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Ignore Unsolicited Calls and Texts from Apple and Other Tech Companies

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We don’t want to belabor the point, but multinational tech companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google will never call or text you personally out of the blue. So if you get a call or text purporting to be from such a company, it’s 99.9% likely to be a scam, and you should ignore it regardless of whether the caller ID seems legitimate. If you’re still worried, look up the company’s tech support phone number separately—never respond directly to such a call or tap a link in a text—and discuss the situation with the support reps. Or contact us, and we’ll talk it through with you.

Did You Know You Can Use Your Mac Laptop Closed with an External Screen and Keyboard?

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Those of you who use a Mac laptop—a MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro—probably know you can connect it to a large external display for more screen space. But sometimes it’s not convenient to have your Mac open on your desk next to the big screen. If you’d like to close your Mac’s screen and just use the external display, you can! The trick to enabling closed-display mode is that your Mac must be plugged into an AC outlet and you must connect an external keyboard and mouse or trackpad—either USB or Bluetooth. (If you’re using any Bluetooth devices, go to System Preferences > Bluetooth > Advanced and make sure “Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer” is selected.)

Easily Save Drafts When Composing Messages in Mail on the iPhone

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Need to check something in another email message while composing a message in Mail on an iPhone? Many people don’t realize that you can swipe down on the top of the draft to dock it at the bottom of the screen, look something up in another message, and then expand the draft again by tapping it at the bottom of the screen.

iCloud Services Being Wonky? Check Apple’s System Status Page

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Many Apple users rely on mac.com, me.com, or icloud.com email addresses, along with plenty of other iCloud-related services. So if you can’t send or receive email, if photos aren’t transferring via iCloud Photo Library, or if some other iCloud-related service isn’t responding, the first thing to do is check Apple’s System Status page. It’s updated every minute, and if it shows that the associated Apple service is having problems, you know to sit tight until things come back up. If everything is green, you’ll have to look elsewhere for a solution—or get in touch with us.

Troubles with Messages? Read On for Ten Possible Solutions

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Apple’s Messages app for iOS and macOS generally works well, but when it doesn’t, figuring out what’s wrong and how to fix it can take some doing. Here are a few of the most common solutions we’ve come across for problems with sending and receiving messages.

Help Android-switcher friends turn off iMessage

Do you have a friend who previously used an iPhone but later switched to an Android phone? People like that can confuse your copy of Messages, which doesn’t know if it should send to them via iMessage (no) or SMS (yes). If you text with someone in this situation, get them to deregister from iMessage.

Check device connectivity

If messages aren’t flowing when you think they should be, the first “is it plugged in?” thing to check is connectivity. Make sure that your iPhone has at least cellular service (for SMS) and cellular data (for iMessage) and that your iOS device isn’t in Airplane mode. In the case of a Mac, make sure it’s connected to your network.

Relaunch the Messages app

Force-quitting in iOS isn’t something you should do willy-nilly, since it slows down your device and hurts battery life, but it’s worth trying if Messages isn’t sending or receiving messages correctly. Double-press the Home button on Touch ID devices or swipe up and to the right from the bottom of the screen on Face ID devices, then swipe up on the Messages app thumbnail to force-quit it. On the Mac, just quit and relaunch Messages.

Toggle iMessage off and back on

Here’s an easy one. In iOS, go to Settings > Messages and turn the iMessage switch at the top off and back on. iMessage may take a minute or two to reactivate. On the Mac, go to Messages > Preferences > iMessage > Settings, uncheck Enable This Account, and then log in again.

Toggle Messages in iCloud off and back on

With the new Messages in iCloud feature, Apple syncs conversations through your iCloud account. If messages from one device aren’t showing up properly on another device, in iOS, go to Settings > Your Name > iCloud and turn Messages off and back on. On the Mac, go to Messages > Preferences > iMessage > Settings and uncheck and recheck Enable Messages in iCloud.

Verify your phone number and email addresses are correct in Messages settings

SMS relies on a phone number, and you can be contacted via iMessage via a phone number or email address. Make sure you can be reached at all the appropriate ones. In iOS, go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive to check. On the Mac, look in Message > Preferences > iMessage > Settings.

If they’re not right, fix them in iOS in Settings > Passwords & Accounts > iCloud > Your Name > Contact Information, by tapping Edit in the Reachable At section. On the Mac, you add these addresses with the plus button in System Preferences > iCloud > Account Details > Contact.

Verify that SMS fallback is enabled

When you’re in an area with sketchy cell service, there may not be enough of a data connection for iMessage to work. In such a situation, SMS text messages are more likely to get through, but Messages will try to send to iMessage users via SMS only if you turn on Send as SMS in Settings > Messages.

Check text message forwarding settings

If you’re receiving SMS messages on your iPhone but not any of your other devices, make sure Text Message Forwarding is enabled for the relevant devices (they need to be signed in to the same iCloud account). On your iPhone, look in Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding.

When in doubt, restart

Restarting can resolve all manner of problems, so it’s always worth a try if all the settings and accounts are correct. On the Mac, of course, just choose Apple > Restart. For iOS devices with Touch ID, press and hold the top button until the Slide to Power Off slider appears. For those with Face ID, press and hold the side (iPhone) or top (iPad) button and one of the volume buttons until the slider appears.

Reset network settings in iOS

Finally, the most voodoo of the fixes we’ve seen work is to reset network settings in iOS. You don’t want to start with this option because doing so also resets Wi-Fi networks and passwords, cellular settings, and VPN settings. But if all else fails, go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.

If none of these techniques fix your problem, let us know and we’ll see what we can do to help!

Social Media: Having trouble with sending or receiving in Messages? Read this article for solutions to common texting problems:

Apple Has Disabled Group FaceTime to Prevent Pre-call Eavesdropping

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A serious bug has been discovered in Apple’s Group FaceTime multi-person video chat technology. It allows someone to call you via FaceTime and then, with just a few simple steps, listen in on audio from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac while the call is ringing, before you have accepted or rejected it. To prevent the problem from being exploited, Apple says it has disabled Group FaceTime and promises a fix “later this week.”

In the meantime, if you’re still concerned (there were some reports of people being able to invoke the bug even after Apple disabled Group FaceTime), we recommend turning off FaceTime entirely in Settings > FaceTime in iOS and by launching the FaceTime app in macOS and then choosing FaceTime > Turn FaceTime Off. (Or just be quiet when a FaceTime call comes in.) Apple may be able to fix the problem without requiring users to update software; if iOS and macOS updates do prove to be necessary, we recommend that you install them sooner rather than later.

Two Ways to Convince a Wedged iPhone to Connect to the Internet Again

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Every now and then, we’ve seen iPhones stop being able to access the Internet, either via Wi-Fi or a cellular data connection. Assuming that the Internet connection is working for other devices, there are two easy ways to reset your iPhone’s connection and get it working again. First, enable Airplane mode to shut off the iPhone’s radios—bring up Control Center and tap the Airplane mode button. After a few seconds, tap the button again to turn it off. Second, if toggling Airplane mode doesn’t work, power down the iPhone by pressing and holding the top or side button (iPhone 8 or earlier) or both the side button and a volume button (iPhone X or later) until the slider appears (or go to Settings > General > Shut Down). Drag the slider to turn off the iPhone. Once the phone is powered down, hold the side (or top) button again until the Apple logo appears. In just a moment, your phone will be back on, and you should be able to access the Internet normally.

Don’t Use Rules in Apple’s Mail to Send “Out of Office” Replies

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It’s helpful to unplug occasionally and ignore email while on vacation or otherwise away from your work routine. And it’s a good idea to set up a vacation auto-responder to tell correspondents what to do in your absence. It might be tempting to create such an auto-reply with a rule in Mail on the Mac, but resist the temptation! It’s way too easy to end up sending replies to every message from a mailing list or to addresses that will themselves reply back, causing a mail loop where each message generates another reply, ad infinitum. Instead, always set up such auto-responders in the server settings for your email provider, which are better about avoiding mail loops. Here are instructions for Gmail, iCloud, Outlook.com, Spectrum, Xfinity/Comcast, and Yahoo. If you use a different email provider, the instructions will likely be similar; check with your provider for details.

The Secret Trick for Enabling Caps Lock When Typing in iOS

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The Caps Lock key on Mac keyboards often feels extraneous, since it’s easy enough to hold the Shift key while typing multiple capital letters for acronyms like HIPPA or when you want to shout GET OFF MY LAWN! But if you need to do that on an iPhone or iPad, it’s annoying to keep tapping the Shift key to switch to the uppercase keyboard for each letter. Luckily, Apple has baked a time-saving trick into its onscreen keyboard. Tap the Shift key twice in a row to lock it on, type the letters you need, and tap it again to unlock it. Notice that when Shift is locked on, a horizontal line appears beneath the arrow on the Shift key.

Siri in Mojave Now Supports HomeKit and Find My iPhone

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Siri on the Mac hasn’t been as useful as on iOS devices, but with macOS 10.14 Mojave, Apple enhanced the Mac version of Siri in a variety of ways. Apple says that Siri now knows about food, celebrities, and motorsports, but more interesting is how you can ask Siri to control your HomeKit devices (“Turn on the bedroom lights.”) and locate your iOS devices or AirPods via Find My iPhone (“Where is my iPhone?”).