Lockdown, the open-source firewall app for iOS, is now available on the Mac. And just like the iOS version, it blocks all kinds of connections to trackers and other unwanted snoop-ware.
Mac users already enjoy good options when it comes to privacy apps, so how does Lockdown match up?
Before the iPhone 11, holding down the shutter button in the camera app would capture a burst of photos. That was great for capturing action, or for making sure you get a group photo where everyone has their eyes open (and is grimace-free). But press and hold the shutter on the iPhone 11, and you get a QuickTake video.
Fortunately, burst mode is still there. It’s just hidden behind a secret gesture.
Switch on a hotel TV, and you’ll likely run into its paywall very quickly. You probably don’t want to view any of the hotel’s stupid pay channels, but maybe you do want to hook up your iPad and watch some of the shows you brought along with you.
You’re typically still out of luck, though. These locked-up TVs won’t let you access their HDMI ports. Nor will they let you connect via AirPlay, if they even support Apple’s streaming protocol. However, there’s an absurdly easy way to disable all this dumb “security” and watch video from your iPad or iPhone to a hotel TV.
The Do Not Disturb mode built into iOS is excellent. It hides incoming alerts, and generally stops you from being disturbed by outside forces. But it won’t save you from yourself. What if you accidentally click on a YouTube link or — more likely — that GIF you clicked in Tweetbot turns out to be a noisy video? The sudden racket will surely wake your spouse.
Today we’ll see how to make a shortcut that automatically silences your iPhone whenever it enters Do Not Disturb mode.
When I was a kid, we communicated in class by writing notes on pieces of paper, and passing them to other kids. It was called “passing notes,” and is now probably taught in schools as an artisanal pastime, along with “going outside” and conkers. In 2020, kids use insane workarounds to avoid actual writing.
Today we’ll see how to “pass notes” using nothing but two $700 iPhones and two $160 pairs of AirPods.
Gmail is finally adding the ability to add attachments to emails straight from the Files app for iOS, giving users another crucial productivity tool.
Until now, the only way to send stuff from your Files app via Gmail was by using the sharing tool inside the Files app and creating a new email with it. Now users can reply to emails inside of Gmail for iOS and add attachments from Files without having to jump between apps. We’ll give you a quick rundown on how to use the nifty feature that’s starting to roll out to users globally.
If you have any App Store subscriptions, you will be familiar with the emails you get every time one renews. And if you subscribe to more than a few monthly plans, then maybe you even get annoyed by them. If your tolerance to this kind of thing is particularly low, we have good news for you: You can now opt out of App Store subscription-renewal emails that Apple sends.
Looking for a portable Apple computer? You have two choices — a MacBook or an iPad. Both excel at different things. The iPad is super-portable, silent and cool. The Mac is more flexible, offers more connections, and can run much more complex software.
It may be that you already know whether you need a Mac or an iPad. If you use apps that only run on the Mac, or if you need to hook up a lot of extra hardware, then a Mac is your only option. But if you desire the ultimate in portability, or you want to use a touchscreen or an awesome Apple Pencil stylus, you need an iPad.
If you’re on the fence, wondering which portable Apple computer best fits your needs, this article will help you decide. The MacBook vs. iPad battle is on …
I’ve made several attempts at creating/repurposing iOS shortcuts that download YouTube videos and save them for offline viewing. The problem is, most of the shortcuts broke after a while, or proved so unreliable that I gave up on them. And, judging by the responses I get via Twitter, you folks are also very interested in downloading YouTube videos.
Well, this weekend I finally found a way to make it work reliably. And because it uses a third-party service to locate the downloadable video link, it means that someone else is making sure that it all keeps working. Hopefully. For now. Fingers crossed.
You know when you reply to a message on your Apple Watch, and it’s such a pain to write it out a letter at a time or to dictate your reply (only to have Siri mishear you)? The alternative is to use one of Apple Watch’s canned responses. Unfortunately, they all sound like your account got hacked, or that you don’t care about the sender enough to come up with a proper reply.
However, you can customize those replies to make them much more useful. And with one clever trick, you can make Apple Watch smart replies sound just like you really wrote them.
This week we check out a great Music app replacement, a crazy photo-and-video glitching app, a $90 music-notation app, and more.
Using a keyboard with your iPad is a beautiful thing. It seems like every iOS update brings more and more keyboard shortcuts. But until now, you’ve been stuck using Mac-compatible keyboards only. If you hooked up a PC keyboard to your iPad, then the ⌘ and ⌥ keys would be the wrong way around.
On the Mac, thats always been easy to fix, thanks to a preference screen for switching these keys via software. And now, in iOS 13.4 beta, you can finally remaps modifier keys, too. And, yes, you can even remap the stupid globe icon on Apple’s Smart Folio Keyboard.
One Switch isn’t a new app, but it does look like one of the handiest Mac apps for anyone who follows our Cult of Mac how-tos. The app puts a drop-down list in your Mac’s menu bar, offering instant access to all kinds of great hacks and tweaks, from toggling Dark Mode to connecting AirPods.
If the main disk in your Mac is a spinning hard drive, you should probably upgrade to a solid state drive. Swapping in an SSD is the cheapest way to make your old computer feel like a brand-new Mac. But for backups, and for lesser-used internal storage in a Mac Pro or iMac, a hard drive still gives you the best value. You will pay far less per megabyte of storage.
The problem is that hard drives are noisy as well as slow. If you’re used to enjoying the silence of an SSD-based computer environment, then those whirrs, whines clicks and pops will drive you nuts. Which is why you should unmount your noisy hard drives. That way they’re still available to the apps that need them, but otherwise they’re sleeping.
There’s nothing a Mac nerd likes more than using keyboard shortcuts. Actually, there’s one thing — telling people about Mac keyboard shortcuts. Either way, you’re going to love this tip, which lets you access the menu bar menus of any and all Mac apps, using just the keyboard.
Hit the magic key combo, and you can quickly type to find any menu command by name.
I live in Germany, and even though my German is fine, I often get beaten by notices and signs. In my native England, signs and notices are snappy. They use few words, and often annoying slogans, to get the point across. In Germany, an A4 (legal-size) sheet of paper with densely spaced type is the norm. And that’s just from neighbors complaining about people leaving their strollers on the wrong side of the entrance hall.
So, I decided to do something about it. I wrote a Siri Shortcut that scans one of these German essays using the iPhone’s camera, translates it, and shows it to you. There are apps that can do something similar, but my shortcut is way better, for several reasons.
On the Mac, hot corners are essential — and amazingly useful. You can put your display to sleep, trigger Mission Control and more, just by flicking the mouse to a screen corner. If you’re one of those people who likes to use a mouse with your iPad, you can utilize these same flick-to-activate gestures on the tablet. And there’s a bonus: Hot corners on the iPad are way, way more powerful than on the Mac.
Apple Watch has always tracked your daily physical activity with its three iconic Activity rings. That’s great if you just want to focus on hitting your daily goals. But what if you want to see your progress over time?
iOS 13 solves this with Activity Trends, an all-new tab you’ll find in the Activity app on your iPhone. It provides an indispensable snapshot of how you’ve been doing. Trouble is, it takes 90 days to collect all your trend data. Which means if you checked when you first upgraded to iOS 13, there probably wasn’t much to see.
The good news is that it’s now well over 90 days since Apple released iOS 13. So your Apple Watch Activity Trends should finally be visible. Here’s how to make sense of them.
If you have a low desk, or you just hate bending your wrists back, then you might consider turning your Magic Trackpad upside down, and using it with the lower end of its wedge away from you. With the trackpad upside-down, its slope will better watch your hand’s natural shape and position.
But flipping the trackpad also flips the direction of the mouse pointer, right? Up is down, down is up, and left and right don’t know where they are any more. Wrong! If you have an older Mac, you can just type a command into the Terminal to allow automatic orientation detection. And on newer Macs — from Sierra onward, I believe — there’s an equally easy trick.
I prefer the Mac’s trackpad to a mouse in every way but one. It’s more comfortable, it relieves RSI, it can be used equally easily by the left or right hand, and it does scrolling and multitouch. But the one thing it’s terrible at is actually clicking. Specifically, clicking and dragging to move a window, or to make a selection. And I’m still using the original Magic Trackpad, the one that runs on AA batteries. It has physical switches in its feet, so clicking is a lot harder at its top edge.
Enter the three-finger drag. This Mac accessibility setting lets you tap with three fingers to simulate a click and drag. And it does a lot more than just making it easier to move windows around the screen.
Super Bowl LIV (or 54, if you don’t prefer Roman numerals) will take place Sunday in a matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs.
For Apple TV users, there are lots of ways to watch, for free and not so free. Here’s your complete guide.
BlackHole is a free, open-source tool to route audio anywhere on your Mac. You know how the audio from YouTube in Safari comes out the speakers or headphones of your Mac, and that’s about it? Well, with BlackHole, you can intercept that audio. Then you can record it, redirect it to another app or do basically anything you like.
We all know how to scroll through long documents or lists on iOS, right? You swipe on the screen, and then keep doing it, over and over, as fast as possible, like some kind of maniac. And, at some point in the future, you will probably arrive at the other end of the list. Scrolling to the very top is easy — just touch the top of the screen. But in iOS 13, you can grab the scroll bar that appears on the right side of the screen, and use it to navigate.
This is a really, really useful feature. Here’s how it works.
Apparently, some people really hate multitasking on the iPad. It’s easy to see why. All you have to do is accidentally drag a link in Safari, instead of just tapping on it, and you end up with a split-screen view, with that link in its own window. And getting rid of that window is a huge pain, even if you know how to do it.
Fortunately for people who hate iPad multitasking — which isn’t really multitasking, but is Apple’s term for the confusion of multiple-window views on iPadOS — Apple lets you turn off the feature. Here’s how to disable iPad multitasking (and why you might not want to).
The best ever Mac default desktop background (aka Mac wallpaper) was the blue Aqua picture that came with OS X 10.4 Tiger. It’s classy, restful and classic without feeling dated. It has enough depth to make it interesting, but is simple enough not to distract. Other Aqua-themed Mac OS X wallpapers followed, but that one remains the best. And if you want it, you can download it in beautiful 5K resolution.
But that’s not all. Over at 512 Pixels, you can download every default macOS wallpaper ever, also in 5K.