Innehållsförteckning för Issue 2 från macOS Monterey The Complete Manual

macOS Monterey has some awesome new features, and we’re here to tell you all about them. Over the next 192 pages, we bring you tip-top tutorials and plain-English guides to Apple’s latest Mac operating system, its bundled apps and its advanced features. We show you how to set up your Mac out of the box, and get to grips with its key functions such as Finder, trackpad gestures and the Dock. Our guides to Monterey’s key apps cover both the basics and their advanced features. Look out for guides to the Safari web browser, Mail email client and FaceTime for audio and video chats. We cover Monterey’s brand new features too, like Universal Control, Live Text, Focus, Quick Notes, iCloud+ and more. With our help, you’ll soon be using your…

1 Your first step is to choose your territory, that is, where you live and will be using your Mac. You can scroll the list of countries up and down to find your own, or start to type it to get there quicker. Click your country to highlight your choice, then click Continue. 2 Now select your language and input source. The default ones for your chosen territory are offered, but if you want to change them, click Customise Settings and set the language your Mac uses and the keyboard layout to suit your specific needs. 3 If you have a disability that makes it harder to use a computer, the Mac’s Accessibility tools could be of interest. If you want to set up your Accessibility settings now, click one…

Choose New Wallpaper 1 To open the Desktop preferences window, click the Apple menu, select System Preferences and select the Desktop & Screen Saver option. Select the genre of picture required from the left column. 2 Click on the image you’d like to use for your wallpaper. If there’s a cloud in the corner, click on it first to download the image. The desktop is updated immediately. Keep it or choose another one. Use an Image from Your Photos Library. Open the desktop preferences: Apple menu > System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver. Select the Photos item in the directory list, click the chevron to its left to open it. Various options are available. Explore your photo images, and then choose one from the right-hand panel. If it has…

1 Your Mac’s desktop often fills with files and folders you know you need regularly but that can mean a very cluttered workspace. To use Desktop Stacks, first click on the desktop to make sure Finder is active, then click on the View menu in the top bar. 2 From the View menu, select the Use Stacks option. Your files are stacked on the right-hand side of your desktop, according to their type. For example, images are stacked together, as are documents. To turn this off again go to View and click Use Stacks. 3 To open a stack on your desktop, click on it. The items contained in that stack are revealed, allowing you to access and open individual files. To close a stack again, click on the down-pointing…

1 Window Control Options: Use the gumdrops to close or minimise the window or open it in full-screen mode. We’ll cover this on the next page. 2 Navigation Controls: The chevron buttons in the top left corner of the window take you forwards or backwards through your navigation history. 3 View Options: These four buttons let you set-up how you view the files and folders in the Finder window; whether as icons, a list, in columns or as a cover flow which gives you a much larger visual preview. 4 Item Arrangement List: Click on the button shown here to order the contents of the window; according to date, alphabetically and more. 5 Share Button: The Share button is found in many places throughout macOS. Here you can highlight a…

First Steps with Widgets 1 To access your widgets, click on the clock and date in the top-right corner of the screen. The widgets are found underneath the notifications. You can scroll the notifications and widgets up and down with two fingers on a trackpad. 2 Click on a widget to open the app that created it, or in some cases, the website from where its information is drawn. Here we clicked the AMP share price in the Stocks widget, which opened the Stocks app on the AMP details page. 3 You can drag widgets out of their current position and drop them into a new place, just like you do with app icons in Launchpad. Reorder them to suit; maybe move the most used widgets to the top of…

Setting Up Your iCloud Email 1 If you set up your Apple ID during your Mac’s initial setup, or if you signed in with an existing Apple ID, your iCloud email account is already in place. But if not, or if you want to add another iCloud email account to your Mail client, follow these instructions. 2 Open the Mail application from the Dock and then under the Mail drop-down menu found in the left of the menu bar, click on the Add Account… link. From the pop-up menu that appears, select the iCloud link and then click on the Continue button to go to the next step. 3 Now enter the Apple ID for the iCloud email account you want to add to your Mail app, and then the…

1 This icon opens and closes the sidebar on the left. 2 Here you see how many tabs you currently have open in Safari. Click the four-squares icon to see those tabs as thumbnails in the main window. 3 This icon gives you a menu that lets you make a Tab Group of the tabs you currently have open, or start a new, empty Tab Group to which you can add tabs manually. 4 These two chevrons are your navigation controls, which let you move forward and backward through your browsing history. 5 Click the house icon to take you back to your designated Homepage. Change this Homepage in Preferences > General. 6 A lot of websites use trackers to track your browsing from site to site, in order to…

The Music app is very similar to the one found on the iPhone or the iPad. If you already use Music on a mobile device, you shouldn’t have too many problems getting started. 1 When you’re using the Music app, the top bar gives you pull-down menus offering controls and options. It’s worthwhile familiarising yourself with them. 2 Completion suggestions are offered as you type, and results can be limited to Apple Music, or your on-Mac library, as you wish. Results include artists, songs, albums and more. 3 These are, in turn, Shuffle Tracks, Previous track, Play/Pause, Next track, Repeat Play. 4 When you’re playing music, the album art, artist and title are shown here. Click on the album art to switch to the mini player, which shows the album…

Managing and Maintaining Contacts 1 This guide shows you to how to add new contacts to your Contacts address book, edit existing ones and share a completed contact card with other people. To create a new contact card, click on the plus button in the bottom left of the current card. Select New Contact from the window that pops up and you’re given a blank card to fill in. 2 To add details, click on the field and then type in the information. After entering a phone number or address, another blank is offered, in case you want to add a second one. Click on the name of the detail (in blue) for a pop-up window that lets you change it. When you’re finished, click Done. To change or add…

Setting Up Messages 1 When you first open Messages, you might need to sign in with your Apple ID. If you’re not asked to do so, you’re already signed in. Open Messages and select Preferences from the Messages menu in the top bar, or press cmd-comma on your keyboard. The Preferences window appears. 2 Click the iMessage tab and ensure the email address associated with your Apple ID is enabled. Set more than one email address and phone number, so messages sent to them appear on your Mac. Check the Enable Messages in the iCloud box, to sync Messages with your other Apple gear. 3 Once you’re signed in, click back to the General tab and click on the Set up Name and Photo Sharing button. This opens a setup…

Finding Places with Maps 1 To focus the view on your current location, click the arrow icon in the toolbar. The map zooms to your current whereabouts. To search for a specific location, type the address, postcode/zip code or road name into the search field. Possible matches are shown as you type. 2 You can search for a business by entering the business name or type, for example ‘Fast Food’, into the search field. Icons appear on the map indicating all matching businesses in the area. To get more information, click on an icon, then on any relevant information that accompanies it. 3 To change the view, click the map icon at the top of the pane. The options are: Explore, for a simple graphical map; Driving, for motorists; Public…

Getting Started with Quick Note 1 You can open a Quick Note from anywhere on your Mac, and access it in the Notes app. There are three ways of opening a Quick Note. The easiest is to drag your pointer to the bottom-right corner and click the white box that appears. 2 In the Safari app, you can highlight a piece of text, right-click or ctrl-click on it and select New Quick Note from the contextual menu. A Quick Note is created containing both the text and the URL from which it came. 3 You can open your Quick Notes using a key command; Fn-Q. However you open a Quick Note, the last one you created is opened. If you need to start a new one, type cmd-N. A blank…

Pages at a Glance 1 Every app on the Mac has its own pull-down menus, and Pages is no exception. When you see a reference to a pull-down menu in the tutorials, this is where you’ll find them. For example, you can open a new document in the File pull-down menu. To do this, click on the word ‘File’ in this top bar and select New from the menu that appears. 2 The View button, found here, opens a menu with several options about showing and hiding on-screen tools and guides. You can choose between thumbnails and a list of contents in the left-hand sidebar, or hide it altogether. You can also show or hide comments, the word count, an on-screen ruler, the Find & Replace window and more. Take…

New and Open. When you have the Numbers app open, you can click on the File menu and choose Open to open a document you’ve previously worked on, through the browser shown here, or New to open the Templates window. If the Open Document browser is already open, click the New Document button in the bottom-left to bring up the Templates window. Numbers Checklists From the Templates window, you can select a checklist template if you wish. This is slightly different from the usual table as it has a column of blank boxes you can check by clicking on them. It’s great for setting up a checklist on your Mac and checking it off as you go on your iPhone. You can add photos, colours, shapes and more to your…

Accessing the System Preferences As long as you read up on what you’re adjusting before making any changes, delving into System Preferences is not a scary experience, and it can make using your Mac a lot more enjoyable. There are several ways to open the System Preferences pane. You can click on the Apple icon in the top left corner of the screen and select System Preferences, click on the Dock icon showing cogs on a silver square or open it from the Launchpad or Applications folder. Opening System Preferences reveals a window with a grid of icons split into categories, each representing a different area of options you can configure. Wherever you are in System Preferences, the grid of squares in the toolbar takes you back to this, the…

1 To activate Mission Control, swipe upwards with three fingers on a trackpad or tap the F3 key on your keyboard. This is unchanged from previous versions of the Mac’s operating system, unless you’ve modified the gesture settings yourself. 2 Unlike older versions of Mission Control, open windows are presented in a single layer instead of being stacked according to which application produced them. Click on a window to bring its app to the fore. 3 You can open a document or app in full screen from Mission Control simply by dragging its window upwards, onto the strip showing the desktops. You can also create a new desktop space by clicking the plus sign, whether this Spaces bar is open or not. 4 You can still use the Exposé buttons,…

Universal Control is available with compatible Macs and iPads running macOS Monterey and iPadOS 15 respectively. They have to be signed into the same iCloud account, and both must have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth switched on. When using Universal Control, you can drag your Mac’s pointer off the Mac’s screen and onto the iPad’s screen, and then operate the iPad with the keyboard and mouse/trackpad from your Mac. Unlike Sidecar, Apple’s earlier Continuity feature that let you use your iPad as a second screen for your Mac, Universal Control lets you use your iPad’s own apps and features, and even drag files between your computer and your tablet. Here’s how to set up and use Universal Control. On Your Mac • Open System Preferences from the Apple menu (top left), and…

1 The App Switcher is easy to use. Hold the cmd key and press Tab. A window showing the icons of all your open apps is displayed in a floating panel in the centre of your desktop. If you release the keys, they disappear again. 2 You can toggle through these apps by repeatedly pressing the Tab key and releasing cmd when you’ve highlighted the app you want. This app is then brought to the front of your Mac, so you can make use of it straight away. 3 You can move forwards or backwards through the list of open apps using the arrow keys at the bottom right of your keyboard, or to the left of the numeric keypad on a large keyboard. Alternatively, just click on one with…

Setting Up Siri 1 You might have activated Siri during the set up procedure. If not, under the Apple menu, select System Preferences. Click on Siri in the top row. If it isn’t already ticked, click on Enable Siri, on the left. If you want Siri in the menu bar, check that box too. 2 You can change the language that Siri understands and also speaks in using the pull-down menu. You can also change the English language voice from a British male to a female voice and a different accent, and set up a keyboard shortcut for Siri if you wish. 3 To launch Siri, click on the icon in the Dock, click on the menu bar icon if you’ve opted for one or press the keyboard shortcut, again…

1 Go to System Preferences > Notifications & Focus and click the Focus tab. Some categories are already offered, namely Do Not Disturb, Driving and Personal. Turn on Share Across Devices to sync your settings across your Apple gear. 2 Tap the + icon in the bottom-left to choose a new focus. You can choose one for when you’re Gaming, for Mindfulness, for when Reading or for when Working. If none of these are a fit, choose a Custom focus and call it whatever you like. 3 If you’re making a Custom focus, the first thing you must do is give it a name, choose an icon from the range on offer (scroll up for more) and choose a colour for that icon. It’s simple enough to do. When you’ve…

Restoring a Mac from a Time Machine Backup If something has gone very wrong with your Mac, and you want to wipe your hard drive clean and reinstall from a Time Machine backup, this is what you should do. Naturally, to restore from a backup you need to actually have a backup, and anything you’ve done on your Mac between the last time you ran Time Machine and the time when you restore to your last backup, will be lost. That’s why you should back up on a regular basis. • First of all, make sure a notebook Mac is powered using the power adapter, and regardless of what Mac you have, make sure your Time Machine backup drive is connected. • Power down your Mac, count to ten then…

AirPlay to Mac You can use the AirPlay feature to play, present and share content from a mobile device to your Mac. You can enjoy your music using your Mac’s sound system as an AirPlay speaker, or watch your videos on its Retina screen. Immediate Deletion If you wanted to delete a file immediately, simply select a file, press alt and cmd together and then press Delete. You get a window inviting you to delete the file. Do so and it’s deleted, without being placed into the bin first. Hot Corners Hot Corners are the physical corners of the desktop, that can be customised to perform certain tasks when your mouse hovers over them. Go to System Preferences > Mission Control > Hot Corners to set them up. Use Stacks…

The First Tree had an unusual inspiration. Its developer, David Wehle, used it as a ‘creative outlet’ to deal with his becoming a father for the first time; and also losing his own dad. So naturally, family ties play a large part in this third-party exploration game. It centres around two parallel stories; a fox (the playable character) trying to find her missing family, and through narration, a son reconnecting with his estranged father in Alaska. Along the way, you uncover artefacts and stories from the son's life as he becomes intertwined in the fox’s journey towards The First Tree. Graphics are simple but enchanting, giving a real sense of being there when combined with the melancholy music. As you run through the snow-kissed plains of Alaska, a beautiful fern…

2001 Version: Mac OS X 10.0 Codename: Cheetah Date: March 24th, 2001 Steve Jobs famously said “We made the buttons on the screen look so good, you’ll want to lick them,” when describing the new Aqua User Interface with the release of Mac OS X. While we may not have licked them, they were certainly new, fresh and good to look at. 2001 Version: Mac OS X 10.1 Codename: Puma Date: September 25th, 2001 Less of a functional update with Puma and more of a performance enhancement. Puma introduced better handling of optical disc burning, file management and improved responsiveness throughout. 2002 Version: Mac OS X 10.2 Codename: Jaguar Date: August 23rd, 2002 The release of Jaguar saw a new Apple logo (the large grey version), better search functionality and…

Setting Up Touch ID 1 First of all, open the System Preferences window. Click on Touch ID. If this option isn’t there, your Mac doesn’t have Touch ID as it’s a feature on newer Macs. 2 If your Mac does have Touch ID, to get started, click on the + icon captioned ‘Add Fingerprint’. You can add more than one print; here, this is our second. 3 Type your admin password when asked, the one you use to unlock your Mac. As instructed, you must now place the finger you intend to register on the Touch ID sensor, on the top-right of the keyboard. 4 Keep raising and lifting your finger. As you can see, the grey fingerprint in the window gradually turns red, as Touch ID reads, analyses and…

One of the things that makes the Mac such a pleasure to use is its large and responsive MacBook multi-touch trackpad or the desktop Mac’s Magic Trackpad. You can use the trackpad in much the same way as you would use the touchscreen of an iPhone or iPad: to quickly and easily access menus, sort through stacks of pictures or documents, scroll through documents and to zoom in and out of displayed images. Once you get used to it, you’ll find that it’s a very easy and intuitive way of controlling your Mac and that it can do far more than just scrolling. Secondary Clicking. Some people like to use a two-button mouse with their Mac, and this can be handy for quick access to shortcut menus by secondary clicking…

Connecting with Wi-Fi 1 Make sure that your Mac is within range of your wireless router’s Wi-Fi signal, then click on the Wi-Fi icon in the top menu bar. You’ll see a list of Wi-Fi networks. If your Wi-Fi is off click the switch to turn it on. 2 You’ll see a list of Wi-Fi networks available in your area. A lock to the right shows a password is required to join it. Click on the network you wish to join, whether it’s your own router or a public Wi-Fi in a cafe or bar. 3 If a password is required (it probably is), a window appears. Enter the password here. If you’re setting up at home, the password is probably supplied with your router. Your Mac then joins the…

Accessing Your Applications from the Dock Add or Remove an Application To add an app, first click the icon filled with multicoloured boxes on the left-hand side of the Dock to bring up Launchpad. Then, click and drag the item you want onto the Dock. To remove it, just drag it out. Open an Application To open an application that’s in your Dock, simply move the mouse pointer onto the Dock and click on its icon. Notice that the app icon slightly bounces as the application opens before the main app opens. Move an Application To move an item to a new location in the Dock, click and drag to the required position. As you move the item the adjacent applications will move aside to allow you to drop the…

Using Spotlight’s Features 1 To start using Spotlight, press cmd and the space bar or click the magnifying glass in the top menu and the Spotlight Search window appears. In Big Sur, as with macOS Catalina, you can drag this window to wherever you want on the screen; it’s not fixed in position. 2 Start typing your search query into Spotlight and immediately answers appear, with suggestions based on the contents of your computer as well as other sources. This may mean you only have to type a few letters of your search term to find what you’re looking for. 3 Spotlight can do instant unit conversions for you. For example, if you want to convert from imperial to metric weights (or vice versa) you just type in the number…

1 You can open the App Store app from the Apple menu, as well as from the Dock, the Applications window, the Launchpad and Spotlight. If updates are available for any of your apps, this is shown in the Apple menu, next to the App Store option. 2 Type the name of an app, a developer or a genre into the Search window to search the App Store for apps. Your search results are then shown in the main window. 3 The sidebar gives you options when exploring the App Store. Discover is best for general browsing, Arcade is for Apple Arcade titles, then there are categories for creative apps, work-related software, games developers’ tools and more. 4 This is the featured app of the day, chosen by Apple’s editors.…

1 This is the sidebar, which lets you select mailboxes, see emails from VIP senders or those which you’ve flagged, and more. You can resize and even close this sidebar by clicking and dragging the divider between this and your emails list. 2 The list of emails contained in the currently selected mailbox, in this case, All Mailboxes. The number of emails in the box, and the number of unread emails, are shown. You can resize this column by clicking and dragging its left or right edge. 3 Click this circular icon to toggle between showing all emails and only unread emails. 4 This button downloads new emails. You can set your Mail app to check automatically but this button does so manually. 5 When you want to write a…

1 When you first open the News app, you see a sidebar and a main window. The sidebar’s Today option is selected, giving you a range of the day’s top stories. Click on a story to open it and read it in full. 2 When you open a news story, if it has a video it can be watched within the News app. In the File menu, there’s an option to open the story in Safari. This takes you to the web page from which the story was drawn. 3 The Special Coverage section gives you a selection of features chosen by Apple’s editors. If you find a story you particularly like or dislike, use the thumbs up/down icons in the top-right corner to improve future suggestions. 4 In the…

Changing the View 1 There are several different ways to view your calendars. To move between Day, Week, Month and Year views, you can use the corresponding buttons that appear in the top bar of the Calendar application. 2 The Year view shows you a complete year in a single window. Clicking on the title bar for any month takes you to its Month view. Double-click a specific day in either Year, Week or Month view to open its page in the Day view. 3 Click the Calendars button (top left) to open and close the sidebar, as shown here. This sidebar is visible regardless of whether you’re in Day, Week, Month or Year view and lets you mute or reveal individual calendars and more. 4 Click the Today button…

First Steps with Books 1 The Books app’s sidebar is divided into three sections; Apple Books shows what you’re reading now and offers two shop options; Library lets you view your book collection; In My Collections, you can organise them into categories. 2 If you’re already a Books user on your iPad or iPhone, you can access your books by clicking the All Books option under Library. Here you can see your book collection. Books not currently on your Mac have a cloud under the cover. 3 Click on a cloud, or the three-dots icon next to it, for options to download a book to your Mac, delete it from your Mac (it remains on iCloud, so you can download it again later) or add it to Library categories like…

1 Open the TV app, and click on the Account menu in the top bar. If you’re not signed into your Apple account, select Sign In and enter your Apple ID and Password in the fields provided, then click the Sign In button below them. 2 Look at the tabs at the top of the window. Watch Now is the TV app’s front page, showing movies and TV shows you’ve previously bought alongside those available to buy or rent from the app. Scroll up for more suggestions. 3 If you subscribe, watch TV+ in the tab. Under the Movies and TV shows tabs you can buy and/or rent films and programmes. TV shows can be bought individually or on a per-series basis; scroll up for available episodes. 4 The Kids…

The People Tab 1 Click the People tab. Click on your own picture in the left-hand sidebar, and click on the ‘i’ in the window that pops up on the map. In the next window, you can change the device through which your location is represented, switch off sharing, Notifications and more. 2 To start sharing your location with someone else, click Share My Location in the bottom-left corner, Enter the name, phone number or email of another Apple user in the To field or navigate to their details using the + icon. People with whom you’ve recently shared your location are listed below. 3 Decide whether to share for an hour, the rest of the day or indefinitely, and your location is shared with that person. If they reciprocate,…

Headers and Footers Hover over the top or bottom of a Pages document and a row of three rectangular boxes are shown. This is for headers and footers. Whatever you type in these boxes appears on every page in the document. Click a blank box and an optional button for inserting page numbers appears. With this you can add automatically-applied page numbers in various formats. Show One or Two Pages When reviewing a multi-page document, you can view a single page at a time, or two pages side by side as if they were laid out in a book. To switch between these two view options, click on the Zoom button on the right of the toolbar and select an option from the top of the pop-up menu. You can…

Keynote at a Glance 1 As you’d expect, Keynote has a series of pull-down menus in the Desktop’s top bar. Click on one for the menu, and drag your pointer down this list to select an option. Some tools have a keyboard shortcut too, displayed on the right of the menu bars. 2 Keynote’s View button lets you change the way the slide is shown in the window. You can hide the sidebars, show the slides as thumbnails, show and hide an Object list and the Find & Replace option and more. 3 Like the other iWork apps, Keynote lets you zoom in on the currently shown slide to see more detail, or zoom out to see more of the slide. This doesn’t change the size of the document; only…

The Touch Bar Explained 1 App-specific: What the Touch Bar shows depends on the app you’re currently using. Here it’s used with a video app but it can be configured for other software too. 2 The Touch Bar: The Touch Bar runs along the top of the keyboard, where the function keys used to be. What it displays depends on what app you’re using. 3 Regular Buttons: As you can see, regular buttons like the Escape key and media controls can be replicated on the Touch Bar and placed where their function keys were. 4 App-related Buttons: Because the OLED Touch Bar is in itself a mini screen, it can also display buttons that are specific to the app that you’re currently using. 5 Slider Bar: The versatility of the…

Wi-Fi Instant Hotspot 1 Instant Hotspot’s system requirements are stringent. A Mac must be mid-2012 or newer and running Yosemite or later. To find out when your Mac was made, click on the Apple icon in the top left and select About This Mac. An iOS device must be an iPhone 5 or later, iPad (4th gen) or later, an iPod touch (5th gen) or later or any iPad mini. 2 Make sure your Mac and all the devices you want to use with Instant Hotspot are signed into the same iCloud account. On an iPadOS or iOS device, go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud and on a Mac, open System Preferences (under the Apple menu, top left corner or from the Dock) and click on Apple ID…

1 To use Sidecar on your Mac and iPad, first of all, open System Preferences on your Mac then click on the Displays preference pane. In the pull-down in the lower left, select your iPad. If it isn’t there, your Mac’s too old to use Sidecar. 2 Make sure your iPad is switched on and placed where you want it. You can drag the small display desktop, which represents your iPad as an external screen, into any position you like regarding your main Mac display. 3 There’s a brief flash, and your Apple devices connect; sharing screen space between your Mac and your iPad. Your iPad can now be used as an input device or second – or even third or fourth – screen. 4 You can drag and drop…

Storing Your Documents in iCloud 1 Click on your desktop to open Finder, then open iCloud Drive from the Go menu. You may need to log into iCloud using your Apple ID. You’ll see a Finder window showing the contents of your iCloud drive folder, with folders for some apps that store output in iCloud. 2 To save files of any type into your iCloud Drive folder, simply drag them from their current location (in this screenshot, that’s the desktop) and drop them in the open iCloud window. They are now stored remotely and accessible from any connected Apple device. 3 You can organise your iCloud folder like any other folder, including creating new folders within it. To move files into a new folder in your iCloud Drive, just drag…

Getting Started with Shortcuts 1 The Shortcuts app comes preinstalled with macOS Monterey. It’s can be found in Applications > Other. You can open it through a Finder window, by using the Launchpad or simply by typing ‘Shortcuts’ into the spotlight search. 2 The Shortcuts app is compatible with, and syncs with, Shortcuts on your iPhone or iPad, so if you’ve already created Shortcuts on those devices, they’re seen here, along with some ‘Starter Shortcuts’ which are prebuilt by Apple. 3 In the left-hand sidebar, click on the Gallery option at the top. Here you see a range of pre-built shortcuts which you can download by clicking on the + icon in their top-right corners. They then appear with your own Shortcuts. 4 Drag a shortcut from your own collection…

1 First of all, check you have an Apple Silicon Mac. Under the Apple menu in the top-left corner, select About this Mac. Look for the Chip listing. If it says ‘Apple M1’ or later, you can run iPad apps. 2 Open the App Store on your Mac. Click on your account in the bottom left corner of the App Store window to take you to a list of your purchased apps. Click on ‘iPhone & iPad apps’. 3 Scroll up and down and you’ll see a complete list of all the apps you’ve bought and/or downloaded on your Apple mobile devices. A cloud under the description means you can download it to your Mac. 4 If an app doesn’t have a cloud, it’s either no longer on the App…

Finder Shortcuts These shortcuts are available when you’re using Mojave’s Finder features, like windows and folders. Command + [ . . . . . . . . . . . Go to the previous folder Command + ] . . . . . . . . . . . Go to the next folder Command + ↑ . . . . . . . . . . Navigate up one level Command + ↓ . . . . . . . . . . Navigate down one level Option + Double click . . . . . . Open the selected folder in a new window and close the current window Command + Double click . . . Open selected folder in a new tab Command + Tab . .…

Modern computers like the Mac are amongst the most complicated machines ever designed. It’s an amazing testament to the quality of both the Mac hardware and software that they’re usually so stable and reliable. However, no machine can ever be 100 percent perfect. If your Mac stops working, the screen freezes up, there’s a battery problem or other such issues, you don’t always need to call the Genius Bar to get it fixed. There are a number of things you can try for yourself that might help and could save you the cost of a service call. Clearing a Frozen Screen 1 Press cmd+OPT+Esc or choose Apple menu > Force Quit from the menu bar. The Force Quit window appears. If the app is identified as ‘not responding’, select it…

iCloud+ iCloud+ is a new service covering our Macs and mobile devices. Previously, the only benefit in subscribing to iCloud as opposed to enjoying the free 5GB of storage you get for free is the greater capacity it offers. But Monterey introduces iCloud+, free features for those who pay for iCloud. How many times have you wanted to enter an online competition, but didn’t do so because you feared getting endless spam emails afterwards? With Hide My Email you can create a randomly generated email address that’s unique to you. Emails sent to this address are automatically forwarded to your own address. So if you enter that competition and win, you get the message. If they send unwanted adverts, you can disable the Hide My Email address you used, so…

1 From the Apple menu you can log out, shut down, restart or put the computer into sleep mode, get comprehensive information on the computer’s hardware and software, access the System Preferences and open items you’ve recently closed. 2 The menu bar running along the top of the desktop gives access to functions and controls for the app you currently have open at the time. The app currently in use is shown to the right of the Apple icon. In this case it’s Finder. Open or click on an app and its name is shown here instead; and its menus are listed in the menu bar. 3 The Command Centre is where you can access Bluetooth, Wi-Fi settings, display brightness, volume, keyboard brightness, Screen Mirroring and much more. 4 Application…

Dark Mode 1 From the Apple menu, open System Preferences. Click on the General pane in the top left corner of the window. At the top, under ‘Appearance’, are the Light, Dark, and Auto buttons. Dark and Light buttons switch to those modes, and Auto lets you schedule the changes. 2 With Dark Mode on, the colours are subdued in Finder, windows, the Mac’s built-in apps and more. Third-party apps can be updated to take advantage of Dark Mode too. If you find it more comfortable to work on a dark screen, this is excellent news. Night Shift Mode 1 From the Apple menu, open System Preferences. Click on the Displays pane and then on the Night Shift button. From here you can schedule Night Shift Mode to run from…

The Apple Menu 1 The Apple menu is found in the top left corner of the desktop. To open it, click on the Apple icon once, then choose an option. It’s always there, whatever it is that you’re doing on your Mac. 2 About This Mac shows you technical information about your computer. Tabs at the top of this window let you delve further, looking at its Display, Storage and more; you can get a full report by clicking the System Report button. 3 The System Preferences option opens the Mac’s System Preferences, which we discuss later in this book. 4 This option opens the App Store. If updates are available for your Mac or any of its apps. 5 Hover your pointer over the Recent Items option to see…

If you came to Monterey from a pre-Big Sur version of macOS, you might look for the Notification Centre icon in the top-right corner of the screen. However, it’s not there. Instead, Apple has integrated Notifications into the Date/Time and Widgets zone. Moving notifications to the Date and Time and combining them with widgets is a clever move on the part of Apple. All you need to do to view your notifications is to click on the Date and Time in the top-right of the desktop. If there are any, they appear at the top of the slide-in area that appears from the right-side of the screen. Notifications are grouped together depending on the app they’re coming from. For example, the News app displays notifications based on what news channels…

Using Launchpad 1 To open the Launchpad, go to the Dock and click on it, or place four fingers on your trackpad and bring them together. The screen darkens and your apps are shown as icons. To launch an app from this screen, click on it. To close Launchpad, press Esc or click on the desktop. 2 If you have more than one page of apps, move between them by swiping left and right with two fingers or hold cmd and use the arrow keys. Click and hold on an app and an ‘X’ appears in the top left corner; click ‘X’ to delete. Not all apps can be deleted in this way. 3 You can arrange your apps into folders on Launchpad too, just like on an iOS Home…

1 Begin by locating the app you want to install – as previously mentioned, look for a reputable site. Ensure that it actually has a macOS version available, as Windows or Linux developed apps won’t work on a Mac (unless you do some clever work in the background). 2 There’s usually a Downloads section to any site where there’s apps available from the developer. In there you can find the macOS specific installation file you need for the app in question. Click the link to it or button, to begin the download of the app’s installer. 3 Most macOS downloaded app installers come as DMG files. A DMG file is an Apple Disk Image file or a Mac OS X Disk Image file. It’s basically a digital reconstruction of a…

1 Before you can make use of the Home app, you have to add HomeKit compatible devices. You can only do this from an iOS device, you can’t use your Mac. There’s a list of HomeKit compatible devices online at www.apple.co/2MFjhb3. 2 When you’ve added one or more devices using your iOS device, you can access them through Home on the Mac. Right-click on a device’s window and select Settings and you can change the room they’re assigned to. 3 Click the Automation tab and you can set timers, actions and more. What they do depends on what kit you’ve incorporated into your Home app. Click the + icon to add automations or groups of automations (scenes). 4 For example, you can use the Home app to control and configure…

1 Use this button to toggle between regular thumbnails of your photos, as seen here, and square-shaped images that leave little border. 2 This slider increases and decreases the size of your preview images. 3 Use these buttons to view your photos arranged according to the year, month, or day in which they were taken. 4 Click here to see all your photographs in the Photos app, arranged as thumbnails. Double-click on a thumbnail to open a photo. 5 Select or open a photo and then click the ‘i’ for the information window. Here you can review and edit where and when it was taken, add captions and more. 6 The Share button lets you add the picture to shared albums, send it using Mail, AirDrop, Messages and more, add…

1 This is your search field. Use it to search your reminders, regardless of which list they’re organised in. 2 This is the Reminders app’s front page, showing smart lists as well as the lists you’ve created yourself. A ‘list’ is a group of reminders you’ve set up and can be titled anything you like. 3 Click the plus sign to add a reminder to the open list. You can call it anything you like. When added, it appears in that list until you mark it as done. 4 These boxes at the top of the sidebar are your smart lists. Click on one to open it. ‘Today’ is all reminders scheduled for that day, ‘Scheduled’ shows reminders due in the future, ‘All’ lists all your reminders and ‘Flagged’ shows…

Using FaceTime 1 Click on the FaceTime app to launch the program. It should start straight away, and you’ll see your own face on the screen, as well as a panel inviting you to log in with your Apple ID. Type in your Apple ID password and click OK. 2 Next you’ll need to log on with your Apple ID. People can use your Apple ID email to call you through the FaceTime app. There might be a brief pause while FaceTime verifies your details and logs you on. 3 Before you make a video call, it’s a good idea to make sure they can see you properly. Using the camera view shown here, make sure there are no distracting bright lights behind you and your face is well lit.…

Creating, Editing and Searching Notes 1 To create a new note, first of all, click on the pen-and-paper symbol found in the toolbar at the top of the Notes window. A new blank note appears. Start typing your note. The first line of a new note is used as its title in the notes list, so bear this in mind. 2 Your notes are listed in the left-hand pane. Click on a note to open it. To change the font or use bold, underline or italicise, select the text and right-click or ctrl-click for a menu; these options are found under Font. To attach an image, simply drag it onto the note or copy and paste it. 3 To search notes, use the search icon (the magnifying glass) in the…

1 If you know the name of the application you’re looking for, type it in the Search Bar to go straight to it. Suggestions are offered as you type, so click on one to select it. You can search for developers here too. 2 Click on Discover for the App Store’s main page, where you can see Apple’s picks of the best and most essential apps for your Mac. 3 For a monthly fee, Apple’s all-you-can-eat Arcade gaming subscription service lets you play as many games as you want, for as long as you want. 4 Click Create to look for apps designed for creativity, such as image editing, music making, photography, video editing, desktop publishing and more. 5 Under Work you’ll find the App Store’s productivity apps, such as…

Numbers at a Glance 1 These are the Numbers pull-down menus, located at the top of the screen in the Menu Bar. Click on one of the words here for a pull-down menu. Take a look at each in turn. They offer controls such as opening new or existing documents, adding elements to a Numbers doc and more. The keyboard commands on the right of each menu are shortcuts you can use. 2 Click the View button for options regarding how the document is displayed on screen. You’ll get a pop-up menu offering the Find & Replace option, Show and Hide Rulers, Show and Hide Comments and if applicable, Show or Hide Collaboration Activity. 3 The Zoom button increases and decreases the size of the document on screen. Click on…

Keynote Live Keynote Live lets you broadcast your presentations over the Internet, so it can be watched by up to 500 viewers online or 35 on your local Wi-Fi. Make sure your presentation is in iCloud Drive. The Keynote app used to have a Keynote Live button in the toolbar, but in the latest version you find this option in the Share menu. Click Keynote Live in the Share menu, and a Keynote Live link is created for your presentation, and you’re invited to add viewers. You can do so, or copy the link under More Options, and send it in another way. Those you invite can watch your Keynote presentation, which you can password-protect to restrict who can see it if you wish. Using an iPhone or iPad as…

1 To use Split View mode, first open an app you want to use as a split-screen app. Here we’ve chosen Safari but any app that’s compatible will do. Just open the app window; there’s no need to open it as a full screen. 2 Click on the window’s top bar and drag it upwards, onto the menu bar. A strip appears, offering the current desktop image and a receptacle for the app you’re dragging. Drop the window onto the plus sign to make it a full screen app. 3 Go back to the desktop and open the second app you wish to use as a full-screen app in Split View mode. Here we’re using Apple’s own Pages word processor app, though once again, you can use almost any app…

1 To use the Universal Clipboard feature, the devices in question must be logged into the same iCloud account. If they’re yours, they probably already are but if you have trouble using this tutorial, it might be worth checking. 2 Now you can copy and paste a piece of text from one device to another, quickly and easily. On your Mac, simply copy it to your clipboard by highlighting the text in question, then pressing either cmd-X to cut it or cmd-C to copy. 3 Now, on your iOS device, double tap on the place where you want to paste the text you cut or copied on your Mac. From the pop-up menu, select Paste and it appears. There might be a slight lag while the text uploaded to iCloud.…

1 On your Mac, open the document you wish to import a photo into, or start a new one. Right-click where you want it to appear, select Import from iPhone or iPad, then Take Photo on whichever device you’re using. Devices only appear here if they’re on the same Apple ID as your Mac. 2 Switch to the device you chose to take the photo from. The Camera app should already be open, so take a photo. You get fewer options in the Camera app than usual. When you’ve taken your snap, you can discard it or use it; make your choice from the links at the bottom of the screen. 3 The photo instantly appears on your Mac, in the application you chose to import it to. You can…

1 To switch on iCloud Desktop Documents and Folders, open System Preferences and click on Apple ID > iCloud. Click on the Options button next to iCloud Drive, then check Desktop & Documents Folders. It may take time to set up. 2 On an iPhone or an iPad, first of all open the Files app. Go to the left-hand sidebar, under Locations (tap the chevron to its right to open it if necessary). Tap on iCloud, and then tap the Desktop folder. 3 Files on your Mac’s desktop can be accessed in this way through the iCloud Drive folder of any Mac or iOS/iPadOS device signed into the same Apple ID. All Macs must be running High Sierra or later, and all mobile devices must have iOS 10 or later.…

1 First of all, open a photo containing the text you wish to copy. Here we’ve opened the photograph in the Preview app, but you can use Photos instead if you like. Click and drag to select the text you wish to copy and paste. 2 To copy the text from the photo, type cmd-C on the keyboard or in the Edit menu in whichever app you’re using, choose the Copy option. Again, this works in the Photos app as well as Previews. The text is saved to your clipboard. 3 Now open an app into which you can paste the text. Here we’re using Pages, but you could as easily paste it into an email in Mail, a note in Notes, a TextEdit document and more. To paste, type…

Getting started 1 Connect an external hard drive, via USB, FireWire or Thunderbolt, to your Mac. It should be at least the size of your Mac’s hard drive. The larger the drive, the further back in time you will be able to store backups. Now open System Preferences and click on Time Machine in the bottom row. 2 Click the Select Disk… button and you will be presented with a window listing your connected drives. Select the drive on which you would like to store your backups. If your external drive isn’t already formatted as ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’, Time Machine invites you to erase and reformat it. 3 If you choose to reformat your disk, all data currently on the drive is wiped. You might get a pop-up asking…

1 When an update to your current version of macOS – or a new release entirely – is available, Software Update is badged in System Preferences. In the Apple menu, there’s an update listed in System Preferences too. 2 Open System Preferences from the Apple menu, the Dock or LaunchPad (it doesn’t matter which), and click on the badged Software Update icon. It checks for an update, then tells you what it is. Click the Upgrade Now button. 3 The installer downloads and automatically launches with this screen. Click Continue if you’re ready to install and if not, quit it and install from the Applications folder later. 4 Next step is terms and conditions. You have to click on Agree to continue. If you don’t have time to read them,…

A Accessibility: A series of tools and features designed to make an Apple device such as the Mac and mobile devices easier to use by those with disabilities such as vision or hearing impairments. You can find the Mac’s Accessibility features and customise them in System Preferences. AirPlay: A protocol for streaming sounds and video from an Apple device to a set of compatible speakers, or a device such as an Apple TV. It’s wireless, and easy to use as well. AirTag: A small Bluetooth device that can be tracked using the Find My app. It’s used to locate property like keys or luggage. App: Short for ‘application’, another name for a computer software program. Your Mac comes with a selection of pre-installed apps, and you can buy more from…