The Camera Control on iPhone 16 and later models lets you open the Camera app and take a photo with the press of a button. But it’s more than just a simple button—it features a touch-sensitive surface that lets you adjust a variety of settings without having to tap the screen. Read More from “Customize the Camera Control on Your iPhone”
Silicon Valley thinks everyone wants to delegate writing to AI, which is why Apple Intelligence constantly suggests replies for you in Messages and Mail. But there’s an excellent way to supercharge your typing speed without sounding like a chirpy chatbot or resorting to teenage texting abbreviations: text expansion. Read More from “Speed Up Mac and iOS Typing with Text Expansion”
Securing your home network might seem uninteresting or unimportant—after all, who would bother to target you? The answer is that criminal hackers are interested in your router for a range of disturbing purposes, including attacks on your employer if you connect to a corporate network. It’s time to get serious about home network security, a fact underscored by recent news of hacking by the Russian military. Read More from “Make Sure Your Home Network Router Is Secure”
If you can work comfortably with the Mac’s four Finder views, you’ll enjoy an easier experience when you try to get to your folders and files. Each view has its pros and cons, so using the best view for the job at hand will make you more productive. Here’s a look at the Icon, List, Column, and Gallery views, plus tips on quickly switching views and setting up default views. Read More from “Get to Your Files Faster by Choosing the Best Finder View”
We’ve warned before about scams that trick users into pasting malicious commands into Terminal. Attackers create fake CAPTCHA pages—often resembling Cloudflare’s “are you a human” tests—that instruct visitors to open Terminal, paste a command, and press Return. Because the user executes the command themselves, macOS’s security protections are bypassed. Malwarebytes recently documented a macOS infostealer called Infiniti Stealer that spreads this way, stealing Keychain passwords, browser credentials, and cryptocurrency wallets. These attacks have become common enough that Apple has added a warning in macOS 26.4 Tahoe that appears when a user pastes a potentially dangerous command from Safari into Terminal. The protection is still in its early days—in our testing, the warning dialog appeared only once, with subsequent attempts producing only a beep. Worse, if you allow the first paste, Terminal keeps allowing pastes without further warnings. It’s a step in the right direction, but don’t count on it yet. The core advice remains: never paste commands into Terminal from websites unless you trust the site and fully understand what it does. No legitimate CAPTCHA ever requires Terminal commands! Read More from “macOS 26.4 Warns Against Terminal-Based Malware Attacks”
Yes, we know we’re still on macOS 26. In 2025, Apple announced macOS 27 would be the last version to support Rosetta for most Intel-based apps. (Beyond that, Apple will maintain a subset of Rosetta functionality for older, unmaintained gaming titles.) This fact has become relevant because in the just-released macOS 26.4, when you launch apps that rely on Rosetta for Intel compatibility, macOS may start warning you that they won’t open in a future version of macOS. These warnings are just reminders—nothing will change until you upgrade to macOS 28, probably in late 2027 or 2028, giving you plenty of time to find replacements. To identify Intel-based apps now, open System Information from the Utilities folder in your Applications folder, select Applications in the sidebar, and click the Kind column header to sort all your Intel apps together. iMazing’s free Silicon app does the same thing with a nicer interface. Read More from “Intel-Based Apps Will Stop Working in macOS 28”
Apple Music subscribers running iOS 26.4 can use the new Playlist Playground feature to create AI-generated playlists tailored to any mood, genre, activity, or era. To try it on your iPhone, open the Music app, tap the Library tab, tap the + button, then tap Create New Playlist. Instead of manually adding songs, tap the search field and enter a natural language description like “songs from a high school dance in the early 1980s” or “positive workout music from after 2010.” Playlist Playground will generate a playlist of songs based on your prompt. You can refine it by giving additional prompts, rearranging songs by dragging the hamburger buttons, or tapping Add Songs at the bottom. When you’re satisfied, tap the checkmark button at the top right to keep the playlist. Playlist Playground requires Sync Library to be enabled in Settings > Apps > Music, and the feature is currently available only in the U.S. and in English. Read More from “Create AI-Powered Playlists with iOS 26.4’s Playlist Playground”
If your Mac starts typing unexpected characters—or rejects a password you know is correct—check to see if the Input Source menu appears in the upper-right corner of the screen, indicating that your Mac has more than one keyboard layout available for writing in other languages. Accidentally switching from the standard U.S. keyboard (or whatever you regularly use) to another layout—like the French ABC – AZERTY, which swaps the A and Q keys, among others—can cause keystrokes to produce different characters than expected. This key swapping is particularly confusing in password fields, where you can’t see what’s being typed. To fix it, click the Input Source menu and choose your default. To prevent this problem from recurring, go to System Settings > Keyboard, click Edit next to Input Sources, and delete any keyboard layouts you don’t use. You can also change what the Globe key does in System Settings > Keyboard—you can prevent accidental layout changes by switching it from Change Input Source to Show Emoji & Symbols, Start Dictation, or Do Nothing. Read More from “Check Your Input Source If Your Mac Types Unexpected Characters”
We recently helped a client set up an external boot drive on a Mac mini for testing, but the installation kept failing near the end with vague errors. We tried different cables, swapped drives, and more, to no avail. On a hunch, we moved the SSD to a different USB-C port, and the installation completed on the next attempt. But the port wasn’t bad—it was just the wrong port. Here’s what we mean.
All the USB-C ports on a Mac look identical, but they don’t all behave the same way. On Macs with Apple silicon and Intel-based Macs with the T2 chip, Apple designates one port as the DFU (device firmware update) port. Most of the time, this distinction doesn’t matter—you can plug a device into any port, and it’ll work normally. But for certain tasks, using the wrong port can cause mysterious failures that waste hours of troubleshooting time. Read More from “Not All Your Mac’s USB-C Ports Are the Same”
A standard piece of advice for staying safe online is to avoid opening attachments from people you don’t know or attachments that seem suspicious. It’s good advice, since PDFs and office documents can contain JavaScript and macros that present a security risk, or they could be maliciously crafted to take advantage of vulnerabilities in common apps to execute code on your computer.
But in the real world, unless the document is attached to a message that is obviously spam, it’s difficult to know whether you should be worried. If you could just look at the document, you might be able to tell, but how can you do that without opening it? Read More from “View Suspicious Documents Safely with Dangerzone”
The just-released macOS 26.4 Tahoe introduced two battery-related features for MacBook users, helping them understand and control MacBook charging. A Slow Charger indicator now appears in the battery status menu and in Battery settings when your Mac is connected to a charger that isn’t delivering the minimum recommended wattage. More significantly, a new Charge Limit feature lets you manually set a ceiling for what the Mac considers a full charge—between 80% and 100%. Read More from “Understanding New MacBook Battery Charging Features”
The discovery of two sophisticated iPhone exploit kits—DarkSword and Coruna—within weeks of each other signals a troubling shift. Unlike previous spyware attacks that targeted high-profile users, these exploit kits have been deployed via compromised legitimate websites, so anyone who visits an infected site could fall victim, with no additional clicks or downloads required. This suggests that exploit brokers are now selling tools to multiple buyers, including financially motivated hacking organizations. Read More from “Two iPhone Exploit Kits Mean You Should Update iOS Now”
When a Web browser has many tabs open, it can be hard to find the one playing audio if you need to silence it. Worse, when a browser relaunches, it can be tough to identify and silence all the tabs that have automatically started playing audio. Happily, all browsers can help. Tabs with active audio show a speaker icon next to their names; click it to mute the audio. These speaker icons are easier to spot in browsers that display tabs vertically rather than horizontally across the top, where space constraints may prevent the speaker icons from appearing. Safari provides an additional option: a speaker icon on the right side of the address bar (see the top screenshot). Click it to mute all audio, or Control-click it to see which tabs are playing audio. Chromium-based browsers—including Google Chrome, Brave, and Microsoft Edge—display a musical note icon in the upper-right corner of the toolbar (bottom screenshot). Click it to open playback controls and stop playback. Read More from “How to Find and Silence the Browser Tab That’s Playing Audio”
In iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 26, Apple added an option in the Messages app to filter messages from unknown people and those marked as spam by the carrier. To enable filtering, open Messages, tap the Filter 
button in the upper-right corner, tap Manage Filtering, and turn on Screen Unknown Senders and Filter Spam. Once those are enabled, the Filter menu gains two new options: Unknown Senders and Spam. If a text from an unknown person comes in, the main app icon will get a red badge, but you won’t see the new message in the usual list. Instead, use the Filter menu—which also gets a blue badge—to switch to Unknown Senders or Spam and look in those lists. The Phone app works similarly—enable call filtering in Settings > Apps > Phone under Call Filtering, and unknown callers will appear in separate lists accessible via the Filter button in the Phone app’s Recents or Calls views. To move a conversation out of Unknown Senders, tap Mark as Known. Read More from “Losing Messages or Calls? Look in the Unknown Senders/Callers Filter”
Sadly, not all websites and apps support Apple Pay, so we’ve become accustomed to manually entering our credit card information into fields, like animals. No longer! In iOS 26, the Wallet app now supports AutoFill. If you need to add a card—those set up with Apple Pay are already available—open Wallet, tap the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, tap AutoFill, then tap Add Card. You can scan the card with your camera or enter details manually. Then, whenever you’re checking out on a website or in an app that doesn’t support Apple Pay, tap a payment field. You may be able to select a saved card from the suggestions above the keyboard, or you may have to tap in the field to bring up the text menu, and tap AutoFill > Credit Card (below left). When you invoke AutoFill from above the keyboard, your card number, expiration date, and security code will be automatically entered. Using the menu requires tapping the blue text for the field you want to fill (below right). Read More from “iOS 26 Can AutoFill Credit Card Details”
Apple has updated its Studio Display with an improved 12-megapixel Center Stage camera with Desk View support, two Thunderbolt 5 ports, and improved bass from its six-speaker system—all for the same $1,599 starting price. More significantly, Apple introduced the Studio Display XDR at $3,299, bringing professional-grade HDR technology to a broader audience at a much lower price than the $5,000 Pro Display XDR it replaces. The Studio Display XDR features a 27-inch 5K panel with mini-LED backlighting, 2304 local dimming zones, up to 2000 nits of peak HDR brightness, a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and a 120 Hz refresh rate with Adaptive Sync. Both displays require macOS 26.3.1 Tahoe and work with all Apple silicon Macs. Read More from “Apple Refreshes Studio Display and Introduces Studio Display XDR”
Sometimes you just don’t want your phone to ring, chirp, or even vibrate. Maybe you’re asleep, in an important meeting, having dinner with family, meditating, playing a game, or simply enjoying some quiet time.
Apple’s Focus feature on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac can silence those interruptions, but Focus is considerably more complex than the straightforward Do Not Disturb feature it replaced in 2021. Misconfiguring Focus such that it activates unexpectedly can cause you to miss important calls, messages, and other notifications. Read More from “Apple’s Focus Is Powerful but Unpredictable”
Many people assume that storing files in iCloud Drive, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive means those files are backed up. After all, the files exist on remote servers maintained by large companies with professional IT teams and redundant storage. But that doesn’t mean they are backed up.
Cloud storage is tremendously useful and can play a valuable role in recovering from disasters, but it is not a backup. Understanding the difference could save you from a devastating data loss. Read More from “Why Cloud Storage Isn’t a Backup”
Apple kicked off March 2026 with a flurry of product updates, refreshing its budget iPhone, mid-range iPad, and entire MacBook lineup. The announcements bring real upgrades across the board, with improved chips, faster storage, and better connectivity. Read More from “Apple Refreshes iPhone, iPad Air, and MacBook Lineups”
Apple has unveiled the MacBook Neo, a new entry-level laptop. With pricing starting at $599, a whopping $500 less than the MacBook Air, the MacBook Neo is positioned as an affordable computing option, particularly for families buying devices for K–12 students. Read More from “How Does the New MacBook Neo Compare to the MacBook Air?”