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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.

Display an Album of Photos on Your iPhone or iPad Lock Screen

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A popular feature of iOS 16 was the Photo Shuffle option for customizing the iPhone Lock Screen. It used machine learning to select photos in four categories—People, Pets, Nature, and Cities—and rotated through them when you tapped, on lock, hourly, or daily. If you didn’t like the automatic selection, you could pick photos manually, but it was clumsy. In iOS 17 (and iPadOS 17, which also added customizable Lock Screens), you can now point the Lock Screen’s Photo Shuffle wallpaper at an album. Touch and hold the Lock Screen, tap Customize, tap the blue ⨁ button to create a new wallpaper, select Photo Shuffle, select Album, choose the desired album from the pop-up menu, set a frequency, tap Use Album, and tap the Add button at the top. Then tap Set as Wallpaper Pair or Customize Home Screen to choose a different image for the Home Screen wallpaper.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: If you like how the Lock Screen’s Photo Shuffle wallpaper rotates through photos but would prefer that it worked from an album you specified, you’re in luck! That’s now possible in iOS 17 and iPadOS 17.

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 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.

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.

Looking for Apple Manuals? Check the New Documentation Site

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Apple publishes a multitude of manuals and tons of technical documentation for its products on its support site, but until recently, it could be challenging to find something specific because the search engine on Apple’s site is poor. For a better path into Apple’s online support materials, check out the company’s new Documentation site, which brings together manuals, specs, and some downloads for nearly all its products. The operating system User Guides are particularly helpful, and they even provide a Version pop-up menu that lets you make sure you’re getting information for the version you’re using.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Ildo Frazao)

Social Media: Do you want to read the actual manuals or specs for Apple products? You can now easily find them on Apple’s new Documentation website.

Did You Know Text Entry Boxes in Web Browsers Are Easy to Expand?

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Have you ever noticed the shading in the corner of text area fields in Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and most other Mac Web browsers? These “handles” let you resize the field—always vertically and sometimes horizontally. That’s handy when the website designer has provided only a small text box and you want to enter more text than will fit. Just drag the handle to make the text box the size you need. Other objects on the page move to accommodate the larger text box. If a text box doesn’t have a resize handle, the site designer doesn’t expect it to need to hold more than a single line of text.

(Featured image based on originals by iStock.com/OlgaCanals and PhotoMelon)

Social Media: If you want to enter more text than will seemingly fit in a text box on a Web page, you can use a trick to expand the box so you can see what you’re typing.

Use 1Password to Enter Your Mac Login Password

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We think of 1Password as being helpful for entering passwords on websites and in iPhone and iPad apps. But its Universal Autofill feature has a hidden capability that lets 1Password enter your Mac login password when you have to provide it to change certain system settings, install apps, format drives in Disk Utility, and more. (But it won’t work to log in at startup before 1Password is running.) To turn this feature on, click the New Item button in 1Password, search for and select “Mac login” ➊, give it a name that will sort alphabetically to the top, like “2020 27-inch iMac” ➋, enter your password, and click Save ➌. From then on, whenever you’re prompted for your Mac login password ➍, press Command- (Backslash, located above the Return key), and then click the desired login or press Return to select the topmost item ➎.

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

Social Media: 1Password is tremendously helpful for entering website passwords, but a little-known feature also enables it to enter your Mac login password for changing system settings, installing apps, and more.