You undoubtedly know about pressing Command-Tab to bring up the macOS App Switcher and mousing to the app you want to switch to. Keyboard jockeys probably even know to keep holding Command down while pressing Tab or right-arrow to cycle to the right (press Shift-Tab, the grave accent/tilde key, or left-arrow to cycle to the left), before releasing the Command key to switch. But did you know you can start dragging something—say a document from the Finder—with your right hand, press Command-Tab with your left hand, and then drop the document on an app in the App Switcher to open it? Go ahead, give it a try! Read More from “Drag Documents to Apps in the macOS App Switcher”

Control Center debuted on the iPhone over a decade ago in iOS 7 and made its way to the Mac in 2020 with macOS 11 Big Sur. However, through macOS 15 Sequoia, Mac users who wanted to tweak Control Center for their needs were limited to turning specific controls on or off. With macOS 26 Tahoe, Apple completely overhauled Control Center, enabling users to remove, rearrange, and add controls, including new ones from independent developers.

If you mostly ignore Control Center on your Mac, it’s worth another look in Tahoe. The big win of Control Center is that it provides quick access to numerous controls without occupying valuable space in the menu bar, a limitation that MacBook users regularly encounter. Now that you can personalize Control Center, it’s much more useful than before.

Before we explain how to customize Control Center, let’s look at the basics. Read More from “Control Center Is Improved—and Highly Customizable—in macOS 26 Tahoe”

Apple’s Dictation feature is a great way to avoid slow typing on the iPhone and iPad, and it can be welcome on the Mac as well. But it struggles with proper nouns—it guesses wildly at unfamiliar names and often fails to capitalize common words that are part of a name (so you get “New York Public library”). Apple doesn’t provide a user-editable dictionary, but there’s a backdoor solution: create entries in Contacts. When you create a fake contact for a troublesome word or phrase, Dictation learns to recognize it correctly across all your Apple devices. Put the word or phrase in the First Name field and add an emoji like 🙉 in the Last Name field so these fake contacts sort to the bottom of your Contacts list and don’t clutter the display. For stubborn words, you may need to train Dictation by dictating a few practice sentences in Notes and correcting mistakes when iOS offers alternatives. This trick works for place names, organization names, technical terms, or any word that Dictation consistently gets wrong. Read More from “Use Fake Contacts to Improve Dictation Accuracy”

Since the pandemic, video calls have become a fact of life for many of us, so much so that it’s now possible to sit down for a meeting without thinking about whether you’ve changed out of your pajamas or brushed your hair. (No judgment; we’ve all done it.) To ensure that you’re presentable before you connect, use the Mac app Hand Mirror. It adds an icon to your menu bar that, when clicked, shows you what your webcam sees. Hand Mirror is free, but you can pay $6.99 for Hand Mirror Plus, which adds features like snapshots, a mic check, quick access to reaction icons, different window types, and more. Read More from “Not Sure If You’re Presentable for a Video Call? Try Hand Mirror”

If you’re still using Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac, on July 13, 2026, an expiring certificate will cause your copies of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook to enter “reduced functionality mode,” meaning you can view and print documents but cannot edit or create new ones. To check if you’re affected, open Word and choose Word > About Microsoft Word (or the equivalent in any other Office app). If it says you’re using Office 2019, you need to act before July 13. Some newer versions are also affected but can be updated—for Office 2021 and Microsoft 365, an update is required for app versions under 16.83, and macOS 12 Monterey or later is required. For Office 2019 users, options include subscribing to Microsoft 365 ($99.99/year), purchasing a one-time license for Office 2024 for $179.99 (Home) or $249.99 (Home & Business with Outlook), or switching to alternatives like Apple’s iWork apps (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote), LibreOffice, or Google Docs. New purchases of Microsoft 365 or Office 2024 require macOS 14 Sonoma or later, so users whose Macs can’t upgrade must use Microsoft 365 on the Web, consider the alternatives, or upgrade their hardware. Read More from “Office 2019 for Mac Goes Read-Only on July 13, 2026”