Miscellaneous stupid Mac tricks, cool Mac tricks, and stupid cool Mac tricks Thread

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xoa

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  • #201
    More of a surprise interaction with a trick: there was plenty of talk this year about using the Screen Time feature to enable some extra protection in the case of stolen iDevices, in particular using the option to prevent password changes. But one interesting wrinkle I just hit is that the feature also prevents not just passcode changes on a paired Apple Watch, but in what I think might have been an oversight/unexpect interaction on Apple's part it also silently interferes with the setup flow of a brand new watch. As part of getting started you can set a passcode on the watch, and then also use the feature so it doesn't need it except when off your wrist or first put on. I did so, didn't want simple passcode, it asked for passcode twice, everything seemed fine. But then I noticed it wasn't asking for it when I took it off, which was odd, and then a few hours ago got around to try setting up Apple Pay on the watch, and got a "you need to set a passcode first". Huh? And the trying to do so, the setting for wrist was the only one that could be toggled, everything else was greyed out and reset to defaults. It took me a certain amount of headscratching to figure out that it was the Screen Time setting on my iPhone and I had to go turn that off. The watch never gave the slightest indication during brand new setup that there was an issue.

    It does make sense in some ways that the same setting there would hit both, but it's more surprising that it'd disrupt entering a passcode at all for the very first time on a brand new device, and do so without any hint of error. Also kind of an interesting peek beneath the hood so to speak, the "prevent all changes to passcode" functionality must be quite low level/early in the chain.
     
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    KhaineBOT

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  • #202
    Arcturus said:
    We're at dinner last night, and my college age son points out there is a tip calculator built into the calculator on the Apple Watch. Enter the bill, hit the obvious button labeled "TIP" and you can spin the crown to adjust the percentage there is a field that you can split the bill a specified number of ways.

    Never knew that was hiding in there.
    Click to expand...

    I don’t see that on my calculator app. Maybe it is region specific?
     
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    ballet_ld

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  • #204
    PoppyPrints said:
    When capturing text from several sources to paste into one document, I found it annoying to have different sizs/style texts showing up and later having to go and make everything my preferred font and size. HOWEVER, there is a menu item -- "Edit" > "Paste and match style" -- which makes the pasted text look like I just typed it! The keystroke is -- SHIFT-CONTROL-CMD-v
    Not actually hidden, but often overlooked.
    Click to expand...
    I use this on the reg. Life changing
     
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  • #205
    DovePig

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  • #206
    FoO said:
    Weird - I suppose it might be, particularly since employers pay service industry crap so they have to scrabble for tips to make a living in the US.
    View attachment 70948

    It would be a hard button to miss. Here's the support page for it: https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/calculator-apdc0baea711/watchos
    Click to expand...
    "Note: The Tip feature is not available in all regions."

    It's a bit weird that the support page shows the tip button even in other locales like German or similar, localised ("Trinkgeld"), some of which are not exactly countries where service workers have to always scrabble for tips like in the US (though tips are still definitely appreciated there). Could be just common renders, though. And Apple's localised features are sometime weird that way.
     
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    xoa

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  • #207
    ballet_ld said:
    I use this on the reg. Life changing
    Click to expand...
    In Mail.app at least I've combined this with the menu hotkey trick to swap the functionality. Regular ⌘V for "Paste and Match Style", and the ⇧⌃⌘V standard paste, because in practice I almost never want to include all the style stuff in an email when I'm copy/pasting into one so the default is kinda annoying.
     
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    Gus

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  • #209
    FoO said:
    Weird - I suppose it might be, particularly since employers pay service industry crap so they have to scrabble for tips to make a living in the US.
    View attachment 70948

    It would be a hard button to miss. Here's the support page for it: https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/calculator-apdc0baea711/watchos
    Click to expand...
    Maybe it's only present since one of the latest updates but for my locale (Belgium), there's a setting for the calculator watch app where you can toggle TIP or %. Actually it's the only setting available for the calculator.
     
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    grahamb

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  • #210
    Gus said:
    Maybe it's only present since one of the latest updates but for my locale (Belgium), there's a setting for the calculator watch app where you can toggle TIP or %. Actually it's the only setting available for the calculator.
    Click to expand...
    Yup, I have the same setting as well (Canada). I'm pretty sure it was on by default.
     

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    KhaineBOT

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  • #211
    Gus said:
    Maybe it's only present since one of the latest updates but for my locale (Belgium), there's a setting for the calculator watch app where you can toggle TIP or %. Actually it's the only setting available for the calculator.
    Click to expand...

    Ah, so it is there as a setting for me as well. It was not selected. I didn't see anything in the UI which suggests you can calculate a tip, which is what confused me.
     
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    Tinlad

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  • #212
    I don't know how well-known this one is: if you have an (ideally Ethernet-connected) always-on Mac on your network, there's an option to use it as a caching server for iCloud content and software updates for other iDevices on the LAN.

    I think it's mainly targeted for environments with large numbers of devices deployed, but for me it's been transformational for iCloud Drive even in my home environment. Previously it was flaky, with new files often taking ages to show up (or not showing up at all). With my Mac mini acting as a cache updates are immediately reflected on other devices.

    The software update side is less useful as my devices aren't homogeneous enough to make it worthwhile - i.e. the iOS 17.3 installer for my iPhone 13 is different to the one for my wife's 12 Pro, so caching is pointless.

    But for iCloud it's great. Can recommend trying it out if you have a suitable Mac.
     
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    xoa

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  • #213
    Tinlad said:
    I don't know how well-known this one is: if you have an (ideally Ethernet-connected) always-on Mac on your network, there's an option to use it as a caching server for iCloud content and software updates for other iDevices on the LAN.
    Click to expand...
    Yep, it's a tiny little remaining fragment of the old Software Update Server which was once one of the many neat features of Mac OS X Server.
    The software update side is less useful as my devices aren't homogeneous enough to make it worthwhile - i.e. the iOS 17.3 installer for my iPhone 13 is different to the one for my wife's 12 Pro, so caching is pointless.
    Click to expand...
    FWIW even in that situation it can be useful for people in environments with really poor internet connectivity since it can allow downloading constantly even when they're not home. For someone still on 2-5 Mbps ADSL, Viasat (on standard plan you get like 60 GB "high speed data" total per month, then speeds can drop to <1 Mbps on "standard data"), or even 56k modem, downloading gigabytes may be hard even if you start an update right away on getting home, plus then it's sucking your data right when you want it. So being able to effectively move that to during the day when you're at work could be valuable. Though hopefully between the new terrestrial broadband initiatives and Starlink that will become an ever smaller niche. Speeds that slow all the time is hard nowadays.
     
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  • #214
    Tinlad said:
    I don't know how well-known this one is: if you have an (ideally Ethernet-connected) always-on Mac on your network, there's an option to use it as a caching server for iCloud content and software updates for other iDevices on the LAN.

    I think it's mainly targeted for environments with large numbers of devices deployed, but for me it's been transformational for iCloud Drive even in my home environment. Previously it was flaky, with new files often taking ages to show up (or not showing up at all). With my Mac mini acting as a cache updates are immediately reflected on other devices.

    The software update side is less useful as my devices aren't homogeneous enough to make it worthwhile - i.e. the iOS 17.3 installer for my iPhone 13 is different to the one for my wife's 12 Pro, so caching is pointless.

    But for iCloud it's great. Can recommend trying it out if you have a suitable Mac.
    Click to expand...
    Oh neat it works on big sur, guess I'll have a use for my soon to be retired Late-2013 MBP :) iCloud hasn't been sketchy or flaky for me, really, but I do use it a lot and if there's anything that can make it more solid, I'm down.
     
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    Jeff J

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  • #218
    Yeah, we celebrated the 15th birthday of The Ach in 2016:

    Happy 15th birthday, Mac OS X (and the Ach!) [edit: now w/ screenshots]

    On March 24, 2001, Apple released build 4K78 of Mac OS X (i.e. the release version) to the world. On or around the same date, the Macintoshian Achaia was created as a way to move all those pesky Mac discussions out of the Battlefront. Congratulations to Apple for a what I think we can all agree...
    arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
     
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    wco81

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  • #220
    I've been wary of using FDE but had a scare with my 14-inch M1 Pro recently, while traveling.

    I landed at my destination and took my iPhone off airplane mode, only to get an alert that my MBP was at the previous airport and last seen 7 hours ago.

    I hadn't gotten Find My alerts on the MBP ever so it got my attention. We were stuck about 15 minutes at the tarmac waiting for the gate to clear so I couldn't check right away. Also I was at the previous airport 3 hours and left my carryon unattended in the lounge a few times to get food and drink and go to the bathroom. It was crowded and I left it in a pretty central part of the lounge, so it would be easier for someone to just wheel my carryon away rather than open it and pull out the laptop.

    When we finally got to the gate, I checked my carryon and saw that the MBP was there.

    That made me think about FDE. I'd been wary about using it because of a bad experience with some utility from the old Mac OS days where I was pretty sure of the password but it wouldn't decrypt.

    But I didn't realize that encryption is automatically on with all Apple Silicon Macs:

    If you have a Mac with Apple silicon or an Apple T2 Security Chip, your data is encrypted automatically. Turning on FileVault provides an extra layer of security by keeping someone from decrypting or getting access to your data without entering your login password.
    Click to expand...

    Protect data on your Mac with FileVault

    Turn on FileVault to add an extra layer of security to the encrypted data on your Mac.
    support.apple.com

    So would turning on FV be redundant with a recent Mac?
     
    Jonathon

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  • #221
    Data is "encrypted" with FileVault off, but might as well not be-- the encryption keys are essentially unprotected, so you don't need a login password or recovery key to get at the data on the disk. You still can't log into the machine, but boot from another OS install on USB or from Recovery and your data will all be accessible, no passwords required.

    FileVault protects the encryption key with your password (or the recovery key); no matter what the computer's booted into, if you don't have one of those, you won't be able to decrypt the disk.

    The main benefit to encryption being "always-on" even with FileVault off is that turning FileVault on is now instantaneous-- it doesn't have to re-write the whole disk to add encryption. It also makes a disk erase instantaneous-- remove the keys; data is now gone forever.

    (On the internal disk, with FileVault off, the encryption-by-default also protects against the SSD being removed and placed into another machine to read, since there are hardware-specific keys stored in the T2 or Mx chip's Secure Enclave... but I'm not sure what that would defend against in practice, as you could just read the data on the original machine, which the SSD is probably soldered to anyways.)

    For more reading, the Platform Security Guide goes into quite a bit of detail on how all this actually works: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/volume-encryption-with-filevault-sec4c6dc1b6e/web
     
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    xoa

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  • #223
    Jonathon said:
    Data is "encrypted" with FileVault off, but might as well not be-- the encryption keys are essentially unprotected, so you don't need a login password or recovery key to get at the data on the disk. You still can't log into the machine, but boot from another OS install on USB or from Recovery and your data will all be accessible, no passwords required.

    FileVault protects the encryption key with your password (or the recovery key); no matter what the computer's booted into, if you don't have one of those, you won't be able to decrypt the disk.

    The main benefit to encryption being "always-on" even with FileVault off is that turning FileVault on is now instantaneous-- it doesn't have to re-write the whole disk to add encryption. It also makes a disk erase instantaneous-- remove the keys; data is now gone forever.

    (On the internal disk, with FileVault off, the encryption-by-default also protects against the SSD being removed and placed into another machine to read, since there are hardware-specific keys stored in the T2 or Mx chip's Secure Enclave... but I'm not sure what that would defend against in practice, as you could just read the data on the original machine, which the SSD is probably soldered to anyways.)

    For more reading, the Platform Security Guide goes into quite a bit of detail on how all this actually works: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/volume-encryption-with-filevault-sec4c6dc1b6e/web
    Click to expand...
    Yep, there's a few other benefits as well when it comes to SSDs, encrypted data becomes random and can feed nicely into wear leveling, and while speed of "erasure" is nice on any drive, spinning rust or solid state, the low level non-deterministic nature of SSDs means that it's hard to be sure you've really erased all the data even with multiple zero passes. Granted that doesn't matter to most and physical destruction can still be done, but encryption is so cheap at this point that it's silly not to use it.
    wco81 said:
    Thanks for the rundown.

    Does FV affect Time Machine backups of the volume or the encryption of the TM volume is a separate thing?
    Click to expand...
    No, drive encryption, whether FV, using the drive's built-in capabilities, AS, or anything else, affects absolutely no higher level data operations. Time Machine, or Carbon Copy Cloner to another drive for that matter, is completely separate.

    I'd never run a system without disk encryption at this point, there should be nothing to be worried about because we all have decent backups right?
     
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  • #225
    Honeybog said:
    Mac-adjacent: If you use Universal Control to control your iPad, you can go to (iPad) Settings > General > Trackpad and toggle "Natural Scrolling." I hate natural scrolling with anything but touch input, so I was very happy to see that Apple bothered including a toggle for Universal Control.
    Click to expand...
    The same setting also applies if you have a trackpad actually connected to your iPad (which can be the one built into the iPad Magic Keyboard, or one over Bluetooth or USB).

    Between the trackpad settings and accessibility settings (Pointer Control), there's actually quite a bit of control over many of the iPad's mouse pointer "quirks" (like whether and how strongly the pointer snaps to UI elements).
     
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    xoa

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  • #226
    While personally I actually really like Bartender and think it's worth the money, and also that cheap nice little indie applications and tweaks have always been a great part of the Mac experience, it was neat to learn that there's a native preference for adjust the whitespacing of menu bar items. Author uses it to deal with a few too many items such that some get lost in The Notch, but I am now using it on my regular 5k display too since I found Apple's defaults a little widely spaced anyway.
    Code: 
    defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int X
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int X
    Where X is a number starting at 0. Log out is required.
     
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  • #227
    Might not be the best thread to post this, but plenty of Mac users watch this, so...

    Per my firewall notifications, Mail.app in Sonoma 14.3.1 (and a few previous versions as well) now tries to download remote content even with Block All Remote Content set to on in Mail preferences...

    Seems to apply only to mails in the inbox, not spam, but it's still quite concerning.

    Every time it downloads a new email into the inbox, if that email contains any remote content, I still get a fucking allow/block notification from my LittleSnitch firewall showing the Mail.app trying to contact some random servers if the message contains any remote content – from fonts.googleapis.com to others.

    Expected behaviour with Block All Remote Content On would be no background loading and zero connections to anything but the mail server...

    I guess it might be a bug or mismatch between all the privacy options in Mail.app

    1. Protect Mail Activity – loads remote content randomly in background for inbox mails, but through a privacy VPN, preventing "just viewed it" privacy attacks. Includes #2.
    2. Hide IP Address – additional option if the #1 is deselected, and just routes all through a privacy VPN, but no random background loading, so not preventing "just seen it" attacks.
    3. Block All Remote Content – should block everything, but it apparently doesn't, at least with #2 selected as well.

    I had the above options set as 011, BTW.

    My firewall only allows unrestricted access to Apple's and my mail servers, so I was pretty pissed at seeing connection attempts to remote content even though I explicitly set Mail to block all of them. Mind you, that doesn't apply to spam folders, as any messages going straight to spam don't trigger connections. But inbox ones still do.

    Filing a feedback and a bug report with my dev account, as that behaviour is certainly not normal, but ya'll might want to look into it as well. I haven't really bothered with spinning up a clean Sonoma Virtual Machine yet to check whether that's just some corrupted plists on my install (which would be bad enough), or a Mail.app bug overlooked all the way.
     
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    xoa

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  • #228
    Of note if any other Achaians ever need to setup some new VMs with older Mac OS versions, or potentially even install it on new hardware. I needed to spin up a Yosemite VM just now, and have always saved all the old OS installers going back a long time. I've used them long ago and am sure they are good. But this time I got through to starting the install and then out popped a
    This copy of the Install OSX Yosemite application can't be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading.
    Click to expand...
    Eventually my memory jogged and I remembered back in like 2020 there were a bunch of date/certificate problems that Apple resolved with new installers. However, extremely irritatingly, they don't actually make the downloads available as the old normal .app. Instead it's this wrapping .pkg thing that will refuse to work and give you the installer without running on hardware that supports it. Maybe could work around it with Pacifist but wasn't immediately obvious.

    Easy work around is after booting into the initial install media screen, pull up the terminal and just set the date to be like 2016. So command is just # date MMDDHHmmYY, ie "date 0101010116" would be January 1 2016 at 1:01. Then it should go along fine.

    In VMware Fusion I also needed to set USB to 2.0 vs 3.1 to get the mouse and keyboard to register for whatever reason.
     
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    twindux

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  • #229
    Arcturus said:
    We're at dinner last night, and my college age son points out there is a tip calculator built into the calculator on the Apple Watch. Enter the bill, hit the obvious button labeled "TIP" and you can spin the crown to adjust the percentage there is a field that you can split the bill a specified number of ways.

    Never knew that was hiding in there.
    Click to expand...
    that is so cool! Not that I struggle with this, but it's a very thoughtful feature.
     
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    Honeybog

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  • #231
    CommanderJameson said:
    TIL Preview can rotate pages in a PDF, and save said PDF.
    Click to expand...

    Some other things you can do in Preview off of the top of my head:

    Create a new PDF with selected pages: Select one or more pages, Command+C, Command+N

    Open thumbnail view, drag and drop pages and save the order

    Drag and drop from one PDF to another to combine

    Reduce file size: File > Save As… > Quartz Filter > Reduce File Size

    Insert a blank page: Edit > Insert > Blank Page

    Live Text: Even though it’s not the same as OCR, I’ve noticed that it can be a lot more accurate than Acrobat at recognizing and extracting text in difficult scans.
     
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  • #234
    CommanderJameson said:
    I use Preview a lot for screenshots - create a new file from the clipboard, and the basic editing and cropping tools are fine. Certainly, a lot less aggravation and bother than spinning up the behemoth that is Photoshop, just to trim a screenie!
    Click to expand...
    No need for going through Screenshot to clipboard > Launch Preview > New from Clipboard > Markup > Save As all manually, you can just make a Shortcut for taking screenshots...

    I have one pinned to my Dock that goes:
    1. Screenshot selected area
    2. Markup screenshot (allows you to add text, pointers, crop, almost everything Preview does, using the same Markup engine as Preview without launching Preview)
    3. Resize and convert to PNG (or JPG, even allowing you to delete metadata for privacy, as otherwise the JPG carries a bunch of PII metadata like your monitor brand and model et cetera)
    4. Save as ~/Pictures/Screenshots/TMP.PNG with overwrite (so I can just screenshot something for quickly sending to somebody, without it cluttering my other screenshots I'd like to keep archived)
    TempScreenshot.PNG
    The nice part is that you can even invoke some other apps' functions seamlessly, without actually launching the big app itself, if it supports Shortcuts (or more precisely Mac OS Extensions I guess). Above, I am running a function from Pixelmator Pro inside the shortcut, without ever waiting for the full app to load. But that's just an example, you can do the resizing and PNG conversion / metadata removal with built‑in functions as well.

    If you ever find any nicer image annotation / markup app that supports Shortcuts, you could possibly add that as well, instead of using the built‑in Markup function.
     
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  • #237
    Not really a new trick, but I just learned how to accomplish something in a much, much simpler way.

    I use dark mode across all my devices, but want to use certain apps in light mode instead. This isn't a problem with most 3rd party apps which tend to include a preference for which mode to use independent of the system setting, but the built-in apps do not.

    On MacOS, I use the open source app Gray which forces light/dark on a per-app basis for all apps. But what about on iOS/iPadOS? It's long been possible to use Shortcuts to force specific apps to swap modes, but it's complex to set up and I found it unreliable. It just didn't work half the time.

    However: As I've been using OpenAI via Co-Pilot a lot lately, I figured... why not ask it? The first solution it gave me was: Focus Filters. You set up a custom Focus mode with the only variables of Schedule: On App Open (adding here the apps I want to view in light mode), and a Filter of: Change Dark Mode to Light. And it works! I switch to Mail.app on my phone and it swaps to light mode about a second later. I swipe back to the home screen (or any other app) and dark mode returns. Brilliant.

    The only downside is the slight delay before the Focus Mode state change kicks in and changes the mode, but that's a minor nit, IMO, to finally get light/dark mode on a per-app basis on iOS/iPadOS.

    Here's one of the guides to setting this up that Co-Pilot referenced as a source.
     
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    megabulk

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  • #238
    iPhone tricks from the NYTimes. Some of these were new to me:

    1. Identify plants or animals. If you take a photo of a plant, flower, tree, or animal, you can find out exactly what it is by tapping the Info button on the bottom of the screen; if your iPhone knows what it is, a symbol with stars will appear at the bottom of the photo. The metadata details will tell you what the plant or animal is and will also give you an option to look up more information about it.
    2. Transform your phone into a portable white noise machine. In Settings, go to Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Background Sounds and choose from sounds such as Ocean, Rain, and Stream. We’ve tested this ourselves and with babies, and the sounds are soothing for all.
    3. Ask Siri to read things to you. Open the Safari app and then command Siri to “read this” or say “I want to listen to this page.” You can also tap the Aa button on the left of the address bar and tap Listen to Page. You have the option to adjust the speaking speed as well as pause.
    4. Automatically sort your grocery list. The Reminders app does double duty keeping lists, and it can even organize some lists for you. When you create a new list, select Groceries from the List Type drop-down. As you add items to the list, the app sorts them into categories, such as putting “eggs” under “Dairy, Eggs & Cheese.”
    5. Keep people out of your private tabs. If you’ve been away from Safari for 15 minutes, your iPhone can require authentication before displaying your private tabs. That’s handy if you often let other people use your phone and would like to keep some browsing habits private. To enable the feature, go to Settings, tap Safari, and switch on the toggle for Require Face ID to Unlock Private Browsing.
    6. Create gestures that you can trigger with your voice. The iOS accessibility features can replay any series of touch actions when you give a voice command. Imagine mapping out an entire, tedious action that you do frequently in an app, such as manually entering information to move through screens, or having a command that scrawls your signature or draws a picture. Go to Settings, tap Accessibility, and then tap Voice Control. Toggle it on, and then tap Commands > Create New Command. Enter your desired command phrase, tap Action, and then tap Run Custom Gesture. Use your finger to create the gesture on your home screen, and your phone will replay it when you say the trigger phrase. Note: We found that Voice Control would respond to anyone using the commands, so maybe turn this one off when you aren’t using it.
    7. Quickly remove the background from photos. Tap and hold any picture stored in the Files app, and then tap Quick Actions > Remove Background. iOS creates a duplicate of your original photo with no background—perfect for further editing in another app. You can use the same trick with several photos, too.
    8. Use two fingers to select all. Just swipe down to select all to mark every item as read or mass-delete items within apps like Messages, Mail, Notes, and Reminders. This action also works in some third-party apps, such as Telegram, but there is no support yet in others, like Gmail.
    9. Copy or translate text with the camera. Open the camera app and point your phone lens at a block of text. An icon with three lines in an outlined square appears at the bottom-right corner. Tap the icon, and it captures the text with the option to copy, select all, look up, translate, or share.
    10. Look up laundry-care icons. After you take a photo of a laundry-care label, tap the Info button at the bottom of the page and tap Look Up Laundry Care. The results will show you what each specific label means.
    11. Delete one digit on the calculator. Swipe in either direction on the calculator display to remove one digit at a time instead of removing all digits via the Clear or All Clear button.
    12. Keep people from snooping through your phone. A setting called Guided Access keeps your phone locked to one app, which is particularly useful when you’re letting kids play with your iPhone. In Settings, tap Accessibility > Guided Access to activate the feature, which prevents whoever is using your phone from exiting an app and opening another one. Just remember to turn it off once you get your phone back.
    13. Become a faster photographer with Camera shortcuts. Swiping left on your iPhone’s lock screen opens the Camera app. It’s much easier to shoot photos by pressing the physical volume button on the side of the phone instead of tapping the Shutter button. Swiping the Shutter button to the left shoots a bunch of photos in a row, a function known as burst mode, while holding down the Shutter button shoots video without your having to swipe into video mode. Shaving a second off the time it takes to snap a photo or record video can be precious when you’re capturing something fleeting, like fast-moving kids or pets.
    14. Limit screen time for specific apps. Wasting too much time mindlessly scrolling TikTok or Instagram? You can turn on a setting that restricts your access to those apps. Within Settings, tap Screen Time, and then tap Add Limits > Add Limit. You can select an entire app category, such as Social, or you can set limits on specific apps by tapping the category and then selecting apps within those categories. Tap Next in the top-right corner and then choose how much time you’ll allow yourself to spend in those apps. You can give yourself more time on weekends if you want by tapping Customize Days.
    15. Move a group of apps to another page on your home screen. When you’re curating your iPhone home screen, moving apps one by one to a different page can be tedious. You can move a group of apps over at the same time: Just long-press an app, tap Edit Home Screen, and then grab the app you want to move. While still holding your finger on the screen, tap on each app icon you’d like to move with it, and the iPhone will grab them all.
     
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    CommanderJameson

    CommanderJameson

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  • #239
    On #9, also consider that you can scan text directly into the Notes app, and it also does handwriting recognition.

    I use this in the following workflow, which ranges from the elegant to the clunky:
    1. Write stuff on kitchen notice board over the course of the week
    2. In Notes, take picture of noticeboard
    3. marvel at the ability of Notes to read my handwriting
    4. Cor, we’re in the future!
    5. clunk begins
    6. Paste text into Reminders
    7. Swear profusely as all the lines of text end up in a single reminder
    8. Go back to Notes, format text as ticklist
    9. Paste this into Reminders
    10. Wonder why Reminders can’t do this directly
    11. clunk ends
    12. Reminders sorts the pasted items automatically into the correct* sections
    *For suitably small values of “correct”
     
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    Honeybog

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  • #240
    megabulk said:
    Use two fingers to select all. Just swipe down to select all to mark every item as read or mass-delete items within apps like Messages, Mail, Notes, and Reminders. This action also works in some third-party apps, such as Telegram, but there is no support yet in others, like Gmail.
    Click to expand...

    This one got me excited, but it’s actually just poorly titled by Wirecutter. It’s “two fingers to select” not “select all.” Swiping down starts selecting items and scrolls, but it doesn’t select all at once.

    For what it’s worth, in any app with selection tick boxes, dragging with one finger over the area with the tick box will do the same.
     
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