Innehållsförteckning för March 2022 från MacLife

AT YEAR END, Apple revealed the 2021 App Store Award winners, recognizing the 15 best apps and games that helped users tap into personal passions, discover creative outlets, connect with new people and experiences, and simply have fun. For more than a decade, Apple has honored the best apps and games on Apple devices at the end of each year. The 2021 winners include developers from around the world whose apps and games were selected by Apple’s global App Store editorial team for delivering exceptional quality, innovative technology, creative design, and positive cultural impact. In the games categories, Apple said the incredible graphics and rich storylines woven into this year’s winners transported players of all ages into highly immersive gaming experiences. Apps iPhone app of the year: TOCA LIFE WORLD,…

WITH THOUSANDS OF Apple’s engineers working on macOS Monterey, the list of new and changed features is long enough to fill a short book. To complicate matters, some of the key enhancements slated to appear, like Universal Control, are still on their way, and others aren’t supported on all the Macs that can run macOS 12. Few parts of macOS and its bundled apps remain unchanged. Even long–neglected tools like QuickTime Player and Disk Utility have been refreshed and improved. In many cases, these latest improvements are concealed behind new menu commands or controls that are far from obvious. Our tour starts with the apps you use most, Mail and Safari, which are rich in new features when you know where to look. After those it’s time to concentrate better…

INITIALLY AVAILABLE AS a beta–test, Safari’s new Private Relay service is intended as a feature of iCloud+. Before you can use it in Safari, open the Apple ID pane and enable it in the iCloud section there. Note, though, that this isn’t a full VPN service. When you want to load a webpage, Safari’s request is encrypted and passes into the Private Relay service in iCloud. There it’s sent through two separate relays; the first anonymizes your IP address to hide it from the website you’re connecting to. The second relay decrypts the destination address and forwards the request to the website. Together these two steps are intended to prevent the remote website or service that you’re connecting to from discovering your IP address, location, or details of your browsing history,…

Bright ideas can can come in a flash, and by the time you’ve fumbled for an app to record them they’ve vanished. Capture your eureka moment in a Quick Note. Use the Fn+Q key combination, or set yourself a hot corner using the Screen Saver tab of the Desktop & Screen Saver pane to activate it. For the latter, you’ll need to click on the corner of a note which appears to open it to full size. Then commit your thoughts to the Notes app before something distracts you. Notes files these separately, but they’re still full–fledged notes with all the features you might need. Add a link to a page on the web, a hastily drawn sketch, scanned document, or an image taken that moment on your iPhone if…

MONTEREYDOES A great deal for communicating and collaborating. Even before the slightly delayed arrival of SharePlay features to integrate rich media in your calls, FaceTime and Messages have enhancements tucked away in the Control Center. 1 PORTRAIT MODE Depending on your Mac and its peripherals, you may be able to use FaceTime’s new audio and video effects. On an M1 model, Portrait mode should be available at least when you’re using the internal camera. With the app open and camera on, open the Control Center and at the top click Video Effects to reveal the Portrait option, which blurs the background. 2 MIC MODE If you have either an M1 or a recent Intel model, with FaceTime open, open the Control Center and at the top click Mic Mode. Here you may…

AUTOMATION MAKES TASKS easier and less error–prone. Shortcuts has been a huge success on iPadOS and iOS, and has now come to macOS, eventually to replace Automator. However, documentation is limited and it has some rough edges. Here’s how to smooth them. 1 CUSTOM SHORTCUT ICONS Make your shortcuts icons distinct in color and mini–icon. Either bring up the contextual menu (using a two–finger tap on trackpads), or open the shortcut and click the icon to the left of the name. Sort shortcuts into folders; they’re created using the New Folder command in the File menu. 2 FIND ACTIONS Finding anything in the Action Library is tricky, and some appear in listings for apps which you wouldn’t associate them with. Control flow actions like “If” and others are available in the Edit…

OVER THE LAST few years Macs have gained powerful features such as APFS snapshots which haven’t been readily accessible. At last Disk Utility can manage them, and Monterey empowers the more advanced user in many other respects. 1 SPLIT SCREEN While Full Screen mode lets you concentrate on one window, splitting it into two is often better for your productivity. Hover the pointer over the green button at the top–left of one of the two windows you want to see until a floating menu appears, and decide whether to put that window to the left or right. With that in place, click on the other window you want and the pair will be shown in Split Screen mode until restored with Escape. 2 GO TO FOLDER To find folders in the…

>> AIRPLAY IS EVEN more amazing on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. That’s because the difference between what your device can do and what an AirPlay device can do is more dramatic; even the smallest smart TV has a screen many sizes bigger than the biggest iPad Pro, let alone the iPhone 13 mini, and while Apple does amazing things with its iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad speakers they’re no match for a HomePod for volume. AirPlay enables your device to hand off media to different hardware. For example, you might have been listening to a podcast on the way home and want to pick up where you left off on your HomePod mini, or you may have found an interesting looking YouTube link you want to see on your…

11–inch size $199.99, 12.9–inch size $249.99 From brydge.com Features Magnetic SnapFit Case, Bluetooth, Adjustable Backlit Keys Needs iPad Pro 12.9–inch (3rd, 4th & 5th generations), iPad Pro 11–inch (1st, 2nd & 3rd Gen), iPad Air (4th Gen) Apple’s suggestion that an iPad can replace a laptop only really makes sense when you add a keyboard and trackpad. For anyone that’s not tried switching on mouse or trackpad support in iPadOS, it’s a game–changer for workflow. The Brydge MAX+ comes in two sizes for the two iPad Pro models — identical other than slightly different battery life. The keyboard is aluminum and the case is plastic. It weighs 766g (11–inch) and 970g (12.9–inch). Both models come in space gray or white, while silver is for 12.9–inch only. Your iPad snaps magnetically…

With charging stand $199.99, without charging stand $179.99 From us.ankerwork.com Features VoiceShield, transcription, ANC Needs Bluetooth 5.0, USB–A or USB–C, macOS 10.14 or later Most people who conference call will be aware of the limitations of a laptop mic and speakers, not least when it comes to ambient noise interfering with your calls. Anker’s PowerConf 700 headset aims to solve these problems and offer extra features for the busy video conferencer. The headset is very lightweight at just 185g and uses quite small on–ear pads. They grip the head solidly but without excess pressure. The boom mic can be rotated to be worn on the left or right side of the head, and raising the mic or pulling its cup away from the head will mute it. It connects to…

$149.99 From razer.com Features Cardioid pattern, pop filter cover, USB–A to USB–C cable Needs 5 V/350 mA power Razer’s Seiren V2 Pro microphone is aimed squarely at streamers, and there’s a lot to like. But there’s also one big caveat that stops it reaching its potential, at least for Mac users. The Seiren V2 Pro looks sleek with its all–black metal construction, which gives it a satisfyingly premium feel. It comes with a weighty stand, a very lengthy braided USB–A to USB–C cable, and a foam pop filter cover, although strangely this doesn’t fit too well. Audio quality is very good. Recordings are pleasingly clear with no hint of background hum, and the included pop filter works admirably. As a piece of hardware, this mic is excellent. The problem, though,…

$49.99 From roku.com Needs HDMI interface, micro–USB (power), 4K resolution with Dolby Vision, HDR10+ Roku’s range of streaming players can be a little confusing, with several models that seem to offer very similar designs and features. However, its new Streaming Stick 4K is great value at just $49.99, and can certainly give the Apple TV box a real run for its money. The compact little device looks just like a USB memory stick, with an HDMI port on one end that allows you to plug it directly into a TV or monitor. There’s also a micro–USB port that provides power to the stick — either from the included mains adaptor, or a USB port on your TV. Getting started is a piece of cake, as the stick automatically detects Roku’s…

Free (Chronicle Pro $9.99/year) From chronicleapp.com Needs macOS 11.0 or later If you’re anything like us, keeping track of all the bills you need to pay each month and the subscriptions that you currently have can be very difficult. Even if you pay monthly by direct debit, it’s not always easy to track how much you’ve paid over, say, a year, or how much you need to set aside to make payments in future months. That’s where Chronicle comes in. Chronicle 10 is a major upgrade that changes the way Chronicle synchronizes data across your Apple devices. It moves from iCloud to Chronicle Cloud. In doing so, it also changes the way you pay for Chronicle. The app is now free to download, but limits you to five bills. If…

ON TEST… Airmail Email – Edison Mail HEY Email Mail Spark – Email App by Readdle Spike Email – Mail & Team Chat DESPITE REPEATED WARNINGS of its imminent demise, email is still very much alive — in fact, it’s almost ubiquitous in most of our daily lives. Plenty of us still need a good app that manages our multitudinous mail messages, whether we’re aiming for inbox zero or just want to make it through another day of spam. Fortunately, there’s a battery of excellent email clients all battling for a spot on your Mac. While some focus on nailing the basics, others are experimenting with new ideas and unusual additions. With so many to choose from, finding your way is not always easy. To sort the wheat from the…

REQUIRES Photos app YOU WILL LEARN How to help Photos recognize and organize friends and family IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes APPLE’S PHOTO APP scans your Library and gathers any shots of people that it finds into collections in its dedicated People album. However, it may not recognize every shot of a particular person in the Library (especially if they’re being viewed side–on or wearing a mask). We’ll demonstrate how to help Photos recognize extra shots of specific people so that you don’t miss any of your best memories. You can then favorite particular people so that they show up more frequently in automatically curated Sharing Suggestions and Memories (and feature other people who you don’t want to see so much less frequently). We’ll also look at some useful troubleshooting…

REQUIRES iOS/iPadOS 15 YOU WILL LEARN How to tailor the Weather app to your needs IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes WE’RE OBSESSED WITH the weather. We check the forecast when we’re planning to walk the dog, we check it when we’re deciding what to wear, and we check it when we’re deciding when or even whether to go out. So we’re delighted by the new Weather widgets in iOS/iPadOS 15, and by the new iPhone Weather app. It does all the basic stuff brilliantly but it can also warn you of imminent downpours, of air quality issues, and of dangerous UV levels. As we’ll see in this tutorial, the Weather app looks pretty amazing too. You’ll notice that while the Weather widget is available on iPad, the actual Weather app…

LETTER OF THE MONTH Mac|Life has done a good job of evaluating programs that help keep messages and emails secure (see June, 2021). However, there are many files and folders that I keep on my home page that contain privileged financial and personal information that I access often, but want to keep encrypted when not being used. My go–to program used to be GoSecure from the company GoGoalSoft. It’s got powerful encryption and is extremely easy to use. But with the new M1 MacBook Pro, this 32–bit program does not work. It would be most helpful if Mac|Life could review 64–bit encryption apps. DANIEL TUERK We spoke with our resident Mac tech expert on this subject, to get this thoughts. Before APFS, this was an excellent question. Now there’s a…

MAIL MAY NOT have had much of an overhaul, but it’s steadily recovering important features which were lost when it was rewritten and gains welcome improvements in privacy. Safari’s intended redesign nearly became a disaster, but Tab Groups are magic for many users. 1 BOOKMARKS TO TABS You can now organize your long list of Bookmarks into Tab Groups, according to subject. Step through each Bookmark you want to add to a given Tab Group, opening each in a new tab. Once you’re happy that you’ve got all of them open, and in the correct order, select the “New Tab Group with [n] Tabs” command from the New Tab Group button at the top–right of the sidebar to add them to a new Tab Group, and give it an appropriate…

1 Select option Hide My Email should appear as an option whenever you’re prompted to enter your email address for a website in Safari. Sometimes this gets confused when you need to enter a username not an address. 2 Pick address The service then offers you a dummy email address which it’ll insert into the form for you. If you don’t like the address offered, click on the icon at its left to generate a different one. Click Continue. 3 Manage addresses That dummy email address is added to your addresses accessible in the Hide My Email item in the iCloud section of the Apple ID pane. When you want to use it for other purposes, use the Copy button.…

WHEN YOU’RE BOMBARDED by notifications, it’s easy to disable most or ignore them, and miss what’s most important in the process. The Notifications & Focus pane introduces two properties to help you tell which merit most urgent attention — critical and time–sensitive alerts. Alerts are those notifications which appear in the upper–right corner of the display, and require dismissing with a click. Although you can opt for any app you want to post notifications as an alert rather than a banner which goes away of its own accord;Al critical and time–sensitive alerts are different. Few apps have privileged access to these high alerts: Calendar, Home, Messages, Reminders, Screen Time, and Wallet. While those offer time–sensitive alerts, only Home can post critical alerts which appear regardless of any Focus in force. You…

1 Pick languages Online translation is great when it’s available. To ensure it doesn’t let you down, set it up offline. Open the Language & Region pane and click the Translation Languages pane at the foot, to decide which you want. 2 Download them Click the Download buttons of your chosen languages one after the other, including your first and destination language. You can also download others later. Then select On–Device Mode to enable offline translation. 3 Translate selection Select a sample of text you want translated and Ctrl–click or two–finger tap for the contextual menu. Not all apps support this feature, but it’s also available with Live Text on images. Select the Translate item there. 4 Pick languages The first time you do this on a text, you’ll be asked to select the…

EVERYONE WHO USES a Mac is different, and revels in customizing its features to get it to work better for them. Each of these suggestions can help you tailor your system for each day, and your every activity. 1 POWER MANAGEMENT While Monterey manages your notebook’s charging to extend its working life, you still make decisions about how to use that power. Low Power Mode is available on most supported notebook models to help eke out a bit more juice. The select few with an M1 Max in their MacBook Pro now get High Power Mode, to run theirs at full pelt. The Battery pane also lets you override Apple’s charge management when you need to start the day with a full battery. 2 LOGIN LOOKS When you type your password…

Before you dispose of any Mac, it’s vital to remove from it all trace of personal data, which isn’t too difficult on most Intel Macs just by formatting the internal storage. But this becomes more complex if the Mac has a T2 chip or is an Apple silicon model. The new command to Erase All Content and Settings, available in the System Preferences menu, is an excellent and reliable way to do that, as it destroys all the encryption keys stored on that Mac, making access to old data impossible. It also wipes all volumes on internal storage apart from the System. Once the process is complete, shut down the Mac, and its next user will receive it as if it had just been unboxed, factory fresh, with its current…

1 MAC Your Mac can send music, movies, podcasts, TV shows, photos, audio, and more to other supported devices, or it can also play content sent via AirPlay to your Mac. 2 AIRPLAY SPEAKERS AirPlay–enabled speakers can receive audio from any AirPlay sender on the same network whether that’s sent from your Mac, iPhone or iPad. 3 HOMEPOD MINI If your iPhone/iPod has Bluetooth switched on and shares the same Wi–Fi network, you can hand off audio to your HomePod by tapping it with your device. 4 iPAD The screen mirroring you can use on your Mac works just as well from your iPad; it’s really good for photos. Your iPad can also AirPlay the same things as your phone. 5 APPLE TV 4K Apple TV uses AirPlay in some really useful ways.…

1 Pick your music AirPlay is built into the Music app, so all you need to do is open the app as normal, pick the track you’d like to listen to and then click on the AirPlay icon. That’s the one with circles radiating from a triangle. 2 Pick your speaker You should now see a list of all the available AirPlay devices on your network. All you need to do is to click on the device you’d like to play your music on and, after a very short delay, it’ll start playing. 3 Cast your clips Sharing video from your Mac is easy too. Simply open the video you want to stream and look for the AirPlay icon; here we’re using YouTube in Safari and we’ve made the clip full–screen. Once again…

>> ONCE YOU’VE GOT the AirPlay bug, you won’t just want a single AirPlay device all on its lonesome, you’ll want AirPlay in every room of your home. Once you start adding multiple AirPlay receivers, some interesting things become possible, including multiroom audio. You can use AirPlay to create multiroom audio in two ways. You can share the same audio to multiple speakers in different rooms. For example, you might want to play the same song at the dining table and in the kitchen. To do that, it’s just a matter of selecting multiple speakers in the AirPlay pop–up in the Music app’s Now Playing view. In most cases that works flawlessly, but when you stream the same thing to multiple speakers you may discover that some of your speakers are…

$77.55 From kensington.com Features 3x USB–A, 1x USB–C, 1x HDMI, 1x Gigabit Ethernet There are dozens of portable hubs available for use with laptops, but Kensington’s USB–C 8–in–1 Mobile Hub is one of the best we’ve seen so far, providing no less than eight different ports and connectors in a compact design that costs just $77.55. Measuring just 13mm thick, 105mm wide and 52mm deep, the hub is small enough to slip into a jacket pocket. It’s pretty sturdy, though, with a tough aluminium casing and a thick USB–C cable that connects the hub to your laptop. The hub manages to include three USB–A (3.2) ports, with one of these providing 5V power output for charging mobile devices or USB storage devices. There’s also one USB–C port that provides 85W…

From $299 From branchfurniture.com Features Mesh back, high–density foam seat, anodized aluminum base, polymer frame The Branch Ergonomic Chair is available directly on Branch’s website for $299. It’s available in several configurations depending on whether you want a two–tone or monochromatic design. It’s worth noting that if you choose the white frame, the price goes up to $329. Regardless of which configuration you choose, Branch offers free shipping and a seven–year warranty for its Ergonomic Chair. The chair’s backrest has double layered mesh for breathability, while the outer frame of the backrest as well as the armrest handles and underside of the seat are white polymer. The high–density foam seat cushion supports up to 300lbs, and Branch designed it so that it can be comfortably used for more than eight…

A an iPad can unleash your creativity, but for the optimal experience, you want a stylus. The first–gen Apple Pencil and its more recent sibling, the Apple Pencil 2, will always be the best styluses for iPads, but not everyone wants to pay the steep price for them. That’s why there are so many third–party Apple Pencil alternatives out there that are just as good, but at a fraction of the price. The biggest selling feature of the Apple Pencil 2 is its wireless charging on newer iPads, and its pressure sensitivity, which you need for digital art. But if you don’t mind not having those features, then the savings are really worth it. Adonit Note+ $69.99 From adonit.net Features 10 hour battery life, programmable shortcut buttons, tilt support, palm…

When Apple first launched the Watch, it didn’t quite seem to know its full potential. Over the years it’s become clear that one of its core jobs is to help you live better. You can see that on the product web page, where the first features listed are the health ones: the Blood Oxygen app, ECG app, heart rate notifications, and fall detection. And it’s also apparent in the latest OS improvements. The headline new feature is respiratory rate tracking, which counts your breaths as you sleep and works out your breathing rate per minute. Data is then sent to the Health app. This is useful because irregular breathing can be an indicator of sleep apnea, lung disease, and other respiratory issues. The respiratory tracking is activated when you’re in…

HOW TO MINIMIZE EFFECTS WHICH TRIGGER VERTIGO? iOS has excellent support for minimizing motion and other effects which can trigger vestibular disorders such as vertigo and Ménière’s disease. Go to Settings Accessibility Motion. Enable Reduce Motion, and consider disabling autoplay of effects in Messages and video previews. HOW TO CHECK BETTER FOR LOCAL BLUETOOTH DEVICES? The best and most advanced tool for iOS/iPadOS is George Garside’s BT Inspector, which can discover nearby Bluetooth devices and examine them in detail. You can even use it to find a lost Apple Pencil, and the wealth of info it provides about the devices it detects is invaluable. HOW DOES 802.11AX WI–FI 6 COMPARE WITH ETHERNET? Wi–Fi 6 can achieve 1.2Gbps, which is slightly faster than Gigabit Ethernet. In use you’re unlikely to realize…

YOU WILL LEARN Why Thread could be the tech which brings your smart home together at last — and could potentially unify the Internet of Things. THE THREAD SMART HOME COMMS PROTOCOL OPERATES VIA A WIDELY KNOWN AND UNDERSTOOD STANDARD THREAD IS A tech designed to solve a problem. The Internet of Things, as it grows, is starting to creak at the seams. It’s packed with protocols that just aren’t up to scratch, communication methods which rely on archaic tech, and nodes which have poor security. And given that everything on the IoT needs to be individually addressable to be effective, the diminishing pool of potential IPv4 addresses may soon cause serious problems for the IoT and for the internet at large. If your smart home devices are to keep…

THERE IS A saying that the arrival of the car freed the horse. That rather than threaten the existence of the all–important horse, the ability of the car to take over so much effort meant that horses got to be for pleasure, and didn’t have to spend their time working. At least, I think there’s a saying about this. I remember a TV presenter saying that it was a saying, but I can’t find any evidence of it. It always stuck with me as an idea: that something that seems to replace something else isn’t necessarily bad for the thing being replaced. Sometimes it’s an opportunity. THE NEW MBPS JUMP STRAIGHT IN, PILING IN MEMORY AND GRAPHICS POWER I thought of it again with the announcement of the new MacBook…

1 NINM Lab Long Time No See HK$918 (about $118) From ninmlab.com >>> Nostalgia for the 1990s is all the rage right now, and what better way to go back in time than this achingly retro Bluetooth CD player? Clad in translucent plastic like a Game Boy of yesteryear, NINM Lab’s Long Time No See spins your discs while using Bluetooth 5.0 to connect to your speakers, iPhone, or wireless headphones. Or you can simply use the built–in speaker on the device. The Long Time No See even comes with an internal magnet, which lets you stick it to a fridge or a bookshelf, making it something you can listen to anywhere. If you’re hankering for the days of Friends and the original PlayStation, then you’re going to absolutely love…

Whether you want to use a password manager, set up a new Mac without Keychain in iCloud, or just want a copy for reference, exporting your passwords from Safari or the Passwords pane is a great solution. It’s available in the Export item in Safari’s File menu, and the More button at the foot of the Passwords section in the app preferences or Passwords. This exports them in CSV format, ready to import into Safari on another Mac, or most password managers. Some expect the order of fields to be different, in which case, open the file in Numbers, reorder the columns, and export it to another CSV file. Make it inaccessible to others by encrypting it, perhaps keeping the copy in an encrypted disk image.…

RECENT YEARS HAVE brought ever–increasing interruptions. Whether you want to work, watch a movie, or play a game, turning those off is key. Quick Notes also enables you to record things on the spur of the moment without losing your train of thought. 1 TAG NOTES Notes, including Quick Notes, are easy to tag, and the Notes app has a new section for those tags. Add your tag with a hash sign “#” immediately before it, such as #MacLife, and the app shows the tag in blue, adding that to the list at the left so you can browse all your notes for a given tag. 2 SHARE NOTES Work on your notes with a colleague by sharing them. Select a note and click the Share This Note tool. Send a…

1 Allow key alerts Open the Notifications & Focus pane and set Notifications up first. Select apps like Messages which have the option to “Allow time–sensitive alerts” and enable those you want to interrupt you when you’re focusing. 2 Set main options Select the Focus you want to use, or add one using the “+” tool, then click Options to allow time–sensitive alerts. Allowing calls is primarily for iPhones, but worth setting when you’re going to share the focus. 3 Add people & apps Select the People item and add those you want to let interrupt your focus using the “+” tool. Then select Apps and add any you wish in addition to those allowed time–sensitive alerts. FaceTime is a good candidate. 4 Set focus trigger Focus offers three ways to trigger that focus…

IN ADDITION TO the regular iCloud Drive folder in the sidebar of Finder windows and elsewhere, Monterey adds a new folder for folders and files that are shared through iCloud. First, an item needs to be copied or moved to your iCloud Drive. To share a selected folder or file, use the Share item in the File menu or the contextual menu. Some apps also support the direct sharing of an open document using their Share button. You’ll then be invited to decide who can access the document, what permissions they have, and which app you want to use to send them the link. To control access to an item you’ve shared, or get a link to it to tell someone where to find it, select the item in the Finder,…

When your notebook is close to a desktop Mac with its own larger display, you can now use the display of that nearby Mac to extend that on your notebook, provided that they both fully support AirPlay. Both need to be signed into the same Apple ID, and to be able to connect with one another over Wi–Fi or through a USB cable, with Bluetooth turned on. Open the Displays pane on the notebook and enable the other Mac using the Add Display pop–up at the lower left. At first, the image shown on your notebook might require a magnifying glass, but you can then adjust the resolution on each, and whether you want the connected display to mirror or extend that on the notebook. Wi–Fi is more convenient to…

>> AIRPLAY USES WI–FI to transmit high–quality audio, video, images, and other data from device to device. Relevant Apple apps include Bluetooth speakers alongside AirPlay devices, but they are separate streaming technologies. There are tons of AirPlay devices from tiny speakers to massive OLED TVs, and your Mac can talk to them using the AirPlay 2 standard if it’s running macOS Catalina or later (or iTunes 12.8 or later) and connected to the same Wi–Fi network. Using AirPlay on your Mac couldn’t be simpler. When you’re watching a film or show in the TV app or listening to songs in Apple Music, you’ll see a little icon showing a TV on top of a triangle. That’s the AirPlay icon, and if you click it you’ll see a list of all the…

1 Pick your presentation AirPlay’s screen mirroring option enables you to share your Mac’s screen with a TV or display. To begin, open your presentation and then select Control Center Screen Mirroring. 2 Pick your target Now all you need to do is select the destination for your screen mirroring. Don’t worry, screen mirroring hasn’t ruined the colors of our original; our iPhone camera has just overcompensated here. 3 Know what’s coming In Keynote, pressing play on your presentation doesn’t just display the presentation on your external display. It also puts Keynote into presenter mode on your Mac, where you can see your progress and make changes as you go.…

1 Pick a tune Open your music app — here we’re using Apple’s own — and find the song you want to share. In the app, bring up the Now Playing screen. You should now see the AirPlay logo in the center at the bottom of the screen. 2 Pick a destination You should now see a menu listing the AirPlay devices, with little icons to indicate what kind of device each one is. Simply tap the speaker or other device you want to share your music to and it’ll start playing. 3 Pick a podcast You can send audio from other apps too, so for example you can use AirPlay with Spotify. Here we’re using Apple’s own Podcasts app, which once again has the AirPlay control in the lower middle. 4 Control it…

$119 From vissles.com Features 19 RGB backlit, low–profile optical switches, 85 keys Needs Bluetooth, USB–C Vissles’ new LP85 is an ultra–thin 75% optical–mechanical keyboard that’s priced similar to Apple’s basic Magic Keyboard but has several differences. It has 85 keys but is just 15.1mm thick including its footpads and keycaps, and despite being machined out of aluminium and feeling reassuringly robust, it’s just a shade over 19oz in weight. Black or white finishes are available and there are Mac and Windows layout models, though the key caps are not hot swappable. It uses low–profile optical switches which have a small amount of pre–travel and deliver a pleasing balance of clickiness and responsiveness. The keys offer more feedback than you’d expect given their compact design, and are perfectly comfortable to type…

32GB model $299.99, 64GB model $329.99 From insta360.com Features Waterproof to 13ft, hands–free Needs iOS 13, iPadOS 13 or later, iPhone 8 or later The Go 2 is an action camera that’s really compact (more so than GoPro cameras) and still packs in a ton of exciting features. The camera itself is tiny, just 0.93oz in weight and not even the size of an adult thumb. It charges in its case, which itself charges over USB–C. The case is multi–functional with a small set of controls that let you configure all sorts of recording modes and parameters. You can also shoot with the camera in its case which extends battery life from 30 minutes in basic mode to 150 minutes. Higher quality and special modes lower the amount of time…

Free; $39.95 for premium features From redsweater.com Needs macOS 10.15 or later If you’ve ever done more than dabble with AppleScripts, or any other scripting on the Mac, you’ll know that macOS’ Script Editor gives the option to put a Scripts menu in your menu bar. That menu gives you access to scripts in the default Scripts folder, so you can view and edit them easily. FastScripts does that and a whole lot more. Version 3 has been updated with a whole host of new features and makes it even more of a “must have” for anyone who uses AppleScripts on a regular basis. There’s a new search box right at the top of the menu, allowing you to use Spotlight to search for scripts. Click the menu, start typing (there’s…

Walking is one of the best ways to experience the world around you and discover something different this new year. Whether you want to learn more about your local neighborhood or go hiking in the remote backcountry to immerse yourself in the beauty of nature, these six apps will help you do it. When it comes to walking apps, 1. ALLTRAILS (free with in–app purchases from AllTrails, alltrails.com) is one of the most popular around. You can use it to plan trips abroad or just find new routes in your neighborhood. Each trail has a dedicated page with everything you need to organize and enjoy your trip, including a map, weather info, photos, reviews, and helpful tags. Once you’re ready, you can plan a route (with options for hiking, biking,…

REQUIRES Gentler, iOS 13 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to improve your fitness in a balanced way with Gentler IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes THERE ARE A lot of apps that claim to help visualize your fitness data, but few like Gentler. Instead of pushing you to ever greater feats of fitness and endurance, this app helps you find a balance between overwork and inactivity. One of the ways it does this is with its Activity Cloud, a green bar that serves as a “compass” for your condition. If your activity level goes above the Activity Cloud, you should rest more. If it’s below, try to be more active. The app determines your position in the cloud based on your age, gender, resting heart rate, training history, and VO2…

A new application layer standard, once known as Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP) and now nattily renamed Matter, will be one of the key drivers for Thread over the next few years. Developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) — a who’s who of smart device companies that includes Apple, Amazon, Hue parent Signify, and Google — Matter is essentially digital Esperanto, aiming to unite future smart home and IoT devices under a single unified language. Sounds like a familiar refrain, but with so many big names both on board and seemingly committed to making their hardware interconnectable, this one might actually stick. Given what we know about Thread, it’s no coincidence that the CSA has chosen its network layer as the delivery method for Matter’s initial spec. Google…