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How to Train Yourself to Use the iPhone 16’s New Camera Control Button

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If you are accustomed to opening the Camera app on your iPhone by tapping its Home Screen app icon or Lock Screen widget icon, you may find it challenging to remember to use the new Camera Control button on the side of an iPhone 16. That button is a big win for easy access to the camera and its settings. To help retrain your camera habits, hide the Camera app icon on a secondary Home Screen or in a folder and remove it from the Lock Screen. To conceal it from your Home Screen, touch and hold it to enter jiggle mode, then drag it to another screen or into a folder. To remove it from the Lock Screen, touch and hold the Lock Screen, tap Customize, tap the Lock Screen, and then tap the minus button on the Camera widget. Replace it with another widget you’ll find useful.

(Featured image by iStock.com/valiantsin suprunovich)

Social Media: The iPhone 16’s new Camera Control button is a welcome shortcut, but you may need to retrain your brain so you remember to use it.

In iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, Quickly Turn Home Screen App Icons into Widgets

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Widgets on the iPhone or iPad Home Screen are enhanced versions of app icons that display extra information. You can now bypass the complicated widget creation process and experiment with widgets more easily. No longer do you have to edit the Home Screen, tap the Edit button, tap Add Widget, choose a widget from the full set of choices, and position it as desired. Instead, touch and hold an app’s icon and tap the desired widget size from the bottom of the menu. The first icon represents a standard icon; the remaining three display the app as a 2×2 widget, a 4×2 widget, or a 4×4 widget. The menu appears only for apps with widgets, and unavailable options indicate that the app lacks a widget of that size. Repeat the process to change a widget’s size or revert a widget to an icon.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Marvin Samuel Tolentino Pineda)

Social Media: A new shortcut in iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 makes it easy to convert an app’s icon on the Home Screen into a widget of any size supported by that app.

Control Window Tiling in macOS 15 Sequoia

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One of macOS 15 Sequoia’s most noticeable additions is a new form of window tiling. Drag a window to the menu bar to expand it to fill the screen, to the left or right edge to resize it to half the screen, or to a corner to resize it to that quarter of the screen. As you drag, a white outline shows what will happen when you drop the window. Unfortunately, accidentally invoking window tiling can be surprising and disruptive. The easiest way to ensure that dragging windows tiles them only when you want is to open System Settings > Desktop & Dock, scroll down to the Windows section, and turn off “Drag windows to screen edges to tile” and “Drag windows to menu bar to fill screen.” The important setting to leave turned on is “Hold Option key while dragging windows to tile” because from now on, your windows will tile only when you Option-drag them.

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

Social Media: Those who are disconcerted by dragged windows suddenly resizing accidentally in macOS 15 Sequoia, take note: you can tweak settings to make Sequoia’s new window tiling feature activate only when you want.

Apple’s Tips App Provides Extensive User Guides and Helpful How-Tos

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Apple has included the Tips app with the iPhone and iPad since iOS 8 in 2014 and on the Mac since macOS 10.14 Mojave in 2018. Initially, it didn’t contain much useful content, and many longtime users ignored it. However, Apple has significantly increased the amount of information in Tips over time, adding device-specific tips, full device and app user guides, highlights of new features, and more. Many tips even include short demonstration videos. Tips is worth exploring or referring to the next time you have a question. Be sure to encourage anyone you know who’s new to the iPhone, iPad, or Mac to take a look—it even helps them practice key gestures!

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: If you haven’t explored Apple’s Tips app on the iPhone, iPad, or Mac recently, check it out. Apple has added a lot more content, including device and app user guides, highlights of new features, and interactive practice guides.

Reveal Mac Window Proxy Icons Permanently with This Setting

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We’re big fans of the Mac’s window proxy icons, those little icons that appear in window title bars next to the filename. They’re not just cosmetic—you can use them just like the Finder icon for the open document. You can drag one to Mail to attach the document to a message, to a Web browser to upload it, or to any other location you can drag a document’s icon in the Finder. You can also drag a proxy icon for a folder from the title bar of its Finder window to Open and Save dialogs to navigate to the folder. In macOS 11 Big Sur, Apple hid the proxy icon until you moused over the filename, but starting in macOS 12 Monterey, the company provided an option to show them all the time. To enable it, select System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Show window title icons.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: People who like using the Mac’s window proxy icons (and if you don’t know about them, you should!) can make them visible at all times with an option deep within System Settings. Here’s how to find it and what you can do with proxy icons.

Five Quick Tips to Ease iPhone and iPad Text Editing and Amaze Your Friends

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A friend recently expressed astonishment when she saw us using trackpad mode while editing text on an iPhone. (It works on the iPad, too!) So, even if you already know these tips, do your friends a favor and show them:

  • Tap once to position the insertion point at the start or end of a word.
  • Touch and hold to reveal the magnifier and move the insertion point within words ➊.
  • Touch and hold the Space bar to turn the entire keyboard into a virtual trackpad that lets you move the insertion point above ➋. On the iPad, you can also touch and hold with two fingers anywhere on the keyboard.
  • Double-tap to select a word; keep dragging to select more text, one word at a time ➌.
  • Triple-tap to select an entire paragraph.

(Featured image by Adam Engst with keys from MXW Photo)

Social Media: Editing text on an iPhone or iPad will never be as easy as on a Mac, but with these tips, you can quickly position the insertion point and select words and paragraphs using your finger.

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.

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.

Apple Podcasts Adds Transcripts

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In iOS 17.4, iPadOS 17.4, and macOS 14.4 Sonoma, Apple enhanced its Podcasts app to include transcripts of all podcasts in the Apple Podcasts catalog as long as they’re in English, French, German, or Spanish. (It doesn’t translate from one language to another.) Much like song lyrics in the Music app—open it by tapping the dialog button in the player—the transcript scrolls in sync with the podcast’s audio, and you can tap anywhere in the transcript to play the audio from that spot. Tap the Search button that appears when you view the transcript to look for any text contained within. Recent podcasts should all have transcripts now, and Apple is working to catch up on older podcasts. The AI that generates the transcripts sometimes makes mistakes and doesn’t distinguish between different speakers, but overall, the transcripts provide a good sense of what’s being said.

(Featured image by iStock.com/microgen)

Social Media: Did you know Apple’s Podcasts app now includes written transcripts? Our tip helps you view the text while you listen, use it to navigate within the audio, search for specific bits, and more.

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.