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.

How to control your Nest thermostat from the menu bar

Jeff Benjamin ∙ December 4, 2013

I wouldn’t call myself a Nest Learning Thermostat early adopter, but I did acquire one fairly early in the game, and I haven’t looked back. The Nest, as you’re likely well aware of, is the new-aged thermostat from iPod designer Tony Fadell. The Nest allows users to control the thermostat from anywhere in the world using a web browser, or by using an iOS app for the iPad or iPhone.

Mac users have sort of been left out in the cold; pun intended. Desktop users have basically been relegated to using the web browser in order to control the Nest, as there is no official Nest app available for OS X. The good news is that developer Joseph Workman has taken the initiative to wrap the Nest’s web interface into a handy utility called Climate, and it runs in the Mac’s menu bar. This makes it so that you can quickly access the Nest’s temperature controls and other features from anywhere on your Mac.

We’ve taken the initiative to create a video walkthrough in order to showcase to you how Climate works, and why it’s so beneficial to Mac users. Jump past the break to see all the details.

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Shiori: my favorite Pinboard utility for the Mac

Jeff Benjamin ∙ November 30, 2013

In episode 002 of Let’s Talk iOS we talked about Pinboard, and why it’s such a useful service for saving bookmarks. I won’t get too much into the specifics about Pinboard on this post, so I urge you to listen to that episode if you haven’t already. The episode does a good job of explaining the methodology behind Pinboard, pricing, etc.

What I do want to talk about is an awesome Pinboard utility called Shiori. A free download for OS X, Shiori is a Pinboard utility that allows you to quickly add new bookmarks to your Pinboard account and just as quickly search all of the contents of your account.

Shiori runs in the menu bar, and both its add and search functions can be accessed by a pair of useful keyboard shortcuts. Have a look inside as we go hands on with Shiori on video. If you’re at all interested in saving bookmarks for the longterm, then I’m positive you’ll find Shiori useful.

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How to type in an app while the app switcher is open

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

As we covered in an earlier tutorial, the app switcher in iOS 7 provides the ability to do some pretty cool things that you could never do in previous firmware.

For starters, there’s the ability to use swipe gestures to kill apps — even multiple apps at the same time by using more than one finger. Next, you have the ability to see what’s going on in each of the running apps, courtesy of the switcher’s new full screen app snapshots.

One of the positive side effects of this new app switcher view are the “multitasking” possibilities that stem out of it. First, let me clear the air and state the obvious — this isn’t true multitasking; but as we showed you already, by thinking outside of the box, you can stretch the app switcher’s abilities to meet your needs.

One such need was stumbled upon by reader Matthew Seltzer. After watching our initial app switcher tutorial, he discovered a handy way to get even more out it. If you happen to have a Bluetooth keyboard connected to your iPad, you can take advantage of the last app’s focus in order to continue to type while the app switcher is open.

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How to create custom keyboard shortcuts for Mac apps

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated November 8, 2021

Have you ever used a specific menu command in an app and wondered to yourself, "Why is there no keyboard shortcut assigned to this command?" Or "why can't I change that shortcut to something else?" I think we've all been there before. Fortunately, fixing the issue requires little more than a few minutes of your time. Inside, we'll show you how easy it is to quickly create a keyboard shortcut for your favorite apps.

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How to edit beautiful Fall photos with your iPhone

Emil Pakarklis ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

As the leaves turn from green to bright yellow and red, the fall is one of the best times of the year for landscape photography with the iPhone. When ordinary landscapes change into magnificent vistas, it’s really hard not to take photos of all that beauty.

However, when you look back at your photos, you’ll often be disappointed to see that the iPhone hasn’t reproduced the fall colors as you expected, and the photos just look boring in comparison to the same scene in real life. Fortunately, this can be corrected in post-processing, and in this article I’ll show you a simple Snapseed post-processing workflow that will bring your fall photos back to life by making their colors much more vibrant.

While the fall is well on its way in most of Europe and North America, other parts of the world have different seasons. It’s spring in Australia and permanent summer in tropical regions. However, the same editing workflow can also be used to greatly improve sunset photos, so you should also give it a try if you live in other parts of the world...

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How to speed up animations in iOS and make your device feel faster

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated November 2, 2022
iPhone 5S colors running iOS 7

Apparently, the iOS parallax effects and animations can literally make people sick. If that doesn't happen to you, don't discount this as just a phony report. This is real for some people, although I have yet to meet any of them. Apple listened to the complaints from users who were experiencing various degrees of motion sickness while using iOS and drastically increased the motion reduction feature that was already present before iOS 7.0.3.

As it turns out, not only will this feature reduce the motion of the user interface, but it will also make your iOS device feel like it's blazing fast.

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7 tips for taking landscape photos with your iPhone

Emil Pakarklis ∙ Updated March 27, 2023

Have you ever taken a photo of a magnificent vista, only to find out that the image doesn’t look nearly as good as in real life? While all of us have experienced that at some point, there are some tips that can dramatically improve the quality of the landscape photos you take with the iPhone.

The iPhone (or any other smartphone) has a small digital sensor which inevitably leads to poor image quality in low-light conditions. However, landscape photos are almost always taken in abundant light, making them practically indistinguishable from photos taken with an expensive DSLR. If you follow the tips outlined in this article, you will be able to take landscape photos that look just as good, if not better, than the same scene in real life.

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