A simple settings change is all that's needed. Image: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac
Apple’s newest iOS 14 beta makes it so that the “hidden” folder inside the Photos app no longer appears by default. But there is a quick and easy way to get it back. We’ll show you how.
Add important details to your snaps. Image: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac
iOS and iPadOS 14 let you add captions to your photos for the first time. You can use them to add detail to your most precious memories, and to make images easier to discover through search.
Darkroom, the amazing iOS photo-editing app, now edits video Photo: Darkroom
Darkroom, one of the best photo library and editing apps on iOS, is now also one of the best video library and editing apps on iOS. In today’s update, Darkroom adds support for editing your videos. Not cutting and chopping them up, like iMove, but changing how they look, as if you were applying filters and edits to a still photograph. And the along thing is, it’s instant, just as fast as editing a still image.
iCloud folder sharing finally arrives in iPadOS 13.4, and iOS 13.4 too. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
Apple seeded the second beta build of iOS 13.4 and iPadOS 13.4 to developers this morning bringing a bunch of bug fixes and some small new features to the iPhone and iPad.
Included among the changes are some more changes to the controversial toolbar in the Mail app. Apple also added some under-the-hood improvements and some changes to how location authorization works in apps.
It's now usable in mobile Safari. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac
iCloud.com is finally mobile-friendly, more than eight years after its introduction. The site now works on Android and iOS devices, allowing you to access Photos, Notes, Reminders, and more.
I couldn’t find any good cat pictures in my photo library. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Do you want to overlay captions onto your Instagram photos? Of course you do. How else can express your inner poet, while simultaneously re-creating the worst of history’s inspirational posters? Where would humanity be without the “Hang in there, baby” cat poster? Doomed, that’s where.
Today we’re going to see how to add captions to any photo, without using an app. I won’t even force you to use a Siri Shortcut (although that’s a good option). And, of course, you don’t ever have to post the result to Instagram.
This weekend, you’re “enjoying” some extended time with your family. After you’ve fixed their devices, and taught them that the battery of their iPhone lasts way longer if they don’t leave the damn screen on the whole time, you might decide to swap some photos. You may grab the your old childhood snaps off your mother’s iPad, or photos of the family recipe book off your father’s iPhone. There are a few ways to do this — slow, fast and faster, wired or wireless. Let’s see how to transfer photos between iPhones and iPads, and how to share the best holiday photos with everyone.
Instagram is trying to make caption less toxic. Photo: Pixabay
In an effort to combat online bullying, Instagram is rolling out a new feature today that warns users when their captions might be considered offensive.
The new feature gives users the chance to pause and reconsider their words before posting, but it doesn’t completely prevent people from posting inappropriate captions.
macOS Catalina is here. But proceed from Mojave with caution. Photo: Apple
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s big beta dump, Apple is back with one more beta software update for macOS Catalina.
macOS 10.15.1 beta 3 was seeded to developers this morning, bringing a host of new bug fixes for the Mac following the public launch of macOS Catalina just earlier this month.
Google won't let original photos go free. Photo: Apple
Google has confirmed it plans to fix a “bug” that gives iPhone owners unlimited high-resolution photo storage.
Some users believed the issue was actually a feature that could save Google “millions of dollars” in cloud storage. But Google has says it is unintended and it is working on a fix.
In iOS 13 and iPadOS, you can easily collect a bunch of Live Photos, and combine them into a single video. It’s great for sharing, or just making a cool remix of your clips. And this isn’t another one of those (awesome) posts where we use Shortcuts to do the dirty work. Making Live Photos videos is a new feature built into the Photos app.
“Memories” from Maroon 5 can be the background music of your Memories. Photo: Apple Music
Maroon 5 is reportedly allowing iPhone owners to use the band’s new single “Memories” as the soundtrack when they build mini-movies from images in the Photos app.
Apple calls all these collections Memories, so the connection is obvious.
Now you can capture an entire web page as a single, long, PDF. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
iPadOS 13 soups up its screenshot tool with the ability to capture an entire webpage as a PDF. That means it doesn’t just grab what you can see on the screen right now. If you’re viewing a webpage that’s really, really long, it will capture the whole thing, and turn it into a very tall PDF.
You can also mark up the resulting PDF before you save it to the Files app. This is a fantastic way to save a webpage, especially when you combine it with Reader View to remove the ads, sidebars and other junk first.
In iOS 13, Photos is now an image-editing powerhouse Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
The Photos app in iOS 13 is now good enough that you may never need another app to edit your photos, for regular edits at least. Somehow Apple made the app even easier to use, and added some new features, while making existing features far easier to find.
For instance, Portrait Mode now gets its own tab; the automatic magic wand tool can now be fine-tuned (as can the built-in filters); and the crop tool now fixes perspective, and mirror-flips your photos.
Not just the big ones. All of them. Photo: Pixelmator
Every single one of your favorite Pixelmator Pro tools can now be found inside the built-in Photos app on Mac.
The latest version of the app makes it so that you never need to leave Photos to edit your best snaps. You can even use the Pixelmator Pro keyboard shortcuts you’re already used to.
Nothing says "freedom" and "pioneer spirit" like a creepy abandoned canoe. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Summer! That time of year where you stay in somebody else’s home via Airbnb, crank up their air conditioning and wear a sweater in the house, even though it’s 90 degrees outside. Aka the season where you leave the limitless comfort of your home Wi-Fi, to venture out into the world using just a restricted cellular plan.
Summer revives that old pioneering spirit of hardship, the bare essentials of living, and of making do with whatever you have. And just like the original English and Spanish invaders of the modern-day United States, you’ll have to do without the comforts of on-demand GPS and automatic app updates.
Today we’ll see how you can stretch your meager data allowance while traveling.
FaceApp uses AI to deliver impressive photo effects. Photo: FaceApp
Impressive artificial intelligence that delivers some of the most convincing facial effects has made FaceApp incredibly popular in recent weeks. But there’s some concern over what happens to your photos when you use it.
The good news is FaceApp won’t steal your entire photo library. However, some of your images will end up on its servers.
Don't let your photos take over your whole SSD. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
The Photos app on the Mac has two options for storing your photos. You can tell it to keep the full-size originals of everything, or you can have it self-manage, keeping your master library in iCloud and storing a mixture of full-resolution and low-res versions locally to save space.
The trouble is, even when you choose the “Optimize Mac Storage” option, the Photos app’s storage can metastasize and take over your whole drive. Today we’ll see how to cap this storage, giving Photos a hard limit on how much space it can use. For instance, if you have a MacBook with a 128GB SSD, you could choose to only use 30GB for Photos — and it will never, ever use more.
Users can't wait to get their hands on iOS 13. Photo: Apple
Apple seeded the third beta build of iOS 13 and iPadOS to developers this morning, bringing a host of new tweaks and bug fixes to test devices just before the 4th of July break.
iOS 13 beta 3 arrives just over two weeks after Apple dropped the last developer beta. The first iOS 13 public beta came out a week ago. Apple also released the third betas of tvOS 13, watchOS 6 and macOS Catalina today.
Yum! I'll take a 'multiple selection' of these. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
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.
Photos were much simpler in the old days. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
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.
iOS 13 has almost too many features to cover -- but that won't stop us trying. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
The second iOS 13 and iPadOS betas bring both good news and bad. Unless you’re a total “thrill-seeker,” it’s still not a good idea to install these betas on your main iOS device. In fact, there will be far more spills than thrills: The code remains raw and buggy as hell.
I have iPadOS running on an old iPad. While this latest version seems much less ragged around the edges, many apps still crash. And I still can’t make the Slide Over apps hide themselves at the side of the screen. Nor do all my favorites appear in the Files app.
The good news is that, despite this, the latest betas offer several new features — and lots of stuff has been fixed. Let’s take a look at the highlights of what’s new in iOS 13 beta 2.
If only you could resize and share all pictures. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
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.
iPhone photography is still incredibly good. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Android enthusiasts are keen to highlight how the iPhone has dropped in the smartphone camera ranks in recent years. But a new camera comparison reveals that may not be the case.
Although there are some better options out there for low-light photography, Apple’s smartphone is still up there with the best when it comes to daytime shooting.
Photos app is usually pretty good at recognizing people. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
The Photos app’s Faces feature is fantastic. It does a pretty good job of gathering all the pictures of a person together, for both browsing and search. And it’s really easy to add new faces to the list. But what about managing those faces? What if the Photos app’s AI added some photos of a stranger into the photos of your husband?
It’s easy to tell your iPhone or iPad that a photo does not contain the person it thinks it does. Unfortunately, it’s a real pain to find the setting you need to tweak.