How to Avoid Head-Tracked Spatial Audio for FaceTime Audio Calls

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If you listen to a FaceTime Audio call using AirPods and hear the other person’s voice moving annoyingly from side to side as you turn your head, the problem is likely head-tracked spatial audio. In general, spatial audio attempts to make sounds seem to come from all around you, and its dynamic head-tracking option adjusts the audio for each ear to simulate how the sound would change as your head moves. Dynamic head tracking may be desirable for music or movies, but with a FaceTime Audio call, having the other person flip back and forth between your ears can be highly disconcerting. To stop this behavior on an iPhone or iPad, open Control Center, touch and hold the volume control, and tap either Off or Fixed instead of Head Tracked. Spatial audio isn’t an option on Mac FaceTime calls.

(Featured image by iStock.com/1550539)

Social Media: If you’ve ever experienced a weird situation where sound on a FaceTime Audio call moves back and forth between your AirPods, it’s because of spatial audio’s dynamic head tracking. Learn how to turn it off.

Too Many Windows Open? Close Them All Quickly with These Tricks

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Have you ever selected a bunch of files and accidentally opened them all by double-clicking one? Or perhaps inadvertently pressed Command-I to get info, ending up with oodles of open Info windows? Here’s a quick way to recover. You can close all the windows in any well-written app with judicious use of the Option key. Press it while clicking the File menu and Close Window becomes Close All Windows. Command-W closes one window; Command-Option-W closes all of that app’s windows. If you’re a mouse person, Option-click the red close button in any window to close all the rest.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/ANGHI)

Social Media: Next time you inadvertently open a large number of windows, you can use these Option-key tricks to close them all quickly.

After “Mother of All Breaches,” Update Passwords on Compromised Sites

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January’s big security news was the Mother of All Breaches, the release of a massive database containing 26 billion records built from previous breaches across numerous websites, including Adobe, Dropbox, LinkedIn, and Twitter. It’s unclear how much of the leaked data is new, but it’s a good reminder to update your passwords for accounts on compromised sites, especially those you reused on another site. Cybernews has a leak checker that reports which breached sites include your data. More generally, password managers often have a feature that checks your passwords against the Have I Been Pwned database of breaches and helps you change compromised passwords—1Password’s is called Watchtower, shown below. You can also search Have I Been Pwned directly. Don’t panic if your email address appears in numerous breaches because some of the theoretically compromised accounts may be defunct sites, trivial sites you used once 10 years ago, or duplicate password manager entries for a site whose password you already updated.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Prae_Studio)

Social Media: Worried about the “Mother of All Breaches” that has been making the rounds in security news? We share a leak checker that can tell you if your email address was involved and recommend that you update any compromised passwords.

Annoyed by Inline Predictive Text Suggestions? Here’s How to Turn Them Off

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In a slight nod to the hype surrounding generative AI, Apple added inline text prediction capabilities to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. They can be helpful, particularly on the iPhone and iPad, where it’s often much easier to tap the Space bar than to finish typing a word or sentence. But that’s less true on the Mac, where a fast typist can be slowed down or derailed by the suggestions, and some people dislike having an AI finish their thoughts. The feature is easily turned off. On the iPhone and iPad running at least iOS/iPadOS 17.2, go to Settings > General > Keyboard and switch off Show Predictions Inline. (Leave Predictive Text on to continue to get suggestions above the keyboard.) On the Mac running macOS 14.2 Sonoma or later, open System Settings > Keyboard, click Edit under the Text Input header, turn off “Show inline predictive text,” and click Done.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/Armastas)

Social Media: If you’re not a fan of the new inline text predictions on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you can easily turn them off and get back to typing only the words you want to appear.

Use iOS 17.3’s Stolen Device Protection to Reduce Harm from iPhone Passcode Thefts

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Last year, a series of articles by Wall Street Journal reporters Joanna Stern and Nicole Nguyen highlighted a troubling form of crime targeting iPhone users. A thief would discover the victim’s iPhone passcode, swipe the iPhone, and run. With just the passcode, the thief could quickly change the victim’s Apple ID password, lock them out of their iCloud account, and use apps and data on the iPhone to steal money, buy things, and wreak digital havoc.

In essence, Apple allowed the passcode, which could be determined by shoulder surfing, surreptitious filming, or social engineering, to be too powerful, and criminals took advantage of the vulnerability. It’s best to use Face ID or Touch ID, especially in public, but some people continue to rely solely on the passcode.

Apple has now addressed the problem for iPhone users with the new Stolen Device Protection feature in iOS 17.3. It protects critical security and financial actions by requiring biometric authentication—Face ID or Touch ID—when you’re not in a familiar location like home or work. The most critical actions also trigger an hour-long security delay before a second biometric authentication. We recommend everyone who uses Face ID and Touch ID turn on Stolen Device Protection. The feature is not available for the iPad or Mac, but neither is as likely to be used in places like the crowded bars where many iPhones have been snatched.

How Stolen Device Protection Works

The location aspect of Stolen Device Protection is key. When you’re in a “significant location,” a place your iPhone has determined you frequent, you can do everything related to security and financial details just as you have been able to in the past, including using the passcode as an alternative or fallback.

However, when you’re in an unfamiliar location, as you would likely be if you were out in public where someone might steal your iPhone, Stolen Device Protection requires biometric authentication to:

  • Use passwords or passkeys saved in Keychain
  • Use payment methods saved in Safari (autofill)
  • Turn off Lost Mode
  • Erase all content and settings
  • Apply for a new Apple Card
  • View an Apple Card virtual card number
  • Take certain Apple Cash and Savings actions in Wallet (for example, Apple Cash or Savings transfers)
  • Use your iPhone to set up a new device (for example, Quick Start)

Some actions have even more serious consequences, so for them, Stolen Device Protection requires biometric authentication, an hour security delay—shown with a countdown timer—and then a second biometric authentication. The delay reduces the chances of an attacker forcing you to authenticate with the threat of violence. You’ll need to go through the double authentication plus delay when you want to:

  • Change your Apple ID password (Apple notes this may prevent the location of your devices from appearing on iCloud.com for a while)
  • Sign out of your Apple ID
  • Update Apple ID account security settings (such as adding or removing a trusted device, Recovery Key, or Recovery Contact)
  • Add or remove Face ID or Touch ID
  • Change your iPhone passcode
  • Reset All Settings
  • Turn off Find My
  • Turn off Stolen Device Protection

There are a few caveats to keep in mind:

  • The iPhone passcode still works for purchases made with Apple Pay, so a thief could steal your passcode and iPhone and buy things.
  • Although Apple says it’s required, you can turn off Significant Locations to require the extra biometric authentication and security delay everywhere. That would eliminate the worry about a thief using Significant Locations to go to your most recent familiar spot in an attempt to sidestep the extra authentication.
  • If you plan to sell, give away, or trade in your iPhone, make sure to turn off Stolen Device Protection first. Once it’s out of your physical control, no one else will be able to reset it.

Turn On Stolen Device Protection

Before you get started, note that Apple says you must be using two-factor authentication for your Apple ID (everyone should be anyway), have a passcode set up for your iPhone (ditto), turn on Face ID or Touch ID, enable Find My, and turn on Significant Locations (Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations), although this last one doesn’t actually seem to be required.

Then, go to Settings > Face ID/Touch ID & Passcode, enter your passcode, and tap Turn On Protection. (If it’s enabled, tap Turn Off Protection to remove its additional safeguards.)

Once Stolen Device Protection is on and you’re in an unfamiliar location, the actions listed above will require either biometric authentication or two biometric authentications separated by the hour-long security delay.

There is one group of people who should not turn on Stolen Device Protection: those for whom Face ID or Touch ID don’t work. Most people have no trouble with Apple’s biometric technologies, but some people have worn off their fingerprints or have other physical features that confuse Touch ID or, less commonly, Face ID.

If that’s you, stick with our general recommendation for discouraging possible iPhone thefts: Never enter your iPhone passcode in public where it could be observed.

(Featured image by iStock.com/AntonioGuillem)

Social Media: In iOS 17.3, Apple has introduced Stolen Device Protection to discourage iPhone thefts enabled by a revealed passcode. It requires additional biometric authentication, and we recommend that everyone who uses Face ID or Touch ID enable it.

Time Machine Now Offers Daily and Weekly Frequencies

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Since its inception, Time Machine has backed up on an hourly schedule. It then keeps hourly backups for the previous 24 hours, daily backups for the last month, and weekly backups back to the start of the backup. Once free space on the backup drive gets low, Time Machine deletes older backups to make room for new ones, always maintaining at least one copy of every backed-up file. The traditional hourly backups are usually fine, but starting in macOS 13 Ventura, Apple lets you choose a daily or weekly schedule instead. One of those might be useful for Macs that are turned on infrequently or where very little important data changes. It also might reduce resource usage and how much data Time Machine backs up. Most people shouldn’t need to change the backup frequency, but if you’ve always wanted to, now you can.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/STILLFX)

Social Media: Has Time Machine’s hourly backup frequency been problematic for you? Starting in macOS 13 Ventura, you can instead choose a daily or weekly backup schedule.

Use StandBy to Make Your iPhone into a Clock, Photo Frame, and More

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iOS 17 brings a new mode for the iPhone: StandBy. All you have to do is connect your iPhone to a charger wirelessly or with a cable, position it on its side in landscape orientation, and press the side button to lock the screen. Standby works best with a MagSafe charging stand. Swipe left or right to switch between three screens: widgets, photos, and clocks. Swipe up and down to move between widgets, photo collections, and clock styles. On the widget screen, touch and hold to add and remove widgets, and on the photo screen, to choose which collections and albums to display. You can choose how long the display stays active in Settings > StandBy > Display. By default, it will stay on all the time on iPhone models with an Always-On display; a tap or nudge will wake it on other iPhone models. Finally, StandBy remembers your preferred view in different locations, so it can be a clock in the bedroom, a photo frame in the kitchen, and a clock at the office.

(Featured image by Apple)

Social Media: The new Standby mode turns your iPhone into a digital picture frame, clock, or customizable widget display—and it remembers which approach you prefer in different locations.

How to Merge Two Similar Folders in the Mac’s Finder

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You’ve ended up with two folders whose contents—hundreds of files or more—are similar but not identical. Perhaps you’re recovering from a sync failure, or maybe you pulled an old version of the folder from a backup and aren’t sure what’s different. Regardless, here’s how you can merge them in the Finder. Make sure the folders are named identically and are in two different locations on your Mac. Press and hold the Option key, then drag the folder that contains more files to the location that contains the folder with fewer files. In the dialog that appears, click Merge to copy only newer files from the source and those not already in the destination. (It’s not a two-way sync; for that, you need an app like ChronoSync.) The Merge button appears only if the source folder contains files not in the destination; if the folders contain just different versions of identically named files, you’ll get only Stop and Replace buttons. For safety, always work on copies of your folders and check your work afterward to ensure the right things happened.

(Featured image by iStock.com/RerF)

Social Media: If you want to merge two folders that contain some of the same data, a little-known Finder feature can do it for you.

Keep Your Contacts Current by Adding Siri-Suggested Content

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Remembering to update your contacts with new email addresses, phone numbers, and postal addresses can be hard. But if you’ve received that information in Mail or Messages, Siri’s data detection capabilities can help. Open Contacts on the Mac and press the Down arrow to cycle through your contacts. When you see one with information in light gray and a parenthetical like (Siri Found in Mail), click the ⓘ button to the right ➊ to see some context in the source message. If the information is correct, click Add to Contact ➋ to keep it.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/Brett_Hondow)

Social Media: Want an easy way to add email addresses, phone numbers, and postal addresses to Contacts? If you’ve received that information in Mail or Messages, Siri can help.

Concerned by the Privacy or Results of Google Search? Try These Other Search Engines

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Google is big. Google Search generated $225 billion in revenue in 2022, thanks in part to being the default search engine on all Apple devices. To retain that position—and continue to reap the ad revenue that it generates—Google pays Apple about $18 billion every year. Along with Apple, Google pays billions to phone manufacturers like Samsung, LG, and Motorola; major wireless carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon; and browser developers like Mozilla and Opera.

So is Google Search’s 90% market share because it’s the best search engine or because Google has enough money to pay distributors for top placement?

Along with concerns about whether Google is the best search engine, some people worry about Google collecting information about them to show targeted ads alongside search results. The more information Google has on users, the argument goes, the better that ads can be targeted, and the more likely it is that users will click the ads, which generates money for Google from advertisers. Others worry that Google’s results may reflect certain types of bias.

If you’re perturbed by the privacy implications of Google knowing everything you search for, or if you’ve found Google’s search results less helpful than you’d like, you can easily switch to another search engine to see if you prefer its results and privacy stance.

How to Switch Search Engines

For many Apple users, the main place to choose a preferred search engine is in Safari’s settings. On the Mac, choose Safari > Settings > Search and choose the desired search engine from the Search Engine pop-up menu. You can choose a different one for Private Browsing windows if you want.

In Chrome-based browsers like Google Chrome, Arc, Brave, Microsoft Edge, and Opera on the Mac, open the settings and look for Search Engine. A pop-up menu lets you choose from some standard options, and additional choices let you add search engines like Brave Search that are too new (or not paying) to appear. Firefox offers similar options when you choose Firefox > Settings > Search.

On the iPhone and iPad, go to Settings > Safari >  Search Engine. Again, if you want a different search engine in Private Browsing tabs, turn off Also Use in Private Browsing and choose another option.

Top Alternative Search Engines

Conceptually, what search engines do is simple—they search a set of Web pages for matching keywords and return a list of them in order of relevance to the user. The hard part is dealing with the number of pages—estimates suggest Google indexes 50 billion pages and Bing 4.5 billion—and scaling the service to respond instantly to tens or hundreds of millions of queries per day. (Google processes 8.5 billion searches per day; Bing handles 400 million.) Beyond Google, here are the main search engines and what sets them apart. (You will also likely see Yandex, sometimes called “the Google of Russia.” Avoid it. For so many reasons.)

  • Bing: The second-most popular (though far, far behind Google) search engine in the world, Microsoft’s Bing sets itself apart with a busy, highly designed search results page that mixes a variety of results. It may work well for you, or you may find it overwhelming and difficult to parse. Microsoft is also putting a lot of effort into chat-based AI-powered results. Bing claims to offer more user privacy than Google, but it’s still tracking users to target ads better. If Bing has better privacy than Google, it may mostly be due to not being part of the larger Google data-collection empire.
  • Yahoo: Though it was the first Web search engine, Yahoo hasn’t run its own index since 2009. Today, Yahoo’s search results are powered by Microsoft Bing, so while the look of the search results page may differ, the results should be identical to Bing’s. Yahoo’s privacy stance is also similar to Bing’s.
  • DuckDuckGo: If privacy is paramount, DuckDuckGo is worth a look because it does not track or store user information at all. Instead, it chooses ads to display only by matching with search keywords. Although it uses Bing for some of its results, DuckDuckGo also incorporates information from numerous other sources, so it won’t seem like an exact clone of Bing.
  • Ecosia: The main reason to use the Berlin-based Ecosia is if you like Bing’s results (but not its layout) and want to support a “social business” that claims to be carbon-negative, offers full financial transparency, and protects users’ privacy. Founded in 2009, Ecosia today relies entirely on Bing’s search results and ads (clicks on which are how Ecosia earns money), and it claims to have planted over 188 million trees in 35 countries since its inception. It’s hard to argue with Ecosia’s environmental results, but as a search engine, it doesn’t feel special.
  • Brave Search: A truly independent search engine, Brave Search relies on its own created-from-scratch index (it leaned on Google and Bing for some results early on, but ceased in August 2023). It also emphasizes user privacy and doesn’t track users, searches, or clicks. Although Brave Search displays keyword-based ads by default, users can pay $3 per month for Brave Search Premium, which provides ad-free results pages. You’ll have to set Brave as the default search engine for most browsers manually; for Safari, all you can do is make a favorite to search.brave.com.
  • Kagi: Speaking of paid search engines, if you really want to avoid ads, Kagi is another independent search engine that rolls its own index and provides access only to subscribers, eschewing ads entirely. You can sign up for a 100-search test account, and if you like it, pay $5 per month for 300 searches or $10 per month for unlimited searches. As with Brave Search, you must manually set Kagi as the default search engine (there’s an extension for Safari).

The “best” search engine is the one that gives you the answers you want without triggering privacy worries or concerns about bias. If you want to see if something other than Google will work better for you, set it as your default search engine and try it for a few weeks.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Prykhodov)

Social Media: Have you become disillusioned by Google due to its search quality or how it tracks your activity to serve targeted ads? You can try other search engines that promise to protect your privacy and provide independent search results.