Table of contents for No. 248 in iCreate

The best of macOS and iOS isn’t necessarily what you see following the customary “Hello” message screen after updating your system software or starting up a fresh, new device for the first time. What you’re presented with is a picture, a snapshot of Ventura or iOS 16 in its rawest form – which is fine, and many Apple users are content to carry on using their devices with the settings stuck rigidly in their default positions. But fortune favours the curious, and a quick visit to the System Settings/Settings apps can transform the way you use your device – what you see, how it responds to touch and your voice, and how it connects to all of your other devices through Apple’s eco-system. Starting on page 14, we have compiled…

To produce attractive guides, courses and training materials about the Mac, software or services, record the screen and save it as a video you can share. Screen recordings have many uses and you might need to create recordings for work, but it could be simply showing a friend or relative how to do something on their Mac that they are having difficulty with. Instead of explaining in words, you could simply record your screen and send them the video. Screen recording has been around for some time, but more features have been added in recent updates. A keypress and click is all it takes to start recording. Desktop recording Configure the screen capture options 🕮 Knowledge base What next? After creating the video recording of the desktop, it is best…

The iOS Voice Memos app is a useful tool to have to hand whenever inspiration finds you. You can capture audio at any moment, dictate thoughts and ideas and, if you’re a musician, secure the next great riff, beat or arrangement that forms through your jamming. The latter is what we’re concentrating on here, and we’ll show you how to record a basic song riff using the Voice Memos app on your iPhone and then export it to GarageBand so that you can develop it further. This latter process is surprisingly complicated and not really something you will stumble across by accident. We’ll reveal all in this guide. Step-by-step Record audio with Voice Memos 1 Enhance the quality Go to Settings>Voice Memos and then tap on ‘Audio Quality’ (which will…

So you’re on public transpor t and your iPhone springs to life. A stranger is tr ying to send you a photograph or a file you haven’t asked for, but how are they doing this? Most likely because you have allowed ever yone to send you items via AirDrop, Apple’s filesharing feature which uses Bluetooth Low Energy and peer-to-peer Wi-Fi. Unsolicited approaches from strangers get through because ‘Ever yone’ is ac tive in the AirDrop set tings. Until recently, this would have remained so until you turned it off or opted for contac ts only, but that has now changed with the iOS 16.2 update’s ten-minute limit. Step-by-step Create an AirDrop time limit 1 Access the controls Want to receive AirDrops from someone who isn’t in your contacts? You need…

Apple has worked on its Notes app consistently over the past few years, and today we have a reliable and feature-laden solution that will help you to ensure that almost ever y thing you need can be held in one place. The only real downside is the linear and colourless nature of the inter face, which can lead to a sense of flatness that does not inspire you to build up your collection. This is where Notebooks offers a completely different feel with the use of colours, in-depth format ting within documents, and a whole host of other features that will drag you in very quickly. It becomes par t note-taker, par t word processor and even a task manager, which makes it a truly special and flexible app of…

Creative Zen Air Wireless Earbuds £54.99/$44.99 creative.com/ZenAir These af fordable AirPod alternatives list an impressive array of features considering the low price. Bluetooth 5.0, Ac tive Noise Cancellation and Ambient modes, six hours of play time (18 hours total with a fully charged c ase), four built-in mics for clear voice pick-up on calls, and an IPX4 rating for water and sweat resis tance – all good credentials for those looking for a pair of ever yday buds. The 10mm Neodymium drivers also deliver the satisf ying audio uppercut that you crave from a set of wireless earbuds. ESR Cyber Armor AirPods Pro Case £17.99/$19.99 amazon.co.uk Compatible with AirPods Pro (2nd gen, 2022) and AirPods Pro (1s t gen, 2019), this rugged, protec tive case is construc ted out of…

Open an app’s menu and on the right-hand side may be some keyboard shortcuts that enable you to execute tasks by pressing a combination of keys. A typical example is cmd+S, which is a very common way to execute the File>Save command in a wide range of apps. Some menus in apps do not have shortcuts and they must be accessed using the trackpad or mouse, which is slower and more cumbersome. Here we show how to add the missing shortcuts in apps. If there is a menu item you often use and there is no shortcut, you can just add it yourself. Step-by-step Define shortcuts for apps 1 Look for menus Open an app like Notes and look at the menus. In the File menu, some items have a…

Way back in the early 90s, you could have fun personalising your Mac by assigning sound samples (our choice of the time being RoboCop clips) to the startup, shutdown and pretty much any keyboard command you wanted via a third-party app. Since then macOS has shut up shop to a far greater degree, making it harder to tamper with the inner workings. However, it is still possible to assign sound samples to your login sequence – it just takes a little knowledge of your Mac’s built-in Automator app. In this tutorial we show you exactly how it is done so you can make your Mac your own. Step-by-step Assign a login sound effect or message 1 Create a utility action In Automator, choose ‘Application’ as the template and then ensure…

Your iPhone can pinpoint your precise location using GPS, Bluetooth, cellular towers and crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspots, but does that make you feel uneasy? Sure, some apps will benefit from knowing exactly where you are (a map app for example), but for others, it’s less important. While you could turn off location tracking in its entirety, you can also make the information less precise. This will allow an app to determine your approximate location without homing in further. This way you’ll still be able to make good use of most apps, while enjoying some additional peace of mind. Step-by-step Stop apps using your precise location 1 Check your Privacy To discover which apps are able to make use of your location, you will need to launch the Settings app on your…

Whether you simply take something for a headache occasionally or take daily doses of medications, the Health app on the iPhone can help you to keep track of them. The latest version of iOS is required, and this adds a customisable Medications section to the Health app. Use it to track your treatment. The app enables you to enter each medication you take, when you need to take it, how much to take, and include notes like whether or not it needs to be taken with food. Log when you take your medications, but if you forget, the Health app will remind you. It is simple, yet effective and could make a big difference to your health. Step-by-step Add medications to Apple Health 1 Set up medications Open Apple Health…

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that has got ever yone talking – and it ’s easy to see why. As more than a million users noted when it was given a beta release, it ’s already proven capable of holding realistic conversations. It can also per form many tasks, having been trained on billions of writ ten tex ts. Here we will highlight the wide range of ChatGPT’s abilities. Much of the satisfac tion is in seeing what you can make it do (one newspaper had it complete a histor y exam and it achieved top marks!). But it ’s also a serious research projec t, and you can help those behind it by providing feedback. Step-by-step Explore a text-generating AI 1 Get started Visit chat.openai.com and sign up for…

Pennies is one of very few apps that aims to make a potentially complex task easy, and which actually succeeds. The learning process is minimal and the inter face on the iPhone is as clean as can be – but even better, it is exceptionally easy to use on the Apple Watch as well. Many apps of this type tend to focus on simply displaying data, but with Pennies you can also enter new expenses when out and about, which will help to ensure that you never overspend through omission. These are the apps that add genuine prac tical use to your Apple Watch and which, when paired with their iPhone equivalent, highlight just how power ful this mobile hardware combination can be. It also gives you the potential to…

Long-time users of macOS may recall the days when the Bin, or Trash as it was called until 2019, had hardly any features. It stored deleted files, and you could recover them. There was little customisation and few features. Fast forward to today and the Bin is as fully featured as any other folder on the Mac’s drive. The Bin grows as you delete files, and this makes it hard to find items you need to recover. You can customise the Bin’s view to make it easier to track down files that were accidentally deleted, change the text size, select a different view, and group files by their type, date or other attributes. Finding files has never been so easy. Explore the Bin Organise its contents and locate deleted items…

The Maps app in the latest versions of iOS and macOS enables you to create routes with extra stops. Any number can be added to a route and Maps works out the directions, time and distance for you. However, the Maps app will not automatically show the optimum route when there are stops. Maps will unhelpfully show routes to places in the order entered. It does not realise that Birmingham is on the way to Leeds and will send you from London to Leeds, then doubling back to Birmingham. It is up to you to select the stops order and experiment to find the best route. Create routes and sync them to your iPhone. Plan your journey Destination and stops in Maps routes 🕮 Knowledge base Delete stops Move the…

There is no doubt that an Apple Watch or an alternative fitness tracker can help you to get fitter, and the many benefits have been proven. However, the majority of people usually do not need all of the sensors and advanced tracking these devices offer, and so they can be overkill for their needs. The fact is that you have much of what you need already built into your iPhone thanks to the motion sensors, and when you add a clever app like StepsApp you will instantly be able to see how much you move during the day. Spending some time studying your StepsApp results will help spur you on to improve your general activity levels. It is a costeffective and satisfying solution. Step-by-step Move more with less 1 Set…

With Mail on your iPhone, you can easily attach documents, images, videos and more to an email and even get around size restrictions thanks to a great feature called Mail Drop. You can also take a fresh photo or a scan of a document and attach those right from within the Mail app. In this tutorial, that’s exactly what we’re going to explore, though this method is not the only way of attaching files. If you find an item in your Photos or Files apps, for example, you can tap the share button and select Mail in order to attach it. You can also attach multiple items. It makes for a rather versatile feature. Step-by-step Attach a file in iOS Mail 1 Compose an email Either tap the ‘Compose Email’…

You may think that you are familiar with all there is to know about your Apple Watch, and it is likely that you are very well versed with how it works. The fact is, however, that as time goes on Apple is of fering more and more customisation options in watchOS, which are rarely quoted in the marketing when updates are issued – many of which you may actually find yourself using on a daily basis once you discover them. Much of the focus on Apple Watch customisation is aimed at the lack of thirdpar ty watch faces, but in terms of usage you really can change the device to work in almost any way you desire. It is your Apple Watch to use as you see fit. Customise your…