AirPods Pro 3’s redesigned ear tips are an unexpected hit-or-miss change. The new foam-infused tips radically change how the earbuds feel when worn.

Apple knows the ear tips are not one-size-fits-all, so the company includes five sizes of ear tips in the AirPods Pro 3 box. You can easily switch them out to find the best size for your ears.

Using the wrong size can cause problems. The earbuds can slip out if they’re too small or irritate your ears if they’re too big. They might even cause high-pitched feedback if you engage active noise cancellation with the wrong size ear tips (especially when flying).

If you don’t like how your new AirPods Pro 3 feel in the ear, don’t be hasty and return them. You should try out different ear tips first. Here are some tips to make sure you achieve the best results.

AirPods Pro 3 ear tips: How to find the right size

AirPods Pro are Apple’s premium earbuds. They fit an incredible amount of technology into a super-tiny space. They feature spatial audio for immersive surround sound. Conversation awareness detects when people are talking to you, so it pauses media while boosting their voice. And, of course, the sound quality is top-notch, with far more bass than you would think possible. In contrast to the regular AirPods, AirPods Pro have ear tips that sit inside your ear.

The latest models were redesigned with foam inserts in the tips to increase the noise cancellation capabilities, but this has been a controversial change, with some users disliking how they feel.

Table of contents: How to find the right size AirPods Pro 3 ear tips

• Five sizes in the box
• Not your father’s AirPods
• Trying out different sizes
• A bad feedback loop
• Take an ear fit test, if you want
• Some third-party options

Five sizes in the box

AirPods Pro 3 come with five different sizes of ear tips: XXS, XS, S, M and L. (That’s short for extra-extra-small through large.) The medium tips come installed on the AirPods. You will find the others in a cardboard tray at the bottom of the box.

Switching out the ear tips is quite easy. You just pull on the tips and they’ll pop off. It takes a little more force than you might expect, but don’t worry.  The other tips snap on really easily.

Not your father’s AirPods

If you’ve used AirPods Pro 2, which come with four sizes of thin silicone ear tips, don’t assume that you’ll need the same tip size for your AirPods Pro 3. The foam that Apple added inside the AirPods Pro 3 tips makes them firmer, so you should probably start with a size lower than before. (I think this is why Apple added the XXS size.)

Personally, I assumed from the generic Bluetooth in-ear buds I used before that I had somewhat large ears. But those didn’t have foam in the tips, so they had much more give to them. That led me to use a larger size.

Trying out different sizes of AirPods Pro 3 ear tips

It took me a while to find AirPods Pro 3 ear tips that felt comfortable. I started with one medium and one large, as my right ear is a little bigger than my left. But regretted it, as an earache set in pretty quickly. To reduce that, I went down to small and medium ear tips, and then to small in both ears. (For posterity, I confirmed that extra small was indeed far too small.)

After a couple of weeks, either the ear tips shrank a bit or my ears became stretched out, as the right AirPod Pro began slipping in my ear. I went back up a size, bringing me to small and medium.

Another couple of weeks later, I think I can go up another size, as they’re both starting to slip again.

A bad feedback loop

Why spend so much time trying to find the right size ear tips for your AirPods Pro 3? Using the wrong size might result in unexpected consequences.

AirPods Pro usually work great for flights, as the ANC can tune out that airplane hum and let audio play at a reasonable volume. But if your AirPods Pro 3 ear tips don’t make a proper seal, an irritating feedback loop can occur. Just like holding a microphone in front of a speaker, some users report hearing a high-pitched whine when wearing AirPods Pro 3 on a plane.

Pro tip: Bring your extra AirPods Pro 3 ear tips with you next time you fly, so if you encounter this problem, you can do a rapid-fire test.

Take an ear fit test, if you want

There’s a feature in the AirPods settings that might help you verify a good fit. With your AirPods Pro 3 connected to your iPhone, open Settings > AirPods. Scroll down and tap Test Acoustic Seal. Your iPhone will play music through the AirPods and let you know if any sound is leaking out. If so, it’ll recommend you find a different tip.

I’m not sure how useful this is — it’ll tell you if the AirPods you’ve got on are too small, but surely that would be obvious to you if they’re not sitting correctly. And the trend seems to be toward the new tips being too firm, not too loose, so the acoustic seal shouldn’t be a problem.

From my testing, the best thing is to live with each size of ear tips for a while. You’ll quickly discover which ones are best for you. Don’t assume that both of your ears are the same size — try adjusting one at a time.

Some third-party options for AirPods Pro 3 ear tips

If none of Apple’s options satisfy, don’t worry. AirPods Pro 3 are backward-compatible with other ear tips, meaning you have plenty of third-party options — even for this brand-new product. We have a roundup of three favorites:

• Delidigi Silicone Earbuds ($12.99): The double-flange design of these soft silicone tips helps with a stable fit and has no trouble fitting in AirPods Pro 3’s closed charging case. Comes with two pairs in three sizes. (Amazon)
• CharJenPro Memory Foam Ear Tips ($25.99): These tips are made of memory foam with a silicone shield for protection. The foam can expand and contract to keep a good seal in the ear canal. Pro tip: Press the tips gently before inserting, and they’ll expand to fit. Comes with three sizes. (Amazon)
• Azla SednaEarfit Xelastec ($24): Made of a thermoplastic elastomer, these soft ear tips adjust to body heat to gently fit different ear shapes. They look cool in contrast with the white AirPods, being dark but transparent. They fit a little looser than Apple’s. Comes with two pairs in the size you choose. (Amazon)

Your iPhone can record 3D spatial video and photos, effectively future-proofing the images you capture. And the results are stunning.

The stereoscopic 3D video and photos captured with the iPhone can be viewed on an Apple Vision Pro headset as an immersive way to relive memories.

Here’s how it works.

How to record 3D spatial video on iPhone

Watching spatial video on an Apple Vision Pro is one of the headset’s most magical experiences. 

Those who have watched personal videos they’ve recorded using the headset offer glowing reviews of spatial video. It “almost brought me to tears,” wrote Raymond Wong at Inverse, adding that “to see them replayed with a sense of presence really tugged at my heartstrings.”

But you don’t need a pricey Vision Pro to record spatial videos and photos. You just need an iPhone 15 Pro or an iPhone 16 or later (although it doesn’t work on iPhone 16e). The regular and ultrawide cameras on these models are positioned side by side, which is necessary for capturing two camera angles of the same scene — so-called “stereoscopic” video. Other iPhones have these cameras arranged diagonally, which wouldn’t work as well.

Table of contents: How to record 3D spatial video on iPhone

1. Open the Camera app and select Spatial Mode
2. Switch between Spatial Photos and Spatial Videos
3. Hold the phone horizontally
4. Record 3D video
5. Beware: Spatial video can eat up storage
6. Rewatch spatial video on all your devices

1. Open the Camera app and select Spatial Mode

To get started capturing spatial video on your iPhone, open the Camera app. (This only works with Apple’s Camera app, not with Snapchat, TikTok or any others.) Swipe left on the Video/Photo picker to select Spatial mode.

2. Switch between Spatial Photos and Spatial Videos

In Spatial Mode, you can take 3D pictures or record 3D videos. Tap the Spatial Mode Toggle (with the icon of a photo or video camera) in the corner to switch between photo and video.

In Photo mode, the capture button will be white. In Video mode, the capture button will be red. 

3. Hold your iPhone horizontally

If you aren’t already, you’ll be prompted to hold your phone horizontally. Again, with how the two cameras are arranged, the left-right orientation mimics how humans see 3D images.

You also need to be in a very bright room. Otherwise, you’ll see a warning message, “More light recommended.”

4. Record 3D Video

Ready to start capturing a spatial video on your iPhone? Just hit the red Record button to start recording. Press it again to stop recording when you’re done, just as you would with any other video. Apple offers a few tips for making the best spatial videos:

• Hold the camera steady and level.
• Keep the subjects and the focus around 3 to 8 feet from the camera for the best depth effect.
• Make sure the room has even, bright lighting. Your phone will have a hard time processing the effect in low light or scenes with a lot of harsh shadows.

These are good tips for any kind of filming, too. 

5. Note: 3D spatial video can eat up storage

Spatial video is captured at 1080p at 30fps, and one minute of 3D video will chew up about 130MB of storage. This is twice the amount of storage space as a regular video, which is understandable since it’s recording two videos in one. However, a minute of 1080p spatial video is still less than a minute of 4K video, and much less than 4K video at 60fps.

Nonetheless, if you plan to record a lot of spatial video, you’re likely going to want to hook your iPhone up to an external USB drive. Newer iPhones make it easy with their USB-C ports.

However, make sure whatever drive or SSD you use is fast enough. Luckily, there’s a free iPhone app from OWC that tests external drives or SSDs to see if they are fast enough for video recording.

In addition, spatial video will sync to all your devices if you have iCloud Photos turned on, so keep an eye on your iCloud storage.

6. Rewatch on all your devices

At $3,499, the Vision Pro headset is rather expensive, but you can still watch spatial videos as ordinary, 2D videos on all your devices. You can watch them on an iPhone, Mac, iPad or Apple TV. And you can share them with an Android phone or Windows computer. Finally, you can edit them in iMovie, Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere — just like any other video.

In the future, when you play back your spatial videos or look at your spatial photos on a Vision Pro headset (or maybe even a Meta Quest), you’ll be able to relive those moments in full 3D.

So record in 3D now, and your precious memories might one day bring a tear to your eye.

More camera and photo tips

• Photographic Styles built into your iPhone’s camera can give your pictures a radically different aesthetic.
• The new Camera Control button on the iPhone 16 lineup opens the Camera app, takes pictures and adjusts camera settings on the fly. It offers a quick shortcut to using one of the most popular and important iPhone features.
• Take 48-megapixel photos that capture eagle-eye details at incredibly high resolution, shooting in Apple’s ProRAW format, on an iPhone 14 Pro and later Pro models.
• Three tips to take better pictures and upgrade your photography skills.
• Photograph fireworks with these special tips and achieve great results. Just pointing and shooting with no prior planning can lead to blurry, unexciting fireworks photos.

We originally published this post on how to record 3D Spatial Video on iPhone on December 22, 2023. We updated the information on November 7, 2025.

You’re happily listening to music on your AirPods when the audio suddenly gets yanked away by a Bluetooth speaker. Don’t get frustrated. Make a quick tweak to the settings on your iPhone running iOS 26.1, and it’ll never happen again.

Here’s what to do.

Great new feature in iOS 26.1 helps your AirPods and Bluetooth speaker get along

It’s irritating if the song or podcast you’re listening to on your AirPods abruptly stops playing in them and instead starts blasting out of a wireless speaker. But there’s a good reason: Apple set up rules for your iPhone’s audio handling.

iPhones follow a “most recently active” audio-route logic. When a new Bluetooth audio device powers on or signals that it’s available, iOS treats it as the freshest output option. The iPhone thinks “the user probably wants to use this,” and starts sending audio to it, even if you’re actively using your AirPods.

In many situations, this makes sense. But not always. Sometimes other people turn on a Bluetooth speaker nearby so they can use it, and — surprise! — your iPhone switches to it.

Or perhaps you just got in a car. Most modern car systems are set to automatically connect and take over audio when the driver turns on the ignition. The car just assumes that’s what everyone wants. But that might not be the case if you’re the passenger.

How to access the new ‘Keep Audio with Headphones’ setting in iOS 26.1

Apple understands your frustration, and iOS 26.1 brings a fix. Toggle a single switch, and your iPhone will keep streaming to your AirPods, no matter what Bluetooth speakers come along.

To get started, open the Settings app on the iPhone. Tap General, then scroll down to AirPlay & Continuity. Tap on it.

You will find a new option there: Keep Audio with Headphones. It’s off by default. Toggle it on.

As Apple says in Settings, flip this switch because you want this behavior: “When using AirPods or other wireless headphones, keep audio with headphones when other devices like speakers or cars connect to iPhone.”

And there, you’re finished. Or maybe you now want to make the same change on your iPad. Whichever, happy listening.

The HomePod operating system occasionally needs updating, because the device is a lot more than a simple speaker — it’s a computer. Here’s how to make sure your Apple smart speaker has the software version released Monday. The new HomePod Software version 26.1 is a simple bug-fix update, but it’s still worth installing. Who wants bugs? 

If you depend on automatic updates, it’s possible your smart speaker hasn’t yet installed the update. Here’s how to do so manually.

HomePod software updates: A bit of background

Apple offers macOS, iOS and several other platforms. You might think the operating system for HomePod would have a similar name. Internally, Apple employees call it audioOS, but the company never uses that name publicly. For everyone else, it’s simply “HomePod Software.”

It’s apparently a variation of Apple TV’s tvOS that’s been specially modified for the smart speaker. This makes sense — both focus on multimedia playback, support Siri, and don’t need to worry about cellular-wireless connections.

New HomePod Software versions come out when Apple updates the Apple TV software. And the version numbers are generally in lockstep. With tvOS 26.1 out now, it’s also time for a HomePod update.

What is new in HomePod Software 26.1

To be current, your Apple smart speaker should be on HomePod Software Version 26.1. This is true whether you own an original HomePod, HomePod 2 or HomePod mini. The previous version, 26.0.1, came out in September.

Apple’s release notes describe the changes, such as they are:

“This update includes performance and stability improvements.”

How to update your HomePod’s software

You have the option to wait for the HomePod to automatically update itself. However, Apple delays a surprisingly long time to start pushing new versions out to users. You can be sure your device has the latest version in just a few steps.

1. Open the Home application on your iPhone
2. Tap on the button for the Home tab in the lower left corner of the screen.
3. Tap the menu button in the upper right corner of the screen, then select Home Settings from the resulting pop-up window.
4. Scroll down to Software Update and tap on it.

To see if your device automatically updated, tap on Updated Recently and you’ll see a description of the last version released.

But if you aren‘t caught up, you’ll see an Update Available message instead. There’ll be an Update All button next to this. Press it to see what the new version is and start the installation process.

If you know there’s a new version out but the Home app doesn’t show it, you need to reboot your HomePod. Do this the old-fashioned way: unplug it then plug it back in. Wait a few minutes for the reboot, then look again for the update.

You can set it to happen automatically

By default, your smart speaker is set to automatically install the latest HomePod Software. If you don’t want to tinker with updating your HomePod’s software, you never need to think about it again.

Just be aware that automatic updates don’t start immediately. Based on personal experience, it can take a a week or more after the software release before your device gets the update. If you’re someone who likes to be sure you’re running the latest software on all your devices, you can always go in and request an immediate update by following the steps above. The best time to check is right after every tvOS update gets released.

How to turn off automatic updates

Or there’s the exact opposite scenario. If you are happy with your HomePod now and don’t want to take the chance that a bad software update will muck it up, you can turn off automatic updates. It’s easy.

1. Open the Home application on your iPhone
2. Tap on the button for the Home tab in the lower left corner of the screen.
3. Tap the menu button in the upper right corner of the screen, then select Home Settings from the resulting pop-up window.
4. Scroll down to Software Update and tap on it
5. In the Automatic Updates section of the screen, toggle off the switch next to HomePod.

You might also consider doing this for other accessories updated from the Home app.

Just don’t forget you did this. By toggling off automatic updates, you’ll never receive another one until you manually request it. You might shut yourself off from useful features coming in the future.

We originally published this article in February 2022. We update it periodically with new information about the latest HomePod software updates.

You’ll want to reset your iPhone if you’re trading it in, selling it or passing it down to another family member. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.

If you don’t fully reset the phone, it’ll still be locked to your Apple Account — and the phone will be effectively useless to anyone who tries to use it.

Follow along to make sure you reset your iPhone the right way.

How to reset iPhone before trading it in, selling it or passing it down

You can’t just delete your apps, messages and photos to give your phone to someone else. Your iPhone is tied to your Apple Account, which authorizes purchases on the App Store and syncs data in iCloud. It’s also activation-locked on Find My, which tracks your phone in case it’s lost or stolen. 

Luckily, there’s an easy setting that factory resets your iPhone. It deletes everything, reinstalls its software from scratch, and removes the device from your account. Here’s where to find it. 

Table of contents: How to reset your iPhone

1. Check to make sure you have an iCloud backup
2. Factory reset your iPhone
3. Now you’re ready to sell, trade in or give away your iPhone

1. Check to make sure you have an iCloud backup

First, make sure you have a recent backup of your device. Check this in Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > iCloud Backup. Right under the button that says Back Up Now, you should see small text that says, “Last successful backup.” If you have it set up properly, it’ll probably say it last backed up overnight.

If not, you need to make a backup. To do so, tap Back Up Now.

If you don’t back up over iCloud, you can back up your phone by plugging it into a Mac or PC.

2. Factory reset your iPhone

After you have a backup and after you’ve moved to your new iPhone, you should erase the old one.

If you haven’t transferred your phone yet, go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone (at the bottom) and tap Get Started. This will help you transfer your eSIM from your old iPhone to your new one, which can save you a long, annoying call with the tech support of your cell carrier. 

If you’re ready to reset your old phone, tap Erase All Content and Settings. Tap Continue.

You’ll be asked to enter your Apple Account and passcode to remove the iPhone from Find My. If you don’t remember your Apple Account password, these instructions from Apple Support can help you.

Next, your iPhone will take a few minutes to sign out of everything and reset.

If your phone reboots to an animated screen that says “Hello,” you’re all done! Turn off the phone, give it a good wiping down and pass it along.

Now you’re ready to sell, trade in or give away your iPhone

After you go through those steps, you can sell your iPhone to a stranger, trade it in to Apple or another retailer, or give it away to a friend or family member.

If you want an easy way to sell your phone, consider Cult of Mac’s buyback program. We buy all kinds of used Apple gear, from iPhones to AirPods. Get your quote now.

We originally published this post on how to reset an iPhone on September 22, 2023. We updated the information on November 6, 2025.

Liquid Glass in iOS 26 brings dramatic change to the look of the iPhone user interface, so it’s no surprise that some people hate it. If it’s just not for you, the option to turn off Liquid Glass was added in iOS 26.1. And it’s easy.

The same setting is available in macOS Tahoe 26.1 and iPadOS 26.1, so you can turn off Liquid Glass on all your devices. Here’s how:

Liquid Glass: beautiful but controversial

Liquid Glass is a translucent and fluid new interface. Many elements of the UI go semi-transparent, while text remains readable. Clever effects make it seem like users are looking through glass at objects shown on the screen behind the Dock, Control Center and pop-up windows.

While Liquid Glass has plenty of fans, it’s a dramatic change, and one that enhances to the appearance of iOS 26 and macOS Tahoe without improving the functionality. And those without perfect vision might struggle with it. There’s less contrast between text in pop-up windows and the background.

For those who don’t like the look, or find the new system hard to use, it’s easy to turn off Liquid Glass. Here I explain how to do so in iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1 and macOS Tahoe 26.1.

How to turn off Liquid Glass

With the latest OS updates, Apple offer a simple switch to turn off Liquid Glass.

On your iPhone or iPad, open the Settings app, then scroll down so you can tap on Display & Brightness. Now tap on Liquid Glass.

That opens a screen that lets you choose from Clear or Tinted. Choose the second option to nerf Liquid Glass. As Apple says, “Clear is more transparent, revealing the content beneath. Tinted increases opacity and adds more contrast.”

Full disclosure: making this change won’t walk your iPhone back to the look of iOS 18. Backgrounds in pop-up windows are much less clear, but they aren’t completely opaque.  

On your Mac, the process to turn off Liquid Glass is nearly identical. Open System Settings, then click on Appearance. You’ll see the option to choose between Clear or Tinted.

If you dumped Liquid Glass just because you don’t like the look, consider revisiting this decision in a few months. It really is beautiful. It only takes a few seconds to toggle it back on — try it again later and see if you change your mind.

Other ways you can undo iOS 26

Liquid Glass isn’t the only controversial change in iOS 26 that you can walk back. Apple redesigned the Phone application for making calls. If you’re not a fan, read our guide on how to bring back the old version of the Phone app.

And the toolbar in the Safari web browser shrank. You can get a larger version by going to Settings > Apps > Safari. Then, in the Tabs section, switch from Compact to Bottom or Top.

My favorite change in iOS 26.1 has nothing to do with Liquid Glass, though cosmetic tweaks to the glossy user interface have drawn the most attention in the latest OS update. To me, the biggest improvement is the option to disable the Lock Screen swipe to open the iPhone’s Camera app.

I frequently pull out my iPhone to find the Camera app has been running in my pocket, draining the battery. It’s that damn Lock Screen swipe at fault. If this happens to you, too, here’s how to disable it in iOS 26.1.

The best iOS 26.1 feature you probably haven’t noticed yet

iOS 26.1 launched this week, and a new setting for Liquid Glass was the centerpiece. It doesn’t fully disable Apple’s translucent and fluid new iPhone UI, but it makes parts of it more opaque. However, it turns out most people like Liquid Glass, so this setting won’t get used as often as some might think.

iOS 26.1 does include a change that benefits a broad swath of iPhone users, though: the ability to turn off the swipe gesture on the Lock Screen to open the Camera app.

Admittedly, this gesture seems like it should be a good idea. Many of us frequently use our iPhones as cameras, and making that feature very accessible seems logical. The problem is, the swipe gesture makes the iPhone’s camera too accessible. It’s easy to accidentally swipe to open the Camera app while sliding your handset into your pocket.

Surely everyone has pulled their iPhone out of their pocket to discover that it’s active and running the Camera app. And it’s possible the app has been running for a long time. It should time out and let the iPhone go to sleep, but the device’s touchscreen can sense your hands through fabric, so just touching your pants can keep the app running on and on.

It will even take pictures or video of the inside of your pocket. Not great.

The real issue here is battery drain. iPhones last a long time on a single charge, but finding out the device wasted a bunch of power while in a pocket is frustrating. Not only is the screen on for no good reason, the camera is active as well. 

To make the problem even more irritating, the swipe to open Camera gesture isn’t really needed. By default, there’s a button on the Lock Screen to open the Camera application. And people with recent iPhones can utilize the Camera Control to launch the camera.

But in iOS 26.1, Apple finally, finally lets us disable the gesture at the heart of this problem.

How to disable the Lock Screen swipe that opens the Camera in iOS 26.1

Fortunately, disabling this Lock Screen swipe gesture is simple after you update to iOS 26.1. You only need to know where to look.

To find it, open the Settings app on your iPhone, then scroll down to Camera. Tap on it.

Scroll way down to near the bottom of the Camera settings to find Lock Screen Swipe to Open Camera. It’s set to active by default. Tap the toggle next to it to disable the gesture.

And you’re done. (Now go do this on your iPad, too.)

More options are better

I’m quite sure some of you regularly use the swipe gesture on the iPhone Lock Screen to open the Camera app, and have no intention of disabling it. That’s great. Carry on.

This iOS 26.1 change is the best kind: Apple didn’t remove the swipe gesture. The company just gave users the option to choose for themselves whether to use it. The same goes for the new option to greatly tone down Liquid Glass.

When it comes to the Apple devices we know and love, more options are better.

Slide Over, one of the best iPad multitasking features, got rescued from the rubbish heap with the new iPadOS 26.1. It’s an ideal way to keep an application that you check frequently but not constantly within easy reach — it’s offscreen but accessible with just a flick of a finger.

Here’s how to use Slide Over, and why you shouldn’t ignore the option now that it’s back in iPadOS 26.1, which launched on Monday.

iPad Slide Over returns — here’s how to use it

Apple gave a huge revamp to multitasking with iPadOS 26. It introduced a powerful windowing system for apps that makes iPad work more like a Mac than even. But the redesign also included kicking out an existing multitasking option from the iPad: Slide Over. Happily, Apple walks that back with iPadOS 26.1.

Cult of Mac writers are spread around the world, and we use an instant messaging app to communicate. I check it many times a day, but don’t need it to be on the screen of my iPad all the time. Slide Over is perfect for this.

I can keep the application’s window off my screen while I’m writing, but with a flick of my index finger or a twitch of the mouse/trackpad, I can bring it back for a quick glance. When I’m done, another flick is all it takes to hide the app again.

As enthusiastic as I am about the return of Slide Over, I have bad news for those who used the earlier version for multi-multitasking. Previously, the system could hold multiple applications stacked on top of each other, and one could easily flip between them. That’s not included in iPadOS 26.1. I’m sorry if you miss this bonus feature, but I suspect few iPad users even knew about it.

How to use Slide Over on iPad in iPadOS 26.1

Putting an iPad application into Slide Over is easy — it really only takes one step. Choose and open the app, then tap and hold the window controls (with the red, yellow and green dots) in the upper-left corner of its app window. A pop-up will open, and one of the options will be Enter Slide Over. Tap on it. The application window will get a grey border around it so you know it’s changed. There, you’re done.

You can now flick the app window so it will Slide Over off the left or the right side of your iPad screen. You need to use the great border to accomplish this. The window disappears, but a “handle” briefly shows up to reassure you that you didn’t accidentally close the application.

To get the app back, flick your finger or the cursor from the outside of your iPad screen toward the middle. Obviously, this needs to be the side where you sent the app before. The window will Slide Over back into view. Alternatively, if the app icon is in your iPad’s Dock, tapping on it will make it slide out.

When set this way, the application always floats above whatever app windows you have open. To see what’s behind it, flick the window off the screen. Or you can change the shape, size and location of the Slide Over app window.

This returning multitasking option can be used in either the iPad’s Windowed Apps multitasking system or with Stage Manager but not Full Screen Apps.

As noted, you can’t put a second application into Slide Over. If you try, the second app replaces the first.

To undo all this, once again tap and hold on the window controls of the app window. Now, one of the options will be Exit Slide Over (see here). Tap on it.

Split View and Slide Over: Together again

While iPadOS 26 revamped the iPad user interface, it didn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Slide Over is now back, and the popular Split View option never went away — it just gets set up slightly differently now.

Just as importantly, those who prefer the classic iPad UI can stick with the Full Screen Apps option. It’s simple and easy to use.

With Thanksgiving coming in a few weeks, it’s time to watch the beloved Peanuts special that celebrates this holiday, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. While Apple TV subscribers can watch it anytime, Apple will also make the special free for anyone to stream one weekend this month.

You do not need an Apple device to enjoy either. It’s easy on Windows and Android.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is a streaming exclusive… but sometimes free to watch

Apple owns the rights to all Peanuts holiday specials. That means the way to once again see Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty and Marcie act out The Courtship of Miles Standish is on the Apple TV streaming service. And it’s available to subscribers at any time.

But A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is also open to all via the free Apple TV application starting Saturday, November 15, 2025, and going through Sunday, November 16, 2025. There’s no paywall on those dates.

And later in the year will come free access to A Charlie Brown Christmas.

How to watch the A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special for free

Apple users play the holiday classic through the Apple TV application, which is available in the App Store for iPhone and iPad. There’s also a Mac version in that app store. Install any or all of these as you would any software.

Once you have the application installed and running, look around for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (direct link).

Watch free on Windows and Android

But enjoying the classic holiday special doesn’t require an Apple TV, Mac or other Apple device. The service is watchable on a wide variety of devices. Anyone with a computer running Windows or Chrome OS, watching Apple’s video content is as easy as visiting its website. The same goes for Android phones and tablets. You’ll access the Peanuts special in a browser. You can jump straight to the A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving page.

Access on Roku and Amazon Fire requires signing up for a free trial of the Apple TV service. Download the Apple TV application on your streaming box or smart TV, agree to the trial, then lean back and enjoy. 

Buy A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on DVD

Those who want anytime access to the Peanuts Thanksgiving special and don’t want to subscribe to Apple TV can buy the DVD. It’s currently available for $11.

Buy from: Amazon

2 months of free Peanuts specials on Apple TV

The Peanuts Thanksgiving special isn’t the only one that Apple will make available for anyone to watch for free. A Charlie Brown Christmas is also an Apple TV streaming service exclusive, but it’ll be open to all on Saturday, December 13, 2025, and Sunday, December 14, 2025.

While the classics are free on these dates, Peanuts fans might want a subscription to the Apple TV service. It offers It’s Christmastime again, Charlie Brown. Plus there’s Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne, a fresh New Year’s eve special created by Apple. Beyond the holidays, there’s The Snoopy Show starring the irrepressible beagle — a series that has a 100% critics approval score on Rotten Tomatoes. And Camp Snoopy, too.

Apple TV is $12.99 a month, and includes a wide variety of other children’s’ programs, too.

You can use the built-in iPhone Wallet app for some basic order tracking with classic Apple ease of use. No need to fiddle with finding and copying tracking numbers — your orders will appear there automatically. 

If you order something from an online store that doesn’t automatically integrate with the Wallet app, there’s a solution for that as well. If your device supports Apple Intelligence, it’ll scan your email inbox and add in all those Amazon orders, too. 

Here’s how the iPhone’s order-tracking feature works. 

How to use order tracking in Apple Wallet on iPhone

Order tracking comes in handy if you don’t want to deal with package theft. If you know when a package will arrive, you can make sure it won’t sit around on your porch for someone to nab. 

Package-tracking apps are a great way to deal with it. But with order tracking in the iPhone‘s Wallet app, Apple is trying to make everything as easy as pie. You don’t need to hunt through your email or open a bunch of apps to see when everything’s arriving one by one. You can see all your orders in one place.. 

Table of contents: Order tracking in Apple Wallet

1. How and when orders are tracked
2. Order something
3. Add order tracking in manually
4. See all your orders in progress
5. How well does it work?
6. More iPhone pro tips

How and when orders are tracked

There are a few different ways orders can appear in the Wallet app. 

If your device runs iOS 16 or later, and you order from a service that supports it, you’ll see rich tracking information appear in Apple Wallet automatically. It’ll show you what you ordered and when it’ll arrive, with plenty of links to manage the order.

You may also see a Track with Apple Wallet button on an order confirmation screen. Tap this button to add the shipment to your Wallet. 

If your device supports Apple Intelligence, it’ll show you orders from other merchants, too. It scans for confirmation emails in the Apple Mail app. These don’t show as much detailed information, but can still be helpful if you need to quickly find the relevant email. 

Order something

Now, you need to order something from an online store. I started writing this article after I ordered some laundry detergent, and by coincidence, I was alerted that my order was being tracked in Wallet. 

The best part is that you don’t have to do anything. After your order is processed, you get a Wallet notification that your order is being tracked. This is how it should be: no copying tracking numbers, no checking which carrier it’s through.

You get another notification when your order ships. When you open the Wallet app, you’ll see updates presented in a banner on top.

Add order tracking manually

If your iPhone doesn’t track the order automatically, you can add it yourself. This applies if you have an iPhone with Apple Intelligence — an iPhone 15 Pro or an iPhone 16 or later. 

If you open an order confirmation email in the Mail app, you’ll see an alert at the top: “Siri found an order.” Tap Track to add the order to your Wallet. 

See all your orders in progress

If you want to see all your orders in one place, open the Wallet app, tap More (⋯) in the upper right, then tap Orders. Orders in progress appear first, with the most recent update highlighted in bold green. Completed orders will appear below.

Tap on the order and you can see details like “your order number, purchase total, and the status of your payment.” A nice feature is that your order might show contact information: an iMessage business chat, phone number or email address, if you need to talk to someone. If your order requires a barcode to complete delivery or pick up from a machine, it may appear in here as well. 

Tap the ⋯ button for a few more options. Mark as Complete will remove it from the list of active orders. Mute Notifications will silence push notifications on order updates. Delete Order will remove the order from your Wallet — it will not cancel the order.

Orders added from Mail via Apple Intelligence won’t have as many details to show. However, you can tap Related Email at the bottom to bring up the order in question. If you have a monstrous email inbox where things often get buried, this might be an easier way to find your orders than sifting through the haystack. 

How well does order tracking in Wallet work?

Annoyingly, order tracking in the Wallet app seems pretty light on details. You won’t see the precise location of your package and its whole history, just when it’s going to arrive. Apps like AfterShip will show me if my package is in Illinois, Parkersburg, Columbus … but in Wallet, you only see the expected delivery date.

As it stands, the feature is a neat convenience, but for anything I really care about, I’m still going to copy the tracking number and add it to AfterShip.

More iPhone pro tips

• Change out the Lock Screen buttons from the standard Flashlight and Camera to whatever you want. There’s a giant selection of buttons you can swap in their place.
• Create Focus modes to customize notification settings for different times of day, like work, vacation, driving, personal time and more.
• Reset your iPhone with your old passcode — for up to three days later — if you forget your new one.
• Customize the Action button to toggle the flashlight, open the camera, run a custom Shortcut and more.
• Hide and lock apps with Face ID (or Touch ID) so they can’t be opened (or seen on your phone) by anyone else.

We originally published this post on order tracking in Apple Wallet on October 26, 2022. We updated the information on October 28, 2025.

You can hide apps on your iPhone so they’re completely invisible, and you can lock all kinds of apps so they require Face ID to open.

Why would you want to? Maybe you have sensitive content you don’t want anyone to see, or you don’t want anyone to know you’re using dating or hookup apps. Hiding apps is also good for staying off social media or away from addictive games. Plus, it’s a great way to declutter your iPhone’s Home Screen. You can really clean things up without deleting apps you might want to keep.

There are, however, a few essential apps on your phone that can’t be hidden. Here’s how it all works.

How to hide apps on iPhone

There are actually two levels of hiding apps on your iPhone:

1. Lock: You can lock an app with Face ID. The app will remain visible on your Home Screen and you’ll continue to see notifications. But in order to open it or see the app, you’ll need to authenticate with Face ID. (On older devices, this will work the same way with Touch ID.)
2. Hide: Hiding an app is more aggressive. The app will disappear from your Home Screen, App Library, notifications, Screen Time history and search. You can only find it inside a special Hidden Apps folder at the bottom of the App Library, which requires Face ID (or Touch ID) to open. After you swipe away from the app, you won’t see it in the app switcher — you have to go back to the Hidden Apps folder to find it again.

Lock an iPhone app with Face ID or Touch ID

If you want to lock an iPhone app, tap and hold on the app icon on your Home Screen or in the App Library. Tap on the option that says Require Face ID. You’ll see an explanatory pop-up that says, “This app will require Face ID or your passcode to open or show content in other apps. App content will not appear in notification previews or Spotlight.”

Tap Require Face ID again to lock the app.

Hide an iPhone app with Face ID or Touch ID

If you want to hide an iPhone app, and the app is available to be hidden (more on that later), you’ll see an extra option that says Hide and Require Face ID. If you pick this option, you’ll see an additional pop-up sheet that says, “This app will no longer be visible on your iPhone, except in a few places such as Settings. Face ID or your passcode will be required to reveal, open, or use Siri with the app.”

Tap Hide App again to banish it to the Hidden Apps folder.

Where to find your hidden apps on iPhone

When you want to use one of your hidden apps, swipe past your Home Screen to the App Library (keep swiping left until it appears). Scroll all the way to the bottom to find your Hidden Apps folder. Tap on it to unlock the folder. If Face ID or Touch ID fails twice in a row, you can enter your passcode.

The hidden apps will appear after you unlock the folder. You can open them up from here. If the folder is empty, it just looks blank.

As soon as you swipe back to your Home Screen or another app, the hidden folder will lock again. There’s no grace period. It can be annoying if one of the apps you’ve hidden is one you open frequently, but that’s the price you pay for security.

How to unhide or unlock apps

To revert a hidden iPhone app back to its normal, non-incognito state, tap and hold on the app’s icon and select Don’t Require Face ID. You’ll need to do one last Face ID scan to unlock it and set it back to normal. Use the same procedure to unlock a previously locked app.

What can you hide or lock?

All apps downloaded from the App Store (and other app marketplaces), including Apple’s own apps (like Apple Music Classical and Final Cut Camera) can be both locked and hidden.

However, most of the stock apps that come with the device — like Messages, Phone, Music, Podcasts and Safari — can be locked, but cannot be hidden. Some, like Phone or Messages, are just too essential to the basic operation of your device.

A small (and curious) selection of apps can’t be hidden or locked at all:

• Calculator
• Camera
• Clock
• Find My
• Magnifier
• Maps
• Settings
• Shortcuts
• Watch

In other words, try not to put any sensitive information in your alarm clock, Maps search history or … calculations.

More iPhone pro tips

Now that you’ve learned how to hide apps on your iPhone, check out more pro tips:

• You can fully customize the Home Screen. Place icons anywhere on the screen. Fans of dark mode can now enjoy alternate dark mode icons. If you have a color theme you want to match, you can tint icons to any hue you want.
• You can edit the buttons in Control Center. Add many more toggles and buttons, including those from third-party apps. You can resize some buttons to make them more prominent, and you can arrange your controls across multiple pages. In one fluid motion, you can swipe down to activate Control Center and continue swiping down to scroll through your pages.
• Standby turns your phone into a smart display when it’s sitting on your desk, your nightstand or the kitchen counter.
• Customize the Lock Screen with a bunch of widgets, aesthetics and styles. You have loads of fonts, colors, styles and themes available.
• Change out the Lock Screen buttons from the standard Flashlight and Camera to whatever you want. There’s a giant selection of buttons you can swap in their place.
• Create Focus modes to customize notification settings for different times of day, like work, vacation, driving, personal time and more.

We originally published this post on how to hide apps on iPhone in iOS 18 on August 6, 2024. We updated the information on September 27, 2024, and October 24, 2025.

In several states, Apple’s digital ID initiative enables iPhones and Apple Watch to hold a digital copy of the user’s driver’s license, in the same way these devices store credit cards and airline tickets.

The day when an iPhone can completely take the place of an old-fashioned wallet is still years away, but it’s a goal Apple is working toward. Apple Pay is making progress on replacing credit cards, you can put airline tickets in the Wallet app, and the same goes for loyalty cards.

But no wallet is complete unless it can hold a driver’s license. And that’s where Apple’s digital ID initiative comes in.

Here’s what you need to know to add your driver’s license and ID to your Apple Wallet.

How to add your ID to Apple Wallet on iPhone and Apple Watch

The first step in adding your driver’s license to your iPhone is to check what state you live in, because they don’t all support the feature. It’s a decision up to individual states, and so far, only a fraction of them offer the service.

At the time of this writing, those who live in Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Puerto Rico or West Virginia can put their official ID in the Wallet app. Still, the list is likely to grow: Connecticut, Illinois and Kentucky also pledged their support for Apple’s digital ID program, though they do not yet offer it.

Also, don’t toss your current license in a drawer. If you get pulled over by the police while driving, you need a physical copy of your license to hand over.

But that doesn’t mean the digital version is useless. The Transportation Security Administration does accept them, so a digital ID can speed up the process of moving through security checkpoints at airports. And it never hurts to have a backup at any time.

Table of contents: How to add your ID to Apple Wallet

1. Add an ID card to the Wallet app
2. Scan your driver’s license
3. Scan your face
4. Watch a how-to video
5. Relax, your driver’s license is secure in Apple Wallet

Add an ID card to the Wallet app

The process for putting your driver’s license or state ID in Apple Wallet isn’t complex. Just follow these steps.

Start by opening the Wallet app on your iPhone, then tapping the + button at the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Select Driver’s License or State ID. On the resulting page, tap on your state name.

Scan your ID or driver’s license

Now get out your physical ID, because you’ll need to take pictures of both sides of it.

The Wallet app walks you through the process of using the iPhone camera to snap images of the front and back of your license. It’s similar to electronically depositing a check, if you’ve done that.

Put your license on a dark background somewhere with lots of light. And be patient — it takes the Wallet app a second or so to get the image lined up.

Scan your face

Next, the app will use the camera to scan your face from different angles to confirm that the person requesting a digital license is who they are supposed to be. You’ll also need to take a still image. It’ll guide you through the process. You also may need to record short video clips for additional verification.

However, registering a digital ID doesn’t all happen on the iPhone. The pictures and videos you take will be submitted to your state’s Department of Transportation or a similar agency for verification.

But once the approval comes through, your license will be added to the Wallet app on your iPhone.

Watch a how-to video

The Colorado Depart. of Revenue released a video walking through the process. It’s the same process for other states, too.

Relax, your ID is secure in Apple Wallet

Because this is an Apple feature, your digital ID is protected by all the same security measures built into iPhone and Apple Watch for any of your other data. That means someone has to have your passcode or get through Face ID or Touch ID to even see it.

Even better, nobody can see any card added to the Wallet app — not even Apple — unless you show it to them.

This article on how to add your ID to Apple Wallet was originally published on May 22, 2023. We updated it with the latest information on September 19, 2024, August 19, 2025, September 30, 2025 and October 23, 2025.

Knowing how to edit or unsend iMessages on your iPhone could come in clutch. Like when you text your mom, “Finally got laid today” when you meant to say “paid.”

Thankfully, it’s easy to rewrite history in iMessage. Let me show you how this lifesaving feature works.

How to edit and unsend iMessages

Potentially embarrassing or career-ending texts aside, there are plenty of reasons you might want to edit or unsend iMessages. For one thing, you might not text everyone the same way. I bash out texts to my partner quickly and haphazardly. I text everyone over the age of 45 in complete sentences, with proper punctuation.

Even the societal rules for when to end a text with a period evoke convoluted psychology theories that could fill an entire college lecture.

If you’re texting, mistakes will be made. And sometimes, you will desperately wish you could edit or unsend a message.

To use these features, you need to be using iMessage (Apple’s blue bubble chats within its Messages app). You can’t edit or unsend SMS or RCS text messages, even if you sent from Apple’s Messages app (where they will appear as green-bubble messages). How to edit or unsend messages in other apps like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and WhatsApp will vary as well.

Edit a message on iPhone after sending it

Sometimes you don’t need to go nuclear and unsend an iMessage — simply editing it will do the trick (although recipients will be able to see the original message).

To edit an iMessage in the Messages app on iPhone, tap and hold the message to show the context menu. Tap Edit to make your changes, then tap the checkmark to confirm them. Your message will be marked as edited for both you and the recipient.

Note that you can only edit an iMessage within 15 minutes of sending it, and you can only edit a message up to five times. The recipient can also see the edit history by tapping the “Edited” indicator.

If you’re texting someone running iOS 15 or earlier, be careful — your phone will still let you edit your message, but the message will not show up edited on the other person’s phone. Instead, a second version of the message will be sent, preceded by “Edited to…”

Unsend iMessages on iPhone

You can unsend an iMessage on iPhone in a similar way. After sending an iMessage, tap and hold to show the context menu, then tap Undo Send. The other person will see that you unsent a message, but they won’t be able to read what it said. This is in contrast to message edits, where the recipient can see the edit history.

Note: If the recipient is running iOS 15 or earlier, Apple warns that they might “still be able to see your message.”

Unlike editing messages, you only have two minutes to unsend a message.

More Messages features

Now that you know how to unsend an iMessage, why not learn more about how to make the most of the Messages app? The how-tos below will show you more advanced texting techniques.

• Schedule texts to send later on iPhone to make sure you never forget to send a reminder, birthday greeting or early morning message for someone in a different time zone. You can schedule a whole slew of texts up to a week in advance, with links, photos, attachments and more.
• iMessage effects can add much more meaning, emotion and fun to your texting. You can add bold, italics, underline and strikethrough text, just like a formatted document. Even better, you can choose from a bunch of cool, animated effects.
• Check In is an iPhone feature that tracks your travels and lets contacts know when you’ve safely reached your destination.
• RCS messaging makes features like read receipts, video and file attachments and named group chats — previously exclusive to iMessage (and some apps) — possible between iPhone and Android.

We originally published this article on how to edit and unsend messages on iPhone on June 24, 2022. We updated the information on September 15, 2022, and October 22, 2025. 

If you have trouble hearing, you might miss the sound of a knock on the door, a barking dog, or even worse — a smoke detector. Or, you might miss someone calling your name when they’re trying to get your attention. It’s less serious, but much more annoying. With Sound Recognition, you can get a prominent alarm and a buzz on your Apple Watch or iPhone when your phone hears the sounds you choose.

When Sound Recognition is enabled, your iPhone will continuously listen for dangerous sounds. It could, literally, be a lifesaving feature for you or a loved one. And Name Recognition lets you train your phone on how to recognize your name. 

Here’s how to use these important safety and productivity features.

Sound and name recognition on iPhone

The iPhone is renowned for its many accessibility features, which help people with disabilities use the device. These come in handy in a variety of situations, even for people without the disabilities that the features were designed to address.

Even if your hearing is A-okay (and you can take a hearing test to make sure) you might want to enable this. Maybe you listen to loud music or video games with headphones, and you miss things like knocking on the door or people yelling your name. 

This is how to set it all up.

Table of Contents:

1. How to use Sound Recognition
2. Supported sounds
3. How to use Name Recognition
4. How well does it work?
5. More accessibility features

How to use Sound Recognition on iPhone

To turn on Sound Recognition, go to Settings > Accessibility > Sound Recognition (near the bottom). Turn on Sound Recognition. Your phone may start a small download.

Tap Sounds to pick a sound from the list to listen for. For every sound, you have an option to turn it on, and tap Alert Tones to customize the sound or haptic pattern.

Tap Haptics > Create New Vibration (at the bottom) and you can even create your own vibration pattern, a feature that has surprisingly stuck around since iOS 5. Tap Tone Store for the option to buy a short piece of music to play instead, an even older feature that is amazingly still available. Otherwise, you can pick from the default iPhone sounds and haptics.

Supported sounds

The iPhone can recognize:

• Alarms
  • Fire
  • Siren
  • Smoke
  • Custom Alarm
• Animals
  • Cat
  • Dog
• Household
  • Appliances
  • Car Horn
  • Door Bell
  • Door Knock
  • Glass Breaking
  • Kettle
  • Water Running
  • Custom Appliance or Doorbell
• People
  • Baby Crying
  • Coughing
  • Shouting

If you tap Custom Alarm or Custom Appliance or Doorbell, you can train it recognize the unique sound of some modern device in your house. Give it a custom name, make sure your house is otherwise quiet, then you can record the sound it makes. You’ll have to play the alarm five times to train it. 

How to use Name Recognition on iPhone

Available in iOS 26, Name Recognition is a great new addition to the Sound Recognition feature. Activate it by going to Settings > Accessibility > Sound & Name Recognition > Name Recognition. Tap to enable Name Recognition. Your device will download support for the feature in your language. 

Tap Set Up Name Recognition to get started. Type in your name (or whatever people call you) and tap Next. If it’s pronounced in an odd way, you can tap Record Your Pronunciation to make sure it gets it right. 

You can add multiple names, if people call you a few different things — a nickname, Mom, Dad, Grandpa, whatever people call you. Tap Add Name to add another one. 

To remove one, tap Edit at the top of the screen, then − and Delete. Tap Done (the blue checkmark) to save your changes. 

How well does it work?

Sound Recognition has improved significantly since Apple introduced it in iOS 14 in 2020. And name recognition in iOS 26 is a fantastic addition. It used to confuse my whistling for police sirens; it no longer does. Enabling it used to disable Hey Siri; it no longer does.

The only obvious downside I found is that it perpetually enables an orange dot in your status bar to indicate your microphone is active. Hey Siri doesn’t require an orange dot in the status bar. (Vocal Shortcuts also trigger the orange dot. It would be nice if Apple could make an exception for both of these.)

For many people, the benefits of being alerted to things they might not be able to clearly hear far outweigh the downsides of a few erroneous notifications or an orange dot. As Apple’s machine learning acumen and chip design improve year-over-year, future iPhones will get even better and more accurate.

For now, you can add Sound Recognition to the long list of lifesaving features on Apple devices.

More accessibility features

• Vehicle Motion Cues will help reduce feelings of motion sickness. With the feature turned on, dots along the edge of your iPhone screen will animate in sync with the motion of the plane, train or automobile you’re riding in.
• Eye Tracking lets you control your iPhone entirely with your eyes. You can use this feature in a pinch if you need to use your phone with soapy hands while doing the dishes.
• Music Haptics add another dimension to audio: vibration. The feature brings to life a track of rhythmic vibrations and patterns timed to certain Apple Music songs.
• Vocal Shortcuts let you control your phone by speaking a command out loud. Think “Hey Siri,” but for running your own custom actions from Apple’s Shortcuts app.
• Live Speech plays whatever you type into the keyboard out of the speakers. And Personal Voice lets you train your phone to mimic your own voice.
• Guided Access locks down your iPhone to a single app before you hand it to a kid or someone else.

We originally published this post on sound recognition on April 30, 2022. We updated the article with new information on October 15, 2025.

Update: Sorry, the free weekend to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown if you don’t subscribe to Apple TV has passed. But look below for when the Peanuts Thanksgiving and Christmas specials stream for free and add them to your calendar.

Families with a tradition of watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown can enjoy the classic Peanuts Halloween special on Apple TV for free this weekend. And you can watch it online, not only with an Apple TV set-top box, Mac, iPad or iPhone.

How to watch the Charlie Brown Halloween special

Apple owns the rights to all Peanuts holiday specials. That means the way to once again see Charlie Brown get a bag of rocks on Halloween, watch Snoopy take on the Red Baron, and get inspired as Linus tries to present the most sincere pumpkin patch in the world is on the Apple TV streaming service.

But the classic is not permanently locked behind a paywall. Apple made the Halloween special free to non-subscribers to enjoy at any time on Saturday, October 18, 2025, and Sunday, October 19, 2025.

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is available to paying subscribers of Apple’s streaming service anytime.

Watch on Apple TV or online

Apple users can watch the holiday classic through the Apple TV app, which is available in the App Store for iPhone and iPad. There’s also a Mac version in that app store. Install any or all of these as you would any software.

Once you have the application installed and running, look around for It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (direct link).

But enjoying the classic Charlie Brown Halloween special doesn’t require an Apple TV box, Mac or other Apple device. The service is watchable on Windows, Android and more.

For anyone with a computer running Windows or Chrome OS, watching Apple’s video content is as easy as visiting the Apple TV website. The same goes for Android phones and tablets. You’ll access the Peanuts special in a browser. You can jump straight to the It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown page.

3 months of free Peanuts holiday specials via Apple TV

The Charlie Brown Halloween show isn’t the only Peanuts holiday special that Apple will make available for anyone to watch for free this year.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is also an Apple TV exclusive, but it’ll be open to all on Saturday, November 15, 2025, and Sunday, November 16, 2025. And if you’re looking to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas for free, it will be available on Saturday, December 13, 2025, and Sunday, December 14, 2025.

While the three classics will be free, Peanuts fans might want a subscription to Apple TV. The service offers It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown. Plus there’s Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne, a fresh New Year’s Eve special created by Apple. Beyond the holidays, there’s The Snoopy Show, a new series that stars the irrepressible beagle, as well as Camp Snoopy.

The Apple TV streaming service costs $12.99 a month, and includes a wide variety of other children’s programs.

Apple kept Split View side-by-side multitasking in iPadOS 26 — despite what you might have read online. And setting it up is as easy as a couple of flicks of your finger.

Here’s how to keep using Split View on your iPad. Apple even made a video that demonstrates what to do.

iPadOS 26 doesn’t kill the iPad’s Split View

iPadOS 26 brings a new multitasking system called Windowed Apps. It features resizable, floating windows and macOS-style controls. It makes iPad more Mac-like than ever before. But that doesn’t mean Apple tossed out all the old ways of working with app windows. Most notably, Split View is still around.

Many iPad users consider this the ideal multitasking arrangement for a tablet, with two applications dividing the entire screen between them. It makes tasks like referencing documents while writing a message more efficient. Users can adjust the width of each app to focus on what matters most, and the setup allows for seamless drag-and-drop between apps, such as moving text, photos or files.

The new Windowed Apps multitasking system in iPadOS 26 is ideal for making the iPad act like a Mac, but Split View lets the iPad act like a tablet.

How to use Split View in iPadOS 26

In iPadOS 26, Split View is a feature of the whole Windowed Apps system — don’t think of the two as rivals. That’s important because in order to use Split View you must have Windowed Apps activated.

To do so, open the Settings app on your iPad, tap on Multitasking & Gestures, then choose Windowed Apps.

Now, return to the home screen and open two applications. You might need to open one, then tap and hold on the lower right corner of its window to resize it before opening the second one. Again, you might tap and hold on the lower right corner of the second app’s window to resize it and reveal the previous app.

Here’s the fun part: putting the two applications into Spilt View. Tap and hold one of them at the top edge and move it around a little bit. Now flick it toward the left side of the screen while letting go. It’ll snap into place, taking up exactly half the screen. Now repeat the process with your second application, but flick it toward the right edge of the screen.

And there you go: your iPad is now arranged with the apps in the familiar Spilt View.

The thick black line that divides them has a handle in the middle. Tap and hold on it, then slide the divider left or right, giving each application, exactly as much or as little of the screen as you wish.

To get out of Split View, you need only move and resize the applications. Or close them.

Another Split View option: Buttons

There’s a second option for setting up applications in Split View. There are buttons slightly hidden in the iPadOS 26 user interface to arrange  

Once you have the two apps open on your iPad, tap and hold the window controls (with the red, yellow and green dots) in the upper-left corner of one of the app windows. This opens a drop-down box with various options to automatically arrange your open windows.

On that pop-up, under Fill & Arrange, tap on the icon that shows an iPad screen divided in half. That puts your two open windows to Split View.

Watch the Apple video on iPad Windowed Apps and Split View

Anyone who needs more guidance on using the Windowed Apps multitasking system in iPadOS 26, and using Split View, can watch a video tutorial from Apple:

What about Slide Over?!

In the last screenshot, you’ll see an option for Slide Over. Don’t grab your iPad and try to use that feature unless you’re running iPadOS 26.1, currently in beta testing.

Still, fans of iPadOS 18 can be happy that Slide Over will soon rejoin Split View as a multitasking option on iPad.

In iOS 26, you can use Apple Cash in a group chat to make it super-easy to split a bill. You won’t need to chase down everyone separately if you use this incredibly convenient feature.

Here’s how to request money and send payments using Apple Cash from a group chat.

How to use Apple Cash in a group chat

Apple Cash is a quick way to pay friends and family using Apple Pay, the mobile digital payment service built into the iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad.

You can use Apple Cash directly from iMessage or by holding two iPhones together (for transactions with someone who’s not in your contacts). It’s fast, convenient and doesn’t require using any third-party apps.

And in iOS 26, it becomes even more useful when you need to split a bill with some friends or colleagues, because you can use the beloved service in group threads.

Note: Everyone in the group chat will need to be running iOS 26 for this to work. (The feature also works on iPad, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro.)

Table of contents: How to use Apple Cash in a group chat

1. Set up Apple Cash
2. Request Apple Cash payments from a group chat
3. Pay someone individually from a group chat
4. More Apple Cash features

Set up Apple Cash

If you and your friends are not yet using Apple Cash, that’s where you need to start. First, open Settings on your iPhone, tap Wallet & Apple Pay at the bottom of the screen, then turn on Apple Cash. You should see it appear under “Payment Cards” — tap Apple Cash, then Continue to go through the setup process.

You must be at least 18 years old to use Apple Cash. Plus, your Apple Account needs to use two-factor authentication.

Request Apple Cash payments from a group chat

If you and the gang have gone splitsville on food, concert tickets, ax throwing or what have you, there’s an easy way to get paid back all at once by using Apple Cash in a group chat.

If you’re the one who made the big purchase, you don’t need to go through the hassle of requesting individual payments from everyone. From the group chat, tap the + menu, then tap Apple Cash. Enter the amount of money you need each person to pay you back; swipe up for a precise keyboard.

Then tap Request and send the message to everyone. If you don’t need the same amount of money from each person, you can also tap Request Without Amount. That way, everyone can pay you back in different quantities. 

Tap the blue Send button (↑) to send your request. Other people in the group will see a big button that says Pay, so they can quickly pay you the amount you requested.

Pay someone individually from a group chat

If you want to send some money to someone, you can do that directly. But if you want everyone else to see what you’re paying, you can do it in a group chat, too. 

From your group conversation, tap the + menu, then tap Apple Cash. Next, enter the amount of money you want to send and tap Send. Then, choose a recipient from the group.

Tap the blue Send button (↑) to send the payment along. 

More Apple Cash features

• How to pay with an Apple Cash card number
• How to set up automatic, scheduled Apple Cash payments
• How to transfer Apple Cash to bank

Your iPhone is too trusting of new USB accessories. Plug your handset into the wrong public charger at an airport or coffee shop and it might get hacked. Fortunately, there’s a setting you can (and should) change that prevents your iPhone from falling victim to data theft via juice jacking.

Here’s what to do. And don’t worry … it’s easy. I’ll walk you through it.

How to protect your iPhone from juice jacking

Suppose you’re in an airport when you spot a convenient public USB charger. Your iPhone battery is low, so you plug it in. What you don’t realize is that the charger secretly belongs to a cybercriminal who’ll use it to pull your personal data off your device. Ahhh, your iPhone has been a victim of juice jacking!

Now that I’ve deliberately scared you, it’s time to walk it back a bit. While security researchers proved that juice jacking is possible, no one has ever been caught doing it. Still, it’s enough of a threat that the U.S. Army Cyber Command felt the need to send out a warning.

To prevent juice jacking, iPhones used to warn users when plugged into a USB port that tried to establish a data connection, not just send power. That doesn’t happen anymore. Maybe Apple decided there wasn’t enough of a threat to iPhones from juice jacking, so it changed the default setting so your iPhone now trusts every connection.

No matter what Apple thinks, making your iPhone more suspicious of USB devices seems prudent, especially for those of us who frequently use public charging USB ports. So let’s change that default security setting.

Change this one setting to shield your iPhone from juice jacking

To make your iPhone less trusting when connecting to USB devices, start by opening the Settings app. Next, scroll down to Privacy & Security and tap on it. On the resulting screen, scroll way down to Wired Accessories and tap on that.

You’ll see that the default setting is Automatically Allow When Unlocked. Change that to Ask for New Accessories.

And you’re done. I told you it would be easy.

Hereafter, whenever a USB device you plug into your iPhone wants to make a data connection, you’ll be asked to approve it. The pop-up says, “Allow accessory to connect?” and gives the name of the device.

You won’t need to do this for cables that simply want to send power to your handset. 

Going forward, if you plug your iPhone into a public charging port and get the pop-up message asking if you approve the connection, hit “Don’t Allow.” There’s no good reason for a data connection when recharging. It could be someone trying juice jacking on your iPhone.

Additional steps

If you’re really concerned about your handset getting hacked this way, you can invest in data-blocking USB-C cables made by Plugable or others.

Read my guide on preventing juice jacking to learn more.

Plugable USBC-CC1M Data Blocker, Charge Only Cable (2m/6.6ft, 240W)

$15.95

Plugable’s 2m (6.6ft) 240W USB-C to USB-C cable is designed exclusively for charging. It includes no data lines for safer use in public spaces and protection against juice jacking. Delivers clean, reliable power to laptops, tablets, and phones. 

Buy from Amazon

05/27/2026 04:19 am GMT

If you’re uncomfortable with social media apps tracking your movements, or worried about data falling into the wrong hands, here’s how to stop them using your iPhone’s built-in location settings.

If you find yourself traveling to a country with an authoritarian government, clearing your phone’s location history is a safe bet. Or if you’re moving to a different city or to a new job, it can be annoying seeing travel suggestions to the wrong place. Resetting your location history will start from a clean slate.

These moves may also protect you from shady data brokers, who spy on and sell your movements. Here’s how.

How to check your location settings on iPhone

Apple keeps your location history for a wide array of features in the iPhone. Photos uses your location data to find collections of pictures and videos that were taken at home and on vacations or trips to create Moments. Siri and Reminders use your location history so that you can ask to be reminded “when I get home.” Maps uses patterns in your location data so that you can be alerted how long it’ll take to drive to work or to the store.

You may want to check up on your location settings from time to time.

Keep in mind that Apple protects your location data. All of the location tracking and processing for these features happens on your iPhone and is end-to-end encrypted. You can read all about how Apple treats your privacy for each service on their Feature Privacy page, or you can peruse their Location Services Privacy White Paper.

Protect your movements from shady data brokers

That’s not to say other apps you have installed won’t track you. Every time you upload a photo or video to social media, the location information in the photo builds a map of places you visit. Shady third-party developers — and even The Weather Channel — have been accused of selling location data to advertisers. This piece by the New York Times is a good introduction to the topic. Since its publication, Apple has cracked down on developers misusing the iPhone’s built-in advertising ID system, but there are still workarounds developers can use.

Don’t let apps track you

There’s one super-fast, easy way to turn off a bunch of useless data tracking behind your back. Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking and disable Allow Apps to Request to Track. 

This won’t break any functionality. It denies apps the ability to use your device’s unique ID to follow you across apps and websites on the internet. 

How to clear your significant locations

You can see all of the locations your iPhone thinks are significant, where you’ve been recently, clear the history and turn off the location features in Settings.

To view your location history on iOS, navigate to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services (scroll to the very bottom) and select Significant Locations & Routes (also at the bottom). You’ll need to authenticate using Face ID (or your passcode) to access this page. 

Turn off Significant Locations & Routes at the top to turn off this feature.

The summary will show you how many times it has recorded you at a significant location and how much history it has. The map will show important places you’ve been in the last day. Tap a location to see it previewed on the map.

Tap Clear History to delete the last few months of records. This will not stop tracking your significant locations so long as that feature is still enabled above.

How to turn off location tracking

Go back to System Services to disable other features of the iPhone that use your location. Personally, I keep all of these enabled because I generally trust Apple, but your own feelings may vary. The arrows next to the toggles indicate if the service only sees your location under certain conditions (hollow), if the service has recently used your location (purple) or if the service has checked your location within the last 24 hours (gray).

Go back to Location Services to see which third-party apps have access to your location and when. The options include Never, Ask Next Time Or When I Share, While Using the App and Always. I recommend setting all social media apps and most other apps to Never. Try to avoid allowing While Using as much as possible. I only use Always for Weather and Maps.

You can also turn off Precise Location, if you want broad features relevant to your general area, without an app knowing your exact habits.

Turn off Apple Maps Visited Places

A new feature in iOS 26 is Apple Maps Visited Places. It logs which restaurants, places of business and points of interest you go to.

Personally, I really like the feature — I think it’s one of iOS 26’s best. It’s great for looking up which restaurants I’ve had before, when I last visited a city, etc. You can search by category, place name and more. 

But I understand why it would give someone the heebie-jeebies. Luckily, it’s easy to turn it off forever. Just go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Maps and turn off Visited Places. 

If you’d only like to clear your recent history, that’s possible as well. Open Maps, tap on your profile icon in the upper right, tap Places > Visited Places and scroll down to the bottom. You can tap Clear History to remove everything until now. You can also change the Keep Visits setting, so that locations are removed after three months or a year. 

More iPhone features

• You can fully customize the Home Screen. Place icons anywhere on the screen. Fans of dark mode can now enjoy alternate dark mode icons. If you have a color theme you want to match, you can tint icons to any hue you want.
• You can edit the buttons in Control Center. Add many more toggles and buttons, including those from third-party apps. You can resize some buttons to make them more prominent, and you can arrange your controls across multiple pages. In one fluid motion, you can swipe down to activate Control Center and continue swiping down to scroll through your pages.
• Standby turns your phone into a smart display when it’s sitting on your desk, your nightstand or the kitchen counter.
• Customize the Lock Screen with a bunch of widgets, aesthetics and styles. You have loads of fonts, colors, styles and themes available.

We originally published this post on iPhone location settings on April 29, 2022. We updated the article with new information on October 10, 2025.

Screening calls on iPhone has finally gotten good. It’s now possible to block and screen all calls from unknown numbers and lead a life of peaceful zen. Apple has added a trio of features to iPhone to screen calls: one aptly named Call Screening, as well as Live Voicemail and Silence Unknown Callers.

Using these features together gives you a great way to stop unknown callers on iPhone. The Call Screening feature pairs very well with Live Voicemail. With both of these turned on, unwanted calls will be far less intrusive, but you will still be able to pick up important calls as they come in.

Here’s how to screen calls and other annoyances without missing any crucial conversations.

How to screen calls on iPhone

With Live Voicemail, introduced in iOS 17, you don’t need to pick up your iPhone midcall to see who’s calling or what they want. You can see a transcription of their voicemail message as it’s being recorded — and you can pick up at any point, if the call turns out to be important. 

And now with Call Screening, new in iOS 26, you may not even be bothered in the first place. Anyone outside your contacts who you haven’t called before will have to explain why they’re calling and who they are, which you can see before you pick up the phone. 

These features are perfect for introverts who only want to answer a phone call if strictly necessary. They’re also currently exclusive to the United States and Canada, though hopefully the feature will roll out to other countries over time.

Table of contents: How to screen calls on iPhone

1. Turn on Call Screening and Live Voicemail
2. Choose to pick up a call or not
3. Send a call to Live Voicemail
4. Send all unknown callers directly to voicemail
5. Find voicemails in the Phone app

1. Turn on Call Screening and Live Voicemail

First, you have to turn all the features on. Go to Settings > Apps > Phone.

Scroll down a bit to get to the “Screen Unknown Callers” section. You have three options: Never lets every phone call come in, just like the bad old days. Silence will send every unknown call straight to voicemail. Ask Reason for Calling is the smart new feature in iOS 26: Your phone picks up for you, asks the reason for the call, then shows you a transcription of what they have to say for themselves. You then have the option to pick up or not. 

Scroll back up a bit to enable Live Voicemail. This is the feature that lets you see voicemails as they’re being placed, so you can choose to pick up. 

With both Live Voicemail and Ask Reason for Calling set, you’ll have multiple chances to pick up calls if they have a real human trying to get your attention, but are sent to the junk drawer otherwise (where they belong). 

2. Choose to pick up a call or not

When you get a phone call, you won’t be interrupted. Instead, you’ll initially see a black notification showing the number. It’ll say, “iPhone is asking the caller for their name and why they are calling.” You can tap View to see a live transcription.

After they leave their message — and if your phone decides it’s important — you’ll see it come through as a regular call. A transcript of what they said will be shown on screen, and you can choose to pick up the call or ignore it. 

3. Send a call to Live Voicemail

When you get a call from a contact, and you’re not sure if you want to pick up, you can tap the More (⋯) button, then hit Voicemail to send them straight to voicemail. You’ll see a live transcription of their message.

If you change your mind, you can tap Accept to pick up the call. (If your phone is locked, slide to answer the call.) You also can tap Message to send a text to the caller.

4. Screen all unknown calls to voicemail

If you, like me, don’t get a lot of important calls ever, you might not even need call screening. You can send everyone straight to voicemail. Go back to Settings > Apps > Phone, scroll down, and under “Screen Unknown Callers,” set it to Silence. It’ll automatically reject anyone not in your contacts — or who you haven’t called yourself. 

You’ll just get a little voicemail icon in your status bar when someone’s trying to reach you. And every time I see that, I get a smile on my face, knowing I wasn’t interrupted at all. This, as you may be able to tell, is my preferred setting. 

5. Find your voicemails and unknown calls in Phone

If you want to listen to a voicemail again or ring the caller back, go to Phone and tap the Calls tab. (Or, if you still have the old phone design, tap Voicemail). Tap on any voicemail in the recents list. You can see a full transcript, play the message, delete it or tap the phone button to give them a callback.

You can also find rejected calls from unknown numbers. Tap the Filter button in the upper right and tap Unknown Callers. You’ll see the full list of calls from unknown numbers and potential spam. You can tap Mark as Known if one of these is actually important, or Delete if you want it gone.

Mine are in the hundreds — scrolling through the gigantic list of spammers who never caught me is a thing of true beauty. 

More Phone tips

Now that you’ve learned how to screen calls on iPhone, do you want even more pro tips? 

• The new Phone app in iOS 26 has a simplified design — but you switch back to the old one, if you wish.
• Set up your Contact Poster to make a beautiful custom call screen for your contact.
• Record a phone call and transcribe it in the Notes app.
• T9 dialing lets you look up a contact from the keypad by typing in the letters associated with each number — like it’s 2004 again.

We originally published this post on how to screen calls on iPhone on November 13, 2023. We updated the article with new information on May 24, 2024 and October 8, 2025.

Apple released new firmware for AirPods Pro 2, AirPods Pro 3 and AirPods 4 on Tuesday that offers bug fixes for a major recent firmware upgrade. Version 8A358 merely tweaks the wireless earbuds, but is still worth installing, as it might fix a bug that’s bothered some users. 

Apple recently explained exactly how to update your AirPods firmware. The process can happen automatically, in the background, but there is a way to speed things up. It’s a good idea to manually check that you’re running the latest version, which brings bug fixes and sometimes great new features.

Read on for more details, and find all current AirPods firmware versions, along with instructions for getting the AirPods update as quickly as possible.

How to update AirPods firmware

Apple periodically releases new AirPods firmware with improvements and bug fixes. It’s well worth installing these updates because they fix bugs and sometimes contain significant new features. There’s no better example than the firmware update released in September. 

Apple typically doesn’t bother to announce AirPods firmware updates. However, the company does publish release notes so users know what’s changed. Apple’s description of the changes in 8A358 promises simply, “Bug fixes and other improvements.”

With so little to go on, it’s not yet known if the fresh firmware fixes a bug that caused some AirPods Pro 3 owners to report hearing an annoying whistling sound.

This new version follows on 8A356 from September, which brought an extensive list of changes. 

• Live Translation with AirPods works on AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation and AirPods Pro 2 and later with the latest firmware when paired with an Apple Intelligence – enabled iPhone running iOS 26 and later. Available in beta with support for these languages: English (UK, US), French (France), German (Germany), Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (Spain). Later this year, Live Translation on AirPods will add language support for Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified), Chinese (Mandarin, Traditional), Japanese, Korean, and Italian. 
• When used with an iOS 26 or iPadOS 26-supported iPhone or iPad, firmware update 8A356 also enhances the experience for Hearing Aid users. A user’s own voice and people they’re speaking to now sound even more natural and with automatic Conversation Boost, voices of people in front of the user will dynamically be amplified while background noise is reduced to improve speech intelligibility in louder environments like restaurants or the office.
• When used with an iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26-supported iPhone, iPad, and Mac, firmware update 8A356 also adds new ways to capture content and levels up the communication experience for AirPods 4, AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Pro 3.
  • Studio quality audio recording improves vocal texture and clarity when utilizing AirPods with the Camera app, Voice Memos, and dictation in Messages. Voice quality on calls, FaceTime, and CallKit-enabled apps will also sound more natural.
  • While using the Camera app or compatible third-party camera apps on iPhone or iPad, capturing photos or videos at a distance is easier than ever with a simple press-and-hold from the stem with AirPods camera remote.
  • In addition, this update includes improvements for charging reminders, Automatic Switching that now includes CarPlay and helps pause media on inactivity for users who utilize AirPods to wind down for sleep.

When you hear about an AirPods firmware update, you can force it to update by following the process described below. If you don’t want to bother, just know that firmware updates are also conducted automatically when your AirPods are charging and within Bluetooth range of an iPhone, iPad or Mac that’s connected to Wi-Fi.

Table of contents: How to update AirPods firmware

• What is the latest AirPods firmware?
• What is the latest AirPods Pro firmware?
• And what is the latest AirPods Max firmware?
• How to check AirPods’ current firmware version on iPhone or iPad
• How to force an update
• How to check AirPods’ current firmware version on Mac
• Can you update AirPods firmware on Android or Windows?
• More firmware update guides

What is the latest AirPods firmware?

• AirPods (4th generation): 8A358
• AirPods (4th generation) with Active Noise Cancellation: 8A358
• AirPods (3nd generation): 6F21
• AirPods (2nd generation): 6F21
• AirPods (1st generation): 6.8.8

Both variants of the AirPods 4 just went to8A358. AirPods 2 and AirPods 3 have been on firmware version 6F21 since October 2024. AirPods 1 firmware hasn’t been updated in years.

What is the latest AirPods Pro firmware?

• AirPods Pro (3rd generation): 8A358
• AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with MagSafe Charging Case (USB-C): 8A358
• AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with MagSafe Charging Case (Lightning): 8A358
• AirPods Pro (1st generation): 6F21

The new AirPods Pro 3 got an upgrade to 8A358, as did both variants of AirPods Pro 2. Original AirPods Pro got an upgrade in October 2024 to firmware version 6F21.

And what is the latest AirPods Max firmware?

• • AirPods Max (USB-C): 7E108
  • AirPods Max: 6F25

In May, AirPods Max (USB-C) went to 7E108, which Apple says offers “Bug fixes and other improvements.” That makes it a tweak to 7E101 from April with the promised addition of lossless audio playback. And the original AirPods Max moved to firmware version 6F25 in April. This offers only “Bug fixes and other improvements.”

How to check your current firmware version on iPhone or iPad

It’s pretty easy to quickly check if your AirPods are up to date in iOS and iPadOS.

1. Connect your AirPods to your iPhone or iPad

Start by establishing an active connection to your AirPods by opening the lid of the charging case. Or put the earbuds on, whichever you prefer.

2. Go to Settings

Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. When connected, your AirPods should be right at the top of settings, just below your Apple ID settings. Tap the name of your AirPods, and on the next screen scroll almost to the bottom where you’ll see Version, which lists the current firmware number.

For many AirPods models, look for Version to say 28358 or 6F21. The same is true for first-gen AirPods Pro. The latest AirPods Pro should read 28358, and so on. See the chart above.

3. Alternatively, go to Settings -> Bluetooth

Another way to check AirPods firmware is to go to Settings -> Bluetooth and look under My Devices for the name of your AirPods. Tap in the blue ⓘ icon — it’s an i with a circle around it next to the name.  On the resulting page, look for Version. Again, the latest version for most AirPods is 28358 or 6F21, while the newer AirPods Pro are on 28358. You also can check Apple’s list of current firmware versions.

How to force an update

If your AirPods firmware isn’t current, you can speed up the update. For close to a decade, Apple resisted revealing the process, though users figured it out. But in early 2025 Apple finally explained — at long last — exactly what to do.

Unfortunately, you can’t push a button or toggle a setting to immediately tell your AirPods to update. It’s a bit more indirect. Apple says the process to update your AirPods or AirPods Pro firmware involves:

1. Make sure that your AirPods are in Bluetooth range of your iPhone, iPad, or Mac that’s connected to Wi-Fi.
2. Put your AirPods in their charging case and close the lid.
3. Plug the charging cable into your charging case, then plug the other end of the cable into a USB charger or port.
4. Keep the lid of the charging case closed, and wait at least 30 minutes for the firmware to update.
5. Open the lid of the charging case to reconnect your AirPods to your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
6. Check the firmware version again.

If you still can’t update your firmware, reset your AirPods, then try to update your firmware again.

 This is just what we’ve said for years: the best you can do is put your AirPods or AirPods Pro in their case and plug the case into a power cable (Lightning or USB-C). Then make sure the iPhone or iPad they are paired with is close by, and wait. The firmware should update. Typically, the process takes five to 10 minutes, but it can take up to 30 minutes. Be patient!

But it’s worth the wait. AirPods just evolved into more than just wireless earbuds — they now a pocket translator, capable of real-time language conversion. And AirPods Pro 2 started acting as hearing aids with a 2024 firmware update 

Same thing goes for upgrading AirPods Max: Just plug the headphones into a charging cable. Or if you have a wireless charging case, put your AirPods on a wireless charger. Then put the headphones near your iPhone or iPad and wait.

To be clear, manually updating AirPods firmware is a problem only for people who get antsy and want the latest as soon as they can get it. For everyone else, just keep using your AirPods. The update will happen without you having to do a thing.

How to check AirPods’ current firmware version on Mac

You also can check your AirPods firmware on a Mac. Your Mac will need to be running macOS Ventura or later.

1. Go to System Settings

Click the Apple menu icon in the upper left corner of your Mac’s screen, and select System Settings.

2. Select Bluetooth

Click Bluetooth in the left-hand sidebar. Then find your AirPods in the My Devices list and select the blue ⓘ icon (an i with a circle around it next to the name). Be sure that your AirPods are connected to your Mac. It should say Connected. (If not, open the lid of the AirPods case, or select Connect next to the earbuds’ device name.)

3. Check the firmware version

After clicking on your AirPods, a popup will show information about them, including the firmware number next to Version. Check it against the firmware numbers listed above, or against Apple’s list of current AirPod firmware updates.

4. Force an update

If the firmware version isn’t up to date, pop your AirPods into their case, and plug them into a charging cable. You can put the other end of the charging cable into your Mac. The firmware should update itself. Again, it typically takes five to 10 minutes, but might take half a hour or longer. If your AirPods came with a wireless charging case, you can put them on a wireless charger.

Can you update AirPods firmware on Android or Windows?

Even though you can connect your AirPods to an Android device or a Windows computer, you cannot update the firmware on Android or Windows. You can only update AirPods firmware on iOS, iPadOS and macOS. There is currently no third-party software that can do an AirPods firmware update.

If you’re wondering how to connect AirPods Max to non-Apple devices, we have a detailed guide.

Editor’s note: We originally published this post on how to update AirPods firmware on November 14, 2019. We refresh it periodically with successive new AirPods firmware versions. Leander Kahney contributed to this post.

You can record your screen with audio (and a voiceover) on your iPhone to talk over your video. This functionality is built right into the iPhone. You don’t need to use a Mac or PC, or pay for an app to do it. 

This can come in handy for making presentations or projects — and you don’t want to waste an hour or more editing a video yourself. You can also make a recording with your voiceover explaining how something works for helping someone out, testing an app, making a tutorial, recording your reaction to watching a video or more. 

Here’s how to record your screen with audio — and add a voiceover — right from your iPhone. 

How to record your screen with audio (and voiceover) on iPhone

iOS 11 added screen recording to the iPhone and iPad, allowing you to make videos of your device’s screen. You can use it to copy videos you can’t just download, record game play, show someone how to use an app and more. Personally, I use it most often to record bugs and crashes in the apps I use so I can submit bug reports.

But did you know that you can record a voiceover, too? It can take them to the next level.

Table of Contents: 

1. Add Screen Recording to Control Center
2. Tap and hold the Screen Recording button
3. Start and stop your recording
4. More iPhone tips

Add Screen Recording to Control Center

The only way to record your screen is to add a button for it in Control Center. Open Control Center by swiping down from the top right corner of your screen (or on an iPhone SE, the bottom edge of your screen).

If you don’t see a circular Record button, you can easily add one. Tap the + button in the upper left to begin editing, then tap Add a Control at the bottom. From the top section you see, tap Screen Recording to add the button in. You can drag it to the spot you want or resize it to make it bigger. 

Tap and hold the Screen Recording button

Instead of tapping the Record button, tap and hold it. You will see an option to turn on the microphone. Enable it to record yourself, too.

Your phone will combine your microphone with whatever is happening on screen. If you don’t have headphones connected while you’re recording, your phone will play audio out of the speakers quietly so that the noise doesn’t loop back into the microphone, but any sound will be at full volume in the final recording.

If it says “Microphone On” and you don’t want any voiceover, tap it again to disable the microphone.

Start and stop your recording

Select Photos from the list of apps and tap Start Recording. You’ll get a three-second countdown if you want to close Control Center first.

Stop recording by tapping the red button at the top of the screen. All of the audio your phone plays — from videos you watch, music you hear — will be saved in the recording. When it’s done processing, you’ll get a notification that it’s been added to your photo library.

More iPhone tips

• Standby turns your phone into a smart display when it’s sitting on your desk, your nightstand or the kitchen counter.
• Customize the Lock Screen with a bunch of widgets, aesthetics and styles. You have loads of fonts, colors, styles and themes available.
• Change out the Lock Screen buttons from the standard Flashlight and Camera to whatever you want. There’s a giant selection of buttons you can swap in their place.
• Create Focus modes to customize notification settings for different times of day, like work, vacation, driving, personal time and more.
• Reset your iPhone with your old passcode — for up to three days later — if you forget your new one.
• Customize the Action button to toggle the flashlight, open the camera, run a custom Shortcut and more.
• Hide and lock apps with Face ID (or Touch ID) so they can’t be opened (or seen on your phone) by anyone else.

We originally published this article on how to record your screen with audio and voiceover on April 18, 2022. We updated it with the latest information on October 1, 2025.

You can have your iPhone read out loud any text on its screen with a useful accessibility feature called Accessibility Reader. Apple designed this feature for people who have trouble reading small text, but you will find it handy even if you don’t — in lots of situations.

For instance, your iPhone can read recipes aloud while your hands are busy cooking. Or you can quickly hear how to pronounce a word you don’t know — that’s what I use Accessibility Reader for most often. You can even hear what you’re typing as you write.

The potential applications for everyday use are incredibly broad. Here’s how to use Accessibility Reader and all of the iPhone’s Read & Speak features. 

Why have your iPhone read text out loud?

The iPhone is renowned for its many accessibility features, which help people with disabilities use the device. These come in handy in a variety of situations, even for people without the disabilities that the features were designed to address. Accessibility settings can make text on the iPhone screen bigger, buttons easier to identify, animations less jarring, and sound easier to hear.

Even if your vision is perfect, you might want to have your iPhone read to you in situations where it’s convenient. Since dictation continues if you switch to a different app, you can open a long article, start dictation and switch to a game or social media as your device reads to you.

Some writers use dictation to hear their writing spoken back to them in a different voice, which can help them identify awkward phrasing, grammatical mistakes or phrases that are repeated too many times.

Of course, hearing words and letters as you type can be useful, too. It can help kids who don’t know how to type write faster. It can help people who are not good at spelling hear their mistakes. And it lets people with poor vision hear what they are writing.

Table of contents: How to get your iPhone to read text out loud

1. Accessibility Reader
2. Read selected text
3. Read the entire screen
4. Leave the speech controller on
5. Change voice, language and speed settings
6. Add custom pronunciations
7. More accessibility settings

Make your iPhone read text using Accessibility Reader

Accessibility Reader makes it easy to listen to long articles or blocks of text, giving you audio playback controls like in the Music or Podcasts apps. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak, then enable Accessibility Reader. Then, you will see a few ways you can access this feature to read text out loud on your iPhone:

1. You can add a button to your iPhone’s Control Center. To do so, swipe down from the top-right corner to bring up the Control Center, then tap + in the upper left to begin editing. Tap Add a Control at the bottom. You can search for Accessibility Reader, or scroll down to the Accessibility section toward the bottom. You can drag the button around to a convenient spot on the screen and resize it to make it easier to tap. 
2. Open Accessibility Reader using the Action button (the small button above the volume buttons on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 and later). Go to Settings > Action Button and scroll over to the Accessibility setting. Tap Choose a Feature… and pick Accessibility Reader down at the very bottom.
3. You can also triple-click the power button to turn on Accessibility Reader.

For trying out the feature, I recommend adding a Control Center button. And if you think you’ll use Accessibility Reader a lot, try adding it to your iPhone’s Action button or setting up an Accessibility Shortcut. 

Whether you’re reading an article in Safari, a text conversation in Messages, a long email or other chunks of text, just activate Accessibility Reader from Control Center or by hitting the button. It’ll take you to the Accessibility Reader app, where you can see the full text and player controls below. You can scroll to a particular section and tap on a word to start reading from that point. You can also tap buttons to skip forward and backward, play and pause, and adjust reading speed. 

From the More (⋯) button at the top, you can tap Customize Reader to adjust its appearance. You have a variety of themes to choose from in light and dark. Tap Edit to customize it — choose the text and background color, text size, font, spacing and more. Tap Done (the blue checkmark) to save your changes. 

For even more options when using your iPhone to read text out loud, you can enable Speak Selection and Speak Screen. Dictation uses the same voice you use for Siri, but you can tap Voices to pick a different one. (You also can change Siri’s voice by going back to Settings > Siri & Search > Siri Voice.)

Read selected text out loud

There’s a simpler solution for getting your iPhone to read text aloud if you just need a few words or sentences read out loud. Wherever you are, you can tap and hold to select text, tap the arrow to bring up the full menu, and tap Speak. You can select text from websites and apps, iMessages and even printed words and handwriting from pictures in your photo library.

If you don’t see this option available, make sure you have it enabled in Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak > Speak Selection. You can also choose to enable Highlighting to see the words animate as they’re read. 

Speak screen

If you don’t like using Accessibility Reader, there’s another solution for getting your iPhone to read text aloud called Speak Screen. Find it in Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak. Turn it on to enable a new gesture; just swipe down from the top of the iPhone’s screen with two fingers to start the feature. This gesture can take some practice to get right — you need to swipe down from the center, from the Dynamic Island (or notch).

When you activate it, your phone will dictate a full article in Safari, an entire iMessage conversation, all of the text in a picture and more — without switching to the Accessibility Reader app. A control will appear on-screen where you can change the dictation speed, pause, and skip forward or backward. Your phone will continue reading to you even if you switch to a different app.

Leave the speech controller on

If you have a hard time doing the swipe-down gesture and you want to read the entire screen on a regular basis, you can keep the Speech Controller on-screen all the time. Go back to Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak > Speak Screen and turn on Show Controller. It won’t get in the way — you can make it transparent by setting the Idle Opacity, and you can move it out of the way by dragging it around.

Tap on the widget to access play/pause controls, skip forward/backward, or switch to open Accessibility Reader. 

Change voice, language and speed settings

You can customize the voices that read text aloud on your iPhone by going to Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak.

Then tap Voices, pick the language (likely English, if you’re reading this article) and choose a voice. You can use any of your personal voices and any of Apple’s system voices. They’re grouped by region. Tap the Play button to the left to hear a quick sample. Any of the “Enhanced” or “Premium” voices will be higher quality. The “Novelty” voices at the bottom of the screen are kind of bizarre.

Customize the voice on the previous screen by adjusting the sliders for rate, pitch and volume. If you want to get advanced, you can tap Equalizer. (And if you mess it all up, just tap Reset Voice Settings.)

Add custom pronunciations for reading text out loud on iPhone

If there’s a proper name (or uncommon word) that keeps getting mispronounced when your iPhone reads text out loud, you can correct it yourself. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak > Pronunciations (at the bottom).

Tap + in the upper right. First, type in the spelling, then tap the microphone icon and say how it’s supposed to be pronounced. It’ll convert that to the correct phonetic symbols. You can tap Languages to set whether the pronunciation should apply to all languages or just one in particular. Ignore Case will apply your custom pronunciation no matter how it’s capitalized; uncheck that, and it’ll only correct it when written as you wrote it yourself. You can also uncheck Apply to all apps to specify where it should apply. 

More accessibility features

After learning how to make your phone read text out loud, check out these other great accessibility features:

• Vehicle Motion Cues will help reduce feelings of motion sickness. With the feature turned on, dots along the edge of your iPhone screen will animate in sync with the motion of the plane, train or automobile you’re riding in.
• Eye Tracking lets you control your iPhone entirely with your eyes. You can use this feature in a pinch if you need to use your phone with soapy hands while doing the dishes.
• Music Haptics add another dimension to audio: vibration. The feature brings to life a track of rhythmic vibrations and patterns timed to certain Apple Music songs.
• Vocal Shortcuts let you control your phone by speaking a command out loud. Think “Hey Siri,” but for running your own custom actions from Apple’s Shortcuts app.
• Live Speech plays whatever you type into the keyboard out of the speakers. And Personal Voice lets you train your phone to mimic your own voice.
• Sound Recognition will continuously listen for certain sounds and will notify you when they’re recognized.
• Guided Access locks down your iPhone to a single app before you hand it to a kid or someone else.

We originally published this article on how to make your iPhone read text out loud on April 11, 2022. We updated it with the latest information on September 30, 2025.

You can scan a QR code directly from your iPhone — you don’t need to download a third-party app to get the information you need. Apple even gives you three ways to do it. You can scan a QR code using your iPhone’s camera, using a shortcut in Control Center, or directly from an image in your Photos library

As QR codes become increasingly prevalent, it’s good to know these methods. If you’re in a restaurant and you want to open the digital menu or join the Wi-Fi network, you don’t want to fiddle with installing a third-party app.

To learn three ways you can scan a QR code using your iPhone, keep reading or watch our short video.

Scan a QR code on iPhone

QR codes (short for “Quick Response codes”) provide an easy way for businesses and organizations to deliver links to informational websites and apps. The black-and-white square symbols can be scanned by iPhones and Android devices, providing an easy way to connect users with event tickets, discount coupons and other offers quickly and efficiently.

Use of QR codes spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, when restaurants and other businesses began using them as a touchless way to convey information. Now, they’ve become an essential way to deliver info that can be updated digitally, without the need for costly physical printing.

Table of contents: How to scan a QR code on iPhone

• What is a QR code?
• Use the iPhone’s camera to scan a QR code
• Add Apple’s QR code scanner app to Control Center
• Scan QR code from an image (photo or screenshot)

What is a QR code?

QR codes were invented for labeling automobile parts in 1994 by Masahiro Hara of Japanese company Denso Wave.

The unique-looking symbols feature “black squares on a white background with fiducial markers, readable by imaging devices like cameras, and processed using Reed–Solomon error correction until the image can be appropriately interpreted,” according to Wikipedia. “The required data is then extracted from patterns that are present in both the horizontal and the vertical components of the QR image.”

Use the iPhone’s camera to scan a QR code

The iPhone camera has other tricks up its sleeve, too. Using Live Text, you can copy words out of the camera or even translate them into different languages.

Add Apple’s QR code scanner app to Control Center

For a nicer (and faster) experience, you can add Apple’s Scan Code control to Control Center to scan QR codes on your iPhone.

1. Swipe down from the iPhone’s top-right corner to open the Control Center. Either press the + icon in the upper left or long-press on a blank part of the screen to customize the Control Center. Tap Add a control, then tap Scan Code to add the iPhone’s built-in QR code scanner. Drag to rearrange the control’s place in the list, if desired.
2. From Control Center, tap the Scan Code button (which shows a tiny QR code icon) to open the app. A square targeting bracket with rounded edges will open on your iPhone’s screen. Center the QR code in the brackets. (If you need more light, tap the flashlight icon.)
3. Unlike the camera, Apple optimized this app for scanning QR codes. The code should open immediately — you don’t need to confirm by tapping a button.

If you scan QR codes regularly, this method proves much faster than using the Camera app.

Scan QR code from an image (photo or screenshot)

What if you take a picture or a screenshot of a QR code? How do you scan it if it’s in your Photos library? Do you need a second phone? No.

1. To open a QR code stored in your photo library, just open the Photos app. You can tap the Search button at lower right and type in “qr code” to see all the codes in your photo library.
2. From any photo with a QR code in it, just tap and hold on the code. You’ll see a pop-up menu that will show your options, such as “Open in Safari” or “Join network.”

We originally published this post on how to scan a QR code with an iPhone on January 29, 2024. We updated it again on September 29, 2025, after the release of iOS 26.

iOS 26 includes an anti-spam feature that can protect you from getting bombarded with text message spam on your iPhone. You just have to activate it.

It’s easy. Here’s what to do to save yourself from the hassle and potential cost of spam texts.

Text message spam is a real problem

Everyone knows about email scams, but criminals discovered that people are more likely to trust text messages that falsely claim to be from a bank, a delivery service, a government agency, etc. That’s why Americans get tens of billions of spam texts every year, and the problem keeps getting worse.

Fortunately, iOS 26 adds a simple way to save from being bombarded with text messages coming from unknown senders by putting them in a folder where you can look at them later, or easily ignore them. Whichever you prefer.

To be clear, your iPhone also tries to filter out messages from known spammers, but we all know that plenty of bad ones still get through. That’s why iOS 26 lets users send every text that comes from an unknown sender to separate area. You also won’t get an alert that this type of message arrived unless you want to.

That said, messages from unknown senders are not deleted. If you’re expecting one from your dentist, car repair shop, etc., you can easily check in the Unknown Senders folder for it. Read on for details on how to do all of this.

How to block spam text messages

Activating this iOS 26 feature is easy. Open the Messages application on your iPhone, and then tap on the Filter button at the top right of the screen (as shown in the image above). That’ll open a drop-down window. Tap Manage Filtering in that window.

On the resulting screen, look for the Unknown Senders section, and toggle on the switch next to Screen Unknown Senders.

Now, your primary list of texts only includes ones coming from friends, family and companies that you’ve already established that you want to talk to.    

If you’d like an alternative method to set this up, you can go to Settings > Apps > Messages > Screen Unknown Senders to flip the same toggle switch.

Control notifications

Don’t leave that Settings screen because now you need to make some decisions about whether you want to be notified about incoming texts from unknown senders.

The quick, obvious answer is “no,” but remember that many websites use texts to send unlock codes. As these might come from an unknown sender, you don’t want them lost. Fortunately, iOS 26 enables you to allow notifications for time-sensitive texts, like verification codes, but not for other texts.

To control notifications for text from unknown senders, once again open the Messages app on your iPhone, and then tap on the Filter button at the top right of the screen. That opens the drop-down window that should now be familiar. Tap Manage Filtering in that window — this is all the same as the process you went through to Screen Unknown Senders.

On the resulting screen, look for the Unknown Senders section, then tap on Allow Notifications. That opens another screen.  To be sure you get notifications for verification codes, toggle on the switch next to Time Sensitive (see image above).

Note that there are also toggles that will result in you getting notifications when you receive texts from a person, or ones that that are related to business transactions, or texts that offer sales and deals. Be careful… you’re on a slippery slope here. Toggle on too many and you’re getting hassled again. 

To be clear, choosing to get a notification of a text doesn’t change where the text gets filed. It’ll still go into the Unknown Senders folder.    

Find those hidden messages

If you’re waiting for an overdue text from a company or individual, you can check to see if it was moved to the Unknown Senders folder.

Open the Messages app on your iPhone, and then tap on the Filter button at the top right of the screen. That opens a drop-down window. Check to see if there’s a number showing next to Unknown Senders on that window (see image above). That’s how many texts have been added to the Unknown Senders folder since the last time you opened it.

Now tap on Unknown Senders to open the folder. Maybe the one you’re waiting for is in here.

Occasionally check the Unknown Senders folder

You should periodically check the Unknown Senders folder. Hiding every text that comes from someone you don’t know will surely save you from scammers and irritating marketers, but it might also prevent you from seeing messages from people you didn’t realize you want to talk to.

Maybe a friend of a friend got your number and wants to invite you to a party. Perhaps your doctor’s office needs to confirm your appointment. Could be a message from that guy you met at the bar last night. All of these would go into the Unknown Senders folder. You should check every now and then.

And doing so would make politicians very happy. They fundraise via text messages, and are freaked out that these can get hidden by iOS 26.

The Messages app notifies you that you have texts you might want to look at. It puts a number next to the Filter button indicating how many texts have been added to the Unknown Senders folder since the last time you opened it (( as shown i the images above).

There are a lot of things you can do with old iPhones. In fact, it might be worth keeping them around rather than trading them in. You can use an old iPhone as a DIY HomePod, a games console, a camera, a weather station, a smart display or a digital clock.

Here are the nine things you can do with an old iPhone. Keep reading or watch our video.

What to do with old iPhones

Easily the most common way to dispose of an old iPhone is to hand it down to someone else as their new device. Ask your friends or people you know with kids or older relatives in their family to see if they know anyone in need of an upgrade. Then, follow our guide on how to prepare to give it away.

Alternatively, you can trade in your old iPhone for cash back. (We recommend our own buyback program, which offers top dollar for used Apple gear.)

But you’re not here for that — here are the nine things you can do with your old iPhone if you decide to keep it. (We have tips for what to do with an old Mac, too!)

Table of contents: What to do with old iPhones

1. DIY smart speaker

Even a HomePod mini is a little pricey for most folks at $99. If you have an old phone sitting around, you can convert it into a room-filling speaker for a fraction of the price (provided it’s not a giant room).

There’s a category of cheap speakers that work kind of like a wireless charger — you don’t need to do any Bluetooth pairing, you just sit the phone on top and it magnifies the sound through induction. It can get several times louder with significantly broader bass.

This black one on Amazon is around $15, or if you want something slightly nicer-looking, this one has a wooden finish at around $25. I have a similar one sitting in my bathroom. I just sit my phone on top, and suddenly it’s loud enough to hear in the shower, all the way from the sink.

Sit one of these on your kitchen counter or a living room side table with an old iPhone plugged in on top of it. If it’s an iPhone 6s or newer, you can turn on “Hey Siri” so it responds to voice commands just like a HomePod. That’s in Settings > Siri & Search > Listen For > Hey Siri.

You could also pick up a speaker dock, like this Belkin Soundform Elite Hi-Fi Smart Speaker and Charger, or Altec Lansing’s Octave Wireless Bluetooth Speaker with Smartphone Dock. Both of these are wireless chargers, so if your old iPhone needs a Lightning connector to keep it charged, there are plenty of older speaker/chargers with Lightning on eBay.

2. Use old iPhone as a security camera

Using AtHome Video Streamer, you can turn loads of old iPhones into a DIY baby monitor, dog camera or CCTV security camera.

It runs on devices as old as the iPhone 5s and iPad Air from 2013 for maximum compatibility.

You just install the streaming app on your old phone and the viewer app on your current one, set up a username and password and you can build up any number of home cameras.

On the Cult of Mac Store, you can pick up a convenient adjustable tripod to keep your phone mounted for $45. You can also get a super wide-angle lens with a screw-on universal attachment for monitoring the whole room.

AtHome Video Streamer:
Price: Free
Download from: App Store

AtHome Camera Monitor:
Price: Free with ads ($1.99 to remove)
Download from: App Store

3. A secondary dumb phone

Staying focused when there’s a whole internet at your fingertips, sending you notifications, begging to be opened again is challenging. Maybe George R. R. Martin has the right idea, writing his novels on an ancient PC running MS-DOS.

You can turn your old phone into a secondary device with limited functionality.

Sign out of iCloud and turn off iMessage, so you stop getting texts. Sign out of or delete all the apps except for the bare minimum you want to use: crosswords, a game or two, podcasts, music, your alarm. This lite phone will help you relax when you want to unwind with a few simple things.

Or you can take the opposite approach: Delete every app off your phone, but stay signed into iMessage and the like so you can keep in touch without any games or distractions. Maybe you even give it a SIM card, so you can choose to go out with either your smartphone or dumb phone.

4. Webcam with Continuity Camera

Even an old iPhone has a better camera than a pretty expensive webcam. If your device is running iOS 17, you can use Continuity Camera to use it as a webcam with your Mac. It’ll up your game on remote meetings or live streams.

Here’s how Continuity Camera works — and check out this MagSafe display mount.

You can also install Camo. It enables advanced features like video recording, graphics overlays, fine-tuned controls for focus and exposure and more. And it runs on older devices that don’t otherwise support Continuity Camera.

Read more about Camo here.

5. iPhone B camera

You know what’s better than one camera for shooting your YouTube epic? Two cameras! Turn your old iPhone into a B camera for multicamera productions.

iPhones have been able to record 1080p video since the iPhone 4s in 2011. Older iPhones have tiny sensors with bad low-light performance (depending on how old they are) but in a well-lit studio, you could easily use some old devices as a second or even third camera.

With multiple cameras rolling at once, you can edit between different angles to splice together two takes of the same line instead of using a jump cut.

Anything older than the iPhone 7 Plus has only a single 1× lens instead of a 2× telephoto lens, but that’s where Moment comes in. Moment makes attachable zoom lenses to get more capability out of an older phone.

You can buy a case that makes attaching lenses easy, or you can get this screw-on camera mount that attaches to any phone.

You can find all of their older hardware steeply discounted second-hand on eBay.

6. Make a DIY digital clock, weather station or wall calendar

iOS 17 has StandBy, an excellent feature that turns your iPhone into a smart display when you’re not using it. But the problem is that when you’re using your phone, your smart display is gone.

If your old phone is still new enough to run iOS 17, perfect! Otherwise, you still have some options:

• Put a phone by the door with the Weather app open.
• Make it a digital clock, using an app like Today Clock or Alarm Clock for Me.
• Keep your calendar open so you can quickly prepare for the day.

You can search for and find 3D-printed stands for any iPhone model ever made, or even fashion your own out of wood or Lego. You can also keep it perpetually plugged in and turned on in Settings > Display & Brightness (or Settings > General on older versions) > Auto-Lock > Never.

7. iPhone picture frame

Any device running iOS 10 or later can access your same iCloud Photo Library, and you can run an app called Digital Photo Frame Slideshow so you can use your iPhone as a digital picture frame. With your phone signed into iCloud, it should automatically receive all your photos as you take them.

There are loads of options for setting up your slideshow — which album to pull from, how long each image is shown, whether to show photos and/or videos, the transition between images and more.

Price: $9.99 yearly or $29.99 forever
Download from: App Store

8. Play retro iPhone games

If you have old games on your iCloud purchase history that aren’t available anymore, you can reinstall them on an older phone.

From the App Store, either tap on your profile in the upper-right corner (or go to the Updates tab) and tap Purchased, filtering by Not on this iPhone. Anything with a gray cloud icon is either too old or too new to run on your particular device, but anything with a blue icon can be downloaded.

You can revisit classics like Flappy Bird (the original), Tap Tap Revolution, Fun Run and more. Sometimes, you’ll see a popup that says “This app isn’t compatible with this device” or “Download old version” (Disco Zoo).

9. Jailbreak an older phone for retro fun

Party like it’s 2012! Older versions of iOS are easily jailbroken. I was surprised to find that the Pangu jailbreaking app still runs on macOS Sonoma, so I jailbroke my iPhone 4 running iOS 7.

On a jailbroken device, you can install all kinds of fun tweaks and wild customizations, like Cylinder. An older iPhone is no longer your main device, so you don’t have to worry about losing your pictures or putting your iCloud account in danger.

Unfortunately, a lot of the classics no longer work. The Cydia store that lets you purchase tweaks and themes is no longer functional; many repositories that once hosted downloadable tweaks have been taken offline.

I once found out how to download pirated apps like iPhoto, GarageBand and iMovie (before they were free) directly on my phone. If you want to download and rediscover the paid apps and games from long ago that you never used, a jailbroken device can come to the rescue. For legal reasons, I’ll leave that as an exercise to the readers to figure out.

We originally published this post on what to do with old iPhones on January 13, 2024. We updated the information on September 26, 2025.

The latest iPhones show the devices’ battery cycle count, helping users track the long-term “health” of the battery. Displaying this data is simple, though it’s somewhat hidden.

In addition, you can check when the iPhone 15, 16 or 17 was manufactured and first activated. (Note: This does not work with older iPhones.)

Batteries have a limited lifespan

Diamonds are forever but batteries are not. Lithium-ion batteries in phones, laptops, etc., inevitably wear out. Each one comes with a limited number of times it can be charged and discharged. A general range to expect is 300 to 500 charge cycles, but Apple uses such high-quality batteries in recent iPhone models that you can expect two or three times that many cycles. Checking your iPhone battery cycle count can give you insight into your usage habits as well as the battery’s health.

However, checking the iPhone battery cycle count is not as easy as it sounds. Simply plugging in the device to charge does not mark the start of a new cycle. That happens only after all of the battery’s power has been expended.

“You could use half of your laptop’s charge in one day, and then recharge it fully,” Apple says in a support document about battery life in MacBooks. “If you did the same thing the next day, it would count as one charge cycle, not two. In this example, it might take several days to complete a cycle.”

Knowing how many cycles a battery has been through gives a rough approximation of how heavily the device has been used — and therefore how much life it has left.

How to check your iPhone cycle count

To check your iPhone battery cycle count, open the Settings app and scroll down to the Battery section. Now tap on Battery Health. You’ll see Cycle Count clearly listed. Also displayed in that section is the month the iPhone was manufactured, as well as the month it was first used.

At one point, Apple buried the cycle count information in the About section of the Settings app. However, that made no sense and is no longer true.

Tracking iPhone battery health

The iPhone battery cycle count serves as an approximate way of determining the health of a battery. Subtracting the number of cycles already used from the estimated lifetime expectation gives a general sense of how much longer a battery will function. And the expectation is high: “Batteries of iPhone 15 models are designed to retain 80% of their original capacity at 1000 complete charge cycles under ideal conditions,” Apple says.

However, iPhone users don’t need to depend on this one method. You can look in Settings -> Battery -> Battery Health to see how much using your iPhone has reduced the total amount of power it can store. That’s the Maximum Capacity entry. The guideline is that a battery that provides less than 80% of maximum capacity should be replaced.

Knowing your iPhone cycle count helps you understand why the battery health is what it is. Discovering that the maximum capacity of a battery has dropped considerably might be irritating, but not if your device has been through 800+ cycles.     

In the example in the screenshots above, the iPhone 16 has undergone 275 charging cycles since September 2024, and its Maximum Capacity is at 96%. That gives the handset a Normal battery level.

We originally published this article on how to check your iPhone battery cycle count on October 6, 2023. We updated the information.

AirPods have a new trick that lets them work as a camera remote. Simply pressing the earbuds’ stem can control your iPhone’s Camera app and snap a picture. This proves helpful when you want to set your iPhone to take a large group photo with you in it.

However, the feature is off by default. You need to activate it. Here’s what to do.

AirPods: Much more than music

AirPods can do far more than play music and podcasts. Recent models can now handle real-time language translation, and newer AirPods Pro can act as hearing aids.

Compared to those, the new AirPods camera remote feature is no more than a party trick. But it’s still a useful one.

How to use AirPods as a remote camera control

The new camera control feature is available with AirPods 4, AirPods Pro 2 and the new AirPods Pro 3. And it requires iOS 26; be sure your iPhone is updated. Speaking of updates, your AirPods will need to be on firmware version 8A356, released this week — here’s how to check.

The AirPods camera remote feature is turned off by default. To use it, you’ll need to switch it on. There are a few steps to accomplish that, but you’ll only need to go through this process once.

First off, activate your AirPods by opening the case. Or putting them in your ears… whatever.

Now, on your iPhone, open the Settings application. When connected, your AirPods should be listed right at the top of that app, just below your Apple ID settings. Tap the name of your AirPods.

On the resulting screen, scroll down until you get to a new Camera Control section (see image above). Tap on Camera Remote.

As noted, the AirPods camera remote feature is set to Off by default. You have two choices when you activate it: Press Once — Your earbuds can tell the Camera app to take a picture when you press the AirPods’s stem once. Press and Hold — A long press is necessary to take a picture.

Because AirPods have only one button on the stem, turning on Camera Control deactivates some other functions of this button. As Apple puts it, “When using AirPods for camera actions, if you select Press Once, media control gestures will be unavailable, and if you select Press and Hold, listening mode and Siri gestures will be unavailable.”

There, you’re done. You can close Settings.

How to activate the AirPods camera remote

Next, put your AirPods in your ears. Then open the Camera application on your iPhone. Point the camera at something you want to take a picture of, then either do a quick press on the AirPods stem or a long press — whichever option you chose during the setup process. And poof, you’ve taken a photo.

Actually, your iPhone captured a burst of 10 pictures. That’s because if you take only one, someone always has their eyes closed. With 10 to choose from, you can take a look at the results in the Photos app and pick the one you like.

Happily, the AirPods camera remote doesn’t immediately take the shot. There’s a three-second delay during which the iPhone’s flash blinks to warn everyone. Without this, every picture you took this way would show you holding your AirPods.

While at least one of your AirPods must be in your ear to activate this feature, you can pull it out during the countdown if you don’t want it in your picture.

Apple says this trick works with “the Camera app or compatible third-party camera apps.” It’s so new that there’s no list of which iPhone apps support the feature. If you use an app besides Apple’s, check and see.

When to use this trick

The AirPods camera remote is ideal when taking a large group shot. This is a photo that includes a dozen people or more — way more than you can cram into a picture while you’re holding your iPhone.

Set the iPhone in a strategic location with its camera pointed at the group. (A folding travel stand really helps.)

Now, go join the group. When everyone is ready, press the stem on your AirPods to get a group photo.

Apple ecosystem for the win

The advantage of the Apple ecosystem is that its devices can cooperate in all kinds of ways. Like turning earbuds into an iPhone camera remote.

As handy as this is, Apple Watch wearers might prefer to use the wearable’s Camera Remote application. Be sure to read our guide on how to best use it.

In iOS 26, the awesome new Spatial Scenes feature lets you convert an ordinary 2D photo to a 3D scene that moves in your hand. It doesn’t have to be a recent picture or one taken with a special camera, either. You can try out Apple’s new 3D effect on any decent photo, even if it’s from 20 years ago.

You can play with Spatial Scenes in the Photos app, converting images and seeing how the effect works. But the best part is that you can set one as your iPhone’s Lock Screen wallpaper, and see it every time you unlock your phone. It even works with the excellent Photo Shuffle feature, so you’ll keep getting new ones to gawk at.

Check out the GIFs below that show how Spatial Scenes work, or watch our hands-on demo video.

Make your photos 3D with Spatial Scenes

Spatial Scenes are slightly different from Spatial Photos. A Spatial Photo has a detailed depth effect optimized for the Vision Pro, Apple’s advanced headset. You can take a Spatial Photo on a Vision Pro, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 or later. However, a Spatial Photo looks like an ordinary photo on an iPhone, iPad and Mac.

A Spatial Scene, on the other hand, lets you enjoy 3D images with a 2D screen. It does this by filling in the perspective of the image, so you can tilt your phone in your hand and see the background tilt, too.

Table of contents: Make your photos 3D with Spatial Scenes

1. Update to iOS 26 on iPhone 12 or later
2. Make a 3D Spatial Scene from your photo
3. Set a Spatial Scene as a Lock Screen wallpaper
4. Get a photo shuffle of Spatial Scenes on your Lock Screen
5. More Photos tips

Update to iOS 26 on iPhone 12 or later

First, you need to update your iPhone to iOS 26. It’s currently available as a software update in Settings > General > Software Update at the bottom of the screen, under “Upgrade to iOS 26.” iOS 26 runs on the iPhone 11, iPhone SE 2 and later (dropping support for the iPhone XS and XR).

Making Spatial Scenes requires an iPhone 12 or later. It doesn’t work on the iPhone 11 or iPhone SE 2.

Make a 3D Spatial Scene from your photo

After you update to iOS 26, open the Photos app. Browse through your photos, and tap on any to open a good candidate.

Tap the Spatial Scene button in the upper right — the tiny hexagon icon with an arrow — under the More (⋯) button. You’ll see a colorful wave sweep over the image, and a few moments later, it’ll become a Spatial Scene.

You can tilt your phone in your hand to see the perspective change. You can wiggle it around freely, up and down, left and right.

The effect looks pretty neat, but not ideal without a true 3D display, like the Vision Pro. It’s pretty great at separating the foreground subject from the background, or applying perspective to a big landscape.

However, portraits sometimes have a diorama effect — where people and animals look like flat cardboard cutouts in a 3D scene. It doesn’t make much of an effort at sculpting the shape and contours of a face, probably to steer clear of the uncanny valley.

Set a Spatial Scene as a Lock Screen wallpaper

Once you’ve made a 3D Spatial Scene out of a photo, you can set it as your Lock Screen wallpaper. Tap the Share button and tap Use as Wallpaper. From the preview, tap the hexagonal Spatial Capture button to toggle it. (If it has a slash through it, the effect is disabled.) Tap Done to customize how it looks on the Home Screen and save your changes.

Unfortunately, there’s a caveat with using a Spatial Scene on the Lock Screen. You can pinch to resize a regular photo below the clock, and your phone will fill in the gap below the clock if there’s not enough space. However, this doesn’t work with a Spatial Scene. So, the subject of the photo has to be pretty far down in the image for it not to interfere with the clock. Images of nature and cityscapes tend to work better than portraits for this reason.

Get a photo shuffle of Spatial Scenes on your Lock Screen

You can do more than manually pick a single photo — you can also get a shuffled mix of Spatial Scenes on your Lock Screen. Swipe down to show the Lock Screen, then tap and hold to customize it.

If you don’t have a Photo Shuffle already, swipe to the end and tap Add New. From the top of the screen, tap Photo Shuffle. Alternatively, you can scroll down and pick a few of the preset categories. You can customize the shuffle, pick a specific album or choose a selection of specific photos.

When you have a set chosen, tap the hexagonal Spatial Capture button to toggle it. (If it has a slash through it, the effect is disabled.) You can tap the screen to preview a few different examples. Choose how often you want it to actually shuffle by tapping the More (⋯) button and selecting either Daily, Hourly, On Lock or On Tap.

More Photos tips

Now that you’ve learned how to make and use Spatial Scenes, check out other features of the Photos app:

• How to tag photos with people and pets
• How to remove duplicate photos
• How to hide your secret photos
• How Photographic Styles make your iPhone photos aesthetic
• How to use the iPhone 16 Camera Control button

iPadOS 26 is the biggest iPad revamp since 2010, bringing new features that make the tablet far more Mac-like. And there are other enhancements too, especially the user interface overhaul dubbed Liquid Glass that Apple’s latest software brings to all of he company’s devices.

Here are the best changes to iPadOS 26 … the ones you’ll use every day. (Many of the new iPadOS 26 features can also be found in the latest iPhone software, so be sure to also read our guide to everything new in iOS 26.)

iPadOS 26: New features for Mac lovers

A vocal minority of iPad users want macOS to run on their tablets, but Apple executives have repeatedly made clear that won’t happen. “iPad’s gonna be iPad,” in the words of Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software development.

But Federighi and his team are also aware that, as iPads have become increasingly powerful — with 13-inch OLED displays and the best Apple processors — many people use them for the same tasks as Macs. So, they crafted iPadOS 26 with new features that make the tablet more Mac-like, with a familiar-feeling multitasking system complete with resizable, floating windows and macOS-style controls.

Even better, this comes without angering those who prefer the simple iPad user interface instead.

Windowed Apps

The standout feature of iPadOS 26 is Windowed Apps. This new user interface setting essentially mimics the way macOS multitasking operates. Applications open in windows. Any app that’s open comes up in front of the ones already open. These windows can be resized and moved around. Even the familiar red, yellow and green window controls from macOS appear in iPadOS 26, allowing users to close, minimize, resize or tile windows in a familiar way.

In addition to making life easier for serious iPad users, it’s a benefit to people who regularly switch back and forth between a Mac and an iPad.

To be clear, Windowed Apps is an option. The default setting is Full Screen Apps — the traditional iPadOS user interface, with every application taking up the full screen. Those who want an iPad that works much like an iPhone should use this option.

Power users who got familiar with the Stage Manager multitasking system can keep using it, too. (Apple also made it more like macOS, though.)

iPadOS 26 Menu Bar

Another of the Mac-like new features in iPadOS 26 is a Menu Bar. It lets you access the commands available in various apps with a swipe down from the top of the display or by moving the cursor to the top of the screen.

The Menu Bar is always there for every app. However, it remains hidden until the user swipes down from the top of the display or moves the cursor to the top of the screen.

Liquid Glass brings glossy new look to iPad

Liquid Glass is as much a part of iPadOS 26 as it is iOS 26. Many elements of the user interface go semi-transparent, while text remains readable. Clever effects make it seem like users are looking through glass at objects shown on the screen behind the Dock and pop-up windows.

Some early beta testers complained about Liquid Glass’ effect on readability. However, iPad users might appreciate Liquid Glass more than iPhone users because it’s easier to see on larger screens.

iPadOS 26 new features: Mac-like Files and Preview apps, plus the Journal app

Not all the amazing new iPadOS 26 features are user interface changes. The new software brings significant improvements to Apple’s stock apps, too. A prime example is the Files application.  Apple gradually built this up over the years, and with iPadOS 26, it gets much closer to the Mac’s Finder, gaining resizable columns and collapsible folders.

The Mac’s Preview app makes the jump to iPad in iPadOS 26. Users can view PDFs and images with it and even make some edits. Naturally, it supports Apple Pencil.

Plus, Apple ported the Journal app from iPhone to iPad. The app makes it easier for users to capture and write about the details of everyday moments or special events. (It supports Apple Pencil, too.)

Live Translation

Live Translation in Messages breaks the language barrier. It automatically translates texts, allowing users to type in their language and have messages appear in the recipient’s preferred language. The Messages app also translates incoming texts.

In FaceTime, iPadOS 26 makes real-time audio translations.

Pro-level audio tools

iPadOS 26 includes new features for those who use their tablet for podcasting. Users gain the ability to choose which microphone to use, and can set defaults for individual applications. The Voice Isolation feature can be used to block ambient noise in more applications. Plus, there’s a new Local Capture feature that records only one side of a conversation when producing video/audio for publication.

visionOS 26 is a modest update, but you’ll want to check out the game-changing features it includes. Widgets come to the Vision Pro in a clever way; you can freely arrange them in space or pin them to a wall. Personas are much improved, making your virtual FaceTime calls less creepy. And there are about a dozen other excellent quality-of-life features that’ll draw you back in, like app folders, a Jupiter environment, automatic iPhone unlocking and more.

You may have forgotten about the Vision Pro, but Apple hasn’t. Despite middling sales numbers, Apple is in this for the long haul — with regular software updates, a spec bump update due this year and a whole family of products in the works.

The update is out now; here’s what to expect.

Everything new in visionOS 26

The Vision Pro has a one-of-a-kind user interface. Although it’s a somewhat cumbersome product to put on, the experience of using it is like an invisible computer. Windows float in your physical space; they react to your eyes and hands as controls. As Apple’s newest and most exciting platform, it gets major new changes year-round — and this update is no exception. visionOS 26 is still compatible with the one and only Vision Pro headset, although a new model with more power could arrive this fall. 

You may have noticed that Apple skipped from visionOS version 2 to 26 — that’s so that all the annual releases use the same number, of the upcoming year. 

Table of contents: visionOS 26 new features

1. Spatial Widgets
2. New Personas are much better
3. Must-have visionOS 26 features
4. New 3D and immersive features
5. Other major updates

1. Spatial Widgets

Widgets from the iPhone, iPad and Mac come to the Vision Pro. Naturally, they’re not on the Home Screen or desktop — they’re in your real environment. 

You can pin a widget to any surface (or free-floating location in space). Put a calendar on the wall. Put a photo widget on your TV. visionOS even has a special Apple Music widget that commemorates one of your favorite albums as decorative art. 

I moved into a new house in May, and wasn’t sure where I should hang up a clock — but I was able to experiment and find the best place using the clock widget. 

You can adjust whether a widget sticks out of or embeds itself within the wall, adjust the frame width and frame color. 

2. New Personas are much better

How do you have a FaceTime call from a Vision Pro, which covers up your face? Using a Persona, which is a virtual 3D recreation of your head and shoulders. Personas looked pretty bad at first, and were marginally improved in visionOS 2 — I looked like a sickly Irish boy.

But now in visionOS 26, Personas are vastly improved. My Persona looks genuinely excellent. Others are still having problems with beards, but I can report first-hand that it handles my head of hair well. 

Must-have visionOS 26 features

3. Look to scroll automatically scrolls content when your eyes get to the edge. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work everywhere — it requires opting in by the developer of the app. But it’s very convenient in Safari. 
4. Unlock iPhone makes it much easier using your phone while you’re wearing the headset. Look at it, and it unlocks. You don’t need to type your passcode in every time.
5. The Jupiter environment lets you view the gas giant in space. You can see it from the perspective of one of its moons. 
6. You can pin an app to a wall to perfectly align it against a surface, just like a widget. This is much easier than trying to line it up yourself.
7. You can put apps in folders, which is all right. Really, all I want is the App Library on visionOS, but at least if you put in the work, you can mimic it yourself. 
8. Local sharing lets two people with Vision Pros see the same content in the same room at the same time. Annoyingly, this adds a second button to the bottom of every window for a feature I probably won’t use for at least a few years. 
9. Hand tracking at 90 Hz is much more accurate and fluid for high-precision tasks like gaming.
10. In Image Playground, you can make images using ChatGPT instead of Apple’s somewhat inferior model, just like the iPhone.

New 3D and immersive features

11. The Vision Pro now supports new accessories for drawing and gaming, like the Logitech Muse 3D pen and the PlayStation VR2 Sense controller. 
12. You can drag 3D objects out of web pages and drop them in your physical space. 
13. Spatial Scenes from iOS are now on the Vision Pro, letting you look around a photo in 3D.
14. You can natively play back wide field-of-view video, recorded on special cameras. Put yourself back in the center of the action by watching 180° and 360° videos. 
15. Safari has a new Immersive Reader mode that expands the window and removes distractions.
16. You can see spatial scenes embedded in web pages. 

Other major updates

 Check out the other major updates Apple will release today:

• Everything new in iOS 26: Liquid Glass and 70+ new features
• Best new features in iPadOS 26: Major UI revamp, Liquid Glass and more
• Everything new in watchOS 26: Workout Buddy and 15 other features
• Everything new in macOS 26 Tahoe: Supercharged Spotlight and 40+ other features

watchOS 26 is a more modest update with one headlining new feature, Workout Buddy — on top of 15 other new tweaks. You might overlook the Apple Watch after the excitement of Liquid Glass on your iPhone and Mac, but your tiniest screen still has some stuff worth checking out. 

There are loads of smart new features for those with the latest and greatest. A new wrist flick gesture silences timers and calls. Your volume automatically lowers in quiet rooms. And everyone can appreciate that the Notes app finally makes its way to the watch. 

The update is out now; here’s what to expect. 

Everything new in watchOS 26

The Apple Watch has Apple’s smallest-looking screens — but not even its 1.5-inch displays are immune from the Liquid Glass redesign. While it takes a lighter touch on the watch, you can still be wowed by its live lighting and lensing effects. And if you have a newer model, there are tons of excellent new additions to your little wrist computer.

This year’s update is compatible with the Apple Watch Series 6 and newer, Apple Watch SE 2 and both models of Apple Watch Ultra. You also may have noticed that Apple skipped from watchOS version 11 to 26 — that’s so that all the annual releases use the same number, of the upcoming year.

Table of contents: watchOS 26 new features

1. Liquid Glass
2. Workout Buddy
3. New Watch faces
4. More smart new features
5. Tweaks and changes in apps
6. Other major updates

1. Liquid Glass

watchOS 10 modernized Apple Watch apps with big, bold colors and new UI layouts. The Liquid Glass design doesn’t change how your watch works, but it does give them a glossy new dressing and appearance. 

Everything from the passcode screen to Notification Center to Control Center to the buttons in all your apps have a shiny glass sheen. 

On the Photos watch face, you can choose a new Glass style for the Time Color. The time might not have as much contrast with the background, but you’ll see the cool effect every time you raise your wrist. 

2. Workout Buddy

Workout Buddy will give you personalized encouragement during your workout, like an imaginary coach. It’ll let you know when you hit a milestone, like achieving a week-long workout streak, or literal mile markers during a run. It draws on your own fitness data to be precise. 

When the Workout Buddy chimes in, it automatically pauses and resumes the music or podcasts you’re listening to. 

New Watch faces

watchOS 26 features a handful of new watch faces:

3. Flow has lava lamp-style colorful patterns behind Liquid Glass numerals. You can choose bubbly, abstract shapes or easier-to-read numbers.
4. Exactograph has separate dials for hours, seconds and minutes. They can either be concentric (with four corner complications) or a series of big, moving dials that orbit the center like a solar system.
5. Exclusive to the Apple Watch Ultra, Waypoint builds a compass into the watch face, showing nearby points of interest and saved locations.
6. Exclusive to Hermès models, Faubourg Party shows a series of 8-bit style pixelated animations of cartoon horses.
7. More watch faces now support always-on second hands when the watch is idle on the Series 10, Series 11 and Ultra 3.

More smart new features

A few features are exclusive to the Series 9, Series 10, Series 11, Ultra 2 and Ultra 3:

7. Hypertension alerts analyze how blood vessels respond to heartbeats over a 30-day period and let you know if you’re at risk of high blood pressure. While Apple clarified that it can’t detect all cases, the company expects this feature to identify over 1 million undiagnosed cases.
8. You can flick your wrist away to dismiss a notification, mute a call, stop a timer and more.
9. Volume automatically adjusts to the ambient sound level of the room, so dings and pings don’t rudely interrupt a meeting.
10. Sleep score tracks sleep duration, bedtime consistency, how often you wake up and how much time is spent in each sleep stage. It gives you a grade out of 100. This is available on the Series 6, SE 2 and later.

More smart watchOS 26 features coming to all models:

11. Your watch will recommend apps to open at the bottom of the watch face when it thinks it may be helpful, like the Camera Remote app while you’re using the camera on your iPhone. Some recommendations are based on your daily routine and usage.
12. Similarly, Messages will recommend suggestions based on the conversation — like sharing your location when someone asks where you are. 
13. Call Screening is an intelligent feature that blocks unimportant calls from unknown numbers. People who call you will be asked by a robot to give the reason for their call, and if your phone thinks it sounds important, then it’ll ring you — and show what they said.
14. Hold Assist lets you hang up the phone when you’re put on hold. Your nearby phone will detect the music, wait for a human to pick up, and ring you again. However, Hold Assist can be fooled by systems that interrupt the music with an automated voice.
15. Messages are automatically translated if they’re sent in a different language (supported by the system). This feature is only available on Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, and requires a paired iPhone running Apple Intelligence. 
16. If you have an Apple Music subscription, you can have music automatically chosen for you based on your taste and the type of workout you’re doing.

Tweaks and changes in apps

12. The Notes app is now available on the Apple Watch. It’s great for quickly checking a recipe, shopping list and jotting down a quick thought before you forget it. A few features, like tables and math notes, are (understandably) limited. 
13. Stopwatch and Timer support always-on animations when the watch is idle on Series 10, Series 11 and Ultra 3.
14. The Photos face can rotate through featured photos of People, Pets, Nature and Cities — just like the photos Lock Screen on the iPhone. 
15. See the custom background image for group chats when someone sets one on an iPhone, iPad or Mac. Apple has a few built-in options, or you can generate one with Image Playground or choose from your own photos.
16. You can see Live Listen transcriptions on your watch when the feature is active on your iPhone. 
17. The Workout app has a new design that uses the new corner-button layout, giving you easier access to common features. 
18. The Watch face gallery has been simplified, with faces grouped into collections. It is far easier to navigate.
19. The Fire, Water, Gradient, Liquid Metal, Vapor and Toy Story watch faces have been removed. 

Other major updates

Check out the other major updates Apple released today:

• Everything new in iOS 26
• Best new features in iPadOS 26
• Everything new in watchOS 26
• Everything new in macOS 26 Tahoe
• Everything new in visionOS 26

macOS 26 Tahoe is a milestone update with a dramatic new look, new power tools for pro users — and over 45 new features. It’s still recognizably Mac, but with a fresh coat of paint (or, should I say, glass). And there’s plenty to dive into once you get settled.

Spotlight has picked up lots of new features, replacing Launchpad and adding a native clipboard manager. There are loads of great enhancements to group chats in Messages. Other great enhancements are in Safari, Passwords, Maps, Photos, Journal and more. And a few new apps come over from iOS: Phone, Journal, Magnifier and the all-new Games app.

The update is out now; here’s what to expect.

Everything new in macOS 26 Tahoe

The Mac is the workhorse of the Apple product lineup. Or, to use a more modern metaphor (coined by Steve Jobs) the Mac is the work truck that allows the iPhone and iPad to be a compact car. It runs the most powerful software, thanks to its more open nature and precise user interface.

The Mac has been mouse-driven from the very beginning, with clickable windows, menus, buttons and toolbars. macOS 26 Tahoe features a new look for all of it. It may not be as dramatic as iOS 26, but it’s certain to stir up opinions in every longtime Mac user.

This year’s update is requires at least an M1 MacBook Air, 2019 MacBook Pro, M1 Mac mini, 2020 iMac, 2019 Mac Pro and M1 Mac Studio. Also, you may have noticed that Apple skipped from macOS version 15 to 26 — that’s so that all the annual releases use the same number, of the upcoming year.

Table of contents: macOS 26 Tahoe new features

1. Liquid Glass
2. All-new Spotlight
3. Messages
4. Phone app and Live Activities
5. Other new features in apps
6. Apple Intelligence
7. Accessibility
8. Other major updates

Liquid Glass

1. Liquid Glass defines the new aesthetic on the Mac. Toolbars have entirely disappeared; buttons float on top of the window and contents. The split sidebar from macOS Big Sur is now stylized as a floating panel with a drop shadow. Window corners are far more rounded; the red-yellow-green buttons are bigger. Window titles are now left-aligned rather than centered. Tab bars are now capsule-shaped.
2. You can customize app icons with light, dark, tinted and clear icon styles in System Settings > Appearance.
3. The new Mac cursor design has rounded corners rather than pointed corners.
4. All Mac icons are rounded rectangles, and are no longer allowed to break free of the shape, matching iOS.
5. The menu bar is now fully transparent by default. If you have a wallpaper that makes it hard to read, you can enable Show menu bar background in System Settings > Menu Bar.
6. There’s a new set of drive icons for Macintosh HD, external hard drives, Time Machine drives and network drives. They’re modernized to represent solid-state storage, but they lose their realistic perspective.

All-new Spotlight

Spotlight is now supercharged as an app launcher, file browser, automation tool and clipboard manager. After launching Spotlight with Command-Space (⌘␣) you can start typing, or you can hit one of four keys to see results from a specific category:

7. Hit Command-1 (⌘1) to launch apps. You’ll see both results from your Mac and from your iPhone via iPhone mirroring, making it easy to use iOS apps.
8. Hit Command-2 (⌘2) to search for files. You’ll see suggestions and recent files. Type in a file name and get instant results. Click on the list of apps to filter results.
9. Hit Command-3 (⌘3) to run Shortcuts and app actions. You can type in the name of an app to see what controls are available, like “Send message,” “Add reminder” and “Add to reading list.” Hit Return to select an action. Each action can have a shortcut, like “anr” short for “add new reminder.” You can specify a custom shortcut for other actions you may use often.
10. Hit Command-4 (⌘4) to browse clipboard history. Use the arrow keys to scroll through the list, and hit Return to instantly paste. It stores items you’ve copied for up to eight hours.

Messages

Messages continues to get excellent new features this year, mostly improving the experience of group chats:

11. The conversation details pane has been redesigned to match iOS. Click the person’s name to slide open a panel that shows their location, contact info, settings and attachments sent in the chat.
12. You can create a poll that the group can vote on. It’s a pretty simple system, without any settings. You enter in as many options as you want, and other people in the group can add their own items. (You can’t lock it down.) You also only get one vote, there’s no multiple choice setting.
13. Set a background image for the group and it’ll be changed for everyone, just like the group name and group icon. You can choose from Apple’s built-in options, generate one with Image Playground or choose from your own photos.
14. You’ll see typing indicators from other members in the group who have updated to iOS 26. However, there are still no group read receipts.
15. Messages automatically hides texts from unknown numbers. From the Messages list, you can tap the Filter button in the upper right to see Unknown Senders and Spam. You can also see Transactions and Promotions, for updates on orders and TK. There are also filters for Unread and Drafts, for those messages you still need to reply to.
16. Messages are automatically translated if they’re sent in another language.

Phone app and Live Activities

16. The Phone app comes to the Mac as a new way to place phone calls through your iPhone. Calling people through the FaceTime app was always a bit silly.
17. Just like on iOS, you can hide unknown callers from the call list, for simplicity.
18. Call Screening is an intelligent feature that blocks unimportant calls from unknown numbers. People who call you will be asked by a robot to give the reason for their call, and if your phone thinks it sounds important, then it’ll ring you — and show what they said.
19. Hold Assist lets you hang up the phone when you’re put on hold. Your phone will detect the music, wait for a human to pick up, and ring you again. (TK test again) However, Hold Assist can be fooled by systems that interrupt the music with an automated voice.

Other new features in apps

20. The Games app is an all-in-one destination for your Game Center profile, achievements, friends and more.
21. The Games overlay is a Control Center interface that gives you quick access to game controllers, energy modes, brightness and sound controls.
22. Photos has a Collections item in the sidebar to visually navigate your albums and media types.
23. Customize the Collections view to show its tiles in a Mixed Grid or Small Grid.
24. Passwords will show your password history if you need to refer to an old one, or if your password is accidentally overwritten.
25. Journal comes to the Mac, with support for multiple different journals, just like on iOS.

Maps, Music and other apps

26. Maps has been redesigned to match iOS. Now, when you look up or click on a business, you’ll see a full-size panel with all the information, rather than a small floating one.
27. Maps will learn your preferred routes and show them to you. (TK check if this is true of the Mac or not). Maybe you know a better way to work that avoids the busy roads, or you take a scenic route to your extended family. If you take that route often, it’ll alert you of delays before you even take off.
28. Maps will show you placed you’ve visited. It’s helpful if you don’t remember the name of that restaurant you went to last week. Click “Visited Places” in the sidebar. You can browse by category, city or recents.
29. Apple Music now has automatic lyric translation, so you can finally get the meaning of those K-pop lyrics.
30. Apple Music can also mix songs together in a playlist, so you never miss a beat while you’re jamming out. It blends the end of one song with the next, adjusting for tempo and key changes, like a DJ.
31. Reminders can automatically suggest items when you share items to the app, and sort them into different sections.
32. In the Clock app, you can set a custom snooze length between 1 – 15 minutes.
33. Notes can import and export Markdown formatted text.

Apple Intelligence

34. Shortcuts can freely prompt Apple Intelligence in a Shortcut. You can ask it to summarize text, generate text, ask it questions and much more. It’ll even format its output however you need it.
35. Siri stays on screen after you click away, letting you use it more persistently while you work.
36. In Image Playground, you can make images using ChatGPT instead of Apple’s somewhat inferior model. A variety of styles are available: Any Style (which makes photorealistic images), Oil Painting, Watercolor, Vector, Anime and Print. You’re limited to only a few options per day without connecting to a paid account.
37. Also in Image Playground, you can customize the appearance of a person if it gets a few things wrong. Edit your hairstyle, facial hair, eyewear, or type in something specific.
38. Genmoji lets you combine two emoji into one, like cat and phone, pineapple and sunglasses, or any other combination. 
39. You can choose the expression of a person when creating a Genmoji of them.

Accessibility

40. The Magnifier app comes to the Mac, letting you use your iPhone as a camera.
41. The Mac App Store now has accessibility disclosures so you can see which features are supported before installing an app.
42. Braille Access allows you to launch apps, take notes and do math using braille input, as well as use braille displays.
43. Accessibility Reader is a system-wide way to have articles, web content, messages, emails and more read to you. It’s integrated with the Magnifier app, so you can even point your iPhone camera at a book or whiteboard and have it read to you.
44. Name Recognition alerts you when your name is called.
45. Background Sounds has new EQ settings, auto-stop timer options and Shortcuts integration to make this focus-enhancing feature more customizable.
46. Personal Voice is faster to set up and more natural-sounding. It creates synthetic voices in under one minute with just 10 recorded phrases. It also supports Spanish (Mexico).
47. Vehicle Motion Cues come to the Mac. You can adjust the pattern, color, size and quantity of the on-screen dots. This will come in handy for working in the car, on the train or in a plane on your MacBook.

Other major updates

 Check out the other major updates Apple released today:

• Everything new in iOS 26
• Best new features in iPadOS 26
• Everything new in watchOS 26
• Everything new in macOS 26 Tahoe
• Everything new in visionOS 26

iOS 26 is a major new update that brings the biggest visual redesign in 12 years — on top of more than 70 new features. It’s easy to overlook the new goodies that Apple sprinkled throughout the operating system because the shiny Liquid Glass user interface takes center stage.

But iOS 26 brings loads of great enhancements to Apple’s major apps. Group chats in Messages become much more useful. The Phone app gets a fresh design and plenty of smart new features. Other great enhancements level up Safari, Passwords, Maps, Photos, Journal and other Apple apps. And just like previous years, Apple added an expansive list of useful accessibility features you should check out.

iOS 26 is out now. Here’s where to find the good stuff — keep reading or watch our video.

iOS 26 new features: Liquid Glass and tons more

New hardware is great and all, but the iPhone’s real power flows from iOS. Nearly two decades after Apple CEO Steve Jobs walked onstage and demoed the original iPhone, showcasing innovative features like Multi-Touch and the “rubber band” effect, Apple’s mobile operating system continues to surprise and delight.

That evolution continues with iOS 26, a massive upgrade that brings an entirely new look to the iPhone. It is compatible with iPhone 11 and later, dropping support for the iPhone XS and iPhone XR.

Also, you may have noticed that Apple skipped from iOS 18 to iOS 26 this year. That’s so all Apple’s annual OS releases will use the same number going forward.

Table of contents: iOS 26 new features

1. Liquid Glass and customizability
2. Messages
3. Phone
4. Other new features in apps
5. Apple Intelligence
6. Accessibility
7. Miscellaneous
8. Other major updates

Liquid Glass and customizability

1. Liquid Glass is the new glassy look used throughout the system. It features transparent floating buttons, toolbars and panels that are perfectly rounded and nested within the corners of the screen and beautiful animated effects. While it can cause some legibility problems — and it’s still a little buggy — it brings an exciting and fresh new look to Apple’s own apps. Hopefully, third-party apps will be updated to use the new design.

Liquid Glass also extends to the Lock Screen, with a few new customization options:

2. Get a tall Lock Screen clock. When editing your Lock Screen, you’ll see a small grabber at the bottom right of the clock. Drag it to make it really tall. It’s a really cool look — although it’s not available on all styles.
3. You can move widgets to the bottom by dragging the widget area down. This gives you room for widgets in addition to fun customizations (like the aforementioned tall clock).
4. A new Liquid Glass clock uses the Liquid Glass effect on the time, blending it naturally with the wallpaper, adding live reflection effects. Tap on the clock to customize it, then choose either “Glass” or “Solid” at the bottom of the panel.
5. Spatial Scenes turn your pictures into 3D renderings, that change perspective when you tilt your phone around. It’s really cool. (This is also available in the Photos app.)

And the Home Screen, too

6. Choose a new clear icon style for all your icons to be rendered in transparent Liquid Glass, refracting the wallpaper beneath it. You can have light or dark glass.
7. You can also have light tinted icons, to complement your wallpaper with an accent color of your choosing. Previously, in iOS 18, tinted icons were only available in dark. I like the light tinted style much more.

As cool as the clear and tinted icons can look, I don’t use them personally. It makes the App Library very hard to use. I install a lot of apps, and I don’t have a very good memory of what they all are — so a big screen of uniform-looking icons makes it hard to navigate.

Messages

Messages continues to get excellent new features this year, mostly improving the experience of group chats:

8. You can create a poll that the group can vote on. It’s a pretty simple system, without any settings. You enter in as many options as you want, and other people in the group can add their own items. (You can’t lock it down.) You also only get one vote, there’s no multiple choice setting.
9. Set a background image for the group and it’ll be changed for everyone, just like the group name and group icon. You can choose from Apple’s built-in options, generate one with Image Playground or choose from your own photos.
10. You can request group payments using Apple Cash.
11. You’ll see typing indicators from other members in the group who have updated to iOS 26. However, there are still no group read receipts.
12. Messages automatically hides texts from unknown numbers. From the Messages list, you can tap the Filter button in the upper right to see Unknown Senders and Spam. You can also see Transactions and Promotions, for updates on orders and sales. There are also filters for Unread and Drafts, for those messages you still need to reply to.
13. Messages are automatically translated if they’re sent in another language.

Phone

14. The app has a new simplified design that you can opt in to. The Favorites, Recents and Voicemail tabs are condensed into one “Calls” tab, so there’s less switching around between the three. Search is more prominent at the bottom of the screen. Tap the Filter button in the upper right to switch between the “Classic” or “Unified” layouts.
15. Also from the Filter button, you can hide unknown callers from the call list, for simplicity.
16. Call Screening is an intelligent feature that blocks unimportant calls from unknown numbers. People who call you will be asked by a robot to give the reason for their call, and if your phone thinks it sounds important, then it’ll ring you — and show what they said.
17. Hold Assist lets you hang up the phone when you’re put on hold. Your phone will detect the music, wait for a human to pick up, and ring you again. However, Hold Assist can be fooled by systems that interrupt the music with an automated voice.

Other new features in apps

18. Safari has a minimal new toolbar with a back/forward button, address bar and More button. You can find the Page menu to the left of the URL, where you can manage your extensions, find on page, hide distracting items and more. The ⋯ button lets you share and browse bookmarks. As before, you can swipe up on the address bar to bring up the tab viewer. And you can switch to the old style toolbar in Settings > Apps > Safari.
19. FaceTime is redesigned with a new layout that puts buttons on the bottom of the screen for easier one-handed use.
20. Camera has simplified controls centered around a minimal new mode picker at the bottom. It shows just Photo / Video, but you can swipe to see all the other special modes. Tap it to see settings for Flash, Live, Timer, Exposure, Photographic Styles, Aspect ratio and Night mode. Choose a format and resolution in the upper left.
21. Camera will tell you if your lens is smudged so you can clean it and get a clear shot, if you have an iPhone 15 Pro and later.
22. Photos has a Library / Collections tab bar to switch between the two.
23. Customize the Collections view to show its tiles in a Mixed Grid, Small Grid or Large Grid.
24. You can look up concert and sports event details by swiping up on a photo.
25. Preview comes to the iPhone, for viewing and editing PDFs, scanning documents, filling out forms and more.
26. Passwords will show your password history if you need to refer to an old one, or if your password is accidentally overwritten.
27. Maps will learn your preferred routes and show them to you. Maybe you know a better way to work that avoids the busy roads, or you take a scenic route to your extended family. If you take that route often, it’ll alert you of delays before you even take off.
28. Maps will show you placed you’ve visited. It’s helpful if you don’t remember the name of that restaurant you went to last week. It’s a little buried, as it’s a beta feature. Tap your icon, tap “Places,” then tap “Visited Places.” You can browse by category, city or recents.

Apple Music must-haves

29. Apple Music finally shows Apple Music Replay in-app, so you don’t have to open Safari and sign in again to see your #1 hits.
30. Apple Music now has automatic lyric translation, so you can finally get the meaning of those K-pop lyrics.
31. Apple Music can also mix songs together in a playlist, so you never miss a beat while you’re jamming out. It blends the end of one song with the next, adjusting for tempo and key changes, like a DJ.
32. The Games app is an all-in-one destination for your Game Center profile, achievements, friends and more.
33. You can keep multiple journals in the Journal app, for separating different parts of your life.
34. Reminders can automatically suggest items when you share items to the app, and sort them into different sections.
35. In the Clock app, you can set a custom snooze length between 1 – 15 minutes. It’s a little annoying to me that you can’t set a 20-minute snooze, which is my preferred length.
36. Notes can import and export Markdown formatted text.
37. The redesigned Fitness app can track workouts without an Apple Watch. And if you have AirPods Pro 3, it can measure your heart rate and calories burned.

Apple Intelligence

38. Shortcuts can freely prompt Apple Intelligence in a Shortcut. You can ask it to summarize text, generate text, ask it questions and much more. It’ll even format its output however you need it. Or, you can create a simple Shortcut that generates text and saves it to a new note. You even have a choice of the on-device model, more powerful Private Cloud Compute model, or ChatGPT.
39. With AirPods 4, AirPods Pro 2 or Pro 3, get real-time translation in your ear when speaking to someone in French, German, Portuguese or Spanish.
40. Genmoji lets you combine two emoji into one, like cat and phone, pineapple and sunglasses, or any other combination.
41. You can choose the expression of a person when creating a Genmoji of them.
42. Visual intelligence can look up things on your screen when you take a screenshot. Circle part of the screen to do a visual search, tap to add items to your calendar, and more.
43. Wallet reads your email to find order tracking information, so you can see packages on the way in the app, on devices with Apple Intelligence.
44. In Image Playground, you can make images using ChatGPT instead of Apple’s somewhat inferior model. A variety of styles are available: Any Style (which makes photorealistic images), Oil Painting, Watercolor, Vector, Anime and Print. You’re limited to only a few options per day without connecting to a paid account.
45. Also in Image Playground, you can customize the appearance of a person if it gets a few things wrong. Edit your hairstyle, facial hair, eyewear, or type in something specific.

Accessibility features

Apple pre-announced a bunch of accessibility features earlier this year, and now they’re available in iOS 26:

46. The App Store now has accessibility disclosures so you can see which features are supported before installing an app.
47. You can now share accessibility settings between devices, so you can more easily use/borrow someone else’s device.
48. Braille Access allows you to launch apps, take notes and do math using braille input, as well as use braille displays.
49. Accessibility Reader is a system-wide way to have articles, web content, messages, emails and more read to you. It’s integrated with the Magnifier, so you can even point your camera at a book or restaurant menu to have it read to you.
50. Live Captions on Apple Watch lets you control the live subtitling feature from your wrist.
51. Name Recognition alerts you when your name is called.
52. Background Sounds has new EQ settings, auto-stop timer options and Shortcuts integration to make this focus-enhancing feature more customizable.
53. Personal Voice is faster set up and more natural-sounding. It creates synthetic voices in under one minute with just 10 recorded phrases. It also supports Spanish (Mexico).
54. Vehicle Motion Cues have many more settings. You can adjust the pattern, color, size and quantity of the on-screen dots.
55. Eye Tracking has more customization features available for switch/dwell options.
56. Head Tracking is now available on iPhone and iPad, with support for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).
57. Assistive Access, a simplified interface for those with lower cognitive needs, gains the Apple TV app — and a comprehensive API for third-party developers.
58. Music Haptics has additional settings for reducing haptic feedback to vocals only, with adjustable intensity.
59. CarPlay now supports Large Text and Sound Recognition, for crying babies, sirens and other noises.

Miscellaneous

60. When charging your phone, you’ll see a charging estimate on the Lock Screen of how much time it’ll take to get fully charged.
61. On a conference call or podcast recording, you can capture local video and audio recordings.
62. From Control Center, you can choose which microphone to use for recording.
63. With the Camera app open, you can press your AirPods to start recording if you have a model with the H2 chip (AirPods Pro 2, Pro 3 and AirPods 4).

A handful of child safety features:

64. Child accounts can send communication requests if there’s someone they’d like to be able to text.
65. You can convert an existing account to a child account to use all of the child protection features.
66. Age-appropriate experiences lets a parent give an age range for their child, so apps can tailor content for their age.
67. FaceTime and shared albums in Photos use communication safety to censor nudity.

Also, a few additions to CarPlay:

68. You can see widgets and Live Activities on your Dashboard. 
69. Incoming calls appear compact along the bottom of the screen.
70. You can see pinned conversations in Messages.
71. You can reply with a tapback to a message.

Other major updates

Check out the other major updates Apple released today:

• Everything new in iOS 26
• Best new features in iPadOS 26
• Everything new in watchOS 26
• Everything new in macOS 26 Tahoe
• Everything new in visionOS 26

How can you watch Apple’s iPhone event? You can stream the keynote on YouTube, on the apple.com website or on your smart TV. It starts at 10 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday, September 9.

At the September event, Apple unveils new iPhones, Apple Watches and other accessories. The iPhone 17 series will be the highlight — with the iPhone 17 Air being a standout new model. Rumors point to the Apple Watch Ultra 3 getting a faster processor, satellite messaging and (possibly) blood pressure monitoring. Some of these features might make it to the Apple Watch Series 11. A couple of other new devices might put in an appearance at Apple’s September event, too. We’ve heard rumors of AirPods Pro 3, an updated Apple TV 4K and AirTag 2.

Here’s how you can watch it all live, whether you’re watching at home or secretly at work.

How to watch the September Apple iPhone event

The keynote starts at the following times:

• 10 a.m. Pacific, United States
• 1 p.m. Eastern, United States
• 6 p.m. GMT, Europe
• 10:30 p.m. IST, India
• 3 a.m. Tuesday AET, Australia

No. 1: Watch the Apple event on Apple’s website, best for a computer

The easiest way to watch the keynote is to just go to apple.com. Come Tuesday morning, the live stream should take over the homepage. Later, it’ll move to apple.com/apple-events/, where you can always go to rewatch old presentations. There, you’ll also see a link to Apple Event videos on Apple Podcasts — a convenient way to rewatch (and download) every Apple Event since January 2007.

No. 2: YouTube live stream, a second choice across all platforms

Another convenient way to watch the Apple event is on YouTube. The watch page is up now in advance. You can bookmark it, add it to a calendar event, or keep it open until it starts Monday morning.

The YouTube live stream is the most accessible across any device and platform. In the past, Apple’s website has gone down if there’s too much traffic (though I don’t recall that happening recently). So, the YouTube live stream serves as a universal backup plan.

However, the YouTube stream usually runs a little bit behind Apple’s own stream. Plus, I vastly prefer the video player on Apple’s website to YouTube’s. If you’re watching on a computer, I recommend you go to apple.com but keep YouTube muted in the background, so you can switch to it just in case.

No. 3: Watch the Apple event in the Apple TV app on your big screen

The best way to watch the Apple event on your TV is in the Apple TV app. The Apple TV app isn’t just for Apple TV set-top boxes. Any modern smart TV made by Samsung, LG, Vizio, Panasonic, Sony (or any TV running Google TV software) has it built in. You can download the app on your Roku, Amazon Fire TV Stick, PlayStation or Xbox if you have any one of those.

Here’s the full list of compatible TVs and game consoles.

Check Cult of Mac for more coverage and analysis

If you can’t watch the Apple event live, you can find all the updates and news right here on Cult of Mac. We’ll cover all the announcements in depth.

Visit cultofmac.com, follow us on Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads or X, subscribe to our YouTube channel and/or listen to The CultCast.

For the first time in 18 years, Apple redesigned the oft-overlooked Phone app. The overhaul coming soon in iOS 26 simplifies the Phone app’s layout, putting your favorites, call history and voicemails in one tab, and providing easier access to search.

Its fancy Liquid Glass-inspired layout goes hand-in-hand with the Phone app’s excellent call filtering features.

Here’s how you can learn to love the new design — and how to nope out of it if you don’t like it.

How to use Apple’s new Phone app (or get the old one back)

After the big kerfuffle over the redesigned Photos app in iOS 18, Apple is being more cautious with the new Phone app. You can choose the layout you want: the same design you’ve used since the first iPhone in 2007, or the modern approach.

Personally, I love the Phone app’s new, simplified design in iOS 26. But a lot of people just want what they’re used to. Luckily, switching to the old Phone app for a more familiar user interface is easy — and I’ll show you how.

Table of contents: How to use Apple’s new Phone app

1. Update to iOS 26
2. Switch to the new Phone app or stick to the old one
3. The new unified Calls screen
4. Add or edit your favorites
5. See your filtered calls
6. Contacts and Keypad
7. Search for a contact
8. More Phone features

Update to iOS 26

First, you need to update your iPhone to iOS 26. It’s currently available as a software update in Settings > General > Software Update at the bottom of the screen, under “Upgrade to iOS 26.” iOS 26 runs on the iPhone 11, iPhone SE 2 and later (dropping support for the iPhone XS and XR).

Switch to the new Phone app or stick to the old one

After updating to iOS 26, when you launch the Phone app, you’ll see a tip at the top of the screen asking if you’d like to switch to the new design.

If you switch accidentally, don’t worry — it’s super-easy to go back to the old-school UI. To do so, just tap the Filter button in the upper right, then tap Classic. In Classic mode, you’ll see the traditional five tabs along the bottom: Favorites, Recents, Contacts, Keypad and Voicemail.

You can tap the Filter button and switch between Classic and the new Unified mode whenever you want. Personally, I like the Phone app’s new design. It just takes a little bit of learning. Here’s how it works.

The new Phone app unified Calls screen

In the Unified design, Apple merged the Favorites, Recents and Voicemail tabs into one: Calls. The general idea is that your favorites are shown as big cards across the top, while your call history and voicemails are listed below, grouped together in one list. You don’t have to switch between as many tabs.

Add or edit your favorites

In the new Phone app, you can tap the Edit button at the top and tap Edit Favorites to put some contacts on speed dial.

Tap + in the upper right to add a new favorite from your contacts. Choose a name, then choose how you want to contact them — by text, phone call, FaceTime or email. You can add the same contact multiple times if you’d like different ways to get in touch.

Tap − next to a favorite to remove them and tap Done (the checkmark) in the upper left to save your changes.

See your filtered calls in the iPhone’s new Phone app

You may notice the new Calls screen looks really great and clean. That’s probably because it’s missing the hundreds or thousands of spam phone calls that usually clutter up the list. They’ve been pushed into the digital junk drawer.

If you want to see them, tap the Filter button in the upper right and tap Unknown Callers. You’ll see the full list of calls from unknown numbers and potential spam. You can tap Mark as Known if one of these is actually important, or Delete if you want it gone.

If you want to take out the trash, per se, there’s a trick to deleting them all. Scroll all the way to the very bottom of the list. With two fingers, swipe up and you’ll start selecting some of the items. Holding those fingers down, with your other hand, tap the clock in the upper left corner of your screen to jump to the top of the list. You will have selected everything in the list instantly. Now, tap Delete.

If you don’t want your unknown calls to be filtered out, tap the Filter button in the upper right and tap Manage Filtering. That’ll take you to the page in Settings where you can change it. In the Call Filtering section, uncheck Unknown Callers and/or Spam.

To be clear, you can leave this setting on and still receive phone calls from people outside your contacts. All this does is choose whether missed calls from people outside your contacts show up in the Recents list of the Phone app.

To change whether you receive calls from unknown numbers, scroll up a bit and choose what you want from the Screen Unknown Callers section.

Search for a contact

An advantage of the Unified design in Apple’s new Phone app is a convenient Search button at the bottom right. You can type in the name of a contact (or any of their contact details) to see filtered results.

Slightly annoyingly, when you type in the name of a contact, you’ll see their call history at the top of the list. That means that their contact card is pushed below the keyboard, which you have to swipe away first.

Nonetheless, the omnipresent Search button at the bottom is a convenient feature of the modern iOS 26 design.

More iPhone features

After learning how to use the new Phone app, check out these other incredible features:

• Set up your Contact Poster to make a beautiful custom call screen for your contact.
• Record a phone call and transcribe it in the Notes app.
• Live Voicemail lets you see a transcription of their voicemail message as it’s being recorded — and you can pick up at any point, if the call turns out to be important.
• T9 dialing lets you look up a contact from the keypad by typing in the letters associated with each number — like it’s 2004 again.

In a pinch, you can charge your AirPods with your iPhone. This feature is very convenient if you know how to use it.  You can also use your iPhone to charge your Apple Watch, or even another iPhone.

Here’s how to take advantage of this capability.

iPhone can be an emergency battery

If there are no electrical sockets nearby and your AirPods or Apple Watch are running low on power, you can use your iPhone to give them a boost. All you need for most of these devices is a compatible cable.

It’s a capability of the newer iPhones with a USB-C port. (Sorry, don’t try this with an earlier model that uses Lightning.)

Charge AirPods with iPhone

Let’s say your AirPods are almost out of juice and you can’t take an afternoon without music. No problem. As our tests prove, you can simply connect the earbuds’ case to your iPhone. Power starts flowing immediately, and your iPhone will charge your AirPods using its battery.

You do need the right cable for this trick, though. Rolling Square inCharge X ($29) is a great option. It’s very, very portable, and works whether your AirPods case uses USB-C or Lightning.

Or recharge an Apple Watch

Alternatively, if you forget to recharge your Apple Watch, you can use your iPhone to do the job. This becomes a bit more complicated because Apple’s wearable requires a proprietary wireless charger, not just a USB-C cable.

We did our testing with a Satechi USB-C Magnetic Charging Dock for Apple Watch ($39.99), which is small enough to go anywhere. Or you can just use the Apple Watch’s regular USB-C charging cable.

How to charge an iPhone with an iPhone

Now let’s consider another scenario. Suppose your iPhone has a 100% charge, but one belonging to your friend/spouse/child is down to 3%. You can be generous and transfer some of the power from your device to theirs.

Again, to get power from one iPhone to another, you will need an appropriate cable (another reason you might want to carry a Rolling Square inCharge X). As with using the iPhone to charge AirPods or Apple Watch, this isn’t an example of reverse wireless charging.

One end of the cable must be USB-C to plug into the iPhone 15 or iPhone 16. The other end also should be USB-C if you’re charging another recent iPhone. For any other model, you need a USB-C-to-Lightning cable.

To start charging another iPhone with your iPhone, simply connect the two handsets with the appropriate cable. If you’re using two iPhone 15 models, the one with more power will immediately begin recharging the one with less power. That’s your only option — you can’t send power to a handset with a higher battery level.

The situation is slightly different if you’re using an iPhone 15 or iPhone 16 to charge an earlier version of the iPhone. Power will always flow from the iPhone 15 or 16 to the older model, no matter what their respective battery levels are.

In Cult of Mac’s testing, an iPhone 15 sends an iPhone 14 about 4W of power. That doesn’t prove particularly quick, but it’s perhaps enough to be useful in a critical situation.

Use with caution

Note that the power transfer isn’t 100% efficient, so dropping one iPhone’s battery level 10% won’t raise another by the same amount. Power is always wasted when charging any battery.

In our tests, an hour of charging brought an iPhone 14’s battery level up by 19% while lowering the iPhone 15’s battery level by 24%.

Bonus trick: Pass-through charging

There’s another way to use this capability that can be very convenient under the right circumstances. And it means you don’t need to drain your iPhone to charge your AirPods, Apple Watch or iPhone.

This method takes advantage of wireless charging. Simply place the iPhone on a wireless charger. Then connect the appropriate charging cable from your iPhone to your AirPods, Apple Watch or another iPhone. Both devices will receive power. If you only have access to a wireless charger and a cable, you can still charge multiple devices simultaneously using this method.

We originally published this post on how to charge AirPods with iPhone on October 12, 2023. We updated the information.

If you stumble across a webpage or a link in a different language, you can instantly translate the website to English directly from Safari. Unlike Google Chrome, Safari even translates the text inside images using Live Text.

And, if you accidentally change the language of a website to one you don’t speak, you can turn this feature on to help you change it back. At Cult of Mac, we use the feature to translate rumors or blog posts often written in Chinese, Korean or Japanese, like this.

You don’t need to select the words paragraph by paragraph and copy them into Google Translate (or even Apple’s own Translate app). Get the entire page in English at the tap of a button. Here’s how to make the most out of this handy Safari feature.

Translate a website to English on iPhone

The iPhone supports translations in Arabic, Chinese (mainland, Taiwan), Dutch, English (U.K., U.S.), French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish (Spain), Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

You can quickly and easily use Safari to translate websites in any of those languages.

When you load a webpage written in a foreign language on your iPhone, you might see a Translate button flash on the left side of the Safari address bar. After the page loads, you’ll see the icon with a “Translation available” message in place of the URL. Tap the icon.

This only appears momentarily — but don’t worry if you miss it. If you do, simply tap the ᴀA button to open the menu and tap Translate to English.

The webpage will reload with all the words translated.

Even images with text inside them will be overlaid with translations, thanks to Live Text. Any links you tap will automatically load translated versions as well, so you don’t need to keep activating Safari’s translation feature during your browsing session.

To turn off the translation, tap the Translate icon to open the menu and tap View Original.

You can still enable Reader mode by tapping and holding on the Translate icon, or by tapping it and tapping Show Reader from the menu.

If there’s a problem with the page — a translation is horribly wrong, some of the features on the page are broken — you can report it. Tap the Translate button and tap Report Translation Issue. Pick the problem you’re experiencing from the list and tap Report.

Translate a website to English on Mac

You can translate a website to English in Safari on a Mac, too. Just click the Translate icon in the address bar. If you don’t see it, you can also click the ⋯ menu, click Translate Webpage > Translate to English.

On the same menu, you will see options to turn off the feature or report a problem with the translation. You also can find these in the menu bar at the top of the screen under View > Translation.

More how-tos

• Learn how to use the full Translate app for iPhone
• Translate text anywhere using your camera and Live Text
• How to turn on all the Safari privacy settings
• How to add a web app to the dock of your Mac

We originally published this article on how to translate a website to English on March 28, 2024. We republished it on September 2, 2025.

Spotlight on the Mac is a universal search bar, available everywhere, ready to quickly launch an app or find a file. And in macOS 26 Tahoe, Apple supercharged Spotlight by adding many advanced features.

Spotlight has a new visual interface for browsing apps on your Mac. It’s also a powerful tool for running Shortcuts and actions inside the apps you use. And, finally, it’s a clipboard manager, too.

Here are the ins and outs of Spotlight on the Mac.

How to use the all-new Spotlight for Mac

Introduced with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger way back in 2005, Spotlight integrated fast, instant search into the Mac operating system (and replaced the Sherlock app). Although it’s moved around (now it’s a floating bar in the middle of the screen), Spotlight has remained pretty similar over the years.

It can find files on your Mac, search the web, perform calculations and unit conversions, and more.

Note: This all-new version of Spotlight is only in macOS 26 Tahoe. It’s currently available as a software update in System Settings > General > Software Update. This year’s update requires at least an M1 MacBook Air, 2019 MacBook Pro, M1 Mac mini, 2020 iMac, 2019 Mac Pro and M1 Mac Studio.

Table of contents: How to use the all-new Spotlight for Mac

1. Launch apps quickly and easily
2. Search for files
3. Run Shortcuts and app actions
4. Browse clipboard history
5. Settings
6. More Mac features

Launch apps quickly and easily

The basic functionality of Spotlight remains in macOS 26’s upgraded version. What nearly everyone uses it for — quickly launching an app — goes even further than before, because it’s now integrated with iPhone mirroring.

After hitting Command-Space (⌘␣) or F4 to show Spotlight, hit Command-1 (⌘1) to list your apps in an icon view. You can also use a four-finger-pinch gesture on a Magic Trackpad.

In macOS 26, Spotlight lists your apps alphabetically. Most of the folders from Launchpad are gone, but instead, you can filter by category using the tags along the top. To switch to a more compact list view, hit the Menu button (⋯) then click List.

Start typing the name of an app to search. You can use the arrow keys to navigate through the results, and hit Return to open the app.

Scrolling through the list, you’ll also see apps on your iPhone if you have iPhone mirroring set up. Clicking on one of those apps launches iPhone mirroring while opening that app. This is a convenient way to use non-cross-platform apps, like Canvas or Instagram, from your Mac. If you don’t like this, hit the Menu button (⋯) and uncheck Show iPhone Apps.

This replaces Launchpad, the iPad-style app launcher Apple introduced in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

Search for files using Spotlight on Mac in macOS 26

Spotlight can also find files on your Mac. After hitting Command-Space (⌘␣) or F4 to show Spotlight, hit Command-2 (⌘2) to see your recent files.

Along the top, you can click on one of the tags to filter by file type or app. You will see one row of suggestions and a long, scrollable list of recent files. To switch to a more detailed list view that shows some file metadata, hit the Menu button (⋯) then click List.

Start typing the name of a file to search. You can use the arrow keys to navigate through the results, and hit Return to open the file in its default app.

Run Shortcuts and app actions right from Spotlight

In macOS 26, Spotlight becomes a powerful utility for launching Shortcuts and running actions inside apps. After hitting Command-Space (⌘␣) or F4 to show Spotlight, hit Command-3 (⌘3) to see the actions available to you.

Some examples of actions are:

• Send a message to a contact
• Add a reminder to a list
• Start a timer
• Add a URL to your Reading List in Safari
• Add a new event to your calendar

If there’s one command you want instant access to, you can click Add Quick Keys to type in a shortcut. For example, “Add new reminder” can be “anr.” Any time you launch Spotlight, just type those three letters and hit Return to run the action.

You can also use Spotlight to search through the menu bar items of the current app. If you can’t remember the keyboard shortcut for a command (or the command’s location in the menu), try typing it into Spotlight to see if it comes up.

Browse clipboard history using Spotlight for Mac

Finally, the Mac comes with a built-in clipboard manager — and you will find it right in Spotlight. After hitting Command-Space (⌘␣) or F4 to show Spotlight, hit Command-4 (⌘4) to see your clipboard history.

Use the arrow keys to scroll through the list, then hit Return to instantly paste the contents.

Pasting from Spotlight strips any text formatting. Even if you’ve just copied something, paste it using Spotlight if you don’t want it to be formatted. It’s easier to remember than the complicated Shift-Option-Command-V (⇧⌥⌘V) keyboard shortcut.

There’s (seemingly) no limit on how many items it will store, but items expire after eight hours by default. As of macOS 26.1, you can increase this period to seven days if you want more history, or shorten it to 30 minutes if you want more privacy and security. (See the next section.)

Personally, I still prefer the Maccy clipboard manager — its keyboard shortcuts are faster. Instead of Command-Space, Command-4, arrow arrow arrow, Return; I can hit Shift-Command-C, Command-3. It simplifies a long string of key presses to just two.

Settings to change in Spotlight in macOS 26

After you upgrade to macOS 26, go to System Settings > Spotlight to adjust a few things:

• Show Related Content allows “content from Apple partners to be shown when searching.”
• You can reset your quick keys and search history.
• Help Apple Improve Search sends anonymous analytics to Apple.
• Results from Apps and Results from System let you exclude content from search results.
• Scroll to the very bottom to set Clipboard history to 7 days if you want a longer period of history. Alternatively, you can shorten it to 30 minutes if you don’t want your secrets staying available for that long. You can also manually Clear Clipboard History or turn it off entirely by disabling Results from Clipboard. (This option is available in macOS 26.1.)

More Mac features

After you learn how to use Spotlight on your Mac, check out these other pro features:

• Share your screen to (and from) any Mac, right from the Messages app
• 6 tricks to master Preview on the Mac
• Rename multiple files on Mac the easy way
• Hidden Mac keyboard shortcuts you might not know
• Pro Tip: Hot Corners make it easy to mouse around your Mac

We originally published this post on Spotlight on Mac on August 29, 2025. We updated the information on November 7, 2025.

Say you’re in the kitchen and you hear an alarm going off on the iPad in your living room. Rather than walking across the house to deactivate it, you can use Siri on your iPhone or HomePod to shut off the alarm. This method also works with timers (and a variety of devices, too).

Here’s how to do a handy trick that everyone should know.

Use Siri to bring back blessed silence

I frequently set timers on the iPad as reminders. Maybe it’s to get something out of the oven, turn off the sprinklers, make a phone call … whatever. Usually, I’m still sitting at the computer when these go off, but not always.

If I’m already in the kitchen when the alarm goes off to take dinner out of the oven, I don’t have to walk back to my office to where the iPad is to silence it. I can use Siri instead.

How to make Siri silence alarms on your iPhone, iPad, etc.

Silencing an alarm or timer on another Apple device is as easy as telling Siri to do so. But you have to phrase the command correctly.

I use, “Hey Siri, silence alarm on iPhone.” Apple’s voice-command system will verbally ask for confirmation. Say “Yes,” and the racket will cease.

It’s necessary to specify the device. Otherwise, Siri will tell you there are no alarms going off on the one you’re talking to. You also need to be specific about whether you’re talking about an alarm or a timer. If you say “alarm” when it’s actually a timer making all the noise, Siri will tell you there are no alarms going off on the device you specified.

Being precise is a slight hassle. But after a bit of practice, you won’t think about it anymore. You’ll recognize the noise on the other end of the house and quickly rattle off, “Hey Siri, silence timer on iPhone” while you’re taking the cake out of the oven.

I’ve tested this with my iPhone, iPad and HomePod, and it works on any of them. Maybe you can find a use for it, too.

How to activate Siri on your iPhone or iPad

I hate to point out the obvious, but for this trick to work on your iPhone/iPad, you’re going to need Siri activated. If you didn’t already invite Apple’s intelligent voice assistant to the always-on party on your device, that’s easy to change.

Start by going to Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri, then tap open Talk & Type to Siri.

From here, you have two options. You can toggle between “Siri” or “Hey Siri” or only have your device listen for “Hey Siri.” Then you’ll be able to do the Siri trick as I described it.

Or you can toggle on Press Side Button for Siri. If you go this route, you’ll press the power button (which Apple calls the Side button) instead of saying “Hey Siri” before ordering it to silence an alarm/timer on another Apple device.

You can combine two or more emoji into your own custom creation in iOS 26 using Apple’s upgraded Genmoji tool. In my testing, it’s great at adding sunglasses and cowboy hats to other emoji. It’s also pretty good at converting ordinary yellow-face emoji into cats, frogs, skulls, etc.

You can easily make a pumpkin cowboy, keyboard cat, pregnant Santa, banana phone or Easter Island statue snowman … the possibilities are endless. Well, not entirely endless — as fun as it would be to play geopolitics by combining national flags, all the flag emoji are restricted.

The best Apple Intelligence feature gets even more fun in iOS 26. Here’s how to use Genmoji‘s fun new feature.

Combine emoji to make your own

Genmoji is one of the more popular Apple Intelligence features for the iPhone. It lets you create a new emoji in Apple’s style. It offers something fresh and fun that everyone can get a kick out of — unlike Image Playground, which often disappoints with its mediocre results.

A great new feature in iOS 26 lets you make a Genmoji by using two (or more) other emoji as a prompt. It’s a natural extension of Apple’s custom emoji tool, and it’s a lot of fun in practice. The feature is also available for the Mac and iPad.

Table of contents: Combine emoji to make your own

1. Update to iOS 26 on iPhone 15 Pro or later
2. Create a new Genmoji that combines two or more emoji
3. Edit and pick one
4. Use as an emoji, sticker or Tapback
5. More Apple Intelligence features

Update to iOS 26 on iPhone 15 Pro or later

First, you need to update your iPhone to iOS 26. It’s currently available as a software update in Settings > General > Software Update at the bottom of the screen, under “Upgrade to iOS 26.” iOS 26 runs on the iPhone 11, iPhone SE 2 and later (dropping support for the iPhone XS and XR).

However, Genmoji is an Apple Intelligence feature. As such, it requires an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 or later. On the Mac and iPad, it runs on any device with an M-series chip or A17 Pro chip — find the full list of compatible devices here.

Create a new Genmoji that combines two or more emoji

Once you’re running iOS 26, open the Messages app on your iPhone. Then you have two options for creating a Genmoji:

• You can tap the Add button (+) to the left of the input box, then tap Genmoji.
• When you bring up the emoji keyboard, you can tap the Genmoji button near the search bar.

In the “Describe a Genmoji” field, type in a series of emoji you’d like to combine and tap Submit (the arrow button).

Edit and pick one

You should see your prompt emoji appear in bubbles on the screen, with the first few combo creations in the middle of the screen. If you want more options, you can swipe through them and Genmoji will generate additional variants.

To tweak the prompt (for instance, by adding a description), you can tap outside the bubble. Tap the − button to remove one of the prompts; type something into the “Describe a Genmoji” to add another prompt.

When you find one you’re happy with, you can tap Done (the blue button in the upper right).

Use as an emoji, sticker or Tapback

After you combine emoji to create your own custom image, what can you do with it? If you’re in an iMessage conversation (with blue bubbles), you can use your new Genmoji in all these ways:

1. Send it as a giant emoji on its own.
2. Drag it from the keyboard onto a message, like a sticker.
3. Tap and hold on a message and tap the Add Custom Emoji Reaction button (with the icon of a face) to add a Genmoji.
4. You can use it in the middle of a sentence, like a regular emoji.

In a green-bubble text message (or RCS message), you can send a Genmoji as a separate picture. In other supported apps, like Snapchat, you can use Genmoji as stickers.

Apple’s apps like Notes and even Mail support Genmoji, even custom ones you create by combining emoji, as well.

More Apple Intelligence features

• Look things up with your iPhone’s camera using Visual Intelligence
• How to use Apple Intelligence writing tools
• Remove an object from a photo with Apple Intelligence

One version of the invitation to Apple’s September 9 “Awe dropping” product launch event includes an Easter egg. Run your finger around on the Apple logo displayed on a touchscreen, and it’ll react.

It’s the latest in a series of Easter eggs hidden in Apple invitations.

Poke the Apple event logo for a glowing Easter egg

On Tuesday, Apple invited the world to its next product launch event. The event has a logo, of course: the colorful Apple logo cycling through red, yellow and blue, all on a black background.

Turns out there’s just a little bit more to it than that. There’s a hidden Easter egg. Finding it requires using a Mac, iPhone or iPad to go to a specific version of the event logo… the one on Apple’s homepage at Apple.com. Don’t look on Apple’s event page. The Easter egg is only in the event logo on Apple’s homepage.

Now run your cursor or finger across the image. It’ll light up. Or use an Apple Pencil on iPad.

#AppleEvent announcement is interactive! pic.twitter.com/oe4tSs9iwm

— Ben Geskin (@BenGeskin) August 26, 2025

Apple loves a good Easter egg

This is far from the first Easter egg hidden in an Apple invitation. They’re common enough that some people have come to expect them.

There was an augmented reality Easter egg in the 2022 “Far Out” event, for example. And one earlier that year for the “peek performance” event, too. The fall 2021 event had its own AR Easter egg.

The Games app is a new all-in-one destination for gaming on your Apple devices. You can create a custom profile, track your achievements, and add friends (and set challenges for them). It’s also a quick way to launch games you’re playing and discover new ones.

It doesn’t entirely replace Game Center, a few vestiges of which reamin in the Settings app. But if you care at all about iPhone gaming, you should check out the new Games app. It’ll help you find new games to play and let you know about exciting events in your old favorites.

Here’s everything you need to know about Apple’s new Games app.

Check out Apple’s Games app for iPhone, iPad and Mac

Game Center once served as the place to find these features, but Apple retired the app in iOS 10. Since then, Game Center’s functionality has been hiding in Settings — and, confusingly, it’s still there, too.

However, the new Games app is a much better (and more discoverable) destination for the same features. And now, it’s on the Mac, too, reminding you that Mac gaming does happen (sometimes).

Table of Contents: How to use Apple’s Games app for iPhone, iPad and Mac

1. Update to iOS 26 on iPhone 11 or later
2. Challenge your friends
3. See what games your friends are playing
4. Launch your games
5. Browse other games
6. View and edit your profile

Update to iOS 26 on iPhone 11 or later

First, you need to update your iPhone to iOS 26. It’s currently available as a software update in Settings > General > Software Update at the bottom of the screen, under “Upgrade to iOS 26.” iOS 26 runs on the iPhone 11, iPhone SE 2 and later (dropping support for the iPhone XS and XR).

After updating, you’ll see the new Games app on your iPhone’s Home Screen.

Challenge your friends in the Apple Games app

One of the new features of the Games app (and Game Center) is the ability to create challenges for your friends.

In the Play Together tab, tap Create a Challenge in the top. You’ll see the list of eligible games below, selected from the games you currently play. You’ll see if any of your friends play the same games as well.

Once you pick a game, you’ll see one or more challenges available, and you can set the rules. You can limit them to a smaller number of tries — one, three, unlimited — and a challenge duration. Finally, invite friends to the challenge.

When the challenge is over, the winner will be declared. Of course, you can request a rematch, if your controller is broken or if the sun was in your eyes.

See what games your friends are playing

On the Play Together tab, below the challenges, you can see what games your friends are playing. Tap on a name to see their recent activity, what games you both play, and how your achievements stack up.

If you don’t have many friends, you can scroll through the suggestions below to add friends from your contacts — just tap Invite.

Launch your games from Apple’s Games app

On the Library tab, you can see the games you have installed and the achievements you’ve earned. You can sort them by recency or by name, and filter them by controller support.

Instead of cluttering up your Home Screen with a bunch of games, you might prefer to use this section of the app to launch the games you play.

Browse other games

The Home, Arcade and Search tabs all offer ways for you to find new games.

Home shows a carousel of recent activity, recommended games and recent achievements. Below that, you can quickly launch recent games. Further down, you can browse top games, categories and see what friends are playing.

Arcade is a dedicated tab to show you games on the paid Apple Arcade service.) All the games on Apple Arcade are free of in-app purchases and ads.)

From Search, you can browse all the categories or type in a name to look up a game — just like in the App Store.

View and edit your profile in the Apple Games app

Tap on your icon in the upper-right corner to see your profile. Tap Edit Profile to customize your icon with a Memoji and set your nickname. Your nickname must be unique, but you can change it at any time.

However, if you would like to make your profile private or choose how much activity is shared, you won’t find those settings in the Games app. Instead, go to Settings > Game Center. You can enable or disable Help Friends Find You to choose whether anyone with your email/phone number can look you up. Set Activity Sharing to Everyone, Friends Only or Only You to choose whether your gaming is public or private. Finally, Nearby Players lets others playing the same game in the same area to invite you to a multiplayer session.

More on iPhone gaming

• Enable Game Mode for higher performance while you’re playing a mobile game.
• Apple News+ subscribers can play a daily crossword, Quartiles, Sudoku and Emoji Game.
• How to set up Game Center with privacy and sharing settings.

Installed iOS 26 public beta on your iPhone to try out Liquid Glass and other new features but regretting the decision due to crashes and bugs? Thankfully, you can easily remove the iOS beta and downgrade your iPhone to iOS 18.

The only catch? You will need to restore an older backup or start from scratch with your setup. If that doesn’t convince you to ride out the bugginess, follow the steps below to revert your iPhone to iOS 18 from the iOS 26 beta.

Remove iOS beta: How to downgrade iPhone from iOS 26 beta to iOS 18

These days, Apple makes it incredibly easy to install the iOS public betas on your iPhone. You only need to dive into the Settings app on your iPhone and switch to the beta channel. While it’s tempting to try out new iPhone features before everyone else, betas are betas for a reason. You will run into random bugs, features that don’t work properly, and apps that crash at inopportune times.

So, if you are now regretting installing iOS 26 beta on your primary iPhone, worry not. You can go back to the last stable iOS 18 release. But before you downgrade, you should keep a few things in mind.

Caution: 3 reasons you might not want to revert

First, you can’t restore an iOS 26 backup to iOS 18. Your only option is to restore the last iOS 18 backup created before upgrading to iOS 26 beta. Depending on how long you tried iOS 26 beta on your iPhone, this likely will mean losing a few days of data. (You could use an iOS 18 IPSW file to directly downgrade from iOS 26 without losing data. But this is a risky move and doing so can lead to several other problems, including app instability and battery drain.)

Second, if your Apple Watch is running the watchOS 26 beta and you remove the iOS 26 beta, it will not pair with your iPhone when it is once again running iOS 18. Even worse, you cannot downgrade an Apple Watch to watchOS 11 yourself. You must send it to Apple to pull this off.

Third, and most importantly, you need a Mac or Windows PC to downgrade an iPhone to iOS 18. Connecting to the computer will enable you to restore your iPhone to the latest stable iOS 18 build. Make sure to have access to a fast internet connection during the process, as your computer will download the latest IPSW file, and they can be fairly large.

How to downgrade your iPhone from iOS 26 beta to iOS 18

Sure you want to remove the iOS 26 beta? The steps below will work when using any Mac running macOS Sequoia or a Windows-based PC.

1. 1. Open a new Finder window on your Mac. On Windows, open iTunes.
   2. Connect the iPhone to your computer using a USB-C or Lightning cable.
   3. A pop-up will appear asking if you Trust This Computer? Tap Trust and enter the iPhone’s passcode to proceed.
   4. Switch to the Finder window (or iTunes) opened in the first step.
   5. Put your iPhone in recovery mode by pressing and quickly releasing the Volume Up button. Then press and release the Volume Down button. Finally, press and hold the side button.
   6. Your iPhone will reboot into recovery mode. If this does not work, follow the instructions on Apple’s support page for further assistance, especially with older iPhones.
   7. Finder or iTunes might show a dialog box saying your iPhone has a problem and needs an update or restore. Select Restore.
   8. Click Restore and Update to confirm your action. This will remove the iOS beta as it erases all data from your iPhone.

Once the restore process finishes, your iPhone will automatically reboot into the latest stable iOS 18 release. You can go through the initial setup process or restore your last working iOS 18 backup.

After you remove the iOS beta, you can always jump back on the iOS 26 public beta later. Apple will continue fixing bugs and compatibility problems as the iOS 26 release date nears. Or you can just wait until September, when the first stable iOS 26 build should arrive alongside the iPhone 17 lineup.

We originally published this post on how to downgrade from an iOS beta on July 18, 2023. We updated the info.

Apple Maps makes it easy to find EV charging stations while you’re on the road to figure out where you can top up your electric car. Apple added some powerful new features in iOS 17 to simplify this sometimes-daunting process for EV owners.

Now you can see electric car charger availability, charging speeds and connector types in Apple Maps so you can find a way to juice up your vehicle when on a road trip. Here’s how it works.

EV routing and charging in Apple Maps

Electric cars are predicted to outsell gasoline cars by 2035 globally, and even sooner than that in the United States. Apple Maps needed to make changes to accommodate the growing number of electric car owners.

Charging stations are actually highly prevalent, but they can be hard to find. Gas stations typically have tall, light-up signs and big awnings to make them instantly identifiable from a mile away, whereas an Applebee’s with a few chargers in the parking lot isn’t going to be as easy to spot.

This Apple Maps feature makes it easier to find EV charging stations wherever you go.

Table of contents: How to find EV charging stations in Apple Maps

1. Search for “charging station” or “car charge point”
2. Filter by speed and availability
3. Check for plug compatibility

1. Search for ‘charging station’ or ‘car charge point’

After opening the Apple Maps app, you can type directly into the search field. If you already have turn-by-turn directions for your route, swipe up from the bottom of the app and hit Add Stop.

In my testing, searching for “charging station” will only show dedicated charging stops, like Tesla Superchargers, Electrify America and travel stops.

Typing in “car charge” autocompletes to “car charge point,” which brings up a few dozen more results in my area. This term includes additional EV charging stations, including hotels, campgrounds and libraries that house electric car chargers on their lots.

2. Filter by speed and availability

After you find an EV charging station, you need to make sure the filters along the top of the Apple Maps app focus on relevant info. Set properly, they will show you which charging stations are open now, which offer fast charging, and which offer charging for free.

In the search results, you’ll see how many EV chargers are at the location and how many are available.

3. Check for plug compatibility

Finally, you need to make sure you find an EV charger that works with your particular electric vehicle. To do so, tap on a charging station’s name. In the detail view, you can see which type of EV connectors they offer, how many of each type there are, and the speeds they work at.

For reference, Combined Charging System, or CCS, is the modern plug standard in most of the world. Tesla’s North American Charging Standard, or NACS, is popular in the United States and will soon be adopted by all other major brands. CHAdeMO is common on older vehicles.

Once you find an EV charging station with the appropriate connector for your electric car, tap Directions or Add Stop to get driving directions there.

EV charging stations in Apple Maps: A good start for electric car owners

These advanced search features are promising, but Apple could do a lot more.

Right now, for example, it’s pretty easy to find gas stations in Apple Maps: There’s a prominent shortcut in the app to search for gas stations along your route. But you can’t change “gas stations” to “charging stations.” If I had an electric car, I would be pretty peeved about that. Manually typing in “charging station” while you’re behind the wheel would be considered distracted driving. And that’s a serious traffic offense in a growing number of states and countries around the world.

Apple also could integrate Apple Maps more deeply with CarPlay in electric vehicles, tying in your destination with estimates on your vehicle’s range. Perhaps it could automatically add charging stops to a long road trip. Or it could filter out charging stations outside your EV’s current range.

Note: We originally published this post on EV routing in Apple Maps on November 15, 2023. We updated the information on May 23, 2024, and August 15, 2025.

If you have a family, odds are you share a house, furniture, car and more. But you might not give as much attention to what you share in your digital lives, even if your digital pictures and purchases are equally valuable. Luckily, Apple Family Sharing makes it easy to share photos, movies, apps and more.

It just takes a little bit of setup to share iCloud’s fantastic Family Sharing feature. Here are the top six benefits of using it.

Share photos, movies, apps and more with Apple Family Sharing

You can keep reading or watch the video on YouTube.

Introduced in 2014, and with powerful new features regularly added, Apple’s Family Sharing makes it simple to share photos, apps and more with up to five other people. One person acts as an organizer, inviting other family members (and setting up accounts for children under age 13).

To set up Family Sharing, simply open Settings, tap on your name at the top, and hit Family Sharing. From there, you can add another person’s Apple ID to the group. If you’re setting up an account for a child without an Apple ID, select Create an Account for a Child.

It’s incredibly easy to set up Family Sharing on your Apple devices, and the feature offers a wide variety of benefits.

Table of contents: Top benefits of Apple Family Sharing

1. Family Photo Library
2. Everyone gets iCloud storage
3. Everyone gets everything else, too
4. Shared locations
5. Parental controls for your children
6. Apps and in-app purchases

1. Family Photo Library

Everyone in your family has a different subset of pictures of family events and trips. Some people take pictures without sharing them with everyone else. One family member might take it upon themselves to send all their photos, but they probably don’t have all the photos from everyone else. Setting up a shared photo library can solve that problem. The best part is that photo sharing happens intelligently and automatically.

By default, when you’re taking pictures at home, your photos will be added to the shared library. They’ll also be added when you’re out and about and your phones are near each other — the system assumes this is the kind of family event you might want to share.

From the Camera app, you can always turn this feature on or off by tapping the yellow Family icon.

From the Photos app, you can easily move photos to the shared library or back to your personal library. You’ll also get recommendations in the For You tab for pictures that your iPhone thinks should go in the shared folder. (Screenshots, memes and pictures you save from the web will not be added to the shared library.)

Learn more in our how-to: How to share an iCloud Photo Library.

2. Everyone gets iCloud storage

Backing up your devices to iCloud will help you rest easy at night — especially if some people in your family are clumsy and cavalier with their devices. An iCloud backup means that any replacement iPhones will be restored and set up exactly as the previous device was the night before they were lost.

Luckily, backing up to iCloud doesn’t mean that everyone in your family needs to pay for their own storage. With Apple’s Family Sharing, one person can share the storage they pay for amongst everyone to save money. Activate it in Settings > Family > Subscriptions > iCloud+.

3. Everyone gets everything else, too (mostly)

It’s not just iCloud storage that Family Sharing affects. Some other Apple services that you subscribe to, like Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, Apple Fitness+ and Apple News+, will be shared automatically as well.

Apple Music, unfortunately, needs to be upgraded to a paid family plan to work with Family Sharing. (This restriction probably results from record companies and royalties — it’s always the record companies.) Still, the Apple Music family plan still costs less than two separate subscriptions, only adding $6 per month to the cost of an individual plan at the time of writing.

4. Shared Locations

When you’re out and about, keeping everybody wrangled together can feel like herding cats. Figuring out where your family members are by texting them and hoping for a swift response is often fraught.

That’s where Location Sharing, one of Apple Family Sharing’s most powerful features, comes in. It’s one of the biggest time-savers and peace-of-mind generators around. You can, and should, turn it on in Settings > Family > Location Sharing. Adults will need to turn it on themselves; children can have it forced upon them.

After you turn on Location Sharing, you will be able to see family members’ locations in the Find My app, directly from iMessage, or by adding a widget to your iPhone’s Home Screen.

Location Sharing also gives you the ability to ring family members’ iPhone speakers. From the Find My app, tap on the Devices tab, select the device in question, and hit Play Sound. It’s much louder than the “ping my phone from my Apple Watch” noise. You’ll be able to see the charge level of your family member’s device, too. This Family Sharing feature is great for locating mislaid Apple gear as well as lost family members..

5. Apple Family Sharing offers parental controls

Family Sharing gives parents lots of options for managing how their children use their Apple devices. For instance, setting up an iPhone or iPad on their behalf is incredibly easy, and you have the power to limit their screen time, internet access and contacts. Plus, setting up Ask to Buy is a great way for your offspring to make purchases in the App Store without the hassle of adding a credit card to their account. And you can approve or deny purchases, so you have full control.

If an iPhone or iPad is too much, you can set up a child with an Apple Watch if you want to see their location, send them an occasional iMessage or give them a call without a full smartphone.

How much control you exert over your children’s digital lives is a highly personal question that someone will always judge you for, no matter what you do. (I had free rein as a kid, but then again, none of these tools existed for Windows 2000. Nor did I carry my Pentium II computer around with me.) Apple Family Sharing lets you make these critical decisions for yourself and your children.

6. Share apps and in-app purchases

If a few people in your family are playing a hot new game, or you all like to use a paid subscription app like Fantastical or Callsheet, you may not need to purchase the download for everyone in your family. Some apps and games offer shared purchases for everyone in your family group via Family Sharing.

If you enable this feature in Settings > Family > Purchase Sharing, your apps and in-app purchases will be shared with everyone in your family (assuming the app’s developers allow the feature). From the App Store, look for the “Supports Family Sharing” label in the app’s information section.

Apple Family Sharing: Bringing the family together … digitally

Your digital life doesn’t have to be fractured and messy. Apple’s Family Sharing feature makes it easy for everyone to have the same pictures, see where you all are, keep your children in check, keep your devices backed up and have access to all the services, media and apps.

Family Sharing is free to set up. If you want to add a subscription to any of Apple’s offerings, you can click right here:

• Apple Music
• Apple TV+
• Apple Arcade

We originally published this how-to on Apple Family Sharing on November 11, 2023. We updated the information on May 22, 2024 and August 14, 2025.

Quartiles is a daily word-building game for Apple News+ subscribers. It’s fun, with a clean interface and no ads. If you want to score maximum points each day, you’ll need to know how to play Quartiles and all the tips and tricks you need to succeed.

Here’s how to play Quartiles — keep reading below or watch our instructional video.

How to play Quartiles in Apple News+

Daily word games have been making a big comeback ever since Wordle went viral a few years ago. Sites like Puzzmo and lex.games offer a whole catalog of daily games. The New York Times offers Wordle alongside Connections, Sudoku, the crossword and others.

Apple is getting in on the game, possibly to boost subscribers to Apple News+. It added Quartiles alongside two daily crossword puzzles that arrived in iOS 17. Apple added Sudoku in iOS 18.2 and Emoji Game last month.

Table of contents: How to play Quartiles in Apple News+

1. Open Apple News and find Quartiles
2. The rules of Quartiles
3. How to play Quartiles
4. More games for iPhone

Open Apple News and find the puzzles

After you’ve updated (and subscribed) to Apple News+, launch the News app. Just below the Top Stories section, you’ll see Latest Puzzles. You can also tap the Following tab; on the top, you’ll see Puzzles, where you can see today’s crosswords and Quartiles game.

Scroll down to continue a game you left in progress or tap the Quartiles tab on the top of the screen to play a game from a previous day.

The rules

When you play your first game, you’ll see a series of screens that explain the game. (You can bring this up again later to refresh yourself on the rules.)

You’ll see a giant grid of word segments — common single syllables, letter patterns, prefixes and suffixes. You need to combine them to make as many words as possible. It works a little like old-school game Boggle, where you compose words out of letters displayed on dice.

In Quartiles, a word can consist of a one, two, three or four tiles. In every game, there are five words that use four unique tiles. These are called “quartiles.”

Each quartile earns you eight points. Find all five quartiles and you earn 40 points, plus an additional 40 bonus points. But the game doesn’t end there — you can always score at least 100 points by building as many shorter words as you can.

How to play Quartiles

After you tap on a puzzle, you’ll see the grid of word tiles. Tap on a tile to select it, then tap on other tiles to build a word. Tap the ✓ button to see if you’ve cobbled together a valid word. You can tap the × to clear the current word at any point.

Note: You do not need to find all the quartiles at first. You can start with shorter words and build from there.

As you play, the button in the bottom right will sort quartiles you’ve found to the bottom of the board, making it easier to solve the remaining quartiles you haven’t located yet. Tap the button to toggle sorting.

The button in the bottom left will shuffle the tiles on the board, which might be helpful if you get stuck.

Tap the Words Found bar at the top to expand the complete list of words you’ve already found and how many points they’re worth.

Tap the ⋯ menu for options. You can redo the tutorial or give up and see the list of all possible words.

Tap the Back button in the top left to save your progress and come back to the puzzle later.

More games for iPhone

As mentioned, Quartiles and the other daily games, are only available to Apple News+ subscribers. Aside from the games, Apple News+ includes access to news sources and magazines like Consumer Reports, National Geographic, Time, Wired, The Athletic and Wirecutter.

Apple News+ is available alone for $12.99/month. Or you can get it bundled with 2TB of iCloud+ storage, Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade and Apple Fitness+ for $37.95 per month with the Premier tier of the Apple One bundle. You can share either subscription with up to five other people.

• How to play Apple News daily crosswords
• 5 fun iPhone games (without any in-app purchases)
• Best games on Apple Arcade

We originally published this post on how to play Quartiles on May 16, 2024. We updated it with the latest information on August 13, 2025.

You might only use the Mac’s built-in Preview app when you need to read a PDF or zoom in on a picture, but there’s much more to the software than meets the eye. It’s a pretty handy image editor for Mac, too.

In this how-to, I’ll go over six features that will let you make the most of Preview, a handy tool that’s an overlooked benefit to using a Mac. I have three tips for working with documents and three for editing pictures.

6 tricks to master Preview app on Mac

The Preview app is one of the hidden gems in macOS. The built-in image and PDF viewer doubles as a free image editor for Mac users, and can handle many tasks quickly and easily.

I explain how to make the most of the Mac’s Preview app in the how-to below, or you can sit back and watch Cult of Mac’s video on the subject:

6 tricks to master the Mac’s Preview app

• 1. Combine PDFs into one document
• 2. Fill out and sign PDFs
• 3. Redact important information from PDFs and images
• 4. Create a new image from your Mac’s clipboard
• 5. Use the Markup toolbar for image editing
• 6. Remove background using Mac’s built-in image editor

1. Combine PDFs into one document

If you have two or more documents you need to combine into a single PDF, or a page or a picture you want to add to the middle of one, you can freely combine different files using the Preview app on a Mac.

First, make sure you have the document thumbnails turned on — click the menu button on the left of the toolbar and click Thumbnails. Then, you can just drag and drop pages from a different PDF or mix images into the document. Save or close the file, and Preview will bundle all the pages together.

2. Fill out and sign PDFs with the Preview app on Mac

This feature arrived in 2023 with macOS Sonoma. When you open a PDF form on your Mac, the Preview app will look for all the text boxes and blank lines and make it easy to fill in.

To get started, click the Form button on the right (next to the search button). With the Text tool, you can simply click on a field, type in your info. Then hit Tab to jump ahead.

To sign your name on a PDF, you can click the Signature button. Click Create Signature and you will see several options. You can try drawing a signature with your finger on a trackpad or your iPhone, but even as a pretty skilled graphic designer, I have a hard time making this not suck.

Instead, I recommend clicking Camera. Then you can sign your name on a white piece of paper and hold it in front of your Mac’s camera to scan it. This method will best capture your actual signature. Then, when using the Mac’s Preview app, you can drag the image on top of a signature line in a PDF and resize it to fit.

3. Redact important information from PDFs and images

If you need to censor any part of a document, the Mac’s Preview app gives you an easy-to-use tool. Just click the icon that looks like a black box — the Redact tool. This will delete all of the content below the resizeable black box so it can’t be recovered or seen.

Plus, you can click and drag over text to select it and turn it black, or you can click and drag a rectangle over any other spot. You can make edits as long as the document is open in Preview. But as soon as you close it, it’ll be saved and everything below the black box will be deleted.

4. Create a new image from your Mac’s clipboard

Here’s a quick one: If you copy a picture from the web, there’s a quick way to open it in Preview to create an image you can save on your Mac. Just hit File > New from Clipboard (⌘N).

5. How to use Mac Preview app’s Markup toolbar for image editing

When looking at an image in the Mac’s Preview app, you can click the pen icon to bring up the Markup toolbar. It’s a bit clunky, but the simple image editor also proves pretty useful for accomplishing common tasks.

It offers several tools for editing images, from left to right:

• First, you will see two different selection tools. Sketch lets you scribble with the mouse or trackpad, and will automatically detect if you draw a shape or an arrow.
• Shapes will let you add in a variety of preset shapes, a highlight box or a magnification bubble.
• Text adds a simple text box that you can set the width of.
• Signature works the same as it does in the aforementioned form-fill toolbar.
• Adjust Color gives you advanced sliders for brightness, saturation and more.
• Adjust Size will resample the image to a different resolution.
• Shape Style adjusts line thickness. You can make the outline dashed or textured, and add arrowheads or a drop shadow.
• The next two buttons edit the line color and fill color.
• Text Style, inexplicably very far away from the text button, adjusts the font, color and alignment.
• Image Description lets you add alt text to an image for accessibility.

6. Remove background using Mac’s built-in image editor

It’s easy to cut or copy the subject out of a photo without the background on an iPhone — but how do you do it on the Mac? The Preview app, of course. And actually, it’s really easy to do with this free Mac image editor.

Just open an image in Preview, then hit Tools > Remove Background (⇧⌘K). The tool isn’t perfectly precise, as it leaves the edges somewhat blurry and choppy if the images aren’t crisp and high-resolution. However, it does work almost instantly for those times when you need to quickly remove the background from an image.

More tips for the Mac

Now that you’ve mastered the Mac Preview app, be sure to check out other articles with pro tips for Mac users:

• 6 more useful apps you already have on your Mac
• A guide to Mac keyboard shortcuts
• How to use Continuity
• 36 best features in macOS Sonoma
• 3 tools for Mac developers

We originally published this post on how to use the Mac Preview app on October 21, 2023. We updated it with the latest information on May 20, 2024, and August 12, 2025.

If your iPhone won’t install a software update, it’s more than just annoying. You need to install the latest updates to get security patches and take advantage of all the latest iOS features.

You install software updates by opening Settings > General > Software Update. It should be a pretty smooth process, but occasionally, things go wrong. The error messages can be inscrutable and infuriatingly vague.

But there are a few things you can try when your iPhone won’t update. Here’s a step-by-step guide that will show you what to do.

What to do if your iPhone won’t update

It’s possible you don’t have a software update available because your phone is too old for the current update. Apple usually updates devices for about six years. So if your iPhone is older than that, it might not run the latest software.

Here is the current list of supported models for the latest version of iOS. If your device still appears on that list but you can’t update your software, there are a few things you can try.

Make sure you’re not installing a beta update

The first thing you should do is check to see if you’re running an iOS beta. Go to Settings > General > Software Update. If you see an option for Beta Updates, tap on that and make sure it’s set to Off.

If it was set to anything else, go back to see if there’s still a software update available. And, if so, try to install the update again.

Try turning your phone off and on again

Most iPhone problems can be fixed by simply turning your phone off and on again. It’s a meme in tech support circles for a reason.

If you own a newer iPhone, hold the side button and the volume up button together for a few seconds. Slide the “power off” slider and wait for your phone to turn off. Then, hold the side button until you see the Apple logo. Enter your passcode, then go to Settings > General > Software Update and try again.

Check that you have enough free space

If your iPhone still won’t update, it’s possible you don’t have enough free space for the iOS upgrade. To check, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage. Wait a few moments as it updates how much space the files on your iPhone currently take up

If you don’t have much available space, you should clear some. If you don’t have Offload Unused Apps turned on, tap Enable to free up some storage quickly. This won’t remove any of your personal data, and you can always turn it back off after you update.

You also can tap Review Large Attachments to clear out some big media files you may have received over iMessage.

If you need to free up even more storage, check out our full article on how to clear up space on your iPhone.

You also can take a look at an app like CleanMyPhone or Cleaner Kit, which will recommend photos and videos you can delete to clear up storage space on your iPhone.

After clearing up some storage space, try once again in Settings > General > Software Update to see if you can install the iOS update.

Delete the update and try again

Sometimes, an iOS update can go wrong. If none of the fixes so far have worked, you should try deleting the software update you downloaded. To do so, go back to Settings > General > iPhone Storage. Scroll through the list and find the update. Then tap it and tap Delete Update.

Go back to Settings > General > Software Update to download the update from scratch to see if that helps.

Try using a Mac or PC if your iPhone won’t update

If none of the above works, you should try updating your phone using a computer. Plug in your iPhone, ideally using an official Apple cable if you own one.

• On a Mac, click on the Finder (the happy blue face on the left of the Dock).
• On a PC, get the free Apple Devices app from the Microsoft Store.

Click on your iPhone in the sidebar and click Check for Update. After it checks, click Update. You’ll need to enter your phone passcode when prompted.

If you still have problems with this step, update your computer:

• On your Mac, go to System Settings > Software Update. (It may also be called System Preferences.)
• On your PC, go to Start > Settings > Windows Update. Once you’ve updated Windows, go to Start > Microsoft Store and click Get Updates to see if there’s an update available for the Apple Devices app.

Go to the Apple Store if your iPhone still won’t update

If all of these steps fail, your last recourse should be to go to an Apple Store. The Apple specialists working there will be able to fix whatever problems you are having for free.

iPhones are available for in-store service for up to seven years after they’re discontinued. So as of August 2025, you can still get free service on an iPhone 8, iPhone X or newer.

Click here to search for a nearby Apple Store.

Great features to try once you’ve updated

After you’ve updated your phone, there are a lot of features you can check out!

• Switch up your Home Screen with dark mode icons
• How to customize the endlessly editable Control Center
• Five awesome new features in Messages
• How to use the new Passwords app
• Lock or hide an app with Face ID

We originally published this article on what to do when your iPhone won’t update on March 26, 2024. We updated it with the latest information on August 8, 2025.

A lot of Mac owners use Google Chrome as their web browser, and personally, I don’t get it. For Apple fans, it seems like a total disconnect not to use Safari vs. Chrome.

For starters, Apple markets its products as privacy-forward and seamlessly integrated with each other. And the web browser is an essential component of your computer, whether we’re talking Mac, iPhone or iPad. You have a lot to gain by using Safari on all your devices.

But look at the numbers: Apple’s web browser Safari only captures 18% of the market, a distant second to Google’s Chrome. Here’s my attempt to sway it the other way — the top five reasons I use Safari instead of Chrome.

Safari vs. Chrome: 5 reasons to use Apple’s web browser

You can watch my list in the following video:

Table of contents: 5 reasons to use Safari vs. Chrome

• No. 1: Safari vs. Chrome: Memory and performance
• No. 2: Safari means fewer ads and more privacy
• No. 3: Sync everything across all your Apple devices
• No. 4: Easy tab organization
• No. 5: Use iCloud Keychain, Apple’s built-in password manager

No. 1: Safari vs. Chrome: Memory and performance

Chrome is a notorious power drain and memory hog. If you have a MacBook Air with the base 8GB of memory, your Mac is probably suffering from using Chrome. The more memory Chrome takes up, the less that’s available for everything else on your computer.

If one app is taking up too much memory, other apps get pushed out, and that can significantly slow down your Mac. And it’s actually not just the Chrome app itself — apps like Spotify, Discord and Slack are built on Chrome technology, too. (We put together a post on how you can switch those to Safari web apps if you’re running macOS Sonoma or later.)

Because Apple makes the browser and the computer, and now even the processor, they’re all designed to work better together. The Safari team also sticks to a strict rule that any and all new features can only make the browser run faster, never slower. After 20 years of incremental improvements, Apple’s internal testing shows Safari loads pages up to 50% faster than Chrome.

No. 2: Safari means fewer ads and more privacy

I use AdGuard for general web browsing and Vinegar for YouTube, so I practically never see ads. Google, a company that makes a significant portion of its revenue from selling ads, finds this troubling.

Chrome’s extension system heavily restricts ad blockers, and a YouTube experiment last year blocked the video player when ad blockers were enabled. Furthermore, in order to target people to sell those ads, Google tracks your every move on the internet.

Safari, on the other hand, keeps your data totally private and secure. Safari blocks cookies that track users across the internet and returns fake data wherever it can to reduce device fingerprinting. And best of all, these privacy features are all turned on by default.

Even better, if you pay for iCloud, you can turn on iCloud Private Relay, which effectively acts as a VPN for all your browsing within Safari. And Safari’s new Hide Distracting Items feature in macOS Sequoia and iOS/iPadOS 18 lets you zap ads, popups and other annoying bits from web pages. They disappear in a satisfyingly animated cloud of digital dust.

No. 3: Sync everything across all your Apple devices

Safari syncs all of your tabs using iCloud. That link someone sent you on your iPad you can’t find? That important website you left open on your Mac? You can bring it all up from your iPhone.

You can even close tabs from other devices, too. Just right-click or long-tap on the tab and hit Close Tab. So from my Mac, I can clean up the junk that builds up on my iPhone.

Make sure you have this visible on your New Tab page — scroll down and tap Edit, make sure iCloud Tabs is turned on (and maybe turn off some of that other clutter while you’re at it).

No. 4: Safari vs. Chrome: Easy tab organization

Safari offers some easy-to-use tools to keep your tabs organized, too. You can easily create Safari Tab Groups for a project or a hobby. From the tab overview, just tap the menu button, tap New Tab Group and give it a name. And still, all the tabs you have open here will sync across all your devices.

Plus, you can use different tab groups as different profiles if you have separate browsing data for work and school. These tab groups will have different sets of saved passwords and data from each other, so you don’t have to juggle between signing in and out of different accounts all the time.

No. 5: Use iCloud Keychain, Apple’s built-in password manager

iCloud Keychain is a seamless way to manage your passwords. Chrome offers something similar, but the passwords you save there will only be in Chrome. iCloud Keychain works inside apps and syncs across all your Apple devices.

It even works with two-factor authentication codes. It’ll generate and auto-fill codes for you.

Plus, iCloud Keychain works with passkeys, the totally password-free system that’s slowly starting to catch on. You can sign into your Apple Account, eBay, PayPal and GitHub using Face ID or Touch ID.

While Apple does make an extension for using iCloud Keychain in Chrome, it’s only enabled on Windows, or Macs running macOS Sonoma. And it must be manually installed in order to override Chrome’s password manager.

More reasons you should use Safari vs. Chrome

There’s much more to Safari than meets the eye. Here are a few of the recent how-tos we’ve written about our favorite web browser:

• 5 secret tips and tricks on iPhone
• How to create a web app on the Mac
• Get organized with Safari tab groups and profiles
• Hands-on using passkeys instead of passwords

We originally published this article on Safari vs. Chrome on August 12, 2023. We updated it with the latest information on November 15, 2024 and August 4, 2025.

There are lots of things you can do with an old Mac. No one will fault you for upgrading to Apple’s latest and greatest, but your old Mac can still find a job to do, too.

It used to be that when your old iMac kicked the can, you hollowed it out and made an aquarium or a desk lamp. These days, Macs have a much longer shelf life. The right model can give you years upon years of loyal service. (Not to mention, modern Macs are too thin to house a fish.)

Here are the six best things you can do with an old Mac. Watch our latest video or keep reading below.

What to do with old Macs

Macs are renowned for their long shelf life. Apple uses high-quality materials and parts inside and out. The strong aluminum unibody can take a beating, and the chips inside will keep ticking for years. If you’ve got a Mac with good specs, it could far outlive what you may think.

The biggest risk is wanting to buy a new one before the old one is entirely dead — the new MacBook Pros are slick machines. You can justify it if you give your old Mac a new job for its retirement. Or, if you’re not the type to ever resell or trade in old machines, you can give your old ones a new lease on life.

Here are six things you can consider.

Table of Contents:

1. Run old games and software
2. Stream movies and shows using Plex
3. Turn an old iMac into a secondary display
4. Use your old Mac as a home server for Time Machine and printers
5. Upgrade it to newer versions of macOS
6. Install a lighter OS like Linux on your old Mac

1. Run old games and software

Unlike Windows, which holds onto backward-compatibility almost to its detriment, the Mac occasionally drops support for old software in the interest of keeping the system modern. Back in 2019, macOS 10.15 Catalina dropped support for 32-bit applications, killing a lot of legacy software.

But if you keep an old Intel Mac on macOS Mojave — the release just before Catalina — you can keep using the old apps and games your new Mac won’t run. Personally, I plan on rolling back my 2015 MacBook Pro so I can play American Truck Simulator.

If you’ve already updated to Catalina or beyond, don’t worry — you can still reinstall Mojave on a separate partition. (Follow the instructions laid out here if you don’t know how to partition a drive.) Then, download the Mojave installer and put the old version of macOS on the new partition.

To switch between the two, just reboot your Mac and hold down the Option key.

2. Stream movies and shows using Plex

Plex lets you roll your own homemade streaming service for shows and movies you’ve (definitely legally) downloaded. Plex works best installed on a computer that’s permanently parked next to your internet router 24/7, for the most reliable and stable connection. If your main computer is a laptop you carry around regularly, you’ll want to install it on a separate machine — a cause worthy of bringing an old Mac out of retirement.

First, install Plex Media Server on your old Mac. Then, hook it up to your network (over Ethernet if you can). After a bit of setup, you can watch downloaded movies and shows in your library from anywhere. You can install the Plex app on Apple TV, Roku, iPhone and iPad, Google TV, PlayStation, Xbox, Fire TV, ChromeCast and more.

A lifetime Plex pass sounds pricey at first at $119.99, but in my opinion, it’s totally worth it. A Plex pass for life is cheaper than a year of any major streaming service.

(And if you’re hitting up dodgy torrenting sites, another side advantage is that you aren’t putting your main machine at risk.)

3. Turn an old iMac into a secondary display

An iMac’s big, beautiful display can far outlast the useful life of the computer inside. After you buy a new Mac, you don’t need to abandon all of your old iMac.

If you want to reuse a newer Retina iMac, you can use Luna Display by Astropad. You buy Luna’s dongle and adapter and download the Luna Display app. Suddenly, your old computer has a new lease on life as a 27-inch display.

You might even consider buying a 5K iMac for this exact purpose. After all, it’s the same panel that goes inside the Studio Display, and they can be bought second-hand for much cheaper than Apple’s “affordable” monitor.

Apple used to support this out-of-the-box with Target Display Mode. To use that, your main Mac must be before 2020 running macOS Catalina or earlier, and the donor iMac has to be the right model from 2009 – 2014 running macOS High Sierra or earlier. But if you have the right combination, this can work for free.

4. Use your old Mac as a home server for Time Machine and printers

Your old Mac might be able to handle other basic server functions at home. You can use it to host Time Machine backups or share a printer over your local network.

With Time Machine, all of the Macs in your house can back up silently and automatically in the background. You don’t have to worry about remembering to do it yourself. And using an old Mac as the destination, none of the Macs that are in use every day will be bogged down as the host of everyone’s backups. You can follow Apple’s instructions here to turn it on in System Preferences > Sharing.

If you have an old and reliable, trusty but dusty printer in your house, hold onto it as long as you can. Printers these days are kind of a mess. You can use your Mac server to make it a wireless printer, so you have all the convenience of a newer model. Enable this from the same Sharing pane in System Preferences.

While you’re at it, you’ll likely want to enable screen sharing. This way, you can check in on the Mac to make sure everything’s running smoothly without physically digging it out.

5. Upgrade it to newer versions of macOS

Apple might not allow you to update your old Mac to the latest version of macOS, but there’s a workaround. Using OpenCore Legacy Patcher, you may be able to update your Intel Mac beyond the prescribed limit.

This can significantly extend the useful life of a Mac if you need one of the newer features. You can even install macOS Sonoma on a 2007 iMac.

Granted, this comes at a cost. Your Mac will run much more slowly the further you push its limits. But if you don’t depend on it for daily web browsing or work, it might not matter so much to you.

6. Install a lighter OS like Linux on your old Mac

You can also go in the other direction if you so choose. You can also give your old Mac a new lease on life by installing a different operating system, like Linux.

However, this does come with some trade-offs. Your Mac will run much faster, but Linux loses a lot of the best features that make it a Mac. You don’t have iCloud or iMessage, Safari, FaceTime or any of Apple’s other apps. You can still browse the web, but if you depend on some desktop apps to get work done, make sure they run on Linux first.

Ubuntu, one of the most popular distributions of Linux, is pretty easy to get up and running. Just partition your Mac’s hard drive using Disk Utility, download the Ubuntu installer, put it on the fresh disk, and reboot your Mac into it by holding down the Option key.

This only really works on Intel Macs. There’s an open-source project that’s working toward porting Linux to Apple silicon, but that’s still a long way away from being easy and reliable. It can be done on an even older PowerPC Mac, but there are some snags to watch out for there, too.

More tips and tricks

If you have a similar stack of old iPhones you’re not sure what to do with, I have another article that can help put those to work, too.

We originally published this article on what to do with an old Mac on March 2, 2024. We updated it with the latest information on August 1, 2025.

Apple now makes it easy to install prerelease AirPods firmware on your wireless earbuds. The company once reserved this option for only a select few developers. But now, anyone willing to put potentially buggy software on their AirPods can try upcoming features early.

The temptation is understandable. The upcoming iOS 26 brings a range of enhancements to Apple earbuds, but you need unreleased AirPods firmware to take advantage of them. Install the beta AirPods software, and you can try out improved audio recording, auto-pause when sleeping, and many other new features.

Feeling brave? Let’s go.

P.S. Not looking for the prerelease version? We also have a guide on how to install the regular non-beta AirPods software.

Warning: Read this first

Before you get started, don’t skim past an important warning. At this time, there’s no way to uninstall AirPods firmware. If you install a beta, you can only replaced it with a new beta version (or a full release version when that becomes available). There’s no way to return to a previous version.

So if beta AirPods firmware causes problems with an application you need or enjoy, you can’t walk it back. All you can do is hope the problem gets cleared up with the next version. Or buy new AirPods …

This is especially important because you also can’t do what we’d normally recommend: Put the beta on an old set of earbuds. The most recent prerelease firmware works only with AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2.

You’ve been warned.

How to install AirPods firmware early

The critical first step in installing prerelease AirPods firmware is putting iOS 26 on your iPhone. Or iPadOS 26 on your tablet, if you generally use the AirPods with your iPad. You can use the public betas released recently for this — you don’t need to be a developer.

Next, connect your AirPods 4 or AirPods Pro 2 to your iPhone or iPad. This is as simple as opening the earbuds’ charging case while using the iDevice of your choice.

Now, open the Settings app and look for your earbuds to near the top of the list. Tap on that item. This opens a screen with settings for the accessory. Scroll down until you see AirPods Beta Updates and tap on it.

As the final step, on the resulting screen, toggle on the switch next to AirPods Beta Updates.

Now you have to wait for the AirPods firmware to be installed — it’s not as simple as pressing a button. “Firmware updates will be installed when your AirPods are in their charging case and nearby this iPhone,” says Apple. Give it some time, then check again later.

What comes with iOS 26 and new AirPods firmware

There are two reasons why you might be interested in trying out prerelease AirPods firmware. For one, it’s never been easier. But the main reason is that iOS 26 ushers in so many cool new features. You can use AirPods as a camera remote, or you can use your AirPods as an external microphone when recording videos. Plus, your AirPods automatically pause whatever’s playing when they detect you have fallen asleep. And they will automatically hand off to CarPlay.

That’s not all. There are other enhancements on the way. Be sure to read our guide on how iOS 26 will upgrade your AirPods experience for more details.

Apple’s Safari web browser packs loads of privacy features that will keep your online activity hidden from ad networks, user tracking and data farms. But are you sure you have everything turned on? Some of Apple’s most important privacy-protecting features don’t come enabled by default.

In light of Google baking ever-more invasive user tracking into Chrome, there are even more reasons to use Safari instead. If you want to make the most out of the best and most secure mainstream browser, here’s how.

Turn on all Safari privacy features on iPhone, iPad and Mac

Toggle on Safari privacy settings

Safari offers a bunch of features to help protect your privacy even when you’re not in Private Browsing mode. Make sure you have them all turned on.

On iPhone and iPad

On an iPhone or iPad, open Settings > Safari (scroll down a bit to find it). Then scroll down a bit on this page to the Privacy & Security section. I have all the features enabled: Prevent Cross-Site Tracking, Hide IP Address From Trackers, Require Face ID to Unlock Private Browsing  and Fraudulent Website Warning.

Then, scroll down to the bottom and tap Advanced. Set “Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection” to All Browsing and then disable “Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement.” You can leave “Block All Cookies” disabled and “Check for Apple Pay” enabled, as changing those settings will break website functionality.

On Mac

On a Mac, open Safari. In the menu bar, go to Safari > Settings… (⌘,) and click on the Privacy tab.

First, enable Prevent cross-site tracking and Hide IP address from trackers. Neither of these will have a significant impact on website functionality; they’ll simply make your browsing safer.

Then, click Advanced Settings for a few more options. In the Privacy section, set “Use advanced tracking and fingerprinting protection” to in all browsing. Leave “Allow privacy-preserving measurement of ad effectiveness” unchecked.

Personally, I have “Allow websites to check for Apple Pay and Apple Card” checked and “Block all cookies” unchecked; changing these options will break website features.

How to enable iCloud Private Relay on iPhone, iPad and Mac

If you have an iCloud+ subscription, you’ll also want to turn on iCloud Private Relay for maximum protection. This feature works kind of like a VPN for your web browsing — your personal internet activity is funneled through an Apple server, so the websites you visit can’t track you as easily.

This premium Safari privacy feature is available to anyone with an iCloud+ subscription. With it, you also get cloud storage to back up your phone (which everyone should do) and other features like Hide My Email. If you’re paying for iCloud+ subscription, you should take advantage of Private Relay on iPhone, iPad and Mac.

To do so on iPhone and iPad, go back to Settings, tap on your name at the very top, then tap iCloud > Private Relay. Turn it on.

To turn on Private Relay on a Mac, go to the  menu, then System Settings > iCloud > iCloud+ > Private Relay. Toggle it to on.

On iPhone, iPad and Mac, you can set your IP Address Location to choose how accurate or private you want it to be. Apple gives you two options: “Maintain general location” or “Use country and time zone.” The latter setting will offer more privacy in Safari at the expense of location-based features on the web being less fine-tuned for you.

How to turn on Private Browsing on iPhone, iPad and Mac

Using a Safari privacy feature called Private Browsing mode offers yet another layer of online anonymity. “With Private Browsing, Safari won’t remember the pages you visit, your search history, or your AutoFill information,” Apple says. “Private Browsing also blocks known trackers, removes tracking used to identify individual users from URLs, and adds protections against advanced fingerprinting techniques.”

To turn on Private Browsing on an iPhone or iPad, first open Safari. Then swipe up on the address bar or tap the Tabs button in the bottom-right. On the bottom, you’ll see a row of tab groups. Tap Private on the left to switch to Private Browsing. You may need to authenticate with Face ID before showing your private tabs.

From the Home Screen, there’s a shortcut to quickly enter Private Browsing. Tap and hold on the Safari icon and select New Private Tab from the pop-up menu.

How to turn off Private Browsing on iPhone or iPad

Turning off Private Browsing works the same way on iPhone and iPad. Swipe up on the address bar or tap the Tabs button in the bottom-right. Select any of your other tab groups to the right to exit Private Browsing.

From the Home Screen, you can also tap and hold on the Safari icon and select New Tab to quickly exit Private Browsing without opening it.

How to turn on Private Browsing on Mac

On a Mac, you can create a new Private Browsing window by hitting File > New Private Window in the menu bar, or with the keyboard shortcut ⇧⌘N.

Learn more about Safari

• 5 tips and tricks in Safari on iPhone
• How to block YouTube ads in Safari
• How to use Safari profiles
• 5 reasons to use Safari instead of Chrome
• How to create a Safari web app on the Mac

We originally published this article on Safari privacy features on March 20, 2024. We updated it with the latest information on July 29, 2025.

As a power user, I find Mac window management clunky and broken when using the options built into macOS. Switching between apps, and snapping apps into desired screen locations, should not be so frustrating.

So, I took matters into my own hands — streamlining how I snap, switch and manage windows to finally make macOS work for me, not against me.

Mac window management is broken

While Apple continues to make steady progress on Mac window management, macOS still lags behind Windows in this area. In macOS, you can snap windows to the left or right of the display, move them to another display, etc., but each movement requires long-pressing the Maximize button on a window’s title bar.

That’s not the most efficient way to manage windows on Mac, especially if you need to use the option multiple times a day. And while macOS’ Mission Control and Exposé prove useful, they are not the fastest options to get things done.

This is why I rely on BetterSnapTool and rcmd for window management on my Mac. These two third-party options are among the most-used apps on my Mac. Together, they make window snapping and organizing a breeze.

Table of contents: How I supercharge window management on my Mac

• Snapping app windows into zones
• Quickly quit open apps
• Custom snap zones
• Cycle through open apps

Snapping app windows into zones

If you switch from a Windows PC, you’ll find macOS surprisingly limited when it comes to arranging windows. Windows 11’s Snap Layouts let you drag an app to the edge and choose from multiple layout presets. On Mac, unless you use third-party tools, snapping a window side by side feels clunky.

While working, I prefer having one window snapped to the left and another to the right of my primary display for a more efficient workflow. Instead of fiddling with my mouse to snap windows into place, I use BetterSnapTool (a paid app from German developer folivora.AI) and keyboard shortcuts for this.

I mapped the Shift + Cmd + 1 keyboard shortcut to automatically snap and reposition a window to the left half of the primary display. Likewise, I set up my Mac so that Shift + Cmd + 2 will snap another window to the right. This is great when I’m researching and need to have my browser and note-taking app open side-by-side. Similarly, when on video calls, I can snap the call window to the left while keeping my work document on the right — all with two keyboard shortcuts.

Focus on one window or move windows to another monitor

When I want to focus on a single window, I use Shift + Cmd + 3 to maximize it. I also mapped the ability to move windows to the next monitor to the Shift + Cmd + ` keyboard combo. I use these shortcuts multiple times a day, and collectively they save me a few minutes every day. More importantly, they reduce the unwanted friction that comes with the standard methods for moving and windows around on my Mac.

Due to RSI in my wrist, I prefer using a mouse over the MacBook’s excellent trackpad. If you are also a heavy trackpad user, I strongly recommend playing around with BetterTouchTool or Rectangle Pro (from developer Ryan Hanson) to speed up window management on your Mac. You can use gestures to snap, resize and reposition apps into places.

Also, I can replicate most of BetterSnapTool’s functionality with Raycast — one of my favorite productivity apps for Mac. But the latter misses out on customizable snap zones and menu bar button customization, which make BetterSnapTool more powerful for Mac window management.

Quickly quit open apps

macOS requires pressing Cmd + Q or clicking on the “Quit” option from the menu bar to close an app completely. That’s fine for occasional use, but when I’m wrapping up work with six or seven apps running, it becomes tedious fast.

To streamline this, I use BetterSnapTool to allow quitting an app by simply right-clicking on the red X window button — a move you’d typically use to just close a window. It’s a faster way to quit multiple apps quickly at the end of the day, saving me from repeatedly using the Cmd + Q shortcut.

Custom snap zones using BetterSnapTool

I use Telegram and WhatsApp for communicating with my friends and workmates. As a result, I need these apps always open and visible on my Mac’s display when working. However, I don’t want to give them too much screen real estate. So, I place them on the bottom right quarter of my secondary monitor. This way, they are always visible while not distracting me from other, more urgent work.

Instead of manually resizing and moving Telegram and WhatsApp to the desired location every day, I created custom snap areas in BetterSnapTool. This way, I can quickly move these apps to my desired location with just the flick of a mouse.

By default, custom snap areas will show every time you drag a window. But since I want to use them with certain apps, I use the Option key as a keyboard shortcut to trigger the snap area. Plus, I created a whitelist to ensure that the custom snap areas only appear for certain apps.

As you can see, BetterSnapTool packs a ton of functionality. Yet you can download this powerful app from the Mac App Store for only $1.99.

Alternative Mac window management apps

Alternatively, you can try other window management apps for Macs such as Magnet, Loop and Rectangle. Almost all of them provide similar functionality to BetterSnapTool.

Cycle through open apps

I previously used Alt-Tab to cycle through open apps on my Mac. As mentioned in Cult of Mac‘s best free Mac apps worth installing, it’s a better solution than Mac’s built-in app switcher. It mimics Windows-style switching using the Alt-Tab shortcut, making it a breeze to switch between open app windows.

Turns out, there’s an even better solution: rcmd, an app from developer The Low-Tech Guys. With it, instead of cycling through all open app windows on my Mac, I can directly switch to the app I want to focus on.

rcmd takes advantage of the Mac’s almost never-used right Command key for quickly switching between apps. With rcmd running, you simply press the right Command key + the first letter of an app’s name to instantly bring it to focus. This simple and effective idea works brilliantly in daily use to make Mac window management easier.

Thankfully, the shortcut trigger key is customizable — I’ve set it to the left Ctrl key since it’s easier for me to reach. So, using rcmd, I can bring up Slack on my Mac by pressing Ctrl + S. Likewise, I can instantly switch to WhatsApp or Finder by pressing Ctrl + W or Ctrl + F.

Quickly jump to the app you want to use

The best part? If multiple open apps share the same first letter, I can cycle through them by pressing that letter repeatedly. So, to cycle focus between Chrome and ChatGPT, I need to hold Ctrl and press C twice. Plus, to quickly hide all app windows and see the desktop, I use the Ctrl + – shortcut.

You can also create custom shortcuts by holding down Cmd + Option + <any key> and assigning it to the app currently in focus. If the app isn’t open, the shortcut will launch it; if it is, it will bring the app to the front.

rcmd is available as a one-time purchase for $12.99 on the Mac App Store. You can download a free trial from the developer’s website. (The trial version only works for a few hours, but you can quit the app and restart it to continue using it.)

More tips for Mac window management

Besides the above apps, I also recommend that you learn some hidden Mac keyboard shortcuts to directly jump to a folder in Finder, bring up Mission Control, put an app into full-screen mode, or open Exposé. They will further speed up your workflow.

You can download the watchOS 26 public beta right now. With it, you can try out the great new Liquid Glass design coming to the Apple Watch before Apple ships the update to everyone. And you can check out Workout Buddy, the AI-powered coach that gives you encouragement during your workouts.

Of course, there are a few things you should look out for. Beta software is buggy and can lead to data loss or apps that don’t work. This particular beta is a rough one, with lots of broken animations and features. A lot of apps you use probably won’t work correctly. I strongly recommend that you at least wait for the public beta — it’ll be available starting in July.

If you’re still sure you want to try it out, you’ll need to install iOS 26 on your iPhone first. I’ll show you how.

How to download the watchOS 26 public beta

Table of contents: How to download the watchOS 26 public beta

1. Install the iOS 26 public beta
2. Switch to allow beta software updates
3. Install the update

1. Install the iOS 26 public beta

Before you download the watchOS beta, you need to install the iOS beta on the same iPhone that’s tied to your Apple Watch. You can find that article here — remember to double-check that you have a recent iCloud backup and that your Photos library is synced first.

2. Switch to allow beta software updates

On your iPhone, open the Apple Watch app and tap General > Software Update. After it checks for updates, you’ll see the option appear for Beta Updates. Tap that and you’ll see the options currently available: Off, watchOS 26 Public Beta, watchOS 26 Developer Beta, watchOS 11 Public Beta and watchOS 11 Developer Beta.

• The watchOS 26 Public Beta is a safer way to enjoy the prerelease software. Updates will go out at the same pace of every two to three weeks, but released about a day later to make sure there are no critical bugs in the software.
• The watchOS 26 Developer Beta is the fast track, intended for app developers to test functionality and implement new features. These betas are released a little early, but have a higher risk of bugs.

Tap watchOS 26 Public Beta to get the flashy new update with all the latest fitness features.

3. Download the watchOS 26 beta update

Swipe back and you’ll see the watchOS 26 update available. Tap Download and Install to, well, download and install the update. Going up a major release version may take longer than the usual software update.

At the end, you’ll reboot into the shiny new watchOS 26 beta! You can expect to get a new software update every few weeks until September.

We originally published this article on how to download the watchOS beta on June 11, 2024. We updated it with the latest information on June 10, 2025 and June 25, 2025.