Tutorial

Learn how to master your Apple devices with our comprehensive tutorials. From iPhone and iPad to Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, and more, our expert guides will help you unlock the full potential of your Apple products. Discover new features, tips, and tricks each day to enhance your user experience.

Tip: find tons of messages you didn’t know existed inside Messenger’s secret folder

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated August 18, 2020

What if I told you that you most likely have tons of messages you didn't even know existed, stowed away in a little-known folder on Facebook?

While messages from your Facebook friends and Messenger contacts are delivered straight to your inbox, the system filters out those it deems spam and tucks them away into a hidden vault.

Some of those filtered messages could be from a distant family member trying to re-connect with you. Others might be vitally important. If you suspect Facebook is hiding messages you should've been aware of, this tutorial will teach you how to access a treasure trove of messages that you never knew you had.

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Changing your router’s DNS settings to increase speed and security

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 29, 2016

At times, you may experience slow hiccups while trying to use the internet from your home. Sometimes, these problems can be attributed to your router's DNS settings because your ISP may not always have the best DNS server speeds.

Your DNS server settings can also affect your security as you use the internet because some DNS servers come with built-in firewalls and security measures to prevent you from opening malicious or phishing websites, while others don't do anything at all to protect you.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how you can edit the DNS settings on your wireless router if you're experiencing slower internet speeds than you should be.

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How to stop iPhone from tracking your location

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 28, 2016

Location Services and Privacy settings on your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad certainly provide a very detailed breakdown of the apps and system services that have requested access to your location, or are motoring your location in the background.

Options in Location Services are incredibly complex so average users may be tempted to not bother and simply leave everything on. Others may disable Location Services altogether, which isn't a very good idea either (from a usability standpoint).

Suppose you want to stop an iOS device from tracking your whereabouts, but without disrupting essential features or sacrificing much of the device's functionality.

But how precisely does one accomplish that?

There's no master switch in iOS that'd tell the device to stop monitoring your location. Plus, things get more complex if you don't know exactly which switches in Settings need flipping and which ones must be left intact.

This easy to follow step-by-step tutorial will lay out exactly the features on your device that you must disable in order to limit or prevent unwanted location tracking.

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How to prevent changes to email accounts on iOS

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated September 5, 2023

I'm nervous every time a curious friend picks up my iPhone and ventures into Settings—not because they could see something they shouldn't, but out of fear they might mess up my multiple email accounts.

While removing email accounts from an iOS device won't wipe the server, re-adding them is a tedious process: you need to remember your access credentials and, if an account is protected with two-factor authentication, provide a verification code, too.

iOS lets you disallow changes to some device settings, including restricting all email, calendar and contact accounts so that no one can add or remove them, here's how.

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How to use your old iPhone as a home security camera

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated September 20, 2018

If you have an old iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch laying around that is just collecting dust, why not put it to work by turning it into an affordable home monitoring camera? We're not talking about a full-featured surveillance system here, but just a simple setup that can live stream anything happening in your house, and send motion alerts directly to you should it detect activity.

In this post we'll be showing you how to convert your spare iOS device, whether it is an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, into a video monitoring camera. The best part is, it's completely free and you should be up and running in just a few minutes.

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How to change your Apple ID

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated October 13, 2018

Many of us still have the same email address associated with our Apple ID that we made years and years ago when we got our first device. We use it to sign into each and every one of our devices when we buy one new from the store or restore an existing one to factory settings.

On the other hand, times change. Sometimes you may get new email addresses, and sometimes you want to use something new to log in with rather than your high school email address. Perhaps you've made one that is a little more professional looking and seek to use it instead.

Apple provides a way to change your Apple ID email address so you can use something different to sign into everything you use. In this tutorial, we'll show you how that's done.

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How to remove Adobe Flash from your Mac

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated April 19, 2018

The succession of vulnerabilities found in Adobe's Flash Player shows no signs of dying down: not a month goes by without Adobe releasing another yet emergency update for Flash to patch a bunch of newly discovered vulnerabilities (measuring in the dozens).

Some of them can be pretty nasty as they introduce new attack vectors for spyware, ransomware, trojans and other malicious applications that you don't want anywhere near your computer.

A few years ago, Flash Player was impossible to avoid because a bulk of web video was encoded in Adobe's proprietary Flash format, but not anymore: YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and many other popular web services now use HTML5-based video players that work in any modern browser.

While Apple does block older, vulnerable versions of Flash in the Safari browser on macOS, you should do yourself a favor and remove Flash Player from your Mac using step-by-step instructions provided in this tutorial.

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How to configure Automatic Downloads on your Mac

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated August 16, 2024
TV app on Mac

macOS users can take advantage of Automatic Downloads, which allows your Mac to automatically download apps, movies, music, and other media that were downloaded on other Apple devices you own.

Unfortunately, some users may not want this. Some apps and media take up a lot of storage space, and there's no reason to sop up all of your individual devices' storage space to keep home to one specific app.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how you can configure automatic downloads on your Mac so you have better control over the content that is downloaded to your machine.

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Finding what version and build number of macOS you have on your Mac

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated June 28, 2019

There come times when you need to know not only what version of macOS that you're running, but also where you may want to know the actual build number.

This information usually comes mostly in handy when you're running betas, but sometimes when filing bug reports with Apple, they might ask you to provide them with what version of macOS you are running on your Mac and the build number it shows.

In this tutorial, we'll show you not only how to find out what version of macOS you're running, but also where to find the build number of the version of macOS you have installed.

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