Apple this week dropped a bunch of gorgeous new Unity wallpapers — and a new band and face for Apple Watch — for iPhone, iPad and Mac as part of its Black History Month celebrations.
Here’s how to download them and enable them on your devices.
Tim Cook’s plush home in Palo Alto, California, has been blurred out inside Apple Maps and Google Maps — likely because of an alleged stalking incident. If you enter his address, you’ll see nothing but a gigantic, pixelated wall.
But this kind of digital scrubbing isn’t reserved for top CEOs and celebrities. In fact, anyone can quite easily get their own home hidden from online maps. All you need to do is ask Apple and Google to conceal the locations. We’ll show you how.
One of the upgrades to Accessibility in iOS and iPadOS 15 is a new Background Sounds feature that plays relaxing audio tracks to help you stay calm and focused, and to block out background distractions.
Here’s how to use it on iPhone and iPad.
Remote meetings on FaceTime are a lot calmer in iOS and iPadOS 15, thanks to a feature called voice isolation that blocks out background noise. Even better, the feature works in other video-calling applications, including Zoom and Google Duo.
Here’s how you can enable it on iPhone and iPad.
iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey allow you to use tags inside the Notes app to keep everything organized. They can help you quickly separate notes for different projects, and they make it easier to find things later.
Here’s how to use tags in Notes on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
If you have to spend $19 on Apple’s fancy Polishing Cloth, you should know how to properly look after it so that it doesn’t get ruined. You can’t just throw it in the washing machine with your mucky laundry when it starts to get dirty.
Fortunately, Apple has now provided official instructions on keeping the Polishing Cloth clean. Here’s what you need to know.
It’s possible to share your Focus status with select contacts in iOS and iPadOS 15, so that friends and family members don’t think you’re just ignoring their calls and texts.
Here’s how you pick and choose who sees that your notifications are disabled while you’re busy.
iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 ship with a brand-new feature called Focus mode that lets you set up different notification profiles based on your activities. You can have one for work, one for play, one for sleep, and more.
Here’s how to create and customize new Focus modes on iPhone and iPad.
You know you can turn on a HomeKit accessory by talking to Siri, but are you aware you can order devices to turn on or off at some point in the future just as easily?
Here’s how to set impromptu schedules for your HomeKit accessories with Siri commands — and why you might want to.
Live Text in iOS and iPadOS 15 is a terrific new feature that makes the text in your photos interactive. You can use it to copy and paste quotes, call phone numbers, find addresses and more.
Here’s how to use Live Text on your iPhone or iPad to translate signs, posters, and other things written in a foreign language.
A growing number of Firefox users on Mac (and Windows) are reporting that they are unable to load any websites. The browser hangs indefinitely and shows nothing at all, thanks to what seems like a background server error.
The good news is that there is a relatively simple fix that you can implement yourself until Firefox eliminates the problem for good. We’ll show you how.
The next-generation version of the Dropbox app for macOS, which finally adds native support for Apple silicon chips, is now available to all in beta.
It comes less than a week after Dropbox began testing Apple M1 support with a small number of users. You can try it out for yourself by enabling “early releases” in your account preferences. We’ll show you how.
iOS and iPadOS 15 introduce a brilliant new feature called Live Text, which not only identifies text in your photos, but also allows you to interact with it. You can use it for all kinds of things, like making a call, sending an email, or looking up directions to an address.
Here’s how to use the feature to copy and paste text from your images on iPhone and iPad.
A newly discovered HomeKit bug can render unsuspecting iPhone and iPad users with a completely unresponsive device. All it takes is for a smart home gadget to be given a super-long name.
Once the bug affects an iOS or iPadOS device, the gadget will continually freeze and restart itself. The only way to fix it is to factory reset the iPhone or iPad — and avoid logging into your iCloud account.
If your New Year’s resolution is to get in shape in 2022, Apple Fitness+ provides the perfect solution. Tightly integrated with Apple Watch, it offers hundreds of excellent video workouts you can do at home right now. But the question is, will you?
As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Subscribing to Fitness+ is all very well, but it’ll be a waste of money if you lose interest after a week.
Unfortunately, sticking to a New Year’s resolution isn’t easy. That’s probably why almost 50% of them fail in the first year.
If you want to smash your fitness goals in 2022, you need to start by getting your head in the right place. And that’s where well-formed outcomes can help. They are goals that meet certain essential criteria identified by psychologists in the 1980s using a technique called neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP.
Well-formed outcomes provide a framework that can massively increase your chances of achieving your goal. And all you need to do to turn your resolution into a well-formed outcome is ask yourself these six questions.
With the omicron variant fueling lightning-fast spread of COVID-19, it’s a good time for iPhone owners to take advantage of the exposure notifications feature built into iOS. By simply enabling this feature, you will get an alert after being exposed to someone who tests positive for the virus — as long as they also have contact notifications turned on, and they report their test results.
For obvious reasons, this automatic version of contact tracing works more effectively if more people utilize it. If you discover that you’ve been in close contact with an infected person, you can take appropriate steps (getting tested, staying away from vulnerable people, etc.)
We’ll show you how to take control of COVID-19 exposure notifications on your device.
An iPhone and AirPods can be used to listen to conversations without people knowing. Such iPhone spying is really just a tricky use of the Live Listen feature built into iOS.
And, even if you’re not a budding James Bond, knowing about this trick could keep someone from eavesdropping on you. Here’s what to do if you want to use your iPhone to spy on someone. (Or what to watch out for if you don’t want to fall victim to iPhone spying.)
Apple is testing an improved version of its Music app that’s built to run entirely natively on Mac. Parts of the app, such as the music library, were native on macOS before, and now the rest of it is catching up for improved performance.
You can try out the new Music app now by installing the macOS 12.2 Monterey beta, which is available to all through Apple’s public Beta Software Program.
Apple’s new tvOS 15.2 update adds a bunch of stunning screen savers to Apple TV, including three from Scotland’s picturesque Isle of Skye and Loch Moidart, and another six from Iceland. And you can enjoy them all on Mac.
Thanks to a simple app built by developer John Coates, all tvOS wallpapers can be installed on macOS. We’ll show you how.
iOS and iPadOS 15.2, which made its official public debut on Monday, makes it easier than ever to reset a locked iPhone or iPad.
You no longer need a Mac or PC to get into a device after forgetting your passcode — so long as you remember your Apple ID and password. Here are the steps you need to follow to perform a reset successfully.
Thanks to a new feature in iOS 15.2, you can designate legacy contacts so your loved ones can gain access to data on your iPhone or iPad after your death without your passcode. The Digital Legacy feature means your personal images, files and other data don’t need to remain locked away after your untimely demise.
It’s easy to specify a Digital Legacy contact. And, like writing a will, it’s a smart move almost everyone should make sooner rather than later. Here’s how.
You don’t need cables to stream video from your iPhone or iPad to a TV. Apple’s AirPlay 2 system is wireless and easy to use. That’s been true for years — what’s changed is the necessary equipment has become very affordable.
Here is what you need.
If you use an iPhone on Verizon, there’s a good chance your carrier has been tracking everything you do when you’re connected to its cellular network. This includes the websites you visit, the apps you use, your location and more.
It’s all part Verizon’s “Custom Experience” and “Custom Experience Plus” programs, which are designed to “personalize” the carrier’s communications with its customers. In other words, it’s to build a profile about you so Verizon can better serve you targeted ads. (According to Verizon’s typo-riddled website, “The Custom Experience programs help us personalize communications, recommandations [sic] and offers to make them more relevant to you.”
There’s nothing Apple can do to stop this — despite its new privacy protections baked into iOS — because its tracking does not require an app installed on your iPhone. But there is something you can do to prevent it. We’ll show you how.
Microsoft is now testing a new version of OneDrive for Mac that runs natively on Apple M1 chipsets. The update enables faster syncing and better performance — particularly for larger files — with no need for emulation anymore.
Although this release is only a preview build for now, anyone who uses OneDrive on macOS can get their hands on it. We’ll show you how.
Get into the festive spirit by making it snow inside the Apple Store app while you do some last-minute shopping. Apple has once again added this cool animation Easter egg, which you can activate in an instant, ahead of the holidays.
Here’s how it works.