It’s time to stop using that useless six-digit passcode on your iPhone. Now that cops around the United States are going crazy for the GrayKey, a little box that can crack your iPhone’s passcode in hours, it has become clear that the iPhone’s regular six-digit numerical code is no longer secure.

Plus, now that GrayKey is available, it won’t be long before they’re in the hands of the bad guys, too, if they’re not already. In fact, instructions on how GrayKey works surfaced online last month.

The good news is, it’s super-easy to change your iPhone passcode to something a lot better. The bad news? There actually isn’t any, unless you already have the cops trying to break into your iPhone — in which case you’ve got plenty of bad news already.

A Tampa teenager who hacked the Twitter accounts of Apple and many other companies and celebrities agreed to a plea agreement that puts him in a juvenile facility for three years.

In mid July, a hacker gained access to Apple’s Twitter account, along with those other corporations, high-profile politicians, and celebrities. At the time, there was speculation it was done by Russian hackers. Or perhaps they were Chinese. Some pointed fingers at international criminal gangs.

Nope. Turns out it was a 17-year-old kid from Tampa.

Unlike streaming music, which often keeps playing when you switch away from the app or webpage, YouTube playback stops as soon as you leave mobile Safari. This means that using YouTube as a music player is out of the question. Or is it? Can you make YouTube play just the audio, even when you’re not showing the video? You can, and it’s really, really simple.

When you start up a Mac, it goes “bong,” and that’s the way the world should be. Unless, that is, you bought a Mac in 2016 or later, when Apple removed the Mac startup chime. These days, a Mac starts up silently, with only a whisper of fan noise (or the din of a whirring, clicking hard drive on an iMac) to let you know something is happening.

But what if you miss the good old Mac startup chime? Or — if you’re new to Macs — you just fancy a bit of retro charm? Today we’ll see how to bring back the bong.

Switch on a hotel TV, and you’ll likely run into its paywall very quickly. You probably don’t want to view any of the hotel’s stupid pay channels, but maybe you do want to hook up your iPad and watch some of the shows you brought along with you.

You’re typically still out of luck, though. These locked-up TVs won’t let you access their HDMI ports. Nor will they let you connect via AirPlay, if they even support Apple’s streaming protocol. However, there’s an absurdly easy way to disable all this dumb “security” and watch video from your iPad or iPhone to a hotel TV.

When I was a kid, we communicated in class by writing notes on pieces of paper, and passing them to other kids. It was called “passing notes,” and is now probably taught in schools as an artisanal pastime, along with “going outside” and conkers. In 2020, kids use insane workarounds to avoid actual writing.

Today we’ll see how to “pass notes” using nothing but two $700 iPhones and two $160 pairs of AirPods.

Using a keyboard with your iPad is a beautiful thing. It seems like every iOS update brings more and more keyboard shortcuts. But until now, you’ve been stuck using Mac-compatible keyboards only. If you hooked up a PC keyboard to your iPad, then the ⌘ and ⌥ keys would be the wrong way around.

On the Mac, thats always been easy to fix, thanks to a preference screen for switching these keys via software. And now, in iOS 13.4 beta, you can finally remaps modifier keys, too. And, yes, you can even remap the stupid globe icon on Apple’s Smart Folio Keyboard.

I sent my first pair of AirPods Pro back to Apple soon after buying them. Why? Because they were too small for my ears. Even with the biggest silicone tips fitted, I could never get too green checkmarks on the Ear Tip Fit Test. But, thanks to an absurdly simple hack, I’m back in the game. Now my AirPods Pro past the fit test every time. More importantly, noise really is sealed out, and the AirPods Pro are super comfy.

By using commands in your Mac’s built-in Terminal app, you can quickly change settings you probably didn’t even know existed.

Some of these Mac settings are just shortcuts — you can enable them in the usual way, using the mouse. But Terminal makes things simple. Instead of opening the System Preferences app, then finding (or remembering) a setting you want to change, and then searching further until you actually find the right checkbox, you can just type (or paste) a command, then  hit return.

Most of these are secret settings, though. They are impossible to change without Terminal. Let’s check them out.