How Tos - Page 36

For those who want to repair their iPhones on their own without having to visit an Apple retail store or service provider, Apple now has a dedicated Self Service Repair program that provides the repair manuals, parts, and tools necessary for fixing the display, battery, bottom speaker, camera, display, SIM Tray, and Taptic Engine. Repairs are available for the 2022 iPhone SE, the iPhone 12...

Apple has released a new firmware update for its MagSafe Battery Pack that improves iPhone charging speed. This article explains how to update it so you can benefit from improved performance. On April 20, 2022, Apple released a firmware update for the ‌MagSafe Battery Pack‌ that enables 7.5W charging on the go, up from the previous 5W limit. While it still doesn't quite offer the 15W...

In iOS, Apple's Safari browser includes a built-in screenshot feature that lets you capture entire webpages on your iPhone or iPad for sharing elsewhere. While Safari for Mac doesn't include an equivalent feature, fortunately Firefox does, so if you want to capture full webpages in macOS, you can do so easily by following these steps. Download and install Firefox from the Mozilla website ...

This article explains how to create polls in group chats on Apple's Messages app for iPhone and iPad. Keep reading to learn how it works. If you often participate in group chats over iMessage, you'll know how hard it can sometimes be to decide on something or make plans when there's a lot of people in the group. Other messaging apps like Telegram – and soon WhatsApp – get around the...

On iPhone, Apple includes a Rotation Lock feature that when enabled locks the screen orientation so that it doesn't change when you rotate the device. Rotation Lock is usually enabled or disabled by invoking Control Center and then tapping the Lock Orientation button, but you can actually turn it on and off a lot quicker without even touching your ‌iPhone‌'s screen. The method uses something...

Activating Control Center on an iPhone with no Home button usually involves sliding your finger diagonally down from the top-right corner of the screen. If your other hand isn't free, this isn't very convenient, but fortunately there's another way of accessing Control Center that doesn't even require you to touch the screen. It uses something called Back Tap, an accessibility feature that...

In macOS Monterey, Apple introduced a new productivity feature called Quick Notes that's designed to be a quicker way to jot down things on your Mac without having to go in and out of the main Notes app. Quick Notes that you create appear in a special Quick Notes folder in the Notes app, where you can edit them to add tables, tags, and more in the usual way. Here's how to create your first...

Rosetta 2 is the translation layer that enables a Mac with Apple silicon to use apps built for an Intel-based Mac. It works in the background whenever you use an app built only for Mac computers with an Intel processor, and automatically translates the app for use with Apple silicon the first time the app is run. Rosetta 2 isn't included with a standard macOS installation, and has to be...

In iOS 14 and later, Apple includes an accessibility feature called Back Tap that lets you assign an action to be triggered when you double-tap or triple-tap the back of your iPhone. This article explains how it's done. There are numerous actions that you can assign to a Back Tap on ‌iPhone‌. You could use it for quick access to something –- launching a specific app or invoking the Control...

Every so often, a seemingly small bug in Apple's operating systems survives the company's annual OS launches and continues to cause users huge frustration from one software update to the next. The phenomenon of disappearing tabs in Safari is one such problem -– reports of multiple Safari tabs vanishing without a trace go back to at least iOS 13 and the issue still to this day blights the...

Since iOS 14, Apple has supported encrypted DNS, which in a nutshell makes it much harder for snoopers on the same Wi-Fi network as you to see the domain names of the websites you are visiting. Because Apple's mobile operating system supports domain name encryption, sometimes you might see a warning that the Wi-Fi network you're connected to is blocking encrypted DNS traffic. This...

Every Apple device user is given 5GB of free iCloud storage to let them store their data in secure remote servers, but Apple also offers ‌iCloud‌+, a premium cloud subscription service that gives you more storage as well as additional features like Private Relay and Hide My Email. Apple offers ‌iCloud‌+ with 50GB, 200GB, or 2TB of additional storage for $0.99, $2.99, or $9.99 per month. If...

Most Mac users will be familiar with Finder's ability to display icon previews for file types that it recognizes. The Finder icon for a JPEG image for example will show a small thumbnail-sized version of the image, which is useful for identifying the file without having to open it. If Finder doesn't recognize an item (if it can't be matched with an installed application that can open it) or ...

This article shows you how to make use of a three-finger gesture to share a photo across your devices in super-quick time. It’s a handy trick to have in your toolkit if AirDrop is playing up or your iCloud Photos are taking ages to sync. Universal Clipboard is usually associated with copying and pasting text, but by using this gesture, you can make it work really well for sharing images...

This article explains how to get daily Apple Watch charging reminders and "fully charged" Apple Watch notification alerts on your iPhone. Keep reading to learn how it's done. Despite the fact that Apple Watch has been updated each year since it was first launched in 2015, the battery life of Apple's latest Series 7 smartwatch still only promises "up to 18 hours" of use on a single charge. ...

With the release of iOS 15.4, Apple has added the ability for users with paid iCloud+ plans to create custom email domains directly on their iPhone. This article explains how it's done. When you subscribe to ‌iCloud‌+ (prices start at $0.99) you can use custom domains to send and receive email with ‌iCloud‌ Mail. That means if you own a personal domain name, you can set up ‌iCloud‌ Mail to use it...

Like the iPad Air 4, Apple's fifth-generation ‌iPad Air‌ (2022) features an edge-to-edge display with no Home button included and Touch ID built into the Power button instead. The lack of a Home button means some gestures and features are different to older iPads, such as the restart, shut down, and force restart methods. On ‌iPad Air‌, a shut down and a restart are the same gesture, while a...

Apple's Studio Display comes with three built-in microphones that allows it to recognize "Hey Siri" voice commands and respond to spoken queries, and the connected Mac doesn't even have to officially support ‌Siri‌ for it to work. Keep reading to learn how. While ‌Siri‌ support has been available on most recent Macs for some time, some Macs such as the 2019 Mac Pro and Mac mini (2018 and later)...

Twitter has updated its iOS app with a new in-app camera feature that lets users create their own animated GIFs for posting to the social media platform. The following steps show you how it's done. In Twitter, hit the big blue plus button to start composing a tweet. Tap the picture icon in the compose window, just above the virtual keyboard. Tap the camera icon. Make sure GIF is selected ...

Following the release of watchOS 8.5 for Apple Watch and tvOS 15.4 for Apple TV, it's now possible to confirm ‌Apple TV‌ purchases from your wrist. This new method of verifying content purchases works for both one-time purchases like movies as well as in-app purchases on ‌Apple TV‌. The following steps show how it works. Update your ‌Apple TV‌ to tvOS 15.4 (Settings -> System -> Software...