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10 tricks to kick your iPhone addiction

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Make Your Phone Boring
Here are my tips for spending less time on your phone.
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Phone addiction is real. Constant iPhone use can literally change the makeup of your brain. Sure, people waved similar panic flags about the television, the radio and even the novel, but those were easily left at home. You carry the internet with you, and it’s constantly blasting a firehose of content, everywhere you go.

Luckily, you can make your iPhone less addictive.

If you feel the impulse to unlock your iPhone at every empty moment, or scroll through an app when you feel like you should be getting to bed, here are my tips for making your iPhone a bit more boring. And that, in turn, will help you curb your phone addiction.

Pebblebee’s tracker tag just became a better AirTag rival [Review] ★★★★

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Pebblebee Clip 5 tracker tag just became a better AirTag rival [Review]★★★★
Pebblebee Clip 5 offers features AirTag can't beat.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

The newly upgraded Pebblebee Clip 5 Bluetooth tracker tag sends out louder alerts, and its built-in LEDs got brighter. That should help it compete with Apple’s AirTag, as both use the same Find My network.

Plus, it has bonus features, like one that helps you find your iPhone.

I put the accessory through real-world testing — here’s how it came out.

The Family Plan 2 spends Christmas with killer Kit Harington [Now streaming!]

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The Family Plan 2 movie
Mark Wahlberg and Kit Harington star in The Family Plan 2.
Photo: Apple TV

Retired secret assassin Dan Morgan (Mark Wahlberg) and his now-the-wiser wife Jessica (Michelle Monaghan) lead the Morgan family to Europe for the holidays, only to find a gun-toting Irish villain from the past — played by English actor Kit Harington (Game of Thrones) — haunting them. And by “haunting” we mean trying very, very hard to rip off and probably kill Dan. It’s Apple Original Films’ first sequel, The Family Plan 2, and it’s now streaming November 21 on Apple TV, just ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Reviews so far suggest it could be perfect for that holiday down time. The Hollywood Reporter calls it a “dumb-fun sequel that clears a low bar.” The New York Times says it’s a “better executed, equally goofball sequel about a family’s tangles with organized crime.” But some reviews get a little more Grinch-y, with Collider calling the film “lackluster” and Screen Rant fuming that it’s “mind-numbingly boring and unfunny.” But still, gathering in front of the screen could be better than talking to certain relatives, right?

This $40 AI content suite does the work of a full creative team

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Lady creating content on a laptop using 2026 AI Content Creation Lifetime Subscription Bundle.
Secure lifetime access to two AI content creation tools in this bundle for one low price.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

The 2026 AI Content Creation Lifetime Subscription Bundle combines two powerful tools that help you write, edit and generate content (including voiceovers) faster: WordPop AI and SpeakBreez. 

Paired together, they will make quick work of your creative efforts. And for a limited time, you can get a lifetime subscription to both for just $39.99 (MSRP $2,070).

Today in Apple history: Apple signs damaging deal with Microsoft

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Windows used a number of elements of the Mac UI
This 1985 pact with Microsoft was one of the most damaging deals in Apple history.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

November 21: Today in Apple history: Apple signs Microsoft deal licensing Mac look and feel November 21, 1985: Following Steve Jobs’ departure, Apple comes close to signing its own death warrant by licensing the Macintosh’s look and feel to Microsoft. The Apple-Microsoft deal — struck by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Apple CEO John Sculley — comes hot on the heels of the Windows operating system’s release.

The pact gives Microsoft a “non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, nontransferable license to use [parts of the Mac technology] in present and future software programs, and to license them to and through third parties for use in their software programs.”

Oh, boy!

Unmissable price drop: Mac mini is now more affordable than ever!

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Mac mini deal
M4 Mac mini is tiny and so is the price (especially with this deal).
Photo: Apple/Cult of Mac

Apple’s tiny yet powerful M4 Mac mini is an amazing deal at any time, and a sale on the desktop computer makes it an even better value. You can get the latest model with 16GB of unified memory and a 256GB SSD for only $479. That’s a full 20% off the list price.

Configure the Mac mini with an M4 Pro or more memory and you can get it starting at $1,199, which is $200 below the usual cost.

Pre-Black Friday deal: Save $120 on AirPods Max, Apple’s ear-tickling headphones

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Photo of Apple AirPods Max headphones, with the words,
Getting $120 off top-shelf cans from Apple is a good deal.
Image: Floating Pixels/Cult of Mac

In a rare AirPods Max deal, both Amazon and Best Buy offer a $120 discount on multiple colors of Apple’s premium over-ear, noise-canceling headphones with USB-C charging.

This is one of the lowest prices we’ve seen — you can’t knock picking up a pair of AirPods Max for just $429.99. Especially considering we don’t see discounts on them all that often.

Stop texting passwords! There’s a safe, easy way to share them on iPhone.

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Share Your Passwords
This is an easier way to share passwords with your friends and family.
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

You can share passwords on iPhone automatically with your entire family, so you don’t have to reuse the same password everywhere or let everyone in your family know when a shared password is changed.

Setting up this feature is easy and saves the hassle of being texted “hey I can’t get into Amazon, what’s that password again?” and “I need you to send me the code.” When you set up shared passwords, two-factor authentication and passkeys are shared, too.

It’s a huge time-saver, and highly recommended. You can keep reading below or watch our quick video.

File sharing breakthrough: Android Quick Share now works with Apple AirDrop

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Android Quick Share now works with Apple AirDrop
Surprise! Androids and iPhones can now AirDrop/Quick Share files back and forth.
Screenshot: Google

Sharing holiday pictures with the whole family just got easier. Google found a way to make Android’s Quick Share feature cross-compatible with Apple AirDrop. This means Android and iPhone users can wirelessly transfer images and other files between their handsets.

The feature was announced Thursday, and currently only works with a few Android handsets, but Google promised wider availability is in development.

AirPods Pro 3 deal cuts Apple’s best earbuds to lowest price ever

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Photo of AirPods Pro 3 with the words
Save now on Apple's best earbuds.
Image: Apple

An AirPods Pro 3 deal whacks the price of Apple’s excellent noise-canceling earbuds down to just $219.99. That’s a 12% discount off the upgraded earbuds — the best deal yet.

They bring  new features including a heart rate monitor, revved-up audio quality and redesigned ear tips for better active noise cancellation. Plus, like the previous model, they can even function as clinical-grade hearing aids.

Make no mistake: These are the best wireless earbuds you can buy for your iPhone, Mac and other Apple gear. Nothing can match how seamlessly AirPods integrate with Apple devices. And this deal offers a discount off the AirPods Pro 3 list price of $249.

Apple Music’s Artist of the Year really is off the charts

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2025 Apple Music Artist of the Year
Apple Music celebrated Tyler, The Creator as its 2025 Artist of the Year for the impact he had on music and culture over the past 12 months.
Photo: Apple

Apple Music crowned rapper Tyler, The Creator as its 2025 Artist of the Year on Thursday, honoring the hip-hop innovator’s remarkable creative output and cultural influence over the past 12 months. With streaming minutes numbering in the billions, the guy gives new meaning to “off the charts.”

This year has been Tyler’s most successful to date across Apple Music’s platform. Between November 2024 and October 2025, fans worldwide streamed his music for more than 4.5 billion minutes, marking career highs in plays, listeners and total listening hours on the service.

Why you might want to pass on Apple’s Black Friday deals

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Apple Store Black Friday Shopping Event 2025
Black Friday brings a rare sale from the Apple Store. But don't get too excited.
Image: Apple

Apple is kicking off the holiday shopping season with a Black Friday promotion: from November 28 through December 1, customers who purchase select Apple products will receive an Apple Gift Card worth up to $250.

While that sounds sweet, you might want to shop elsewhere.

Today in Apple history: iTunes bags its first exclusive movie, which promptly fades into oblivion

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The producers of Purple Violets took a gamble on iTunes movie distribution.
The producers of Purple Violets take a gamble on iTunes movie distribution.
Photo: Wild Ocean Films

November 20: Today in Apple history: iTunes movie distribution begins with Purple Violets, the first film to launch on iTunes November 20, 2007: In a milestone for iTunes movie distribution, Purple Violets becomes the first feature film to launch exclusively on Apple’s platform.

A romantic comedy directed by Edward Burns, Purple Violets stars Selma Blair, Debra Messing and Patrick Wilson. With limited offers from Hollywood’s traditional players, the filmmakers pin their hopes on iTunes distribution as an alternative way to get their movie in front of viewers.

London’s iPhone-loving thieves ‘don’t want no Samsung’ for a reason

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phone thieves return Androids
"Don't want no Samsung," said one thief.
AI image: Grok

In what may be the strangest twist in the ongoing smartphone wars, London phone thieves have developed a strong brand loyalty to iPhone. Some phone thieves return Androids, literally giving the handsets like Samsung phones back to their victims, according to a new investigation. Now why would they do that? Well, it’s mainly about economics. And good taste, of course. 

You don’t need coding skills to build websites with this all-in-one solution

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Man using We.inc no-code website builder on his desktop computer.
Build websites the easy (and affordable) way with this no-code solution
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

We.inc is a no-code website builder that offers numerous perks — and an affordable lifetime subscription. It’s one of the cleanest, fastest ways to build, launch and manage a website right from your Mac, iPad or iPhone, without needing to know anything about HTML or Python coding.

This deal on We.inc’s Unlimited Plan lets you build endless websites, gives you AI chatbot access, and includes a handy Social Media Suite that makes it easy to schedule posts across the most popular platforms. And you can get the whole thing for just $149.99 (a 92% savings off the MSRP of $1,899).

Price drop: $25 lifetime subscription gives you access to ChatGPT, Mistral AI and more

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1min AI
This lifetime subscription gives you access to top AI tools for any task.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Finding good AI tools isn’t the problem. Even the free version of ChatGPT can do a lot. The real frustration is that if you want good results for generating copy, creating images, transcribing text and doing a myriad of other AI tasks, you often need a whole pile of subscriptions, and those costs add up. The alternative is to get an all-in-one tool that brings top AI models together in one interface. Enter 1minAI.

The major benefits of 1minAI are organizational and financial. It gives you access to ChatGPT, Gemini Pro, Llama, Mistral AI and more. So you get all your AI tools in one place, and you don’t need to pay for a subscription to each one separately. For a limited time, you can get a lifetime sub to 1minAI for just $24.97.

Get $40 off this blazing-fast charger for iPhone, AirPods and Apple Watch

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Ugreen MagFlow Charger deal
When not unfolded for use like this, the charger folds flat.
Photo: David Snow/Cult of Mac

Love the convenience of 3-in-1 wireless chargers for iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods — but wish they were faster? Well, Ugreen joined the early wave of Qi2.2 chargers with it MagFlow 3-in-1 Magnetic Wireless Charger. And that means it leaps from 15 watts (Qi2) to 25W (Qi2.2) of charging power for late-model iPhones, which makes a big difference in charging speed. And with this Ugreen MagFlow charger deal, you can get $40 off right now on Amazon. 

Today in Apple history: Apple Park gets the official go-ahead

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Apple Park
Apple's spectacular new campus gained city approval on this day in 2013.
Photo: Matthew Roberts

November 19: Today in Apple history: Apple Park approved by Cupertino City Council November 19, 2013: Apple gets final approval from the Cupertino City Council to proceed with building a massive second campus to house the iPhone-maker’s growing army of workers in California. Regarding the new Apple headquarters, Cupertino Mayor Orrin Mahoney issues a simple message: “Go for it.”

However, the massive structure — with an innovative circular design that will earn it the nickname “the spaceship” — remains years away from opening, despite Apple’s ambitious schedule.

How to add your ID to Apple Wallet

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Get a gorgeous ID in Apple Wallet.
Get a gorgeous ID in Apple Wallet.
Image:

In several states, Apple’s state ID initiative enables iPhones and Apple Watches to hold a digital copy of the user’s driver’s license, in the same way these devices store credit cards and airline tickets. And across the United States, you can create an Apple Digital ID based on your passport that can get you through some airport security checks. 

The day when an iPhone can completely take the place of an old-fashioned wallet remains years away, but it’s a goal Apple is working toward. Apple Pay is making progress on replacing credit cards, you can put airline tickets in the Wallet app, and the same goes for loyalty cards.

But no wallet is complete unless it can hold an ID. And that’s where Apple’s digital ID initiative comes in. Here’s what you need to know to add your driver’s license, state ID or federal passport to your Apple Wallet.

This Sandisk SSD is so tiny it can live on your MacBook [Review] ★★★★

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SanDisk Extreme Fit USB-C Flash Drive★★★★
Add a terabyte of storage to your older MacBook with this affordable SSD.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Sandisk gives its new Extreme Fit USB-C Flash Drive the crown as “the world’s smallest 1TB USB-C flash drive.” It’s undeniably very, very small — so tiny that you can leave it plugged into your MacBook. That means it can semi-permanently boost the storage capacity of your older notebook — and at quite a good price.

I tested the miniature external SSD with a variety of Apple devices, including my iPhone. Here’s how it stood up to real-world use.

When will your state let you add your ID to Apple Wallet?

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Graphic showing a Georgia digital ID over a map of the United States
13 states or territories, including Georgia, are fully on board.
Image: Apple/D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

When will you be able to add your driver’s license or state ID to Apple Wallet on your iPhone? In the United States, it varies by where you live. It’s not up to Apple: Each state and territory maintains a completely independent registry of drivers and identification cards, so each one must independently pass legislation and implement digital IDs.

If you live in Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Puerto Rico or West Virginia, you can do it today. (Our guide will show you how to add your driver’s license to Apple Wallet.) Otherwise, check our map and lists below to see how likely your state is to let you add your ID to Apple Wallet, and when it might happen.

How to quickly queue songs on Apple Music (and clear the queue)

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Play This One Next
Your phone can DJ for you.
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

You can queue songs in Apple Music so the tracks you want to hear play automatically, one after another. You don’t need to wait for the song to end and manually play the next one. And if you want to start over, you can quickly clear the queue as well. 

Plus, you can let friends add songs to the queue from their own phones — even if they don’t have an Apple Music subscription. Watch our video or keep reading below.

Your secret weapon for 4K Mac screen recordings

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Screen showing video editing on a Mac with AWZ Screen Recorder for Mac
Save 62% on a lifetime subscription to AWZ Screen Recorder for Mac.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

If you’ve ever tried recording your Mac’s screen and ended up juggling multiple apps — one for video, another for audio and a third just to trim the thing — you’ll instantly get why AWZ Screen Recorder for Mac is such a big deal. It lets you record anything on your screen in crisp 4K, edit it instantly, and share it anywhere.

It’s the rare screen-capture tool that actually groks what creators, gamers and professionals need: clarity, control and zero friction. And right now, you can grab lifetime access to AWZ Screen Recorder for just $29.99 (MSRP $79.90).

I ditched Finder on my Mac for this app, and I’m not going back

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Image of a MacBook Pro with the logo of Bloom, a Finder replacement for Mac, on its screen
When it comes to file management on Mac, Bloom blows Finder away.
Photo: Rajesh Pandey/Cult of Mac

Bloom is a Finder replacement that will completely change how you work with files on your Mac. 

With a refined interface that makes it feel like a native Mac app, it offers advanced features like a customizable multi-pane layout and enhanced file operations. After using Bloom for several weeks, I’m hooked. It speeds up basic tasks and makes file management on my Mac much easier.

Here’s everything this productivity-boosting Finder replacement can do.