Tech tips

To take a screenshot of whatever’s on your phone screen, click the home button at the same time as the sleep button on the side of your phone. In newer models, the sleep button and the increase volume button.

If you’re taking a screenshot of a webpage that extends down below the edge of your screen, start by taking a regular screenshot (the home button + the sleep button on the side or the sleep button + volume up) but then when the thumbnail shows up, click on it (this will give you an edit view, which is actually also really useful for making quick annotations), then at the top, click “Full Page” which will allow you to see and scroll through the entire page via the scroll bar on the right, and you can then save it as a PDF.

There’s also a chrome extension that will allow you to do this on your computer so that you don’t need to take multiple screenshots to get an entire webpage. (See the Chrome section under General)

I use this all the time when I’m on a website because I had been searching for a word via Google.

All you need to do is click the share icon, scroll down a bit, click on “Find on page” and type in the word you’re looking for.

Update: if you’re using Safari on your phone, you can also click the address bar and start to type your search term. By default if you continue, you’ll just execute a google search, but as you type, Safari will display the results of an on-page search that you can click on instead.

Go to “Settings” and then “Control Center” — once you’ve added things like “Screen Recording” or “Low Power Mode” you’ll be able to toggle them on or off just by swiping to display your control center.

It will offer you a bunch of extra math functions. It’s in the “control center” by default for easy access.

Without unlocking the phone, swipe left. You can also hard-press the camera icon if it shows on your Lock Screen.

(This also allows you to take pictures on other people’s phones without needing them to unlock it first—it can be nice to have a 3rd party take pictures of you doing something fun without needing to ask)

Deep press on the camera icon to get a quick menu (e.g. video or selfie).

You don’t have to touch the big red button on the screen (especially hard to do when taking a selfie or when the screen is wet or you’re wearing gloves). Once you’re in the camera view, you can click either of the physical volume buttons to trigger the shutter. The only downside is that for Live Photos, you’ll pick up the audio of the click.

When you go to take a photo, there’s a small menu on the top bar — the icon that looks like a bullseye, when selected and yellow, will take a second or two of video before and after you snap a photo. When you press on the still photograph, it will “play” the photo.

If you push the photo up, like you’re scrolling down, you’ll be able to manipulate the Live Photo to have it “loop” or “bounce”.

I almost always enable Live Photo because it gives so much more context if there’s any kind of action—a kid playing, a dog saying hello, snow falling—but it also works a bit like shooting in burst mode because when you go to edit the Live Photo, you can select a different frame as the “key photo” which is the default still image. (Though it typically does a pretty good job of choosing an appropriate frame on its own, and it enhances that frame, so you lose some quality, e.g. HDR, by choosing your own).

Unfortunately when you text a Live Photo to someone without an iPhone, it loses its Harry Potter magic. This is also true for sharing on other platforms like WhatsApp, though I’ve read that the Facebook app does allow for sharing Live Photos.

🔉 Note: they really are like little movies, which means that they include sound by default (you can edit them to “mute.” That can be both good and bad. 🙃 My phone is perpetually in silent mode, so I have to flip the switch to listen to other people’s Live Photos and check my own for questionable content (so I basically never do the latter).

When your camera is activated, click on the screen to have it focus on that spot; you’ll see a small yellow square. To the right of the square is a small sun — drag it up and down to make the image brighter or darker.

Turns out that Apple uses machine learning to identify what is in your photos, so you can search your photo library for “snow” or “beach” or “dog” in addition to more basic things like “August 2020.”

You might have pocket lint in the charging port. Try gently teasing it out with the end of a paperclip.

(I’ve come to believe that airplane mode is maybe the best, at least for nighttime and at least if you aren’t likely to be needed in an emergency)

This bothered me until I discovered that I can change today’s wake-up time easily.

If it’s past that day’s bedtime, just click on the wake up time displayed on your Lock Screen.

I personally want my screen to be darker at night than the dim settings allow, so I have changed the white point, which can be turned on and off by triple-clicking the home button or sleep button (the default shortcut for toggling accessibility features on and off). But there are many many other interesting options.

If you listen to podcasts or music when falling asleep, you may use an app that has a feature for turning off after a set period of time. But if there isn’t a built in feature for whatever you’re listening to, you can use your iPhone’s timer feature for the same effect:

Just select “Stop Playing” from the menu of tone options when setting the timer.

Instead of tapping the blue up arrow to send your text message or photo message, click and hold. You’ll get a menu for things affecting the message itself “bubble” and things affecting the background “screen.”

“Invisible ink” is probably the most magical; my family uses it to share their Wordle guesses with one another every day without spoilers, since they’re in different time zones. I just used it a minute ago to text a photo of a cool thing on the inside of my cheek so that the recipient could a) choose whether they wanted to look or not and b) wouldn’t have to see it any time they scrolled past 😅.

Balloons and confetti are fun for celebrations (and the fireworks actually make your phone vibrate!)

If someone texts you "Flight XYZ" it will become a clickable link and offer you to "Preview Flight"

It will show all legs of that plane’s flight plan (so you may need to swipe left to get to the one you're looking for) and will display a map showing where the flight is on its flight plan, departure and arrival time (often adjusted for late or early arrivals) and even baggage claim information.

Bonus tip: you can text that info to yourself and it will work just as well.

Different commands do different things:

shift+command+4 allows you to drag a box around what you would like to capture and is the one I use the most.

shift+command+5 gives you more options (entire windows, entire screens, recording—which I usually do with quicktime—etc.) This is also where you can change the location where your screenshots are saved.

shift+command+3 immediately takes a screenshot of the entire screen.

For me they are automatically saved as png files in a folder called "Screenshots." I use them often enough that I have the folder that they're saved to in my "dock" for easy access, and that folder is actually in my dropbox so that the screenshots sync across my devices.

Take a screenshot on your Mac

You can capture the entire screen, a window, or just a portion of the screen. To take a screenshot, press and hold these three keys together: Shift, Command, and 3. If you see a thumbnail in the corner of your screen, click it to edit the screenshot.

support.apple.com

When you're looking through a folder or looking at files on your desktop, you can preview them without opening them (and without launching any application, whether they're excel spreadsheets or pdfs or jpgs or word docs). It’s called “Quick Look.”

Just select the file and press the space bar. Until you press it again or click escape, it will preview whichever file is selected, so you can arrow through a whole folder of files to find what you're looking for (this happens most for me in my screenshots folder where I don't name files by default, or when looking through different versions of a PDF since it also allows you to scroll through while in this preview mode).

If you accidentally click on the name of the file and it thinks you want to edit it, just esc out.

Not working for you? It seems to be on the fritz in Monterey — try opening Activity Monitor, searching for “QuickLook” and then force quit it. For me, this worked for the finder version and it also solved the problem of photos in Messages not opening up nice and big with a doubleclick.

This is how I search for files in my system (I think I have a program called "Alfred" set up to use this key command instead of spotlight, so there might be some differences). command+space lets me type the name of an application I want to launch or if I type "find" and then a keyword, it will find files. It will also allow me to do math problems (which I probably use it for more than searching my machine), and hitting “return” automatically copies the result to my clipboard so I can paste it elsewhere..

Some people don't minimize any of their windows, and just use hot corners to reveal their desktop. For this strategy to work, it helps to be able to navigate between applications as well as windows and tabs using your keyboard rather than clicking (since you're more limited in what you can see).

(hold)Command+Tab to flip through open applications (reverse directions with the ~ key instead of Tab)

Three fingers swipe up to reveal all open windows (which will exclude anything minimized)

Within a window, control+tab to cycle through tabs (add shift to reverse directions). Cmd+shift+ brackets will do the same (and is easier to switch directions). Cmd+a number to go directly to that one.

You can have multiple desktops. Three finger swipe up to see all your windows and then + in the top right to create a new one. It will also automatically create a new one for a window that you make fullscreen. Three finger swipe to the side to move between desktops.

You can make an application fullscreen with the green button in the top left corner, but if you hold, you can put two windows side-by-side. Once something is fullscreen, you'll have to swipe with three fingers to get back to your old desktop space unless you stop the fullscreen.

If you have an external monitor, you can swipe through desktops on one screen while keeping one screen constant or even swiping in the opposite direction.

I use an app called "Spectacle" to do something similar with key commands. I've heard of other people using BetterTouchTool and Divy and Magnet.

That's the fastest way (and useful if you're sharing your screen for movie night or whatever and haven't enabled automatic dnd when in full-screen mode for the relevant program), but you can also do it by clicking the "notifications" icon and then swiping down to reveal the do not disturb and night shift options.

Gone are the days of needing to print, sign, and scan documents. Using Preview, you can annotate a document and add your signature (which can then be stored for any future use) by holding a piece of paper with your signature on it up to the camera on your mac.

When you hover over anything, it shows you the size and location. (yes, I have a rather large Photos library...)

I check this when the fan on my laptop starts up unexpectedly, or when things get sluggish.

This is native to Apple, so you can find it with command+space and the heaviest tasks will be at the top of the list — you can also stop individual processes by clicking the x in the top left corner.

You can also force quit something via cmd+alt+esc

This allows you to use them in any application, even though you don't have an emoji keyboard like you do on your phone.

I find it harder to scroll, but you can search for them by name.

Turns out that Apple uses machine learning to identify what is in your photos, so you can search your photo library for “snow” or “beach” or “dog” in addition to more basic things like “August 2020.”

If you bring a friend to your parents’ house or your favorite cafe, but can’t remember/find the password, you can look it up in your mac. Go to “Keychain Access” and search for the wifi network.

To “show password” check the box and you’ll just need to input your computer’s login info.

There's a useful app for automatically shifting the color spectrum of your computer screen to be warmer during the evening hours:

https://justgetflux.com/

(On a mac they have a built-in option called "night shift" which you can toggle on and off by scrolling up after clicking the icon in the top right corner of your screen — settings are in the display preference.)

e.g. Adobe Scan or your Notes app (I use scanbot (now called swiftscan) but I think it might be expensive now)

I don't carry a purse, so I never have checks with me when I encounter an ATM. BofA has made it incredibly easy to deposit checks with your phone — the app will just have you take a photo of the front and (endorsed) back and input the amount.

Just click the little down arrow next to “send” when you’re at your computer and select the time you want it to be sent.

This can be useful both if you don’t want your colleagues thinking that you’re available for work outside of business hours (or “irresponsibly” awake in the middle of the night), or if you want to get their attention at a particular time when they are in work-mode when the message comes in and/or when they’re less likely to have a backlog

This means that firstname.lastname@gmail.com will work exactly the same as firstnamelastname@gmail.com or first.name.last.name@gmail.com or f.i.r.s.t.n.a.(you get the idea).

Uses: when you sign up for a new account with the same provider but their system can’t accept two accounts with identical email addresses, e.g. using both amazon.com and amazon.de as I recommend for international gifting. (I highly recommend using a password manager to make things like this non-annoying for your future-self).

You don’t think you need this until it’s too late 😅 So turn it on now!

In Notion and Slack, they’ve figured out that if someone highlights text and pastes a link, they probably want a hyperlink, so that’s what happens automatically. (Which is good because command+k in Slack let’s you search for a channel to go to instead.)

I hate that embedded graphics (even tiny hidden ones) can tell a sender that you’ve opened an email, or that you’ve sent it to someone else, or that it’s been opened 5 more times. You can prevent most (all?) of this tracking by asking your email provider not to load any images unless you individually ok them on a specific email.

If someone gets access to your email, they can just go to any site and request a password reset to be sent to your email which they can then click on 😱 (this is also why two-factor authentication (2FA) is good — phone numbers can be hijacked, so using an "authenticator" app is much better than receiving a text or call.)

My favorite password manager. Good for quickly generating long secure passwords, storing them for you, and for inputting saved logins to websites with a few keystrokes. (I have it on my phone as well as my laptop so that I always have my passwords with me.)

Google passwords might be a good option for people who don’t want/need the cost and extra steps of a dedicated service (maybe your parents?).

LastPass is also supposed to be good

Prevents you from plugging your phone into an untrusted thing + isn't as bad if it goes missing (since it can sometimes be awkward to hang out near the power source).

You may also be able to get a power cable that can’t move data, but that ends up being annoying, especially if it looks just like your other cables.