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Apple Explains Its Approach to Device Longevity

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We Apple users tend to believe that our devices usually last longer—both physically and functionally—than Windows PCs and Android smartphones. For instance, Apple’s current operating systems work on nearly all Macs, iPhones, and iPads introduced in 2018 and later, albeit with some feature loss on the oldest devices. In a white paper entitled “Longevity, by Design,” Apple has now outlined how it works to increase product longevity through design and manufacturing, ongoing software support, and access to repair services. The white paper may be partially aimed at dissuading elected officials from passing Right to Repair legislation that could force unwanted design changes, but it still offers an illuminating look at how the company balances environmental impact, protecting customer privacy and safety, and enabling repair transparency. It’s worth a read if you’re interested in why Apple makes the design decisions it does.

(Featured image based on an original by Apple)

Social Media: Apple has published a white paper that offers an illuminating look at how the company works to increase device longevity while balancing environmental impact, protecting customer privacy and safety, and enabling transparency in repair.

Quickly Catalog Books or Other Named Items on Shelves

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If you have trouble finding particular items across multiple shelves of books, labeled boxes, or anything else that’s clearly identified with a text name, take carefully composed photos that capture all the titles without glare. Later, you can search for any text in those photos to find them—tap the Search button in Photos on the iPhone or iPad, or use the Search field in Photos on the Mac. Photos highlights the search term on the found photo. (If Photos on the Mac doesn’t surface an expected photo, try again on your iPhone, which seems to get more hits on harder-to-read text.) This capability comes courtesy of Apple’s Live Text feature, which uses machine learning to identify text in photos. Think of it as the lazy person’s database!

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: You can take advantage of Apple’s Live Text feature in Photos to catalog books, boxes, or any other items with text names. Think of it as a lazy person’s ad hoc database.

Working Late on Your Mac? Turn on Night Shift to Help Your Sleep

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Research suggests that exposure to blue light fools your body into thinking it’s daytime, making it harder to fall asleep if you work late on a Mac with a bright white (which has a lot of blue light) screen. To help, a macOS feature called Night Shift subtly changes the colors of the screen as the sun sets to reduce the amount of blue light hitting your eyes. In essence, everything gets slightly warmer. To configure your Night Shift schedule—so it turns on and off automatically—go to System Settings > Displays > Night Shift. You can set any times, but Sunset to Sunrise adjusts for the sun’s movement in your location throughout the year. One warning: if you edit photos or videos, or work on graphics where specific colors matter, Night Shift’s color changes may be problematic.

(Featured image by iStock.com/PeopleImages)

Social Media: If you regularly work at your Mac late at night and have trouble falling asleep, consider turning on Night Shift to reduce your blue light exposure. By default, it makes the colors of your Mac warmer from sunset to sunrise.

Tame the Tangle! Quick Cable Management Tips

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Take a moment and look behind your Mac. Do you see a tangle of cables? The main downside of a mess of cables is that it’s a cluster of chaos that attracts dust bunnies. However, it’s possible for power cables—especially when tightly bundled or looped—to emit electromagnetic interference that can disrupt or degrade the signal carried by nearby data or network cables. They can also heat up, which is generally best avoided. Plus, the more tangled the cable nest, the more likely you’ll cause harm if you pull too hard while attempting to remove a cable from the tangle.

Also, consider cables that extend beyond your desk. Do you have power cables that run across the ground or Ethernet cables that loosely snake up into the ceiling? To protect both people and equipment, ensure that cables aren’t a tripping or catching hazard.

If your cables are a complete disaster, take some time to shut down your devices, disconnect all the cables, clean underneath, and reconnect them in an organized fashion, removing unused cables and replacing damaged or unnecessarily long cables with new ones.

To keep your cables under control going forward, follow these tips:

Select and reduce cables:

  • Buy and use cables that are only as long as they need to be.
  • When buying new cables, prefer braided cables, which catch less and last longer.
  • If you have many cables, try to trim the number with judicious use of docks or hubs.
  • Upgrade to wireless accessories, like the Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad, that only need to be plugged in occasionally to charge.

Pay attention to cable location:

  • Try to keep cables off the floor, but use a floor cord cover if it’s unavoidable.
  • Attach long runs of network cabling to the wall or floor to reduce the chance of accidents.
  • Run cables through raceways or inside cable trays to keep them together under desks.
  • Add adhesive cable clips to the back or underside of desks without cable management options.
  • Ensure cables don’t interfere with workstation ergonomics, especially with movable sit/stand desks.
  • Keep power adapters away from other cables for better heat management.

Group your cables:

  • Use Velcro straps or cable ties to bundle power and data cables separately.
  • Avoid bundling too many power cables too tightly to avoid heat buildup.
  • Label cables with their type and use so you can easily distinguish between them.
  • Store extra cables in clear zip lock bags or bins, one per cable type.

Maintain your cables:

  • Throw out any damaged or suspect cables right away.
  • Periodically check and reorganize your cables, removing any that aren’t in active use.

You should be able to find a wide variety of cable management accessories, such as Velcro cable ties, cable labels, cable clips, and floor cord covers, at your preferred electronics retailer.

None of these suggestions are difficult to follow, and you’d be surprised how much you will appreciate having neatly organized cables in use and available when you need them.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: Do you have a rat’s nest of random cables behind your Mac? Follow our quick tips to bring order to the mess, reduce the chance of accidents, and avoid degraded data signals.

Select Non-Contiguous Text in Pages, Keynote, and Numbers 14

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The latest versions of the Mac and iPad apps in Apple’s iWork suite—Pages 14, Keynote 14, and Numbers 14—have gained a helpful feature: non-contiguous text selection. By holding down the Command key, you can select chunks of text that aren’t next to each other. For example, imagine you want to make the first part of each item in a bullet list bold. Instead of bolding each one separately, hold down Command as you work to select all of them and then apply bold to the entire selection with a single command. Non-contiguous selection is particularly helpful when applying formatting, but you can also copy non-contiguously selected text or work with it in nearly any way you would interact with a contiguous text selection. (Note that while holding down Command, you can double-click to select words or triple-click to select paragraphs, just as you can normally without holding down Command.)

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: A new feature in Pages, Keynote, and Numbers lets you select bits of text that aren’t next to each other so that you can, for example, format them or copy them all at once.

Where Can You Control Automatic Smart Quotes and Dashes in macOS?

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Most people like smart quotes and dashes, at least most of the time. Your Mac is probably set up to turn the single (‘) and double (“) hash marks and double hyphens (–) that you type into the apostrophes (’) and single smart quotes (‘’), double smart quotes (“”), and em dashes (—) used in professional publications. However, in some situations, like programming, smart quotes and dashes are problematic. To prevent macOS from automatically inserting them, open System Settings > Keyboard and click the Edit button next to Input Sources. In the dialog that appears, turn off “Use smart quotes and dashes.” As a bonus tip, if you occasionally want single or double hash marks, such as to indicate feet and inches, instead of turning the entire feature off, immediately press Command-Z after typing a single or double hash mark to undo the change from straight to curly.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Wirestock)

Social Media: Smart quotes and dashes usually make your text look more professional. But if they’re problematic, you can turn off the feature that inserts them automatically or revert them on a one-off basis.

How to Display the Battery Percentage in Your Mac’s Menu Bar

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By default, the battery icon in your Mac laptop’s menu bar shows how full your battery is. Clicking it reveals the exact percentage, but you can also set macOS to display the battery percentage next to the icon. The setting isn’t where you might expect in System Settings > Battery. Instead, you’ll find it in System Settings > Control Center, where you need to turn on both “Show in Menu Bar” and “Show Percentage.”

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: If you’re tired of trying to interpret how full your MacBook’s battery is from its menu bar icon, here’s how to get it to display a percentage as well.

Apple’s iCloud Keychain Password Management Is All Many People Need

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Apple’s iCloud Keychain Password Management Is All Many People Need

We constantly recommend using a password manager like 1Password, BitWarden, or Dashlane. But many people resist committing to yet another app or paying for yet another service. Isn’t Apple’s built-in iCloud Keychain password management good enough?

The answer now is yes, thanks to two recent changes:

  • In iOS 17.3, Apple added Stolen Device Protection, which leverages biometric authentication—Face ID or Touch ID—to protect users against thieves who would surreptitiously learn someone’s passcode, steal their iPhone, and then take over their digital lives. One of the worst aspects of that attack was that the iPhone passcode was sufficient to access the user’s stored passwords, so the thief could get into everything.
  • Until mid-2023, Apple’s built-in password management worked only in Safari, which was problematic for users who rely on other browsers. Then Apple updated its iCloud Passwords extension for Google Chrome to work not just in Windows, but also in Mac browsers based on Google Chrome running in macOS 14 Sonoma. There’s also now an iCloud Passwords add-on for Firefox.

If you aren’t yet using a password manager, try iCloud Keychain.

Passwords Basics

Apple integrated iCloud Keychain into macOS, iOS, and iPadOS at a low level, so you mostly interact with your passwords in Safari. But first, make sure to enable iCloud Keychain so your passwords sync between your devices. On the Mac, you do that in System Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Passwords & Keychain. On an iPhone or iPad, it’s in Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Passwords and Keychain.

If you’re using a browser other than Safari, install the iCloud Passwords extension or add-on and activate it by clicking it in the toolbar and entering the verification code when prompted.

When it comes to website accounts, there are two main actions: creating a login and logging in to a site:

  • Create a new login: When you need to create an account on a new website, after you enter whatever it wants for email or username, Safari creates a strong password for you. Unfortunately, the iCloud Passwords extension or add-on on the Mac can’t generate passwords—you can either create a strong password manually or switch to Safari temporarily to let it create one. When you submit your credentials, you’ll be prompted to save them.
  • Autofill an existing login: The next time you want to log in to a site for which you’ve saved credentials, Safari or your other browser on the Mac displays a pop-up with logins matching the domain of the site you’re on. On the iPhone or iPad, you might get an alert at the bottom of the screen or have to pick a choice in the QuickType bar above the keyboard.

For basic usage, that’s it! However, iCloud Keychain can make mistakes. The site shown above asks for both an email address and a username and wants the email address for logging in, but iCloud Keychain remembered the username instead. Happily, Apple makes it easy to fix such unusual missteps. On the Mac, open System Settings > Passwords, or on the iPhone or iPad, open Settings > Passwords. Here’s where you find and edit your saved logins.

Open the desired login by double-clicking it on the Mac or tapping it on the iPhone or iPad, then click or tap Edit and make any desired changes.

iCloud Keychain provides additional features and options:

  • A search field at the top of the Passwords window or screen helps you find logins if scanning the full list is frustrating.
  • You can use commands in the + menu to create new passwords and shared groups. On the Mac, commands in the ••• menu let you import and export passwords; the iPhone and iPad use that menu to bulk-select passwords for deletion and show generated passwords.
  • Shared groups let you share a subset of passwords with family or colleagues. Choosing New Shared Group triggers an assistant that walks you through naming the group, adding people from Contacts, and choosing which passwords to share. You can move passwords between groups at any time.
  • The Security Recommendations screen displays logins exposed in known breaches and points out logins with weak passwords. Check those and update them as necessary.
  • In Password Options, you can turn off autofill, but why would you? Another option automatically deletes verification codes you receive in Messages after it inserts them with autofill.
  • On websites that support two-factor authentication, you can set up a login to autofill the verification code. During setup on the site, you’ll get a QR code you can scan with an iPhone or iPad if you’re using a Mac; if you’re using an iPhone or iPad, touch and hold the QR code and choose Add Verification Code in Passwords. Once you finish configuring the login, you’ll have to enter the six-digit verification code on the site to link it with the login.

Overall, iCloud Keychain provides the password management features that most people need, and it’s a massive security improvement over keeping a document of your passwords on your desktop.

(Featured image by iStock.com/loooby)

Social Media: Apple’s iCloud Keychain password manager keeps improving, and we now recommend it, especially for those not already using a third-party password manager. Here’s how to use iCloud Keychain to store and enter secure passwords.

Tips for Working with Mac Display Resolutions

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You can change the resolution of your Mac’s screen—how many pixels appear—to make text and graphics larger and easier to see or smaller to fit more content onscreen. In System Settings > Displays, Apple shows thumbnails for five likely possibilities. Hover the pointer over a thumbnail to see its numeric resolution underneath. If you prefer the traditional list of numeric resolutions, Option-click a thumbnail—another Option-click in the list brings back the thumbnails. Although the Show All Resolutions switch reveals more options, most will be fuzzy. If you always want to see resolutions as a list, click Advanced at the bottom and turn on Show Resolutions as a List. Finally, look closely for a tiny Easter egg: the text in the thumbnails is the script from Apple’s classic Think Different ad spot.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: You can adjust your Mac’s screen resolution to make text and graphics larger so they’re easier to see, or if you have good vision, you can make them smaller so more content fits on the screen. Our tips will help.

Want an Event List in Apple’s Calendar App? Try This Trick

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Along with day, week, month, and year views, most calendar apps offer the option of a simple chronological list of events, which can be a handy way to see what’s coming up. Apple’s Calendar app on the Mac is unfortunately not among those apps. However, there is a trick you can use to get it to show all your upcoming events in a scrolling list. Click in the Search field in the upper-right corner and enter two double quote marks (“”). In essence, it’s a search for “everything,” and Calendar promptly shows all your events in a row down the right side of the window. If you’re looking for a more capable calendar app, BusyCal and Fantastical are popular in the Mac community, and some apps like Microsoft Outlook and Zoom also include calendaring features.

(Featured image by iStock.com/AndreyPopov)

Social Media: Want to see all your upcoming events in a list in Apple’s Calendar app on the Mac? It doesn’t have a built-in list view, but there’s a workaround.