How Tos - Page 17

As a Mac user, you may have noticed that your Mac goes to sleep after a while whenever the display is off. This is default behavior in macOS, but you can prevent it from happening. Keep reading to learn how. There are occasions when you might want your Mac to keep running with the display turned off. Maybe you want a large download to progress while you're away from your desk, or perhaps you ...

Apple's Home app is where you can control and automate HomeKit and Matter-enabled accessories, such as lights, smart TVs, and thermostats. Here's how to reorganize the Home overview to more easily navigate and control your accessories. In the Home app, you can tap the Home tab to get an overview of your accessories, which are organized into several sections. The top row lets you view them by ...

In macOS, Apple's Safari browser allows you to choose the default search engine that is automatically used whenever you type something into the address bar. Keep reading to learn how it's done. When it comes to searching the web using Safari, Apple's browser doesn't restrict you to a single search engine. In other words, you don't have to "Google" something to find out more about it online....

In macOS Ventura, Apple's Mail app automatically adds a rich link preview in your email when you paste in a web address. Keep reading to learn how to disable them. When you paste a web link into a Mail message in macOS Monterey, only the web address is shown in the message content, providing the recipient with no information about what's being linked to beyond what's included in the URL....

In the Messages app on iPhone and iPad, Apple includes a bunch of screen effects that add fireworks, confetti, and more to the whole screen when you send an iMessage to someone. Because it's not obvious how to access these iMessage screen effects, they're often overlooked, which is a shame because they can surprise recipients, make them smile, or even laugh out loud – if you use the right...

When you take a screenshot on your Mac using the Shift-Command-3 keyboard shortcut (or Shift-Command-4 to capture a portion of the screen) the images are saved to your desktop by default. Keep reading to learn how you can change the save location to somewhere else. In macOS, Apple saves screenshots to the desktop by default because it's just about the most convenient location for most users. ...

Apple recently added a Track Detection feature to its Workout app on Apple Watch Series 4 and newer models. Keep reading to learn what it does and how you can take advantage of it. With the release of watchOS 9.2, Apple introduced its promised Track Detection feature for supported Apple Watch models. The software update means that your watch can now tell when you are at a running track, and...

OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot offers a new generation of conversational AI functionality that promises to fundamentally change the technological landscape and the way people work. Here's how to access it directly from your Mac's menu bar. ChatGPT is a next-generation language model that's designed to understand and generate human-like response to natural language input. Using a form of AI called ...

In iOS 16.4 and later, it's possible to create an iPhone Lock Screen shortcut. Keep reading to learn what it does and how you can set it up. Since Apple introduced the iPhone 14 Pro with always-on display in September, the company has used updates to iOS 16 to enhance the customization options of the Lock Screen. With iOS 16.2, for example, Apple added the ability to hide darkened...

With last year's launch of the iPhone 14 Pro series, Apple introduced its first always-on display, and it has continued to improve the feature with subsequent updates to iOS 16. The first enhancement came with iOS 16.2, released in December 2022, which added the ability to hide darkened wallpapers and notifications, allowing users to have a more minimalistic always-on display that only shows ...

Your iPhone's passcode is the first line of defense when it comes to protecting your private data. Here's how to set up a stronger one than the default six-digit passcode that you're likely already using. If someone with malicious intentions finds out the passcode for your ‌iPhone‌, they could end up causing you all sorts of trouble. With passcode access to your ‌iPhone‌'s contents, they could...

On computers and mobile devices, file extensions are the suffixes that apps append to filenames. When you see an item like "document.docx" for example, the .docx extension tells the computer and the user what the file is and what to open it with. Some users don't feel the need to see the extensions of files when viewing them in a file manager, but others prefer to have them displayed to help ...

Does your MacBook Pro have an OLED Touch Bar along the top of the keyboard? Keep reading to learn how to customize it to your advantage. This article assumes your Mac is running macOS Ventura or later. Since 2016, certain models of Apple's MacBook Pro have included a Touch Bar, a small touch-sensitive OLED display strip that displays virtual buttons. On MacBook Pro models that have a Touch...

Most iPhone users probably don't know it, but it is possible to delete multiple contacts at the same time in iOS. The problem is that Apple's implementation of this function is unlike similar bulk delete actions performed in Messages and Mail, so it's not at all obvious how it's done. The following steps guide you through what is actually a very simple process, once you know it. Until fairly ...

If you use Google's Gmail smartphone app for your mobile email correspondence, keep in mind the Undo Send feature. It's really useful for times when you forget to link a file or notice you misspelled someone's name after hitting "Send." In other words, if you regret sending a message immediately after you have pressed Send, you still have five seconds to "unsend" the email so that it doesn't ...

With online account hacking becoming increasingly widespread, all users should make sure they're taking every security measure available to them. If you use Apple devices, consider using Apple verification codes to protect your accounts. Keep reading to learn how it works. One of the best ways to protect any online account is by using two-factor authentication (2FA). 2FA offers hardened...

Twitter in February 2023 announced that text message two-factor authentication (2FA) is set to become a premium feature for Twitter Blue accounts. Here's why the company's logic behind the decision doesn't make any sense from a security perspective, and why you don't need the feature anyway. Twitter has said that it will soon be removing text message-based 2FA from non-paying accounts and...

Apple's mobile software has supported so-called "web apps" for years now. But what is a web app, and how do they differ from typical apps used on iPhone and iPad? Here's your short explainer. What is a Web App? When Apple talks about "web apps," it's referring to "Progressive Web Apps," or PWAs for short. Apple prefers to call them web apps either because it was Google that first promoted ...

Most Mac users know how to take standard screenshots on their Mac, but not many MacBook Pro owners will know how to take screenshots of the Touch Bar that runs along the top of the keyboard on some models. Why would you want to take a screen grab of your Mac's Touch Bar? Perhaps you've customized its layout using System Settings -> Keyboard -> Touch Bar Settings... and want to share it with ...

There are several ways you can take screenshots on a Mac. Preview offers the option from its File menu. There's also a little screen capture app in the macOS Utilities folder called Screenshot. But the simplest and most common method is to use your Mac's built-in shortcut key combinations. Taking a screenshot is as easy as hitting Shift-Command-3 to capture the whole screen, or Shift-Command...