How-To - page 46

The USB port on your iPad has gotten a massive update in iOS 13/iPadOS. You can now plug in pretty much everything except a printer, and have it Just Work™. We already know this from Apple’s own PR and WWDC announcements. But what exactly does work when you plug it in? I decided to try it. I took my old test iPad (a 1st-generation iPad Pro) on a tour around various friends’ homes, and plugged stuff in. Here’s what happened.

In iOS 13 and iPadOS, the Wi-Fi connections get a lot of changes. In addition to the familiar Personal Hotspot connection, you can now use and share a new Instant Hotspot. Plus, you can see all your connections at a glance in the revamped Wi-Fi settings screen. Let’s take a look.

Teenage Engineering’s awesome, pocket-size OP-Z synth can now record and use samples. Thanks to a massive software update, it can now sample live audio in through its mic, or via its USB-C port. And yes, if you hook it up to an iPhone or iPad via USB, it shows up as a standard audio interface: You can record from, and send audio to, the OP-Z in lossless digital quality.

Today we’re going to check out these new features. A few limitations prove annoying, but Apple users should feel accustomed to that by now.

When you send a photo to somebody in iOS 12 or earlier, you also share that photo’s location. If you upload a picture to a classified ad or auction site, you potentially show everyone exactly where you live. And if you send a photo to a friend or family member, they may share that image publicly (on Facebook, for instance) — and share your home address along with the picture.

In iOS 13, you can disable location sharing for any photo you share. Some annoying limits hurt this new feature, and you have to remember to do it every time you share an image or video, but it’s still a lot better than what we have in iOS 12.

There are plenty of little annoyances that stop the iPad from being as easy to use as the Mac, especially when it comes to working with multiple items. On the Mac you can Select All with the keyboard, and you can easily add and remove items from a selection. You can click an empty space in a Finder window and start dragging a selection. And more.

The iPad sort of incorporates some of these features in some places. But in iPadOS, multi-select has been somewhat consolidated. And it is now arguably as good as the Mac, at least in the places where you can use it.

Did you ever type in a URL, only to find later that you already had that site open in another Safari tab? Well, never again, because in iOS 13, Safari will prompt you to open that original tab instead.

In iPadOS and iOS 13, you can kinda replace the stock Apple apps on your iPhone or iPad. For instance, anytime you tap the Mail icon, Spark could launch instead. Or, and this is probably the most useful, when you tap the lock-screen shortcut for the Camera app, you could launch Halide instead.

This isn’t proper app replacement, but it is a pretty wild trick for iOS devices. We use a new feature in Shortcuts to make the magic happen. And for the Camera app, it works great.

iPad multitasking gets a boost in iPadOS, with tweaks and enhancements that make it easier to do more on Apple tablets.

If you use an iPad for anything beyond watching videos, you should be thrilled by these changes, which boost inter-app productivity. Here’s how to take advantage of the different flavors of multitasking in iPadOS.

You can now ask the Google app on iOS to automatically wipe your location and activity history.

The new feature, which was showcased during Google I/O in late May, takes the hassle out of covering your tracks. You only have to set it up once and it will take care of itself going forward. Here’s how to get started.

The macOS Catalina public beta is here, so if you’re feeling brave, you can go ahead and install it on your Mac. But should you bother? Is early access to Project Catalyst apps, Voice Control, the Photos app redesign, Sidecar and Screen Time worth the risks?

Probably not. Or not yet, at least. But if you want to go ahead and install macOS Catalina on your Mac, here are a few tips and warnings.

The iOS 13 and iPadOS public betas are here. And if you plan to test them, you need to take a few steps to get ready. And remember, you will be testing them. Or, more likely, you’ll be testing your own patience.

The early betas are almost always buggy, screwy and crashy. You may lose work. Weird things may happen to your iCloud data. Your favorite (and essential) apps may flat-out fail to launch.

But still, these public betas are already more stable than the very raw early developer versions. If you’re planning on trying them out, here’s how to do it.

Safari in iPadOS is “desktop-class,” according to Apple. And part of that definition means Safari offers plenty of keyboard shortcuts, just like when you use Apple’s web browser on a Mac.

Just a quick look at the screenshots below will show you how many more Safari shortcuts are available in iPadOS than in iOS 12: Holding down the ⌘ key now reveals two panels in the pop-up help screen, instead of just one.

Let’s take a look at the new Safari keyboard shortcuts in iPadOS.

USB is dirty. Just like you’d never stick your body parts into a mysterious public hole, neither should you plug your iPhone into a public charging station. iOS is pretty good at rejecting unknown connections from USB, but why take the risk?

There are a few ways to make public iPhone charging safe. One is to plug into a power outlet using your own plug and cable. But what about on a plane or train, or other public spot where only USB outlets are available? Or a friend’s computer, one that might be riddled with malware? Then you need a custom USB cable, one that only passes power, and not data. The good news is that, if you have an old Lightning USB cable laying around, you can easily fashion your own, just by yanking out two pins from inside the USB plug. Alternatively, a charging keychain can be a great portable solution to ensure safe and convenient charging wherever you go.

Here’s how.

I hate my friends. I want to show them a photo, or that screenshot I took of those cute otters, and all they can do is take one look, and then swipe off into the rest of my photos. And trust me, you don’t want to know what I have lurking back there. And I also hate myself, because I do the exact same thing without thinking. It’s human nature.

Some apps let you load up a few photos to show to other people, so they can’t pull back the virtual shower curtain and peek at your private photos. But these require that you do extra work to prepare them.

Happily, iOS offers a way to lock down a single image. That way, when you hand your iPhone or iPad over to a friend, or anyone else, they can’t swipe to other photos. In fact, they can’t do anything at all, because you’ve locked the whole touchscreen. Best of all, you can toggle this on and off in a second.

External storage support is one of the best new features in iPadOS 13. Even if you opted for the maximum iPad Pro storage capacity, you may often want to grab some movies from a hard drive, or save some songs and photos to a thumb drive to hand to a friend.

But how exactly does external storage work in iOS? Can you drag files between connected volumes? Can you even mount more than one drive at once? What about FAT32? Or HFS Plus? And do you have to eject them? Let’s find out.

Were you ever drawing a diagram in the Notes app, and then realized you needed to type a note? Did you then find yourself frustrated at having to drop the Apple Pencil and type on the huge, half-screen QWERTY keyboard?

With iPadOS 13, Apple has removed that frustration. You still can’t do Newton-style handwriting and have it turn into text. But you can shrink the keyboard to a tiny floating panel, and use the Apple Pencil to swipe-type on it.

The iOS 13 Shortcuts app brings plenty of radical changes — automatic scheduled and location-based shortcuts, for example — but one super-neat new feature will make a world of difference. Now, if you have a compatible iPhone, you can combine NFC tags with Shortcuts. That is, you can run any shortcut just by tapping your iPhone onto an NFC sticker.

Seriously. Pretty wild, right? You could tap your iPhone onto a sticker atop a speaker in your kitchen, and it would start playing the radio, for instance. Let’s check out how NFC shortcuts will work.

Apple’s Shortcuts app is already great, but in iOS 13 it gets even better. You can still create simple or complex workflows to do all kinds of tasks, from downloading YouTube videos or setting a quick meditation timer to resizing a whole folder of photos. But until now, you had to trigger those shortcuts manually.

In iOS 13, your iPhone or iPad can run a shortcut at a preset time or when you arrive at a specific location. This is huge.

iOS 13, iPadOS, and tvOS 13 will finally allow you to play games with a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One controller.

That means there’s no need to purchase a pricey MFi controller that is restricted by Apple’s outdated gamepad guidelines. Simply connect one of the controllers you already own and you’re good to go.

Here’s how to get set up.

The iPadOS beta is out, and it has one killer feature — mouse support. Not only can you use any Bluetooth mouse or trackpad to control the text-selection cursor on the iPad, you can use the mouse just like you would on a Mac — clicking buttons anywhere in the entire iPad user interface.

The feature is not on by default. It’s not even a regular checkbox. To enable mouse and trackpad support on your iPad, you have to dig into the Accessibility settings.

Today Apple will announce iOS 13, possibly the new Mac Pro, plus a slew of Mac and Apple Watch-related news. Cult of Mac will not be live-blogging the action — instead you can join our WWDC 2019 watch party or follow along on Twitter. And as always, you can watch the show live.

We’re expecting to learn all about the incredible new iOS 13, which many expect will turn the iPad into some kind of Mac Pro-beating powerhouse¹. Also expected is a Marzipan update, and perhaps our first peek at the real new Mac Pro.

Whether you’re watching on your Mac, your iPhone or iPad, or your Apple TV, we’ll show you how to tune in.

You can even show up at an Apple Store and watch it on the big screen!

Background refresh is what lets your iPhone and iPad download your email while your iPhone is sleeping, to update your weather app while you are sleeping, and to grab all kinds of data so that it’s ready before you need it — news feeds, notes-app syncing, and pretty much anything else.

However, as revealed this week by the Washington Post, plenty of bad apps are abusing the background refresh mechanism. They are using it to send your private data — you location, your email address, your phone number, and much much more.

It’s likely that this is happening to you, because background refresh is enabled by default for newly-installed apps. Fortunately, it’s an easy problem to fix. Today we’ll see how.

Ever wanted to resize a photo before sending it, or posting it to the web? The quickest and easiest way to do this is with a shortcut. And it’s even quicker and easier because I’ve already written it for you. All you have to do is share the photo from inside the Photos app, pick this shortcut, and you’re pretty much done. Check it out.

Today we have another great tip ripped form the iPhone’s accessibility settings. The screen reader lets you use a quick two-finger gesture to read anything on the screen. This is obviously designed for folks who have trouble reading the screen, but it is also very handy for everyone else.

You can listen to a long magazine article while you do the dishes for example, and much more.

The big iOS 13 news is all about the iPad. Or at least, we expect it to be based on rumors and leaks. But what about the iPhone? How will iOS 13 shape up on the most popular of iOS devices? Will it be a dead year, while the iPad gets all the (somewhat overdue) attention? Or will it be just as exciting for iPhone owners?

The good news is, the iOS update will probably be huge overall. In recent years, Apple has managed to lock down the secrecy around software, but this year the rumors — based on purported leaks — abound. That might mean the iOS 13 is bursting with new stuff.

So, let’s take a look.