How-to

If you have the YouTube app installed on your phone, then you’ve likely run into the dreaded ‘Open this page in “YouTube”?’ message when visiting YouTube in Safari. While it’s understandable that Google would like you to view content via its official app, it starts to get annoying after encountering the message for the umpteenth time.

One surefire way to eliminate the prompt is to uninstall the YouTube app altogether, but that’s a bit on the extreme side of things. Fortunately, there is a way to easily bypass the request, as we’ll show you inside.
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Final Cut Pro X has gone through a lot of changes since it first debuted as a reboot back in 2011. Since then, the app has grown up significantly, but it’s been able to retain its relatively low barrier to entry in the process. Final Cut Pro X is remarkably simple to learn, but it has a fairly high ceiling for growth.

In this initial tutorial, I’m going to cover some of the basics about one of the fundamental aspects of Final Cut Pro X: library management. Knowing how Libraries are created and what they contain is extremely important. It’s one of the first steps in really getting to know Final Cut Pro X.
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None of us likes to think about our own mortality, but as the old saying has it, nobody is going to make it out of here alive.

Things were simple enough in the old days. We wrote a will, took out a life insurance policy, maybe left a letter explaining where to find important documents, and that was about it. But in an age where many of our documents and assets are in digital form, it’s worth taking a little time to ensure that our loved ones don’t encounter major hassles when it comes to accessing them.

There was a case recently where a widow was unable to use the apps on her late husband’s iPad because she didn’t know the password for his Apple ID – and Apple wouldn’t reset it even with his death certificate. There have been other cases of family members being locked out of a lifetime’s collection of music for the same reason.

Fortunately, there are a few simple steps we can take to ensure that technology is one less thing for our family to have to worry about …

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Mission Control is a great feature found in OS X that can simplify the process of moving items between full screen apps when combined with Hot Corners. Hot Corners, a feature that I talked about in my 10 getting started tips for new OS X users, allows you to place your mouse pointer in one of the four corners of your Mac’s screen to invoke a specific response.

When combining the power of Hot Corners with Mission Control, you can easily move items to and from full screen apps. Have a look at our video tutorial inside for the details.
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In this week’s episode of The Logic Pros, we are diving into the media browser. More specifically, ways in which we can move ideas and tracks between sessions. While saving presets is a very handy feature, is doesn’t help as much when we want to move entire channel strips, along with the associated midi/audio performances, sends, I/O, and more from session to session:
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If Apple hasn’t yet made the Ethernet network port on your Mac obsolete by not including it, as is the case with most Macs sold today, then it may have accidentally broke the port last week in an OS X kernel extension update. Many users complained about the issue online: they had randomly found their Macs no longer connecting to the Internet and their Ethernet port simply not working. Apple has now officially acknowledged the problem on its support pages. Luckily, the software problem isn’t permanent and the bug can, usually, be easily resolved.

Apple has already fixed the Ethernet software problem for users going forward. Here’s the fix if you were affected …

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I’ve never been a fan of the stock Mail app in OS X, so I generally find myself relying on Gmail inside of Chrome for all of my email needs. In fact, I don’t have any email accounts configured inside of the stock Mail app at all. With this in mind, I always get frustrated when I inadvertently click a mailto link inside of a browser window. Doing so forces the Mail app, which is set as the default mail client in OS X, to open without purpose.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could configure Gmail to play the role of the default mail client inside your browser of choice? In this video tutorial, I’ll show you how easy it is to configure Chrome, Safari, and even Firefox to use Gmail as the default mail client.
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As we told you about earlier, Readdle has released the highly anticipated update to its Spark email client for iOS. Spark 1.6 adds support for the iPad, including iPad Pro, syncing of settings and accounts, and watchOS 2 support among other things. Needless to say, it’s a major update that vaults it clear to the top of third-party email offerings on iOS.

But what if you’ve been holding out and have just now decided to give Spark a chance? If that’s the case, then you should definitely check out this breakdown of 50 different tips for new Spark users. Like I always say, even if you’re a veteran user, chances are you may still learn a thing or two.
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It looks like Apple’s plans to strengthen iPhone security to make it impossible for the company to comply with future demands to hack into them will require new hardware. But you can already make it effectively impossible to gain access to your iPhone, even if Apple was forced to bypass passcode time-outs. All that is needed are two simple changes.

First, if you currently use a 6-digit passcode, change it to a longer one. If Apple removes the timeouts, and that compromised firmware gets into the wrong hands, it will take an average of just 11 hours to brute-force a 6-digit code. Simply doubling the number of digits to 12 means that the average time needed increases exponentially to 1,268 years.

If that isn’t enough for you, changing it to a complex alphanumeric one literally pushes the brute-force attack time into the millions of years. There is, however, one other weakness you need to address …

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Yesterday, I presented a list of 10 different tips that I thought any new Mac owner should know. As stated in that walkthrough, I don’t consider every recommendation on the list to be an absolute must-follow for new Mac users. There are a few items on the list, however, that are staples in my opinion.

For example, I would hate it if every minimized window on OS X occupied its own space on the Dock. For that reason, I rush to enable the “Minimize window into application icon” option (found in System Preferences → Dock) after every new install. But enabling such a feature comes with its own caveat — it’s hard to know exactly what’s behind an app icon on the Dock once you’ve minimized its respective windows. Thankfully, there’s a handy Mac utility that allows you to preview app windows by hovering over icons in the Dock.
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As someone who reinstalls macOS several times a year, I’ve gotten into a habit of powering through the initial setup process without thinking much about it. Today, I’d like to share 10 of my favorite initial setup tips with new Mac users. But even if you’re a long-time Mac user, you may still find a helpful gem or two within this how-to.
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SpringInvaders is a $0.99 jailbreak tweak for jailbroken iPhones that just launched today. It’s very obvious that the game gets its inspiration from Space Invaders, the classic arcade title. Instead of taking out aliens, however, gamers are tasked with shooting down enemy ships that turn out to be modified versions of the app icons installed on your iPhone.

Your own ship is moved from side to side using the iPhone’s accelerometer, and a tap on the screen causes your ship to shoot tiny app icon bullets at enemies. Have a look at our video walkthrough to see SpringInvaders in action.

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In this week’s episode of The Logic Pros, we will be continuing our look at some of Logic Pro X’s underused features and key commands with some helpful editing tricks. We are also going start our master Solo Jedi training with some interesting uses for the various Solo modes, locks and more.
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The stock Camera app found in iOS is decent enough. It’s great for the casual shooting of photos and videos, and more importantly, it’s easy to use and almost always works.

But just like there are dedicated photo apps for improving the quality of your photography, the same thing is true for videographers. If you’re looking to improve your iPhone or iPad videography skills, then look no further than FiLMiC Pro, a $9.99 universal app.

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The 58th Annual Grammys are broadcasting tonight and thanks to CBS All Access, nearly anyone can watch it for free without a cable subscription or TV set. The show starts at 8PM ET, with a pre-telecast red carpet show at 7PM ET. Viewers can catch the show on CBS’s site, or by using the iOS or Apple TV app. Here’s how to do it for free:

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If you’ve been following any of the Swift mailing lists and have begun to feel overwhelmed with the amount of conversations passing through, take a look at Benedikt Terhechte’s new beta app Hirundo. The app focuses on creating a comfortable reading experience for the multitude of mailing lists out there and allows users to easily find, bookmark, and mute messages they desire.

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Update: iOS 9.3 adds support for importing Evernote data into Notes by long-pressing on Evernote Export files.

Apple dramatically improved its Notes app with iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan last fall thanks to enhanced photo support, new formatting tools, URL snippets, a share extension, and an iCloud Drive backend to keep it all in sync. So much so that people have actually been moving from Evernote to Apple Notes and not looking back, but there hasn’t been a simple way to make the leap until now. Included in the OS X 10.11.4 software update is a new option in the Notes app that makes migrating content from Evernote to Apple Notes a very simple process. Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

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Tim Cook’s embarrassment at the Super Bowl seems a timely opportunity to put together something that’s been on my to-do list for a while now: a quick guide to getting the best results from your iPhone’s camera.

As a keen photographer, I’ve been amazed just how far cameras have come in the past few years. Where I once used to carry a compact camera with me everywhere just in case, my iPhone has for several years now been my ‘always on me’ camera (currently the iPhone 6s). And where I used to carry a DSLR for travel photography, I now only carry my Sony a6000.

Since low-light was the problem Mr. Cook had, I’ll start with some tips specifically designed to help in low-light situations.

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You can get just about anything at the Shenzhen market in China, and that apparently includes an on-the-spot internal storage upgrade for your iPhone (in addition to a long list of counterfeit Apple products). It’s a service that, save for perhaps the most hardcore DIYers, is unheard of stateside.
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Today marks the official kick off of Americans deciding who will be the next President of the United States with the Iowa caucuses taking place tonight. So without stepping into partisan territory, I wanted to share a few helpful tips for keeping up with the whole election season using your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

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