Top Stories - page 26

The iPhone’s Live Captions feature generates subtitles of any media playing on your device or heard by its microphone. Powered by the Neural Engine in Apple’s custom silicon, the ability to convert words from music, videos and real-time conversations into text on the fly is a boon to many users in many situations.
If you’re hard of hearing, for instance, the ability to see instant captions on the screen is a game-changer. Or, if you don’t have headphones when you’re sitting in bed late at night and your partner is asleep — or you’re in any situation where you don’t want to make noise, like on the bus or in an office — you can turn on Live Captions to get subtitles.
The applications are endless and exciting. Here’s how to use Live Captions on your iPhone.

The Apple Watch doesn’t just count your steps — its three Activity rings track different levels of energy you burn throughout the day. And the perpetual challenge to “close your rings” provides a motivational push that gamifies fitness.

Apple’s smartwatch gives you a bunch of options for customizing your Activity rings (and for taking a break when you need it). You can set different goals for each ring for different days of the week to fit your workout schedule. When you want a rest day or if you fall ill, you can take up to a month-long break without losing your streak.

If you’re all-in on the fitness tracking, you can add widgets that show your rings on your Apple Watch face and widgets on your iPhone. Or, on the other hand, if you find it all a bit annoying, you can turn off all the notifications so they won’t bother you anymore.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Apple Watch’s Activity rings.

When Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler gave ChatGPT access to a decade of his Apple Watch data, he expected useful insights. Instead, the AI delivered wildly inconsistent health assessments that left him questioning the readiness of AI-powered health tools.

There’s a fresh round of system software updates for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch on Monday. Apple released iOS 26.2.1, iPadOS 26.2.1 and watchOS 26.2.1 to support AirTag 2, a tracker tag also introduced on Monday.
Note that Mac users didn’t get an equivalent macOS 26.2.1 update — likely because Macs and AirTags aren’t truly intended to be used together.

If you want to install a beta version of macOS, either for software development or for simply poking around, the smartest way to do it is to partition your Mac’s hard drive. That will create a new storage area just for the different installation, with entirely separate data, so none of your precious documents are at risk.
You also might want to have different versions of macOS on hand for testing old versions of the operating system, too. It’s easier than keeping a pile of aging Macs around (my go-to strategy).
Luckily, the Mac comes with a very handy tool to partition your hard drive for free. Read on to find out how to partition your Mac’s hard drive with Disk Utility.

If you want to make your iPhone easier to use, you can customize its Control Center to gain faster access to the buttons and toggles you rely upon to perform frequent tasks.
Plus, you can remove all the junk you never touch from the iPhone Contol Center, putting the vital controls you actually use front and center.
Keep reading to find out how and why you should customize the iPhone Control Center to make the device your own.

January 24, 1984: Apple ships its first Mac, the mighty Macintosh 128K.

Bringing a mouse and graphical user interface to the masses, and heralded by an acclaimed Super Bowl commercial that’s still talked about today, the first-gen Mac will quickly become one of the most important personal computers ever released.

Stop feeling frustrated that Apple Pencil works with iPad but not iPhone. The Tinymoose Pencil Pro Ultra supports Apple tablets and handsets.
Beyond iPhone support, the stylus offers iPad users palm rejection, zero lag, Scribble support, magnetic attachment to the tablet and more.
I tested the affordable accessory with both iPad and iPhone — here are the results.

Apple delivered some genuinely meaningful upgrades with the iPhone 17 Pro, fulfilling all the fundamentals: better performance, display, battery life and overall polish. Under normal circumstances, this would make an easy upgrade.
Yet, I’m choosing to skip it. If the iPhone 17 Pro nailed the basics, the iPhone 18 Pro looks set to finally push Apple’s Pro lineup forward in a meaningful way.

If you’ve noticed your iPhone storage filling up faster than it used to, you’re not imagining things. Modern iOS apps now routinely consume hundreds of megabytes, with some reaching multiple gigabytes in size. What’s behind this relentless growth? Why do iOS apps take so much space? And what can you do about it? Read on. 

The Blip file transfer app is a delightful utility that lets you move extremely large files and folders quickly across the internet — directly from your computer to somebody else’s.
With Blip, there’s no middleman uploading to and downloading the file from a cloud, and no pesky web app to sign into. It’s like beaming your files onto someone else’s computer.
It’s the easiest, most straightforward way to send someone large folders of files or complex projects from your Mac, iPhone, PC or Android device. And best of all, it’s totally free and secure. You can get it from blip.net.

With the ever-growing number of devices on my desk, a charging station has become a non-negotiable accessory. Instead of juggling multiple chargers, cables and adapters, a charging station can keep everything organized.

That’s where Acefast’s 6-in-1 80W foldable GaN charging station shines. Despite its compact size, it can charge up to six devices simultaneously, all while reducing the clutter and chaos on my desk. 

iOS 26’s Liquid Glass user interface brings dramatic change to the iPhone, so it’s no surprise that some people hate it. If the new translucent look is just not for you, you can tweak or turn off Liquid Glass in iOS 26.2. And it’s easy.

Plus, you will find the same settings in macOS Tahoe 26.2 and iPadOS 26.2, so you can turn off Liquid Glass on all your Apple devices if you like. Here’s how.

Apple likely will struggle to acquire a critical component for all its products this year. In fact, the whole electronics industry will face the same problem, and the competition will drive up prices, according to analysts.

What’s the missing product? RAM. Why is it so hard to get? AI. But the full story is more complex than those two basic facts.

Desk lighting plays a surprisingly transformative role in creating memorable workspaces. Here are seven Mac setups where lighting — whether RGB gaming effects, professional video illumination or ambient mood enhancement — elevates the entire experience.

After the purported dimensions of the first folding iPhone leaked a few weeks ago, it didn’t take long for mockups to hit MakerWorld, a popular site for people with 3D printers to share their models. I got my hands on one of those models, and I have lots of thoughts. If the rumored folding iPhone looks anything like this, it’ll be weird.

For one thing, it’s almost as short as the original iPhone, but wider than the widest iPhone ever. Lots of design questions remain unanswered, too. Where will the volume buttons go, since there isn’t any room on the left side? Will it only have one speaker, like the iPhone Air? Will the two cameras arranged horizontally across the back mean the camera sensors are in landscape, not portrait?

I’ve been fiddling with a 3D model of the first folding iPhone all week. Here are my thoughts and observations.

The fact that Google Gemini will power the revamped Siri is drawing criticism from people convinced that Apple should have developed its own AI in-house to bring the voice assistant up to speed.

Some of the critics seem to think Apple always made its own software before now. Therefore they regard the deal with Google as a major policy shift — and a sign of weakness that would horrify Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

No. Just … no. These critics will be shocked to learn that many Apple products are built on top of tech developed outside the company … and often, it was Steve Jobs who did it!

The Kingston Dual Portable SSD brings up to 2TB of storage to anyone in the process of transitioning from the old USB-A to the smaller USB-C standard. It’s small enough to easily carry around, and fast enough to quickly handle large files.

I ran tests on the drive to see how the portable SSD fares in real-world use. Read on to see how well it performed.

Setapp Mobile, MacPaw’s ambitious alternative iOS app store for European Union users, will close its doors in February after just over a year of operation, the service said Thursday.

On a support page, MacPaw cited Apple’s “still-evolving and complex business terms that don’t fit Setapp’s current business model” as the reason.

Update: Anker renamed the Soundcore Work AI Voice Recorder reviewed below as Soundcore Work AI Note Taker to more directly reflect the main use of the product, the company said Tuesday. Its listings tend to put it down now as “note taker/voice recorder.” Soundcore also noted the problem I had with Find My functionality should be fixed now on production units. 

Original review: In an ecosystem where seamless integration matters most, the new Soundcore voice recorder and note taker arrives with a compelling proposition for Apple users. As this Soundcore Work AI Note Taker review finds, the coin-sized device promises to transform how iPhone and Mac users capture, transcribe and organize voice recordings.

After examining its features through an Apple-centric lens, here’s what you need to know about whether this $159.99 recorder deserves a spot in your productivity arsenal.

A new Apple Creator Studio subscription bundles six major professional creative apps into a single monthly or yearly plan. The new bundle, announced Tuesday by Apple, includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor and MainStage, plus premium artificial intelligence features in other Apple apps.

“There’s never been a more flexible and accessible way to get started with such a powerful collection of creative apps for professionals, emerging artists, entrepreneurs, students and educators to do their best work and explore their creative interests from start to finish,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, in a press release.

Mac Hot Corners are shortcuts for your mouse. Enable the Hot Corners feature, and you can throw your mouse cursor to the corner of the screen (the easiest place to hit) to perform quick actions. You can instantly lock the screen, start a screensaver, show the desktop, show all windows and more.

If you use your Mac with a standard two-button PC mouse instead of Apple’s Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse, Hot Corners can replace the multitouch gestures that you miss out on. The Mac’s built-in Hot Corners feature provides a quick and easy way to navigate your computer, and I recommend that you turn them on and use them.

CES 2026 showcased how iPhone accessory makers can innovate while offering deep integration with Apple’s ecosystem. Think slimmer and safer iPhone power banks, smarter MagSafe add-ons, and even an accessory that makes your desk less cluttered.

Plus, Apple’s Find My tech is making its way into everyday carry items, while physical keyboards — typically considered a bulky and impractical iPhone accessory — have become more modular, wireless and easier to live with.

Check out the iPhone accessories from CES 2026 that stood out for all the right reasons.

A cool, colorful Apple Watch concept that borrows the design language of the original iMac is drawing raves on Instagram.

The instantly recognizable design features translucent plastic in the bright shades of the nonconformist computers that saved Apple’s bacon in the late 1990s.

You can adjust the background blur of a Portrait mode photo on iPhone and Mac — even after you’ve taken the picture.

Because the iPhone stores the depth data that it uses to create the blur effect along with the image itself, you can adjust how blurry or clear the background looks. It’s super-easy to get just the right amount of aesthetically pleasing background blur, aka bokeh, to make your images look perfect.

Why would you want to tweak the background blur on your iPhone photo? A blurrier background, under the right conditions, can make for a very dramatic picture. It can effectively emphasize the subject of your shot. Or, you might want to turn up the blur to intentionally hide details behind you. On the other hand, if you’re in a photogenic location, you might want to decrease the blur so you can see more of the gorgeous background scenery.

Either way, I’ll show you how to edit Portrait mode’s background blur in photos on iPhone and Mac.