iPhone
To take a screenshot of whateverâs 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 youâre 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 âFull Pageâ 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.
Thereâs also a chrome extension that will allow you to do this on your computer so that you donât need to take multiple screenshots to get an entire webpage. (See the Chrome section under General)
I use this all the time when Iâm 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 âFind on pageâ and type in the word youâre looking for.
Update: if youâre using Safari on your phone, you can also click the address bar and start to type your search term. By default if you continue, youâll 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.
- This can be done without sound, with just the system sound, or with the microphone for a voiceover.
- It can be used for recording something funny in a game you're playing, or for capturing a short clip from a podcast or video you're watching.
- I enabled this in the control center as described below.
Go to âSettingsâ and then âControl Centerâ â once youâve added things like âScreen Recordingâ or âLow Power Modeâ youâll 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. Itâs in the âcontrol centerâ 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 peopleâs phones without needing them to unlock it firstâit 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).
When you go to take a photo, thereâs a small menu on the top bar â 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 âplayâ the photo.
If you push the photo up, like youâre scrolling down, youâll be able to manipulate the Live Photo to have it âloopâ or âbounceâ.
I almost always enable Live Photo because it gives so much more context if thereâs any kind of actionâa kid playing, a dog saying hello, snow fallingâbut 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 âkey photoâ 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 Iâve read that the Facebook app does allow for sharing Live Photos.
đ Note: they really are like little movies, which means that they include sound by default (you can edit them to âmute.â That can be both good and bad. đ My phone is perpetually in silent mode, so I have to flip the switch to listen to other peopleâs 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; youâll see a small yellow square. To the right of the square is a small sun â 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 âsnowâ or âbeachâ or âdogâ in addition to more basic things like âAugust 2020.â
- I've never been able to do this properly from my desktop (if you know how, let me know!), but if you go to Messages and drag down with your thumb, a search box will show up. When you search for a keyword, it will display a bunch of instances for you to select from.
- Even by just clicking in the search box, it will display a number of things you might be looking for: links, photos, locations, files, etc.
You might have pocket lint in the charging port. Try gently teasing it out with the end of a paperclip.
(Iâve come to believe that airplane mode is maybe the best, at least for nighttime and at least if you arenât likely to be needed in an emergency)
This bothered me until I discovered that I can change todayâs wake-up time easily.
If itâs past that dayâs 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.
Instead of tapping the blue up arrow to send your text message or photo message, click and hold. Youâll get a menu for things affecting the message itself âbubbleâ and things affecting the background âscreen.â
âInvisible inkâ is probably the most magical; my family uses it to share their Wordle guesses with one another every day without spoilers, since theyâre 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) wouldnât have to see it any time they scrolled past đ .
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 planeâs 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.
Apple Desktop/Laptop
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, recordingâwhich I usually do with quicktimeâetc.) 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.
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). Itâs called âQuick Look.â
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 â try opening Activity Monitor, searching for âQuickLookâ 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 âreturnâ 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 â 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 âsnowâ or âbeachâ or âdogâ in addition to more basic things like âAugust 2020.â
General
There's a useful app for automatically shifting the color spectrum of your computer screen to be warmer during the evening hours:
(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 â 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 â the app will just have you take a photo of the front and (endorsed) back and input the amount.
- Google a term, click on "images," click on the image you're interested in, when the details come up, right click on that image to copy, copy the address, or open in a new tab. If you've copied the image, you can paste it directly into a message (rather than downloading and then attaching the file).
- Advanced: click on "advanced search" to open a menu of options including the image quality and general shape/orientation of the image. Once you click "search" here, these criteria will actually be displayed at the top of the search results for you to tweak or to have available while looking for images with different search terms.
Just click the little down arrow next to âsendâ when youâre at your computer and select the time you want it to be sent.
This can be useful both if you donât want your colleagues thinking that youâre available for work outside of business hours (or âirresponsiblyâ 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 theyâre 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 canât 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).
In Notion and Slack, theyâve figured out that if someone highlights text and pastes a link, they probably want a hyperlink, so thatâs what happens automatically. (Which is good because command+k in Slack letâs you search for a channel to go to instead.)
Chrome
Not sure if this is still the best option out there, but if you're someone who ends up with many tabs open, you may want to look into an extension that lowers the amount of memory that Chrome is taking my maintaining each tab. I would be cautious of the security risk of a utility like this.
An alternative to "pausing" tabs that you've collected is to group them together and save them all via bookmarking, which will then allow you to open them all back up when you're ready for that topic again. Top right dotsâ>bookmarksâ>bookmark all tabs (vs bookmark this tab)
This is amazing and makes it so that you can capture things like full fb threads in a single click (and you can save it as a png or as a pdf).
Select the text, right click, choose "copy link to highlight" and voila!
When you open a new tab or window and start to type the name of the page that you'd like to open, Chrome will make guesses as to what you're searching for and will show you pages that are already in your browser history. If you already have the relevant page open somewhere, below the link youâre looking for will be an option to "switch to this tab" (so that you don't open a second version of the same page).
Security

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 đą (this is also why two-factor authentication (2FA) is good â 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 donât 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 canât move data, but that ends up being annoying, especially if it looks just like your other cables.