The latest versions of the Mac and iPad apps in Apple’s iWork suite—Pages 14, Keynote 14, and Numbers 14—have gained a helpful feature: non-contiguous text selection. By holding down the Command key, you can select chunks of text that aren’t next to each other. For example, imagine you want to make the first part of each item in a bullet …
Display an Album of Photos on Your iPhone or iPad Lock Screen
A popular feature of iOS 16 was the Photo Shuffle option for customizing the iPhone Lock Screen. It used machine learning to select photos in four categories—People, Pets, Nature, and Cities—and rotated through them when you tapped, on lock, hourly, or daily. If you didn’t like the automatic selection, you could pick photos manually, but it was clumsy. In iOS …
Where Can You Control Automatic Smart Quotes and Dashes in macOS?
Most people like smart quotes and dashes, at least most of the time. Your Mac is probably set up to turn the single (') and double (") hash marks and double hyphens (--) that you type into the apostrophes (’) and single smart quotes (‘’), double smart quotes (“”), and em dashes (—) used in professional publications. However, in some …
How to Display the Battery Percentage in Your Mac’s Menu Bar
By default, the battery icon in your Mac laptop’s menu bar shows how full your battery is. Clicking it reveals the exact percentage, but you can also set macOS to display the battery percentage next to the icon. The setting isn’t where you might expect in System Settings > Battery. Instead, you’ll find it in System Settings > Control Center, …
Apple’s iCloud Keychain Password Management Is All Many People Need
Apple’s iCloud Keychain Password Management Is All Many People Need We constantly recommend using a password manager like 1Password, BitWarden, or Dashlane. But many people resist committing to yet another app or paying for yet another service. Isn’t Apple’s built-in iCloud Keychain password management good enough? The answer now is yes, thanks to two recent changes: In iOS 17.3, Apple …
Did You Know Most Mac Apps Keep Versions of Your Documents as You Work?
We all make mistakes, which is why Undo exists. Immediately choose Edit > Undo or press Command-Z to undo your last change. Most Mac apps support multiple levels of Undo, so you can keep pressing Command-Z to revert change after change. However, suppose you delete a table in your Pages document, but 30 minutes and many changes later, you decide …
Audit Your Trusted Device Lists for Greater Security
One of the ways companies protect critical account information is by remembering the devices you use to log in as “trusted devices” or “authorized devices.” Those logins will usually have been protected by two-factor authentication or another mechanism that guarantees the device is being used by you, its owner. Subsequent logins from those devices may be more convenient for you …
Apple Podcasts Adds Transcripts
In iOS 17.4, iPadOS 17.4, and macOS 14.4 Sonoma, Apple enhanced its Podcasts app to include transcripts of all podcasts in the Apple Podcasts catalog as long as they’re in English, French, German, or Spanish. (It doesn’t translate from one language to another.) Much like song lyrics in the Music app—open it by tapping the dialog button in the player—the …
Tips for Working with Mac Display Resolutions
You can change the resolution of your Mac’s screen—how many pixels appear—to make text and graphics larger and easier to see or smaller to fit more content onscreen. In System Settings > Displays, Apple shows thumbnails for five likely possibilities. Hover the pointer over a thumbnail to see its numeric resolution underneath. If you prefer the traditional list of numeric …
Want an Event List in Apple’s Calendar App? Try This Trick
Along with day, week, month, and year views, most calendar apps offer the option of a simple chronological list of events, which can be a handy way to see what’s coming up. Apple’s Calendar app on the Mac is unfortunately not among those apps. However, there is a trick you can use to get it to show all your upcoming …










