Ever use Hot Corners on your Mac? If not, you should try it to make life a little easier. Go to Apple Settings>Desktop and Dock and then scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Hot Corners. Here you will be able to select up to four actions/shortcuts on the corners of your screen. Once selected, just move your mouse to place the cursor at a corner to take the action you chose. As an example, if I go to the top left, I see my Desktop… move to the lower left and I see Mission Control. The choices are up to you.
iOS 18+ made a number of security updates as well as some new features.
If you haven’t yet tried Categories in MacMail. Navigate to the top level in one of your email accounts and press the three dots icon in the top right corner of the screen. There you can choose between “list” or the default or “category”. Mail attempts to move emails into four categories: Primary, Shopping, Updates, and Promotions. It learns as you use it and you can teach it also. When you have an email open in a category that you want to change, click on the three dots icon on the top right corner and select “Categorize Sender” and choose a different category so it will end up there the next time you receive an email from that sender.
Also at the top level of an email account, the three dots icon will let you select “Show Contact Photos” if your sender has a Contact Photo available from their mail account. Otherwise, you will just see two initials from the sender’s name.
Back Tap – Go to Settings>Accessibility>Touch>Back Tap. There you can select to perform an action by tapping the back of the phone case with two taps or three taps. You can do things like turn on Flashlight, Camera, Lock Screen, etc.
Screen Time here parents can monitor junior’s time using their digital devices. Parents will be notified when their Screen Time pass code has been entered into their child’s device, which will alert parents when their kids have figured out the code. It may be hard to stop your child from trying to figure out your code, but at least now you’ll know when they do so.
Charging Limit – The thinking is that constantly charging your battery to 100% reduces its health over time. So you can make an adjustment to have it charge to a lower level such as 90% or 85%,etc. Consider using the “Optimized Battery Charging” feature which holds the charge to a preset level but allows a higher charge when your phone thinks you’ll need to use it. I know you are thinking is the phone reading my mind… :). See this feature at Settings>Battery>Charging.*
Recording for people like journalists who need to take notes on a call, this is indispensable. With this feature, you can record a phone call (and get a surprisingly accurate transcription) directly within iPhone. When you’re on a call, click the waveform icon in the upper-left of the screen. Then, you’ll see a notification (and the person on the other end of the call will hear a notification) to start recording the call.
Emojis: eight new emojis are added for those who use them. Face with bags under eyes, splatter, harp, and so on.
Flashlight: now you can change the brightness and width of the beam. Sometimes that light is a little too bright, now you can fix that. With the light on, slide up/down to set brightness and left/right to adjust beam width.
Photos: Remove distractions from the background of a photo using Apple Intelligence. Open it in Photos, click Edit, then click Clean Up. Circle, click, or brush over something to remove it. If you have not used it before, it will need to load. Watch the right side of the screen to see when it’s complete. You can get rid of things in photos that are not desirable, such as an extra person, tree, car, and that type of thing.
Writing tools: Trying to find the right words to say something? Apple Intelligence can help you find the right tone, flow, and wording as you write. Select text in an app like Mail or Messages, then click Writing Tools to help with grammar, spelling, and tone. To get a shortened version of selected text, click , then choose Summary — or choose a type of summary, like a list or table. Get a summary of a long email exchange using Apple Intelligence. In the Mail app, click an email in your inbox, scroll up, then click Summarize. Apple Intelligence can summarize a recording — like a phone call or lecture — so you can see important information at a glance. Open the recording in your Note, then click Summary.
Siri: Get help from Siri even when you don’t want to speak out loud. Press the Command key twice and ask something like “How do I make text on my Mac bigger?” or “How do I see iPhone notifications on Mac?”
For example, press and hold (the microphone icon above the F5 key) on your keyboard, then say “What’s the weather at Muir Woods tomorrow?” Then say “Schedule a hike there tomorrow at 9 a.m.” And finally: “How long will the drive be?”
Use the microphone key to dictate text in your email or document rather than typing. Click to turn it on and click again to stop dictation.
* If you have trouble finding some of these deeper-level settings, you can always type the term in Search in the very top level of Settings.