app won’t open, maybe things just feel off, or maybe you just want to go back to a stable daily driver while Apple sorts all the issues. Whatever the reason, you can downgrade from iOS 27 beta to iOS 26, and it’s not even that hard.

Here’s what to do.

With a little know-how, you can photograph fireworks with an iPhone and achieve great results. But just pointing and shooting with no prior planning can lead to blurry, unexciting fireworks photos.

For instance, does this sound familiar? Last year’s fireworks made you say ooh and ahh, but when you look at your iPhone photos from that night, the sound you make is more of an ugh. Don’t blame Siri or some engineer in Cupertino for previous photo fails. The iPhone camera, as mighty as it is, can’t do all the thinking for you — especially in challenging lighting conditions like a fireworks display.

But with a little thought and preparation, you can make this holiday worth reliving on your iPhone camera roll. Below are some simple tips to make your iPhone fireworks photos sizzle.

iOS 27 and macOS Golden Gate add a handful of Notes features that will supercharge your note-taking. There are new options for formatting, working with Markdown and even drawing on a Mac for the first time.

It’s not a big year for the popular note-taking app, but the changes Apple added will please plenty of power users. Here’s what’s new.