How-to

If you’ve just purchased a new iPhone, gotten a replacement, or need to bring back all your information to your iPhone for another reason, restoring from an iTunes backup is an easy way to pick up where you left off.

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If you’ve just purchased a new iPhone, gotten a replacement, or need bring back all your information to your iPhone for another reason, restoring from an iCloud Backup is an easy way to pick up where you left off.

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Connecting an iPhone or iPad to a TV is a great way share to content with friends and family (or have them share with you when visiting) and can also be useful in business settings. Follow along to see which of the two ways to connect your iPhone or iPad to a TV is best for you.

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If you’re selling or giving your Mac to someone else or are just looking to make a fresh start, wiping your Mac and reinstalling a fresh copy of macOS (previously called OS X) is probably on your to-do list.

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First time checking out this series? You may get the most value by starting at the beginning, however you can also use the series overview if you’d like to go buffet style.

Note for regular readers, the already tech savvy, and IT professionals: this series is designed as a resource you can share with those you are helping or for those looking to become tech savvy on their own.

Last week we focused on deconstructing the complicated nature of the wireless carrier world and today we’re going to dive deeper into how to track and manage your cellular data usage.

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Print to PDF is an easy way to preserve the information and layout of what you are currently viewing, saving a 1:1 digital copy of the documents and websites you use everyday. You don’t actually print anything, but the idea is that an exact replica of what would have appeared on paper, if you had sent a job to a real printer, is instead stored as a PDF file.

A big advantage of Print to PDF, or Save to PDF as it is often known, is that it is available in a lot of apps by default. Apps don’t have to support PDF output, they just have to support the normal printing features. This means Save to PDF is widely available across many iOS apps, and even more Mac apps.

The concept of Print to PDF began on the desktop and macOS exposes the feature relatively prominently. On iOS, the feature is harder to find. There isn’t an obvious button in the interface for it, but the capability is there — if a little hidden. Read on for step-by-step instructions to print to PDF on Mac, iPhone and iPad …

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Taxes are due in the US this coming Tuesday, April 18. While that may sound like cause for alarm if you haven’t completed your taxes already, there are still some easy ways to get them done without filing late or filing for an extension. Follow along for the best apps to quickly and accurately file your taxes right from your iPhone or iPad.

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Copy and paste is an essential function for almost any computer use. Whether you’re looking to become familiar with the basics or would like to improve your efficiency with keyboard shortcuts, follow along for how to copy and paste with a Mac.

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Did you know you can check your iPhone battery level from your Mac when it’s nearby? I knew there was a way to see the visual indicator, but there’s actually a way to see the specific percentage as well without installing any third-party apps.

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iCloud Photo Library is a great feature built into Apple’s iOS and macOS operating systems, but it can feel a bit foreign depending on how you have been managing your photos and videos up until now. Follow along for how to set up this feature across your various Apple devices as well as upload photos to iCloud Photo Library.

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As it’s common to use an iPhone as a primary communication device it can be quite frustrating to deal with an iPhone not charging. Fortunately, in many instances you may be able to solve this problem quickly and easily yourself.

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Now that Apple’s Clips app is officially available on the App Store, the next thing is figuring out is how to use it, at least that’s what a lot of the early reviews are saying. Follow along for a hands on look at getting started with Clips.

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Taking a screenshot does exactly what the name suggests, it captures whatever is on your screen in an image and saves it to your Photos app on iOS.

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It doesn’t take long for a MacBook to become covered with dust, crumbs, fingerprints, etc. with regular use.  Fortunately, it’s quick and easy to get in the habit of keeping your Mac looking and feeling like it’s brand new.

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A few weeks ago I posted about 10 handy iPhone tips that I use on a regular basis. To follow up, I’d like to share 10 additional iOS tips that I often use. Like I said before, chances are that hardcore iOS users will know most of these, but there’s usually at least one or two tips that catch users by surprise. Watch our hands-on video walkthrough for the full list.
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Copy and paste is a useful feature to be able to use quickly and confidently with iPhone and iPad. Let’s look at the different ways to use this feature in iOS and also how to use it across multiple devices including your Mac with Apple’s Universal Clipboard.

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Emoji are a fun and easy way to communicate with others on their own and can also enhance standard text-based messages. Whether you’re new to iPhone, just haven’t used emoji before, or the emoji keyboard was removed from your iPhone, follow along for how to get the emoji keyboard on your iPhone.

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Even with high-quality devices like Apple’s MacBooks and iMacs, it’s important to back up. No device works as expected all the time and there are many scenarios outside of drive failure when a backup is crucial to have (upgrading, accidents, loss, or theft.) Follow along for how to back up your Mac.

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First time checking out this series? You’ll get the most value by starting at the beginning, however you can also use the series overview if you’d like to go buffet style.

Note for regular readers, the already tech savvy, and IT professionals: this series is designed as a resource you can share with those you are helping or for those looking to become tech savvy on their own.

Background, Expectations, & Best Practices

Staying up to date with software can sometimes be a confusing and frustrating task, but fortunately it’s a more straight forward process with iOS than compared with macOS.

First, let’s define some of the vocabulary we’ll be using. Software can refer to both the applications (apps) or the operating system (iOS) for your iPhone or iPad. We’ll define apps as computer software designed and written to fulfill a particular purpose.

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The latest updates to Apple’s iWork suite included a lot of new features; Keynote’s release notes included a line that was particularly eye-catching. Keynote 7.1 for Mac and Keynote 3.1 for iOS adds the ability to ‘Post interactive presentations on Medium, WordPress and other websites.’

This means you can put a Keynote document on a webpage in just the same way as you can embed a YouTube video. It certainly feels like an advanced feature targeted at iPad Pro as computer users. Unfortunately, the process to actually do this is not so straightforward, with some tricky edge cases about how it works. Read on to find out how to embed Keynote documents on a website or blog …

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I’m really good at managing my inbox (for personal email at least) and rarely leave messages there for keeping. Most emails go in a receipt folder or get deleted, I aggressively unsubscribe to mailing lists and mark spam as junk, and special messages are archived for keeping.

Occasionally I’ll have a message with important information that I don’t need right now and will want to easily reference in the near future. I’ve tried flagging but I don’t entirely understand how the feature is supposed to work between iOS and the Mac.

Usually I just leave the email in my inbox, but what I’d like to do is save the message somewhere with other important information like Apple’s Notes app. Luckily this is possible on iOS, but it’s a bit confusing to discover…

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