How-To - page 88

Finally! Apple has added a small yet incredibly useful feature to the way iOS 9 handles Bluetooth devices.

In the past, you’d have to drop into the Bluetooth settings, tap on an offending Bluetooth device, and tell your iPhone or iPad to Forget the device, just to re-pair it or use the built in speakers. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent doing that, especially when I get a call while connected to a speakerphone-capable audio device; I have a lot of Bluetooth speakers.

Now however, Apple’s added a little extra so you can disconnect from a Bluetooth device instead of Forget it entirely, making it much easier to, say, stop using a specific speaker and return to your iPhone’s built-in speaker.

Here’s how.

iOS has so many settings in one app, it’s kind of ridiculous.

Whether you want to change preferences for an app or the operating system itself, a trip to the crowded Settings app can often be a frustrating experience.

iOS 9 — still in beta — has a solution for that information overload though: Search.

Here’s how to access it.

Although it looks like Apple is about to turn the Apple TV into a PlayStation-killing video game console, it’s not the indisputable king of the hill of streaming media boxes right now. Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast … all have their advantages over the Apple TV except for one killer feature: AirPlay Mirroring, which allows the Apple TV to stream anything running on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

If you don’t have an Apple TV, you can’t use AirPlay Mirroring, right? Actually, you can — as long you have a Raspberry Pi.

We love how easy it is to set up an alarm from the Apple Watch. All you have to do is say, “Hey Siri, wake me up at 7 a.m.,” and the digital assistant will put that order in for you.

But this comes a slight inconvenience: What happens to alarms after you’re done using them? Well, if you’re like me, you just turn them off to stop the horrendous buzzing on your wrist and then forget about them. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Here’s how to clear off all of those old, unused alarms with a quickness.

Are you getting something like following message on your Mac every time you log in?

talagent wants to use the "local items" keychain. please log in with password.

If so, you’re in luck, because we have a fix. Here’s how to get this utterly annoying pop-up out of your face.

iOS 8 introduced the idea of showing your most-contacted contacts in the multitasking screen. You’d simply double click on the Home button to see the list of the most recent apps as well as a row of the folks you contacted the most across the top.

If you’re looking for that feature in iOS 9, you might have noticed that the contacts are no longer in the multitasking screen. Never fear, though, they’ve just moved.

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.