iPhone
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 send it as a jpg or 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 often the reason I’m on the page at all is because I had been searching for a specific word or phrase 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.
- 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, or for sharing a long chat by scrolling through it while recording.
- I enabled this in the control center as described below.
- (I recommend stopping the recording by clicking the indicator box in the top left so that you don’t have to trim the end of your video where you navigated to the recorder.)
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. The calculator is 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. But don’t worry, it doesn’t unlock the photo library.)
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 afterward 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).
Select the Live Photos in the Photos app and go to File—>Export—>Export originals. This will create two files for each Live Photo: a .HEIC file of the still and a .mov file for the movie. Note: if you’ve done any editing, including choosing a new key photo, the still won’t be the one you want. So you can delete the HEIC files and replace them with a regular .jpeg export.
Sometimes you’re taking a picture, maybe using the “Live” feature, but realize a video would be better (a butterfly, a kid blowing out their birthday candles, a friend jumping off the dock), but you don’t have time to swipe to the “video” setting—no worries! Just hold down the big red shutter button and it will take a video for as long as you keep the button depressed.
This also works with the volume button on your phone, as an extension of the photo taking tip above.
Though you can also extract the video from any Live Photo if you really just wanted those ~2 seconds.
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.” And you can also layer search terms, to find a picture of your dog at sunset in 2023.
- 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.
- If you click on the profile for someone (their photo at the top of your chat), it will show you the links, photos, etc. just in that person’s chat—theirs and yours. Pretty convenient for recent items.
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)
(update: there’s a product called “Brick” that I’ve heard people rave about — you set what can and can’t be accessed, and then until you physically go touch your phone to the brick, your phone is incapable of being reset)
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 set to turn 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.
To make your screen darker, go to
Settings —> Accessibility —> Display & Text Size —> Reduce White Point
And to make this toggle on and off with the “triple-click” you go to the bottom of the Accessibility menu under General (this is also a cool place to look at a list of all the other options that might be worth checking out).
Note: because I manually turn it on and off, I sometimes don’t realize it’s on, which can be annoying if you’re trying to take a picture in bright sunlight and you’re having trouble seeing the image on the screen. I’m not strict about making sure I turn it off in the morning (I think it might reset on its own?), but I do keep it in mind as a thing to check if my phone isn’t acting like I want it to.
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.
Caution: depending on your iOS, if you tell Siri to set an alarm, and this is what you last set, she might default to “stop playing” rather than giving you an audible signal that your time is up.
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 mouth 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!)
Like gmail, iMessage lets you set the time you want to send a message. Maybe you have an older relative who doesn’t set their phone on dnd overnight: just click on the ➕ and select “Send Later”
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.
From Messages, if I click on my dad’s profile or my sister, I’ll see them on a map in realtime. I use this most frequently to make sure they made it to their gate at the airport on time or that they’ve landed or made it safely back home (and I’ll often send a screenshot and an emoji to let them know I know).
It will also offer directions to them, which is reversible at the click of a button, so I can get an updated ETA when they’re on their way for a visit.
You can also see all your contacts with shared locations by going to the “Find My” app, but for whatever reason, that feels more Big Brother.
My sister lives halfway across the world, and I like that she checks on me. She’ll sometimes notice that I’m having an adventure and ask for photos 😅
But you can also share your location just for 24hrs if you’re coordinating with someone but don’t want them tracking you forever.
On your settings menu, you should see something called “Personal Hotspot” which you can toggle on. Your network is probably named “____’s iPhone” and has a default password which you can change to something easier to remember like your phone number.
(if it’s greyed out, you either aren’t connected to a cellular network, or your cell phone plan doesn’t include this feature)
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. (You can also hit the spacebar and it will automatically select the current window.)
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.
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 have a free program called "Alfred" set up to use this key command instead of spotlight, so there are 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 by using Alfred, 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.
Go to system preferences—>trackpad—>more gestures and then uncheck “swipe between pages” or choose “off” from the top dropdown menu that offers to use two or three finger swipes or scrolling to navigate pages.
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.
You can add text boxes in addition to other editing tools by clicking the button that looks like the tip of a pencil. Importantly, these kinds of edits can look wonky when opened by other programs—text overlapping with itself, or offset from the lines of the form. You can preemptively solve this problem by always locking in the view by going to “print” and then selecting “pdf” (instead of a printer).
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.” And you can also layer search terms, to find a picture of your dog at sunset in 2023.
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.
Update: if you are both Apple people and you have one another in your contacts, you should be able to tell your friend the wifi network, and when they try to join, you’ll get a ping on your device, asking to share the password. (if this doesn’t work on your laptop, try it on your phone)
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 — 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.
- 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 “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.
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 dots—>bookmarks—>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 you’re 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 😱 (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.)
This is also a juicy target, so be very careful if an email or customer support call or anyone else directs you to log in. Always go to a trusted website rather than anything that could’ve been spoofed.
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.)
You can change the parameters of the passwords it generates so that it’s easier to fill in if you are in a situation where you can’t just use the saved library, e.g. using “memorable” words instead of random characters:
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?).
Bitwarden is also reputed to be a good option for tech savvy folks.
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.