You’re probably excited about all of the fun new emoji characters that you just got in iOS 9.1, but one of the new additions won’t show up on any of your keyboards.
The “Left Speech Bubble” emoji isn’t part of the official canon yet, but Apple went ahead and added it, anyway. Here’s what it looks like and how to add it to your pictorial lexicon.
Forget self-driving cars that will drive you to the store while you sit back watching Netflix, because where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
Google has leaked highly “confidential” plans for a new time-traveling car the company calls Project Flux.
Maybe there aren’t a ton of new features in iOS 9, but you may find yourself getting tighter with Siri.
Siri is out to earn the title of “Best Assistant” with a series of new tricks aimed at making your life easier.
You no longer have to set a time for Siri to remind you to do tasks. You will automatically get reminders once you arrive or leave a location. No time to read an email or an interesting article? Ask her to remind you later and she will do so.
Siri can call up any photo you like based on a location or timestamp. She can also give you sports scores without directing you to a website, can convert measurements and, if you have a shiny new iPhone 6s, there is no need to press the home button to summon her. Just say, “Hey Siri.”
To see how Siri worked for me, check out the video below.
The iPhone 6s’ new Live Photos feature created a new media format, but there’s one major problem with the new moving pictures: You have to own an iPhone 6s to see them.
Most of your friends probably haven’t upgraded yet, which means those cool Live Photos you’ve snapped are only viewable by you. However, there is a way to transform your favorite Live Photo into a shareable GIF or video file, allowing everyone to see the movement in your picture, no matter what device they’re on.
Here’s how to do it:
Facebook’s algorithmic nostalgia is all well and good — until it starts pulling up the worst memories you’ve shared. Not everyone wants to be reminded of these awful memories.
Introduced this past March, “On This Day” is a Facebook feature that lets you re-share important digital memories from one year ago. Now you can keep specific people and/or dates from appearing in your feed, thanks to a pair of filters introduced on the social network.
Here’s how to make sure your worst memories aren’t surfaced by Facebook.
When I lose track of my mouse cursor, I’ve always just wiggled it a bit to find it on the screen. It’s a natural gesture, and Apple’s capitalized on it with its new “shake to find” feature in El Capitan.
If you’re constantly shaking your mouse or swiping quickly on your mousepad, maybe while gaming or editing, the new feature might bug you.
Here’s how to turn it off (and turn it back on again if you want to).
You should be excited to get Siri up and running with your new Philips Hue bridge and control your lights with the power of your voice, but one annoying error might stop you. It definitely had me scouring the Internet for answers when I was setting up my smartbulb system this afternoon, and I’d love to save you that time.
Because if you’ve spent $200 on fancy lightbulbs, you probably want to start using them right away, damn it.
Seriously, people, we have families to feed. Kittens to adopt. We need your ad impressions.
The new iOS content blockers, as well as traditional ad-blocking browser plugins, threaten the wallets of every ad-supported website, including Cult of Mac. Luckily, it’s easy to whitelist us (and any other sites you want to support). It’s incredibly easy to restore order to the online universe, whether you’re using an iPhone or a Mac.
AT&T finally activated Wi-Fi calling on its network, allowing iPhone users to seamlessly switch to their local wireless network to place calls when their LTE signal is weak.
Apple added WiFi Calling in iOS 8, but you probably haven’t had a chance to use it yet because the only carrier in the U.S. to support it has been T-Mobile. Now that the nation’s second-largest carrier is getting on board, more iPhone users than ever can take advantage of the feature to place calls anywhere in the United States, free of charge.
Here’s how to turn it on:
OS X El Capitan has arrived, and it’s a free for most Mac users, making the decision to upgrade super-simple. Once you have it installed, there are some awesome new features you have to try out. See them all in action in our video tour below.
Not all iPhones 6s units are created equal, and yours just might have a weaker processor thanks to Samsung. Chipgate rocked the Internet with the revelation that Apple used two different suppliers for the A9 chips in its latest iPhones and one processor looks like a serious under-performer.
Even though Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s 14-nanometer A9 chips are bigger than Samsung’s 12-nanometer A9 chips, if you have an iPhone 6s with a TSMC chip, you might get an extra two hours of battery life on your device.
There’s no way to tell if you’re getting stuck with a Samsung A9 processor when you purchase your iPhone 6s in stores or online, but you can find out whether you got saddled with a crappier processor with some help from a couple of apps.
Here’s how to find the maker of the A9 processor in your iPhone 6s or 6s Plus:
Trying to get your canine BFF to look at your iPhone to capture the loving bond between the two of you is difficult, if not downright impossible.
Luckily, this new attachment for your iPhone or other smartphone, called the Pooch Selfie (because of course it is), is going to the dogs.
We received a message today on our Cult of Mac Facebook page asking about calls showing up on an iPad when the call originated on an iPhone.
There are a couple of different places to turn this feature off so you’re not juggling all your iPads and MacBooks when you make or receive phone calls.
I’m not sure why iOS doesn’t officially support nested folders, despite the fact that people have been clamoring for them for years.
Needless to say, dropping a folder inside another folder is still a no-no in iOS 9.0.2 … unless you use this easy trick to nest your folders inside each other.
Let’s be honest: there are a handful of sites that you visit a lot, open in tabs in Safari.
If you want to keep these tabs ready to go in every Safari window you open, even after you’ve quit Safari and re-launched it, you can use El Capitan’s new tab pinning feature to keep pages “open, up to date, and easily accessible.”
The sites you pin will stay active in the background, pinned to the left side of your tab bar. Here’s how to create (and get rid of) pinned tabs in Safari.
Sometimes you need to use your entire screen at once, like when you’re working on a serious photo-retouching project or need more screen real estate for an epic GarageBand session and you don’t want to maximize the app you’re using.
If you’ve ever wanted to regain a little bit of space on your Mac’s screen, the time is right to make sure you’re running the latest version of OS X, El Capitan. It will let you hide the menu bar up top to give you more space to work with.
Here’s how to have your menu bar hide itself when you’re not using it.
Ever wish you could watch all those great Key & Peele or Inside Amy Schumer clips from YouTube on the big television in the living room?
Sometimes the small screen on your MacBook just isn’t large enough to contain all that hilarity. It’s times like these that you’ll want to send video to that massive HDTV, and El Capitan makes it even easier with a new AirPlay feature.
Here’s how to beam your favorite clips to your favorite screen.
iOS 9’s Wi-Fi Assist feature helps when you’re connected to a slow Wi-Fi connection by kicking in your cellular data network to help things seem a bit snappier.
The problem is that it can also rack up some data charges if you end up going over your data cap. If you’ve got a limited data plan with your wireless carrier, you’ll want to find this iOS 9 setting, which is on by default, and kind of buried in the Settings.
You don’t have to press so hard on your expensive new iPhone 6s or 6s Plus to get the groundbreaking 3D Touch working easily.
We’ve all been looking forward to this killer UI upgrade, but some users say they’re worried about breaking their new iPhone screens because they’re pushing so hard to get the “pop” level of 3D Touch.
Here’s how to make this a little easier to use.
Facebook Messenger keeps buzzing at me while I’m in the app itself. It’s annoying.
It seems like I’m getting messaged more and more via Facebook Messenger these days as my buddies and family take to the mobile messaging platform to connect in real time.
But the incessant buzzing, when I’m right there staring at the conversation, has got to stop. Here’s how I did it.
With watchOS 2, you can now use any photo in your library to make a custom Apple Watch face. And that gives you a lot of freedom to make the wearable your own, but sometimes, you and the watch might have different ideas for how to treat your pictures.
Here’s a quick and easy way to make sure that your Apple Watch looks exactly how you want it to.
Every day, it’s the same thing. Wake up to my iPhone blaring OK Go’s “I Won’t Let You Down” at me, then fumble the Tap to Snooze function (which never seems to work for me in the morning). It’s not as simple as an alarm clock, and the distraction of having your iPhone with you when you go to sleep at night is something I think we all can do without.
Apple Watch now has the answer, in the form of a new watchOS 2 feature, Nightstand mode.
Here’s how to use it to help you get your sorry butt out of bed in the morning.
Here’s another tip that’s snuck into watchOS 2: Did you know that you can keep your Apple Watch awake longer now while you’re using it?
Apple hasn’t mentioned this feature much, if at all; we couldn’t even find it on the details screen when we upgraded. But it’s a great addition to the firmware that will save you a little frustration and a lot of wrist-flipping.
Here’s how to do it.
Third-party complications have arrived to the Apple Watch in watchOS 2, and setting them up is far from complicated.
The new operating system for Apple’s wearable dropped this week, and this is one of the features the company has talked up the most. And rightly so, because it adds a ton of new functionality to the device.
Here’s how to put a wealth of new information on your watch face.
If there’s one thing we could all benefit from, it’s more time in the day. Unfortunately, Time Travel on the new Apple Watch operating system, watchOS 2, won’t actually let you travel back in time to get a few extra hours of Netflix in, no matter which edition you purchased.
However, watchOS 2 does now include a new feature called Time Travel, which lets you see the past and future right on your wrist. You can check what the weather will be a few hours from now for your drive home, see if you’ve got any appointments later in the day, or just figure out what time the sun set yesterday to prove you were home before it got dark.
Either way, here’s how to Time Travel on your Apple Watch running watchOS 2.