QR codes have been around for over 30 years but only entered general usage with the advent of smartphones over the last two decades. A QR code often leads to a website. However, it can have other uses, like to initiate payment, represent an event registration or ticket, track products through a pipeline, or [...]
While Apple celebrates its 50th birthday this season, half that time has passed since it introduced iTunes. Initially, iTunes was just a music player that could import music users already had and sync music with the then brand new iPod. The iTunes Store opened a couple years later and Apple firmly planted its feet [...]
Send Later is a current feature of Mail and Messages that enables delaying an email or text message, respectively, to be sent at a specific future time. Mail added this capability in macOS 13 and iOS 16 while Messages gained it in macOS 15 and iOS 18. In Messages, Send Later only works with [...]
Are your messages overflowing with spam, political solicitations, and other texts from people you don’t know? Starting in OS 26, when you filter unknown senders, these messages stay out of your primary list. Plus, it’s now really easy to mark messages as spam, unsubscribe from legitimate promotions and ads, and delete both of these, [...]
One thing you might notice upon upgrading to macOS 26 is Apple’s more thorough use of glyphs. There were already little pictorial icons next to sidebar listings and on toolbar buttons in various Mac applications. They also appear next to text elements on iPhone and iPad. Now, throughout macOS, glyphs precede menu items, too. [...]
Apple first introduced passcode autofill way back in 2018 with iOS 12. The clever feature discovers a security code received in a text message, offers it on the iPhone keyboard, and fills it into a form field when the user selects it. One need not ever switch to Messages nor even view the text [...]
When you go to search Messages on your Apple device, do you tend to come up empty? The search function has grown greatly in OS 26 but it can still be finicky. Plus, it’s important to know where to start. It never occurred to me that users may have different approaches to search. However, [...]
When I was in college, I learned to wrap power cables so they stay put, take up little space, and don’t get tangled. I was working for Ithaca College’s IT department and one of my supervisors caught me in the act of tossing a cable in a crate with dozens of others that had [...]
With iPhone, like many an electronic device, periodically something goes awry. The easiest fix: restart my iPhone. How you accomplish this feat, though, may depend on your agility and dexterity. As I outlined in When in Doubt, Restart, there is a particular method of pressing/holding buttons to force an iPhone or iPad to restart. Currently, [...]
When Mac Mondays was born over seven years ago (!), my first post was about System Preferences. I encouraged you to explore settings on your Mac so you can make it look and feel delightful to use. Relatedly, each application you use also has a settings area. To further refine your apps’ behavior, I [...]
