MacMost: Archives

A new feature in iOS 13 allows you to send a name and photo to someone you are messaging with, and they can choose to use that to create a new contact. You can use a photo, your initials, take a new picture, an Apple Animoji or your own Memoji for this image.

Learn some useful everyday tips, tricks and techniques to make it easier to manage your files and folders in the macOS Catalina Finder. See how you can use things like Undo, Copy and Paste, the Path Bar, keyboard shortcuts and more to navigate around in the Finder and work with your files.

With the Books app taking over audiobooks in macOS Catalina, a lot of Mac users are upset that it doesn't handle large collections very well. You have no option to store your audiobooks on an external drive. However, you can still keep a large audiobook collection by managing the files yourself outside of Books, and only brining in the books you wish to listen to at the moment. Audible users may find it better to simply use the Auible iPhone app instead.

iPadOS (iOS 13) refines multitasking so it works better than ever. You can bring up two apps at the same time with Split View, or float a window over a full screen all with Slide Over. You can pile up Slide Over windows and flip through them too. Apps can interact with each other through dragging and dropping. There is a lot of different ways to use multitasking so it is best to practice a little before you need it.

While working on your Mac, you can use your iPhone or iPad to take photos, scan documents and draw sketches. The result will end up as files on your Mac, being saved directly from the iOS device to your Mac. You can also insert these images directly into documents in some apps. You can also use this to create signatures in Preview.

If you like to switch between light and dark mode frequently, you can create a keyboard shortcut or Dock icon to do it with one fast action. By using a very simple workflow in Automator, with no scripting required, you can create either a Quick Action or a application for your Dock. The Quick Action can then be assigned to a keyboard shortcut.

Often those in technical or linguistic professions need to enter specific Unicode characters while typing. You can type characters using their specific 4- or 8-digit codes by using a special keyboard built into your Mac. For other users, it is often easier to search using the character viewer or create shortcuts for commonly-used symbols.

There are some changes to the Photos app in Catalina, most notably how you browse your photos. Gone are the confusing Years, Collections and Moments views, replaced by the more understandable Years, Months and Days views. You can also see square thumbnails in the All Photos view, plus a few other improvements.

Apple released minor updates to macOS Catalina, iOS 13 for iPhone and iPadOS for iPad today. These updates include a variety of small bug fixes, but no new features.

Apple has expanded the availability of Apple TV content to Roku boxes and TVs with the release of an App on the Roku platform. This will make the upcoming Apple TV+ service available to a larger base of customers, as well as existing Apple TV functions such as library sharing, movies and TV shows.

A new feature in macOS Catalina is the ability to track and restrict your app usage. You can use Screen Time for yourself, to attempt to limit your use, or as parent controls on a standard account on your Mac. You can also limit individual websites.

The Notes app gets a bunch of new features with Catalina, bringing it up-to-speed with Notes in iOS 13. You can do a lot more with Checklists now, share folders of Notes, and view your notes in a gallery. You can also search your Notes for objects in photos and words in scanned documents.

Improved security is a big new feature of macOS Catalina. Some features, like a read-only system volume, extra checks by Gatekeeper and the deprecation of kernal extensions will barely even be visible to the typical Mac user. Other features like new permission settings for apps and websites and Sign In With Apple will give us new security techniques that we can practice.

The iTunes app is gone. So how do you sync your iPhone, iPad or iPod? If you are still using a cable or Wi-Fi to sync your devices and not iCloud, you can still do it in macOS Catalina. That functionality has simply mostly moved to the Finder. You can sync music, movies, photos, books and other things this way. Ringtones is tricky, but you can still put custom ringtones on your iPhone. Even older iPods are supported by Catalina.

There are hundreds of keyboard shortcuts for Mac users. There are Mission Control shortcuts, Finder shortcuts, system shortcuts, application shortcuts and more. Many you can find by just looking through the menu bar for that application. You can find system ones by looking in the System Preferences under Keyboard.

The new Reminders app adds a lot of new useful features. You can now set an icon and color for each list, place lists inside of folder, and view all of your lists in one long screen. You can also see which reminders items from all lists are due today or in the upcoming days. When creating a new reminder, you can easily add a due date, location, photo or URL.

While major new changes get all of the attention, here are 10 minor things that you may not have heard about, but could become your favorite new features in macOS Catalina. You can put Dark Mode on automatic, block email senders, use picture-in-picture with QuickTime Player, tint the color of your screen, and much more.

The latest Mac operating system has arrived with a general release today. Catalina has been in developer and beta testing since June. It joins iOS 13 and other device operating systems that Apple released last month to bring the entire line of Apple hardware up-to-date.

A new feature in iOS 13 and iPadOS is the ability to have Shortcuts trigger automatically, at a certain time of day, when you launch an app, change a setting or move to a new location. You can use this to make Shortcuts much more useful. Take a look at two quick examples. The first simply forces the Calendar to jump to the current day every time you open it. The second will display a special Reminders list when you turn on Do Not Disturb, but only if there is at least one item in that list.

When you buy a new Apple device, you can also purchase an extended warranty called AppleCare+. This not only covers the Mac, iPhone, iPad or other device for an extra year or two, but also adds accident protection and other benefits. With AppleCare+ you can replace a broken screen or other accident damage for a fee much less than the cost of an actual repair. You can also get additional theft or loss protection for iPhones. But is AppleCare+ worth the price?