If you use Gmail – and let’s face it, most of us do – one of the biggest draws of using an external app, like OS X Mail, is being able to get Notifications when new emails arrive. Unfortunately, many email apps don’t support Gmail’s best features natively, like labeling, search or automatically filtered inboxes.
If you’d like to get Notifications when a new Gmail comes in, but continue to use the Gmail web app instead of a dedicated client, here’s how.
Taptic feedback on the Apple Watch felt a little weird at first, but we’ve come to love its gentle nudges to let us know something is going on. But some Cult of Mac staffers have noticed that after time, the taptic feedback has started to feel not so … tappy anymore.
If you’re having this problem, here are a couple quick and easy ways you can try to put the pep back on your wrist.
In previous versions of iOS, finding your photos was a bit tricky, especially as you started to amass them in the thousands, what with having a high-quality camera in your pocket at all times.
In iOS 9, currently in public beta, the Photos app has gotten a new way to find the photo you’re looking for amidst the haystack of your Photo Roll. Here’s how to use this new feature.
Using the mobile web is an uneven affair in terms of what you’ll see once your little blue progress bar slides across the page to let you know your page has loaded.
Some sites give you a crippled version of the original, making sure you can’t find any information on them at all. Looking for a tiny link to load the desktop site can be an exercise in frustration.
iOS 9, currently in public beta, has an answer to this issue baked right into Safari. Here’s how to make it happen.
iOS 8.4.1 might have fine-tuned Apple Music, but some users are complaining about about battery issues after updating to Apple’s latest mobile operating system.
If you’re afflicted, the good news is that iOS 9 is right around the corner. The bad news? That doesn’t help you now, and iOS 9 will likely have its own host of bugs that Apple needs to address. Here are some tips to help you eke out as much battery life in iOS 8.4.1 as possible.
Closed captioning is useful to those with a hearing impairment to make the audio of videos accessible. Subtitles help those who speak a different language understand what’s going on in a film not in their original language.
You can enable these features on your Apple TV, but it’s not super-intuitive — there’s no single button to make it happen.
However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t easy. Here’s how to turn on Apple TV subtitles, even if you just want to watch a scary movie at night and have the sound turned down.
WhatsApp is a pretty popular messaging app that went from 200 million daily active users in April of 2013 to 800 million of them as of April 2015.
Unlike competitor SnapChat, however, WhatsApp will save every photo and video file sent to you to your Camera Roll. This could make for some embarrassing moments when you’re swiping through your photos to show mom your latest cat pictures.
It could also start to clog up your iPhone, really, with all that racy video your friends keep sending you.
To avoid these situations, you can disable the “feature.” Here’s how.
If you travel a lot, iOS 9 and El Capitan have a hidden feature just for you.
Apple’s latest operating systems (both of which are currently in beta) offer a way to keep tabs on airline flights. Here’s how to access this hidden new feature.
I wanted to find photos from my vacation a couple of weeks ago, so I figured I’d try out Siri’s new iOS 9 functionality.
“Siri,” I said, “show me photos from Hawaii.”
Dutifully, Apple’s updated digital assistant pulled up photos from my trip to Oahu a couple of years ago. They’re lovely, but I wanted more recent pictures.
“Siri, show me photos from Hawaii last week,” I said, reasonably.
As soon as I finished speaking, there they were. Siri had launched my Photos app on my iPhone and brought up the photos I’d taken while in Kona. Great stuff.
Here are some other ways you can get Siri to find the photos you want in the huge pile you have sitting on your iPhone.
Apple’s new Wallet app replaces Passbook in iOS 9, currently in public beta. Just like Passbook, when you wave your iPhone at an Apple Pay kiosk, it will only let you choose your default credit card and pay for the goods or services you bought.
In iOS 9 beta, you’ll also be able to choose any of your other provisioned credit cards from your Apple Pay account without even unlocking your iPhone or accessing the Wallet app.
Here’s how.
iOS 9 brings a bunch of battery-boosting features, most of which work right out of the box. But there’s one battery-saving feature you’ll have to enable yourself.
Called Low Power Mode, this new feature should prove super-useful when you need to eke out just a bit more time with your device — provided you’re not doing anything intense.
iCloud Drive is a Dropbox and Google Drive-type service from Apple that lets you store documents in the cloud, making it super easy to synchronize them between your iOS and OS X devices.
You can access it on your Mac with an icon that shows all the documents you’ve stored in iCloud in a folder-like structure.
Prior to iOS 9, in order to access these documents on your iPhone or iPad, you’d need to open an app that supported iCloud Drive on your device.
Not anymore. iOS 9 comes with its own iCloud Drive app, and here’s how to enable it.
If you’ve been itching to get your hands on Apple’s latest public beta for iOS 9, you’re in luck. With new proactive features for Siri, public transit directions in Maps, and a supercharged notes app, not to mention new multitasking and keyboard features for newer iPads, iOS 9 is looking pretty great.
Plus, now that we’re getting closer to the actual Fall release, the iOS 9 beta (release 5) is probably more stable than it was when it first released to the public in July. Of course, all beta software can mess up your iPhone, so don’t apply it unless you’re willing to put up with possible glitches and maybe even a bricked iPhone.
If you’re good with that, though, here’s how to get the iOS 9 beta onto your iPhone (or iPad) right now.
Apple Music now offers replays of several Beats 1 shows through a feature called Beats 1 Replays.
These full replays aren’t particularly easy to find, but here’s how you can locate them and catch up with shows you’ve missed in their entirety.
If you’ve been using iCloud to back up your iOS devices for a while like I have, chances are you’ve got a few older backup files crufting up your iCloud storage space.
If you want to maximize the space on your iCloud account, you might want to delete some of these older iCloud backups to make room for more.
Here’s how to do that.
Websites these days have another tool to engage you: the desktop notification. Many sites, this one included, allow you to opt in to a system of popup notices that encourage you to click through and see new content.
Of course, not all content is created equal, and you might someday wish to stop being notified of new cat photos from that feline-friendly website.
Here’s how to manage web notifications using two of the Mac’s most popular web browsers, Safari and Chrome.
Most every app I’ve installed on my Apple Watch brings some sort of Glance along with it. While that’s a neato-keen thing to put in your App description to sell more apps, I’m not convinced that every app I have needs to be on my wrist.
Nuzzle, Words with Friends, Tile, Fandango, Foursquare: These are all apps I surely do not need or want on my Apple Watch.
Here’s how to clean up your Apple Watch Glances section for a much more focused and clear informational workflow. Because seriously, how many swipes do I need to get to the battery Glance?
As you may have heard, Apple released the public beta for OS X El Capitan yesterday. Since I tend to ignore the risks of beta software in favor of all the new features, I downloaded it on my mid-2011 MacBook Air. Do yourself a favor: don’t be like me. Understand and acknowledge the risks of beta software. It’ll save you time and data.
Apple Music Connect is like another version of Apple’s failed Ping service. It’s being promoted as a way to keep in touch with your favorite artists, but man is it impersonal.
My Connect page is full of bland PR-style stuff and links to buy music from artists I’m following. There’s just not enough quality posts in there to justify checking it each day.
Until now. Jonathan Poritsky has a fantastic idea over at his music blog: why not follow the folks on Apple Music who actually share and curate music? Follow Julie Adenuga, Zane Lowe, or any of the genre or curator profiles hidden in Apple Music.
These are the folks that are sharing amazing music. Here’s how to follow them.
Beats 1 is live 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it’s a fantastic way to get your dose of what’s happening right now in urban music.
Problem is, just like the terrestrial radio that it uses as its model, Beats 1 doesn’t have an archived recording of its shows. If you want to hear a specific DJ or interview, you have to tune in.
There are ways, however, of recording the audio stream with varying degrees of “free” and “easy.” Two of them involve some technical know how while the third will require you to drop some cash. Check it out.
Apple Music is the latest way to stream a ridiculous number of tunes on demand. And with all that variety, you’re going to get some cursing in there. It’s just how a lot of musicians work.
But if you don’t want to hear all of those bleepables and swears, it’s a pretty quick fix to keep it from showing up in your stream. Here’s how to do it.
One of the cool things you can do with a streaming service like Apple Music, Spotify, or Rdio, is making and sharing playlists. It’s a way to seriously curate your own musical taste, and then show off by sending along to others.
It’s not super tricky, but the downside of such a new user interface like the one in the just released Apple Music is that things may not be where you think they should be.
With that in mind, let’s jump right in and make a new playlist. Then let’s learn how to share it with our Apple Music buddies.
Several iTunes users have taken to the Apple Discussion forums to complain about iCloud Music Library — part of the iTunes 12.2 update — has destroyed their music libraries.
Discussions user Tuff Ghost explains that everything was fine with his 13,000 song iTunes library, until he installed iTunes 12.2 on his Mac and allowed it to enable iCloud Music Library.
“All of the (sic) sudden it starts overwriting my album art with completely wrong art (example: Weezer showed art for a Radiohead album) on both my iMac AND my iPhone, screwing up metadata by putting random songs in albums where they didn’t belong (there was a Cursive album where the first track was listed as a Foo Fighters song).”
When he clicked to listen to a song, it would play a completely different one, like the metadata for the files was completely incorrect.
If this is happening to you, another Discussions user may have found a solution.
When you sign in to Apple Music, you have access to Apple’s new music-centric sharing and socializing system, Connect.
While Ping may have come to an an ignominious end, Connect has the advantage of being integrated into the new, exciting Apple Music to the very core, and will let everyone signed into an Apple ID account (not just Apple Music members) use the system to follow their favorite artist.
When you comment on a Connect post, though, you’ll be known by a user name, which uses the @ symbol just like Twitter.
If you want to have something unique, though, you’ll need to act quickly and enter it now, before the service gets clogged up with all the other people that might want your specific user name. Here’s how to do just that.
So, you’ve gotten the three month trial subscription for Apple Music, right? How exciting!
Chances are, you’ll forget all about it and, whether you love the service or not, you’ll get auto-charged in September for the $10 to $15 you chose when you signed up for your Apple Music subscription.
If you want to make sure that you aren’t automatically charged again, here’s how to turn that function off.