iOS 17 brings a new mode for the iPhone: StandBy. All you have to do is connect your iPhone to a charger wirelessly or with a cable, position it on its side in landscape orientation, and press the side button to lock the screen. Standby works best with a MagSafe charging stand. Swipe left or right to switch between three screens: widgets, photos, and clocks. Swipe up and down to move between widgets, photo collections, and clock styles. On the widget screen, touch and hold to add and remove widgets, and on the photo screen, to choose which collections and albums to display. You can choose how long the display stays active in Settings > StandBy > Display. By default, it will stay on all the time on iPhone models with an Always-On display; a tap or nudge will wake it on other iPhone models. Finally, StandBy remembers your preferred view in different locations, so it can be a clock in the bedroom, a photo frame in the kitchen, and a clock at the office.

(Featured image by Apple)

The concept of site-specific browsers has been around for a long time, but in the version of Safari that comes with macOS 14 Sonoma, Apple brought it to the big time by making setup easier than ever.

Put simply, a site-specific browser is a Mac app that encapsulates a single Web app or site. The goal is to break a website out of a Web browser and turn it into what looks and works like a regular Mac app. Gmail the Web app can become Gmail the Mac app.

What kind of websites might you want to turn into a standalone app? Beyond Gmail, consider Google Docs, Netflix, Notion, QuickBooks, and any other Web-focused app that feels more natural as a standalone app. Additionally, a site-specific browser can be helpful for any website you use regularly throughout the day, such as a discussion site, news aggregator, or company intranet.

To create a Web app in Safari, open the desired page, choose File > Add to Dock, and give the app your desired name.

That’s it! Safari saves the Web app to the Applications folder in your Home folder (not the regular top-level Applications folder), adds it to the next open spot on the Dock and in Launchpad, and enables you to open it using Spotlight. The tab you had open in Safari remains open, so close that and launch the new Web app from the Dock.

Web apps look and feel just like Web pages in Safari, with a few exceptions:

• If you click a link to another page on the same website as the Web app, the page opens within the window, but clicking a link to another website opens it in Safari as a new tab. There are a few special cases, too—double-clicking a document in a Google Drive Web app opens it in a new window within the Web app rather than in Safari.
• Web apps have their own browsing history, cookies, website data, and settings, which aren’t shared with Safari.
• Web app toolbars have only back and forward buttons and a Share button. They lack an address bar, bookmarks, tabs, and extensions, but you can switch back to Safari to get those—choose File > Open in Safari.
• For websites that have notifications, the Web app’s icon in the Dock can show the number of unread notifications.

To tweak the name or appearance of the Web app, click the app’s name in the menu bar and choose Settings. The only option that isn’t obvious is the icon—if it’s too fuzzy or not what you prefer, click it and select a file in the dialog that appears. You can select either an image file or another app. (Hint: To find more icons, search for “AppName icon” in Google or Bing.)

Keep these tips about Web apps in mind:

• You can remove a Web app from the Dock without deleting it from your drive.
• To delete a Web app, drag its icon from your Home folder’s Applications folder to the trash.
• To make the Web app launch at login, add it to your login items in System Settings > General > Login Items.
• Web apps cannot receive incoming URLs on their own. In other words, if you have a Google Docs Web app and click a Google Docs link that someone sends you in email, it will open in your default Web browser, not your Google Docs Web app. However, you can use the $10 utility Choosy to redirect appropriate links to specific Web apps.

Overall, Apple has done a good job with Safari Web apps. They’re easy to create and provide most of what you’ll likely want in an app that encapsulates a website. Give them a try, but if you find yourself needing capabilities beyond what Safari provides, such as access to extensions, support for tabs, more control over how links open, and choices of different browser engines, check out alternative site-specific browser apps like Unite, Coherence X, and WebCatalog.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/Armastas)

Since its inception, Time Machine has backed up on an hourly schedule. It then keeps hourly backups for the previous 24 hours, daily backups for the last month, and weekly backups back to the start of the backup. Once free space on the backup drive gets low, Time Machine deletes older backups to make room for new ones, always maintaining at least one copy of every backed-up file. The traditional hourly backups are usually fine, but starting in macOS 13 Ventura, Apple lets you choose a daily or weekly schedule instead. One of those might be useful for Macs that are turned on infrequently or where very little important data changes. It also might reduce resource usage and how much data Time Machine backs up. Most people shouldn’t need to change the backup frequency, but if you’ve always wanted to, now you can.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/STILLFX)

Happy New Year, and welcome to 2024! For many of us, starting a new year means reflecting on fresh habits we’d like to adopt. Although we support any resolutions you may have made to get enough sleep, eat better, exercise more, and reduce social media usage, allow us suggest a few more that will improve your digital security and reduce the chances that bad things will happen to you online.

Back Up All Your Devices

The most important thing you can do to stave off the slings and arrows of digital doom is to make regular backups. Bad things happen to good people, such as a Mac’s SSD failing, an iPhone accidentally falling off a boat, an Apple Watch breaking in a fall, or loss due to theft, fire, or flood. With a good backup strategy, you can recover from nearly any problem.

For the Mac, it’s easiest to back up with Time Machine to an external drive, but remember that an offsite or Internet backup is also essential. With iPhones and iPads, it’s easiest to back up to iCloud, which happens every night automatically if you turn it on in Settings > Your Name > iCloud > iCloud Backup, but you can also back up to your Mac if you don’t have sufficient iCloud storage space. Apple Watches automatically back up to their paired iPhones, so if you protect your iPhone, you can always restore your Apple Watch.

Keep Your Devices Updated

Another key thing you can do to protect your security is to install new operating system updates and security updates soon after Apple releases them. Although the details seldom make the news because they’re both highly specific and highly technical, you can get a sense of how important security updates are by the fact that a typical update addresses 10–30 vulnerabilities that Apple or outside researchers have identified. Some are even zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited in the wild.

It’s usually a good idea to wait a week or so after an update appears before installing, on the off-chance that it has undesirable side effects. Although such problems are uncommon, when they do happen, Apple pulls the update quickly, fixes it, and releases it again, usually within a few days.

Use a Password Manager

We’ll keep banging the password manager drum until passkeys, the replacement for passwords, have become ubiquitous, which will take years. Until then, if you’re still typing passwords in by hand or copying and pasting from a list you keep in a file, please start using a password manager like Apple’s built-in password manager. A password manager offers five huge benefits:

• It generates strong passwords for you. Mypassword1 can be hacked in seconds.
• It stores your passwords securely. An Excel file on your desktop is a recipe for disaster.
• It enters passwords for you. Wouldn’t that be easier than typing them in manually?
• It audits existing accounts. How many of your accounts use the same weak password?
• It lets you access passwords on all your devices. Finally, easy logins on your iPhone!

A bonus benefit for families is password sharing. It allows couples to share essential passwords or parents and teens to share specific passwords.

Using a password manager is faster, easier, more secure, and better. If you need help getting started, get in touch.

Beware of Phishing Email

Individuals and businesses frequently suffer from security lapses caused by phishing, forged emails that fool someone into revealing login credentials, credit card numbers, or other sensitive information. Although spam filters catch many phishing attempts, you must always be on guard. Here’s what to watch for:

• Any email that tries to get you to reveal information, follow a link, or sign a document
• Messages from people you don’t know, asking you to take an unusual action
• Direct email from a large company for whom you’re an anonymous customer
• Forged email from a trusted source asking for sensitive information
• All messages that contain numerous spelling and grammar mistakes

When in doubt, don’t follow the link or reply to the email. Instead, contact the sender another way to see if the message is legit.

Never Respond to Unsolicited Calls or Texts

Although phishing happens mostly via email, scammers also use texts and phone calls. Thanks to weaknesses in the telephone system, such texts and calls can appear to come from well-known companies, including Apple and Amazon. Even worse, with so much online ordering, fake text messages pretending to help you track packages are becoming more common.

For texts, avoid following links unless you recognize the sender and it makes sense that you’d be receiving such a link. (For instance, Apple can text delivery details related to your orders.) Regardless, never enter login information at a site you’ve reached by following a link because there’s no way to know if it’s real. Instead, if you want to learn more, manually navigate to the company’s site by entering its URL, then log in.

For phone calls from companies, unless you’re expecting a call back from a support ticket you opened, don’t answer. Let the call go to voicemail, and if you feel it’s important to respond, look up the company’s phone number elsewhere and talk with someone at that number rather than the one provided by the voicemail.

Avoid Sketchy Websites

We won’t belabor this last one, but suffice it to say that you’re much more likely to pick up malware from sites on the fringes of the Web or that cater to the vices of society. The more you can avoid sites that revolve around pirated software, cryptocurrency, “adult” content, gambling, or sales of illicit substances, the safer you’ll be. That’s not to say that reputable sites haven’t been hacked and used to distribute malware, but it’s far less common.

If you are concerned after spending time in the darker corners of the Web, download a free copy of Malwarebytes and scan for malware manually.

Let’s raise a glass to staying safe online in 2024!

(Featured image by iStock.com/Bet_Noire)

Sometimes, something goes wrong, causing Mail on the Mac to have trouble sending a message. When it does, you may see an error like the one below, encouraging you with a default button to try another configured server. Don’t do it! Always click Try Later. If that still doesn’t work, contact your favorite tech support professional to troubleshoot the problem with the SMTP server associated with the account from which you’re sending. Attempting to send through another SMTP server is a recipe for trouble because various anti-spam checks may fail, causing your message to be filtered as spam or bounced back to you. Worse, if you select a different server and click Try With Selected Server, Mail remembers that choice going forward, so you will have to reset it manually later.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Marut Khobtakhob)

Have you ever wanted to extract an object from a photo for use in another context? Starting with iOS 16 on a relatively recent iPhone, you can do that with many photos. In the Photos app, touch and hold the object, and if Photos can extract it, you’ll see a highlight run around its edges. Raise your finger, and a popover lets you copy the object, look up information about it, turn it into a sticker (in iOS 17), or share it. Or you can start dragging the object, switch apps with your other hand, and drop it into another app, like Messages. With Universal Clipboard, you can even lift an object on an iPhone, copy it, switch to Preview on your Mac, and choose File > New from Clipboard. File this one under Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law, which states, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Although we’re cautious about recommending that people upgrade to the latest major release of macOS, we think Apple has done a good enough job with macOS 14 Sonoma that anyone who wants to upgrade can do so now. That doesn’t mean you have to upgrade immediately, but there’s no major reason most people need to delay.

Our confidence comes from our positive experience working with those who have upgraded to Sonoma and the fact that Sonoma has received only three updates so far.  None included significant bug fixes:

• macOS 14.1 fixed two bugs that could reset the System Services settings within Location Services and prevent encrypted external drives from mounting.
• macOS 14.1.1 came with generic release notes, but the community discovered that it fixed a bug introduced in 14.1 that affected Photoshop and another that could prevent a new M3 24-inch iMac that shipped with macOS 13 Ventura from upgrading to Sonoma.
• macOS 14.1.2 focused on fixing two WebKit-related security vulnerabilities that were exploited in iOS.

Apple will likely release another update before the end of the year, probably macOS 14.2, with some promised features, a few more bug fixes, and the usual handful of security improvements. After that, the company will continue with an update every month or so to address newly discovered bugs and security vulnerabilities.

That said, you can put off the Sonoma upgrade as long as you’re running macOS 12 Monterey or macOS 13 Ventura and are staying current with Apple’s security updates. Earlier macOS versions no longer receive security fixes, rendering them more vulnerable to attack. Possible reasons to continue delaying include:

• You’re too busy. The upgrade process will take a few hours, plus some additional time to configure everything properly afterward. When you are ready to upgrade, aim for when a little downtime will be convenient.
• You rely on incompatible software. The jump from Monterey or Ventura to Sonoma isn’t a big one, so most modern apps should have been updated by now. But if you’re still running macOS 10.14 Mojave or earlier with 32-bit apps, you’ll lose access to them if you upgrade. There’s nothing new here—32-bit apps stopped working in macOS 10.15 Catalina in 2019. Rather than delaying, consider running Mojave and your 32-bit apps in a virtual machine using VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop.
• You need consistent versions for workflow reasons. We’re unaware of any examples here, but it’s conceivable that a coworker could be stuck on an older version of macOS and older versions of shared productivity apps. If your upgrade would force you to update those apps and introduce compatibility issues when collaborating with that coworker, you may have to wait until your coworker can upgrade as well.

Sonoma won’t transform your experience of using a Mac, but it has new features you might appreciate. The most noticeable is probably desktop widgets that provide updated information at a glance—you can even add widgets from your iPhone. Sonoma also lets you turn websites in Safari into standalone apps, enjoy aerial screensavers from the Apple TV, create a video overlay of yourself on video calls when sharing your screen, autofill PDF forms, and use the keyboard while dictating.

Before You Upgrade

Once you’ve decided to upgrade to Sonoma, you have three main tasks:

• Update apps: Make sure all your apps are as up-to-date as possible. If you regularly put off updates, now’s the time to let them complete so you have Sonoma-compatible versions.
  
• Clear space: Sonoma may need as much as 25 GB of free space to upgrade, and the Sonoma installer itself is about 12 GB, so we recommend making sure you have at least 37 GB free. Don’t cut this close—you should always have at least 10–20% free space for virtual memory, cache files, and breathing room. Check in Ventura by choosing System Settings > General > Storage; in earlier versions of macOS, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu and click Storage. System Settings provides quick ways to free up space. Another easy one for iCloud Drive users is to Control-click large folders and choose Remove Download to “evict” the local versions of those files temporarily; Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive have similar features.
  
• Make a backup: Never, ever install an update to macOS without ensuring you have at least one current backup first. In an ideal world, you’d have an updated Time Machine backup, a duplicate, and an Internet backup. That way, if something goes wrong, you can quickly revert.
  

Upgrading

After completing those tasks, ensure you won’t need your Mac for a few hours. There’s no telling exactly how long the upgrade will take, so never start an upgrade if you need the Mac soon.

Initiating the upgrade is just a matter of opening System Settings > General > Software Update in Ventura (System Preferences > Software Update in previous versions of macOS), clicking the Upgrade Now button, and following the instructions. If you’d like more handholding, check out Joe Kissell’s ebook Take Control of Sonoma.

After You Upgrade

Part of the reason to set aside plenty of time for your Sonoma upgrade is that there are usually cleanup tasks afterward. We can’t predict precisely what you’ll run into, depending on what version of macOS you’re running now and what apps you use, but here are a few situations we’ve noticed in the past:

• If you had an icon for your printer in the Dock, it will become a question mark. Drag it off the Dock until you see the word “Remove” and then let go. Then head to your Applications folder, then Utilities, and drag “Print Center” to the Dock. This app replaces your printer icon. If you have more than one printer, you’ll find both in Print Center.
• One big change is that if you click the Desktop, the windows will fly out of the way. Click again to bring them back. I find this valuable but you can revert to the old behavior in System Settings, Desktop & Dock, Click wallpaper to reveal desktop, set to “Only in Stage Manager.”
• macOS may need to update its authentication situation by asking for your Apple ID password, your Mac’s password, and if you have another Mac, its password as well. Don’t worry that your Mac has been compromised by malware—it’s fine.
• Some apps may have to ask for various permissions even though you previously granted them. Again, that’s fine and won’t happen again.
• If you use your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac and apps (and you should, it’s great!), you may need to re-enable that in System Settings > Touch ID & Password (or Login Password on a non-Touch ID-enabled Mac (previously, it was in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General).
• If you use Gmail, Google Calendar, or other Google services, you may need to log in to your Google account again.
• Websites that usually remember your login state may require that you log in again. If you’re using a password manager like 1Password, that’s easy.
• You may have to re-enable text message forwarding to your Mac. You do this on your iPhone in Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding.

With all that housekeeping done, it’s time to check out all the new features in Sonoma!

(Featured image by Apple)

There’s little more annoying than accidentally touching the Caps Lock key while typing and having your text suddenly TURN INTO CAPITAL LETTERS, which we all know is seen as shouting. Unless you have some reason to type in capital letters regularly, you can prevent this mistake by disabling the Caps Lock key or remapping it to another modifier key. In macOS 13 Ventura and later, choose System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Modifier Keys, and choose from the pop-up menu next to Caps Lock. (In earlier versions of macOS, open System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys.)

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

You have a file on one Mac and want to copy it to another Mac, either yours or someone else’s. Sounds easy, and it is, but the best way to go about it varies widely depending on circumstances, and your go-to method may not be the best choice, depending on the size of the file and the locations of the Macs. Here are some possibilities:

• Email: It’s easy to attach a file to an email message, but most email providers limit the attachment size, such as 20 MB (iCloud) or 25 MB (Gmail). Thus, email is best for sharing small files with other people—there are better ways of moving files among your own Macs. Attachments also take up significant space in your email account, and running out of space will cause new messages to bounce.
• Messages: For relatively small files, dropping a file in an iMessage (blue bubble) conversation in Messages works well as long as the file is smaller than 100 MB. Remember that files sent in Messages consume iCloud and local storage space unless deleted, so this approach is also best reserved for occasional use.
• AirDrop: To copy a file to another Mac in the same room, AirDrop is the most convenient solution. Make sure it’s turned on in Control Center on both Macs and the discovery options are correctly set. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi must be on, but the Macs don’t need to be connected to any network or to iCloud. To transfer a file, select AirDrop in a Finder window sidebar (enable it in Finder > Settings > Sidebar if necessary) and drop the file on the icon for the other Mac. Or Control-click the file, choose Share, click AirDrop, and select the desired Mac. AirDrop has no file size limits, but it’s not the fastest approach and might have issues with multi-gigabyte files or older Macs. Received files appear in the Downloads folder.
  
• File Sharing: Regularly copying files between Macs on the same network is best done with network file sharing. It’s fussy to set up, requiring one Mac to be set as the file server in Settings > General > Sharing > File Sharing. Then click the info icon to add shared folders, designate users, and set access privileges. (In macOS 14 Sonoma, the temporary “Allow full disk access for all users” option for the server Mac may simplify things.) To connect to the server Mac, in the Finder, choose Go > Network, and click the Connect As button to log in if necessary. On the plus side, once you’ve configured everything and made aliases or sidebar items for quick access, file sharing is easy and fast.
  
• Network server or NAS device: If you need to copy files between several Macs on a network, it may be better to use a dedicated server or NAS (network-attached storage) device as an intermediary. (Or, instead of copying files locally, you can access the files directly on the server or NAS. This requires a fast network.)
• Target Disk Mode: The fastest option for moving huge files around occasionally is Target Disk Mode over a Thunderbolt connection between two Macs. The setup differs between Intel-based Macs and Macs with Apple silicon, but once one Mac is in Target Disk Mode, it appears in the Finder of the connected Mac as an external drive, and you can drag files to and from it. It’s most appropriate for transferring many gigabytes of files.
• External storage: Never underestimate the speed and ease of copying files to external storage, whether an SSD, hard drive, or USB flash drive, and then copying them off to another Mac.
• Cloud storage service: Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and iCloud Drive can all work well for moving files between Macs, although they’re best used with files under a few hundred megabytes. For sharing among your Macs, they’re particularly convenient, and it’s usually easy to copy a link to a file to share it with someone else, though that sometimes requires setting sharing permissions first. iCloud Drive sometimes has problems updating quickly.
• File sending service: The best way to send a large file via email, Messages, or another messaging service is to send a link. That’s easy if the file is already in a cloud storage service, and some email apps and services automatically create links for attachments over a certain size. Otherwise, try a file sending service such as Files to Friends or WeTransfer, which email links to files up to 1–2 GB in size for free. Many other services exist but allow only smaller files for free.

With so many options, you should have no trouble finding one that meets your needs in any particular situation.

(Featured image by iStock.com/LightFieldStudios)

One of the prominent new features in iOS 17.1 and watchOS 10.1 is NameDrop, which makes it easy to exchange contact information with someone merely by putting your iPhone or Apple Watch next to theirs. When you do that, you can share your contact card and receive theirs, or just receive theirs—nothing happens unless you initiate an action.

Unfortunately, some police departments have posted warnings about NameDrop on Facebook, insinuating that it’s a privacy concern. Nothing could be further from the truth. First, NameDrop requires the devices to be almost touching, so it’s implausible that it could be triggered inadvertently, and second, you must unlock your iPhone and tap a button to share your contact information with the other person. If you lock your iPhone or move it out of range, Apple says the transfer will be canceled.

There’s no harm in turning NameDrop off by default other than losing access to the feature, but it’s a sufficient win that we encourage you to leave it enabled.

Imagine you meet someone new at a conference and want to share contact information. Previously, you would have had to find your contact card at the top of the Contacts app or Phone app, tap Share Contact, choose which fields to share, tap Done, and then share it via AirDrop (which may require them to enable their receive settings in Settings > General > AirDrop > Everyone for 10 Minutes), Messages (after entering their phone number), Mail (after typing their email address), or another method. It’s a pain.

Here’s how sharing contact information with someone new works in NameDrop. (It only supports sending new contact information, not updating an existing contact.) Both of you must have an iPhone running iOS 17.1 or an Apple Watch Ultra, Apple Watch Series 7 or later, or second-generation Apple Watch SE running watchOS 10.1. To get started, either:

• Share from an iPhone to another iPhone or an Apple Watch: Hold your unlocked iPhone close (almost touching) to the top of the other person’s iPhone or Apple Watch.
  
• Share from an Apple Watch to another Apple Watch: Open the Contacts app on your Apple Watch, tap your picture in the upper-right corner, tap Share, and then put your watch close to the other person’s Apple Watch (Apple’s animation shows them being positioned face to face).
  

Keep the devices close together until NameDrop appears on both screens. On the iPhone, tap Share to exchange contact information or Receive Only to get theirs without sending yours. On the Apple Watch, you have only a Share button.

Next time you meet someone new and want to exchange contact information, give NameDrop a try. Alas, if they’re an Android user, you’ll have to fall back on the old, clumsy methods.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/Caiaimage/Martin Barraud)