How-To - page 10

Spatial photos and videos look incredibly lifelike in full 3D while wearing an Apple Vision Pro headset. But how do you take photos with Vision Pro? It might be confusing at first since there’s no Camera app in the headset. Instead, Vision Pro uses a new Capture app.

But don’t worry. Any photos or videos you take with Vision Pro will sync to your Photos library. And they’re fully compatible with your other Apple devices, although you’ll only see them there in a boring two dimensions, like it’s still 2023. Yawn.

Screen sharing from your Mac to Vision Pro is a great way to work inside the headset while using your Mac’s keyboard and trackpad. You can enlarge your Mac’s screen to enormous size, and surround it with apps that work inside Vision Pro.

It’s called Mac Virtual Display. Unfortunately, it’s limited to only one Mac screen. But set up right, it can be the ultimate big screen setup — without the actual big screens.

Here’s how to use your Mac with Vision Pro.

The Vision Pro Persona is a 3D representation of yourself that will appear to others in FaceTime calls. It also fuels the EyeSight feature, which shows a ghostly 3D version of your eyes on the outside of the headset to make the device seem less isolating. 

Many people criticize the Personas for looking unnatural, so the feature very much deserves its beta label. However, there are some things you can do to create a better one. If you didn’t create a Vision Pro Persona while setting up your headset, or want to redo it to make yours look a little less uncanny, I’ll show you how to do it at any time.

How do you force restart Apple Vision Pro? All computers lock up from time to time — even spatial computers you wear on your face. You don’t want to keep it on if it’s locking up; that could lead to a nasty head injury!

Here’s how to reboot or restart Vision Pro.

Vision Pro Guest User mode is how you get your Vision Pro ready to show to someone else. Because if you own one of Apple’s new AR/VR headsets, everyone you know is inevitably going to want to try it on. That’s where Vision Pro guest mode comes in.

I will be visiting my mom this weekend, who’s enormously excited to try out the new technology. This is how to set up a Guest User on Vision Pro.

Do AirTags make noise? They don’t look like they make any sound, but yes indeed they do. They make noise for a variety of reasons, and in my experience, it can sometimes be mysterious — or irritating.

• What does the setup chime mean?
• Why is this AirTag I found beeping?
• And how do I stop it?

I have about half a dozen AirTags, my family has about a dozen more, and we use them regularly to find lost or forgotten items.

But they can sometimes be mysterious and the sounds they make aren’t always obvious. Here are all the reasons why it’s beeping at you, and how to stop it. But be warned: it’s not a simple yes/no situation.

Any time a company sends a push notification to an iPhone, its application can gather information about the user, including their location, according to security researchers. Meta and TikTok reportedly use push notification tracking, and many other companies do it, too.

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution for users to protect their privacy and keep apps from spying on them.

Managing files on iPad has finally got a lot easier with new tools added to the Files app in iPadOS 17. It’s especially good for working with external drives, including basic capabilities like seeing see how much space remains on a thumb drive. And iPhone users can access them, too.

Here’s how to access all the new features in Apple’s Files app.

Apple has a daily crossword and crossword mini that you can play on your iPad and iPhone inside the News app. This new feature of iOS 17 is available to anyone with an Apple News+ subscription or the Apple One Premier bundle.

I absolutely love playing the crossword puzzles every day. I’m not very good at them, but it’s a fun challenge and it’s a well-designed app.

Here’s how it works.

In iOS 17, you can see the past week’s weather on your iPhone in the Apple Weather app. It shows all kinds of detailed weather data — not just temperature and rain, but wind, humidity, visibility, pressure and more.

You also can easily see how that info compares to the average weather data to see if this is an unusually heavy winter or a particularly hot summer. Apple Weather even shows you details on the phase of the moon, all in iOS 17.

Here’s how it works.

iPhone 15 has a charging trick many users might not be aware of: It can automatically stop charging when the battery level hits 80%. This makes it much easier to follow the “40-80 rule,” which helps increase the long-term useful life of the battery.

Here’s more on how it works, whether you should follow the rule, and how to flip on the setting on your iPhone.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Meta came up with a new way to track its users. Facebook Link History stores a list of websites and webpages that users have gone to from their Facebook feed. The information is used to target advertising.

Fortunately, you can turn off the tracking feature. Here’s how.

It couldn’t be easier to set up HomePod or HomePod mini. Learn how to get started, use Siri, and exclude your kids’ music from your listening history.

This holiday season, with all the family together, Apple has a new feature that may future-proof the video you take: 3D video that Cupertino calls spatial video. With your iPhone, you can record stereoscopic 3D video that you will one day be able to replay on an Apple Vision Pro headset as an immersive way to relive your memories.

Update to iOS 17.2 and you can start. Here’s how it works.

iOS 17 brought dozens of great features and changes, but the latest 17.2 update adds even more.

The headline feature is the new Journal app — other new tweaks come to iMessage stickers, NameDrop and Apple Music. If you have a new iPhone 15 Pro, you can record Spatial Videos and use the Translate app directly from the Action button. You can also customize more notification sounds and StandBy.

Here are the ten best features in 17.2.

In iOS 17, many of the default sounds for notifications, alarms and timers have been changed — but how do you get back the old sounds if you don’t like the new ones?

A lot of people get deeply attached to the sound effects. If you want the old noises back, you can change (most of them) back manually. I’ll show you how.

Update: The new iOS 17.2 makes a nice change to alerts in third-party apps. Read on for more details.

Find My is built into most Apple devices, and helps you locate them if they go missing. It can be used with MacBook, iPad, AirPods and more.

If you haven’t been taking advantage of Apple’s free device-tracking system, here’s how to get started.

Connect Apple Watch to treadmills at Planet Fitness, and other exercise equipment, for more accurate health data inside the Fitness and Health apps on your iPhone. After all, if you’re working out, you want to make sure your Apple Watch gives you credit for it.

Here’s how.

Google plans to purge old accounts starting in December. However, you can keep your Google account active and prevent it from being deleted. You have until the first day of December to save any inactive Google accounts.

What’s being cleaned out? Any Google account that’s been inactive for two years. If you received an email about a dormant account, you know for sure that you need to take action. However, that’s not foolproof. If your dormant account doesn’t have a recovery email set up, you’d never be notified in the first place.

If you have a bunch of alternate, backup Google accounts — as many do — here’s what you need to do.

Collecting old video game consoles and vintage computers is a fun hobby, but keeping all that hardware working can quickly become an expensive, never-ending task — not to mention all the space you need just to store the gear. You might instead (wisely) opt to emulate your favorite games and software on the Mac you already own.

In this guide to emulation on the Mac, I’ll walk you through the best apps you can use to accomplish the two most common scenarios: playing old video games, and taking Classic Mac OS for a test drive on a modern Mac. Plus, I’ll wrap up with the easiest way to virtualize modern operating systems like Windows and Linux on your Mac. (This handy virtualization software also works for old and obscure computer operating systems.)

Best of all, each of these Mac emulation methods is free and open source.

Just about everything electronic requires firmware — Apple’s iPad stylus is no exception. With software comes updates, and there’s new one for the recently released version of the Apple Pencil with a USB-C port.

Here’s how to check what firmware version your Apple Pencil is currently running, and a suggestion on how to get the new update.

Some lucky first-day owners of the new M3 MacBook Pro unboxed their machines Tuesday to discover a reversal of fortune: Their new Macs arrived with a broken version of macOS that can’t install software updates.

Some MacBook Pros shipped to customers with an unreleased (well, more like unintentionally released) build of macOS Ventura 13.5. This version can’t be updated to macOS Sonoma through the standard Software Update feature in System Preferences.

Here’s how to fix the admittedly rare problem.

While your iPhone doesn’t have a built-in microSD card reader, adding a plug-in memory card reader is easy. And it requires no additional software. The same goes for iPads.

Here’s what you need to do.

If you forget your new iPhone passcode, you can reset it with your old one for up to three days later. This can save you hours of trying to remember the new passcode, or worse, resetting your phone from a backup.

You just have to tap Forgot Passcode? on the Lock Screen after you enter it several incorrect times.

Keep reading for a detailed walkthrough. And don’t worry — if you change your passcode intentionally to keep someone out, you can instantly expire your old one.

There are a lot of awesome features in iOS 17 — Contact Posters, StandBy, Safari profiles, shared passwords and much, much more. Here’s a simple to-do list on how to make the most of Cupertino’s latest and greatest iPhone operating system.