It’s easy to get caught up in what you’re doing and miss an alert for a Zoom meeting or a reminder to leave for an appointment. The Mac app In Your Face ensures that will never happen again by taking over the entire screen for notifications and requiring that you click a button to dismiss or snooze it. It can also play sounds repeatedly, lets you pick which calendars and reminder lists to use, gives you single-click access to videoconference links in events, and shows ongoing and upcoming events in the menu bar. In Your Face costs $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year, or it’s available in the $9.99 per month Setapp bundle of over 230 Mac apps.

(Featured image by Blue Banana Software)

We’re seeing an increasing number of people switching to macOS 14 Sonoma, and for the most part, things are going well. However, Apple introduced some new features—and turned them on by default—that are causing some consternation. If you’ve switched to Sonoma or are planning to soon, here are four features you might want to know about.

Hide Windows when Clicking on the Desktop

The most immediately surprising thing you’ll notice when you upgrade to Sonoma is that clicking an empty area on the desktop moves all windows off to the side to give you full access to icons and widgets on your desktop. It’s not a bad feature, but if you’re accustomed to clicking the desktop simply to switch to the Finder, it can be off-putting. To keep windows where they are, open System Settings > Desktop & Dock, and under Desktop & Stage Manager, where it says “Click wallpaper to reveal desktop,” choose Only in Stage Manager.

Apple has introduced additional interlocking settings here, so you might want to play with them to see if they support your preferred working style. In particular, note the Show Items checkboxes—if you don’t like seeing all your desktop icons, deselect the On Desktop box to make those icons appear only when you click the desktop.

Print Queue Apps Are Now Part of Print Center

For many years, when you printed from a Mac, a print queue app launched to show the progress of your print job and quit automatically once the job was completed. Some people kept those print queue apps in the Dock afterward, perhaps as a way of accessing a multifunction printer’s scanner. Upgrading to macOS 14 Sonoma broke those Dock icons because individual print queue apps have been replaced by the new Print Center app.

Print Center now launches automatically to show print job progress, but you can also open it manually from the Application folder’s Utilities folder. It also offers options to manage the printer and launch Image Capture, Apple’s default interface for scanning. If you’ve been surprised by printing changes in Sonoma, take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with Print Center.

Gestures Can Trigger Fireworks and Other Effects

In Sonoma, when you’re in a video call using FaceTime, Zoom, Webex, or another supported videoconferencing app, making certain hand gestures will trigger special effects. (This works only on a Mac with Apple silicon or when using an iPhone as your webcam.) These reactions are fun… except when they’re not. A double thumbs-down gesture that generates rain during a therapy session may be utterly inappropriate, and causing balloons to fall during a serious business meeting just because you inadvertently made a V with your index and middle fingers might not be considered amusing. Here are the gestures and what they trigger.

To ensure you don’t accidentally generate a reaction with a stray gesture, click the green video camera icon that appears in your menu bar when using one of the apps that supports reactions. (You must be actively sending video—just having the app open may not be sufficient to make the green icon appear.) Then click Reactions under your preview so it goes from having a green icon to a gray icon. Reactions are now disabled. That app should remember your preference, but you’ll have to turn off reactions separately in every app where they’re available.

New Privacy Awareness Icons

That green video camera icon that appears in your menu bar when sending video in Sonoma isn’t the only one that can appear in that spot, and we’ve fielded questions from people who are surprised and confused by these icons appearing. Don’t worry; they aren’t an indication of malware on your Mac! Apple added them so you’d always be aware when an app was using your Mac’s camera or microphone, or recording the screen. You can think of them as an expansion of the tiny green LED that lights up next to the Mac’s camera when it’s in use.

The three icons you might see are:

• Green camera, which indicates that the Mac’s video camera is in use. The microphone may also be active, but that’s not indicated separately.
• Orange microphone, which shows that the Mac’s mic is recording audio.
• Purple screen, which tells you that an app is recording your screen. Beyond screen-sharing apps, other apps like screenshot utilities can trigger this icon.

Click the icon to see what app is involved. You could even see multiple apps listed at the top, if several apps are recording the screen, for instance.

If you’ve switched to Sonoma already, we hope this quick tour of a few potentially confusing features has helped explain what’s going on. And if you’re still waiting to install Sonoma—which is fine!—remember to come back to this article when you decide to upgrade.

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

If you use Siri, particularly on a HomePod, you’re probably accustomed to saying “Hey Siri” as the trigger phrase before your requests. In Apple’s new operating systems for 2023, you can now choose to invoke Siri using the traditional “Hey Siri” or just “Siri” (at least in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US). You might appreciate being able to stop saying “Hey” every time, or you might find that using just “Siri” generates incorrect activations. (And if someone in your family’s name sounds like Siri, you may want to turn the feature off entirely!) There are four places to look:

• iOS 17 and iPadOS 17: Settings > Siri & Search > Listen For
• macOS 14 Sonoma: System Settings > Siri & Spotlight > Listen For
• watchOS 10: Watch app > My Watch > Siri > Listen For
• HomePod Software 17: Home app > long-press HomePod > Accessory Settings > Listen For “Siri” or “Hey Siri”

(Featured image based on an original by Apple)

In 2013, Apple added Touch ID to the Home button of the iPhone 5S. Taking advantage of the uniqueness of fingerprints, Touch ID combines the Home button press to wake up the iPhone with a fingerprint scan to authenticate the user. But in 2017, Apple introduced the iPhone X with Face ID, which relies on cameras and sensors at the top of the screen to authenticate the user via facial recognition. Since then, Apple has slowly been phasing out Touch ID in the iPhone line, with only the third-generation iPhone SE still supporting it. (Only the iPad Pro models have Face ID; other iPads have Touch ID in the Home button or the top button.)

We’re not here to dub one better than the other, but many people find themselves needing to upgrade from an older iPhone with Touch ID to a newer one with Face ID. If you’re trying to switch between Touch ID and Face ID, we have some tips to help.

Unlock the iPhone

Once the iPhone is awake (the screen is lit up), you unlock an iPhone with Touch ID by pressing the Home button. On an iPhone with Face ID, you swipe up from the bottom of the Lock Screen—a bar reminds you where to start—while looking at the iPhone. Face ID is fast and accurate enough that you’ll notice that authentication is happening only if iOS asks to verify your passcode (which it also does with Touch ID).

Return to the Home Screen

When you’re using an app on an iPhone with Touch ID and want to return to the Home Screen, you press the Home button—logical! On an iPhone with Face ID, you repeat that swipe up from the bottom of the screen action you use to unlock the iPhone. You’ll get really good at it.

Switch between Apps

When it comes to switching between apps, iPhones with Face ID offer a unique shortcut. On an iPhone with Touch ID, you must quickly press the Home button twice and then swipe between apps in the App Switcher. Bringing up the App Switcher on an iPhone with Face ID requires swiping up from the bottom of the screen just slightly and then continuing the swipe to the right. But Face ID experts seldom do that. Instead, swipe right and left on the bar at the bottom of the screen to switch between apps—it’s far faster and easier, if hidden.

Activate Siri

On an iPhone with Touch ID, holding the Home button activates Siri. On an iPhone with Face ID, press and hold the side button to activate Siri. Tomato, tomahto.

Open Control Center

When all we had were iPhones with Touch ID, Apple decided we’d open Control Center by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. Face ID relies on that gesture for unlocking and opening the App Switcher, so on iPhones with Face ID, you instead open Control Center by swiping down from the top right of the screen. Think of it as swiping down from the cellular, Wi-Fi, and battery status icons.

View Notifications

Because iPhones with Touch ID use a swipe up from the bottom for Control Center, they can devote a swipe down from the top of the screen to displaying the Lock Screen with notifications. The same gesture works on an iPhone with Face ID, but you must start from the left side of the screen.

Use Apple Pay

Paying for a purchase with Apple Pay requires that you authenticate, which means placing your finger on the Home button—but not pressing it!—on an iPhone with Touch ID. Getting the hang of the touch-but-don’t-press action can take some time, but once you have it, you may even have developed a habit of not looking at your iPhone to authenticate Apple Pay. In contrast, with an iPhone with Face ID, you must look at the screen when prompted so the Face ID sensors can confirm you’re making the purchase. Honestly, neither is as easy as double-pressing the side button on an Apple Watch.

Authenticate in Apps

Beyond Apple Pay, plenty of apps from the App Store, like password managers and banking apps, tie into biometric authentication so you don’t have to type lengthy passwords. As you’d expect, if you previously authenticated by touching the Home button, doing so on an iPhone with Face ID requires looking at the iPhone screen. That’s nearly always what you do anyway, so it’s even easier than touching the Home button.

Register Alternate Appearances

With Touch ID, you can register up to five fingers, which lets you use several of your own and let a trusted spouse or family member authenticate using Touch ID as well. We tend to have more fingers than faces, though, so with Face ID, Apple allows only a single alternate appearance. That shouldn’t be too limiting, but if everyone in your family had a Touch ID finger, sorry, you’ll have to pick a favorite.

(Featured image by Apple)

Apple recently released watchOS 10.1, with support for the much-ballyhooed double-tap gesture that selects the primary action in many apps without requiring that you touch the screen! It’s available only on the new Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2, where you activate it by raising your wrist and tapping your thumb and index finger together twice. On the main Apple Watch screen, a double tap opens the Smart Stack of widgets you would otherwise get by turning the Digital Crown, and subsequent double taps advance through the widgets. A double tap also activates the primary action in many apps, such as answering and ending phone calls, playing and pausing media, viewing and scrolling through messages, ending timers, stopping and resuming the stopwatch, snoozing an alarm, responding to reminders from the Workout app, and performing the primary action from notifications. Whenever you double tap, you’ll see this icon at the top of the screen. If you have a supported Apple Watch model, give it a try!

(Featured image by Adam Engst, article image by Apple)

At Apple’s Halloween-themed Scary Fast event on October 30, the company unveiled its next-generation Apple silicon chips for Macs, the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max. Apple also showcased new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models and a faster version of the 24-inch iMac based on these chips. They’re available to order now, with units in stores and orders starting to arrive on November 7, apart from the M3 Max models that will arrive in late November. Apple also dropped the awkwardly positioned 13-inch MacBook Pro model from the lineup, leaving the low end to the highly capable MacBook Air.

Apart from the new chips, the updated MacBook Pro models boast only a brighter screen, a slightly longer battery life in the M3 14-inch model, and a new Space Black aluminum finish for the M3 Pro and M3 Max models. There are no other changes for the M3 24-inch iMac.

M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max Bring More Power to the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro

Although the MacBook Air has done an admirable job of supporting everyday laptop users, professionals who rely on processor-intensive apps have long turned to the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro for more power. Apple updated the MacBook Pro to the M2 Pro and M2 Max in January 2023, a release that probably came later than Apple wanted. There’s less reason to upgrade from an M2 model to a new M3 one, but the performance gains are significant when upgrading from Intel-based and M1 models.

The M3 MacBook Pro models beat the equivalent Intel-based MacBook Pro models by 3x, 5.5x, 7.4x, and even 20x, depending on the specific app and task. Overall, Apple claims speed improvements up to 11x over the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro. Gains over equivalent M1-based MacBook Pros are also significant, with improvements from 30% to 60%.

Apple expanded the options for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, so there are now three basic configurations:

• M3 starting at $1599: It has an 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 8 GB of memory, and 512 GB of storage. You can (and probably should) jump to 16 GB of memory; 24 GB is also available. This model has only two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports and can drive only a single external display.
• M3 Pro starting at $1999: You have two options here: either 11 or 12 CPU cores and 14 or 18 GPU cores, and either 18 GB or 36 GB of memory. These models feature three Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports and support one or two external displays.

• M3 Max starting at $3199: The maxed-out configuration also sports two options: either 14 or 16 CPU cores and 30 or 40 GPU cores, plus 36 GB of memory, upgradeable only to 96 GB. These models also have three Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports but can drive up to four external displays.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro has only M3 Pro and M3 Max configurations:

• M3 Pro starting at $2899: There’s only one option here, matching the beefier 14-inch M3 Pro model: a 12-core CPU, 18-core GPU configuration with 36 GB of memory.
• M3 Max starting at $3499: The choices here are either 14 or 16 CPU cores and 30 or 40 GPU cores. The lower-end configuration comes with 36 GB of memory and can upgrade to 96; the higher-end configuration has 48 GB of memory and has options for 64 GB or 128 GB.

Storage starts at 512 GB for the M3 14-inch model and 1 TB for the rest, with options for 2 TB, 4 TB, and 8 TB.

Note that the M3 14-inch MacBook Pro replaces the awkwardly positioned M2 13-inch MacBook Pro, which offered only the slightest advantage over its cheaper M2 13-inch MacBook Air cousin. The new M3 14-inch MacBook Pro does cost $100 more than the comparable 13-inch MacBook Pro that it replaces, but that’s a fair trade for the bigger, better screen and 1080p FaceTime HD camera. Now there’s once again a clear physical and performance distinction between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro lineups.

Otherwise, some prices have increased, but in most cases, that may be because the new configurations include more unified memory. For instance, the M3 Pro 16-inch MacBook Pro previously started at $2499 with 16 GB of memory, but now starts at $2899 with 36 GB of memory. Regardless, the professionals buying these speedy Macs can often justify paying more if the performance boost directly increases productivity.

M3 Chip Improves 24-inch iMac Performance

There isn’t much to say about the refreshed 24-inch iMac, which trades its M1 chip for an M3 but sports no other notable changes and keeps its $1299 starting price. The 24-inch iMac remains an attractive option for anyone looking for an all-in-one desktop Mac.

The switch to the M3 does provide more memory choices. Previously, you could choose only 8 GB or 16 GB of memory. With the M3, 8 GB of memory remains standard, but you can upgrade to either 16 GB (a good idea) or 24 GB (probably unnecessary for most people). Storage still starts at 256 GB, which isn’t much these days, particularly if you take a lot of photos or videos, and you can upgrade to 512 GB, 1 TB, or 2 TB.

Apple gave no hints that it is considering a replacement for the popular 27-inch iMac that Apple discontinued when it introduced the Mac Studio and 27-inch Studio Display. Though the 24-inch iMac has an impressive 4.5K Retina display, it’s still smaller than the 5K Retina display in the 27-inch iMac. Speculation has swirled around the possibility of a 32-inch iMac Pro, but given that a Mac Studio starts at $1999 and the 32-inch Pro Display XDR sells for $4999, it’s hard to imagine such an iMac Pro having a competitive price.

Also missing from the announcement was any mention of USB-C versions of the Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Mouse. Those accessories continue to use the Lightning connector and ship with a USB-C to Lightning cable for charging.

(Featured image by Apple)

The hardest time to remember your iPhone or iPad passcode is right after you’ve changed it. Generally speaking, there’s no reason to change your passcode, but if you inadvertently or intentionally shared it with someone with whom you wouldn’t trust your bank account information, changing it to something new is a good idea. We could also imagine a child who knows your passcode changing it on you as a prank. For whatever reason, if you can’t enter your new passcode, a new iOS 17 feature called Passcode Reset lets you use your old one for 72 hours. Once you’ve tried the wrong passcode five times, tap Forgot Passcode ➊, enter your old passcode ➋, and create a new one ➌. If you’re certain you know the new one, you can expire the old one sooner in Settings > Face ID/Touch ID & Passcode.

(Featured image by iStock.com/NazariyKarkhut)

Between apps, photos, videos, music, and downloads, it’s easy to fill up your Mac’s drive, particularly one with just 128 or 256 GB of drive space. macOS warns you when you get too low on space, but those warnings may come late—for optimum Mac performance, we recommend you keep at least 10–20% of your drive free for new downloads and virtual memory swap files. There are excellent utilities that help you find and delete unnecessary files, such as the free GrandPerspective, the $9.99 DaisyDisk, and the $14.99 WhatSize, but Apple’s built-in storage management capabilities will likely be all you need.

Apple first introduced its Storage Management tool in the System Information app in macOS 10.12 Sierra, making it accessible from the About This Mac dialog. Starting in macOS 13 Ventura, Apple moved those capabilities to System Settings > General > Storage, providing a quick overview of your drive usage at the top. Hover over each colored bar to see how much space is taken up by a particular type of data. The light gray space at the end of the bar is what’s still available.

Below the graph, macOS may offer some recommendations for reducing storage over time, but they come with tradeoffs. Storing files in iCloud and optimizing Apple TV videos will replace local files with stubs pointing at a version stored in the cloud. That’s OK, but you then have to download the original before you can use it. Deleting files automatically after they’ve been in the Trash for more than 30 days is also fine but could have undesirable results if you ever want to recover older files from the Trash. Enable these if you wish, but the real work happens farther down on the screen, where you find all the categories of files you can explore. Depending on what apps you use, they will vary a bit between Macs, but they correspond to the colored bars you saw in the storage graph. Double-click each one to see what it displays.

For a few app-specific categories, like Mail and Podcasts, you merely learn how much space the app’s data occupies—to save space, you must delete unnecessary data from within the app itself. iCloud Drive and Photos are similar but also let you enable space optimization, which stores only placeholder files or smaller optimized photos on the Mac, leaving the originals in iCloud for later downloading whenever you access them.

More interesting are the Applications, Documents, and iOS Files categories, each of which may reveal gigabytes of unnecessary data. iOS Files, for instance, shows any device backups and software updates stored on your Mac’s drive. It’s worth keeping the latest backup of devices you still use, but delete any older backups and updates that are just wasting space—well over 8 GB in the screenshot below.

The Applications category lists your apps and is sorted by size by default. But try clicking the column header for Kind and scrolling down. You can probably delete most apps tagged as Unsupported, Duplicates, or Older Versions. Similarly, click the Last Accessed column header to see which apps you haven’t launched in years. Many of them can probably go, too.

In Documents, you’ll see four buttons: Large Files, Downloads, Unsupported Apps, and File Browser.

• Large Files shows huge files regardless of where on your drive they’re located.
• Downloads shows you the contents of your Downloads folder, much of which you likely don’t need.
• Unsupported Apps lists any PowerPC or 32-bit apps that won’t run on your Mac. You can delete them.
• File Browser provides a column view sorted by file size and shows sizes next to each item. It’s great for trawling through your drive to see what’s consuming all that space.

In any of these views, click Delete or Move to Trash to remove the file or Show In Finder to see it in its native habitat, which may help you decide if you should keep or delete the file. To delete multiple files at once, Command-click or Shift-click to select them and then click Delete to remove them all at once.

You may find it worth using GrandPerspective to get a visual overview of how space is used on your drive. After scanning, which can take a long time, it uses tiny colored blocks to represent files, collecting multiple blocks into bigger rectangles to show folder size. Toolbar buttons let you open, preview with Quick Look, reveal location, or delete whatever file block you click. Look in the status bar at the bottom of the window to see the path to the file.

In the screenshot below, the big boxes of color are massive virtual machine disk images, and the selected folder outlined in white at the right contains desktop pictures downloaded by an app that rotates them regularly—gigabytes of old files that can easily be deleted.

If your Mac’s drive has less than 10% free space, consider using Apple’s storage management capabilities—perhaps supplemented with OmniDiskSweeper or another utility—to find and delete files that are wasting space.

Two final notes: Don’t get too wrapped up in the exact numbers in the storage graph matching what the Finder reports, and give the Mac some time to update its free space amounts after deleting files directly or emptying the Trash.

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

One welcome feature of Safari is its automatic detection and auto-filling of SMS-based two-factor authentication codes you receive in Messages. It allows you to complete your login quickly, without having to retrieve the code from Messages. But what if you use a different Web browser, like Google Chrome, Firefox, Brave, or Arc? Apple doesn’t allow other developers access to those codes in Messages, but Messages itself recognizes the verification code, marking it with an underline. Rather than transcribing the code manually like an animal, you can Control-click the underlined numbers and choose Copy Code. Then, switch to your Web browser and press Command-V to paste it. Not all websites accept pasted codes, but most will, even if they present a custom interface.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Galeanu Mihai)

We’ve helped some clients recently with networking problems that seemed to be related to Internet connections. Most notable was intermittently slow Internet performance, causing the client to call their ISP to upgrade to a higher bandwidth connection with guaranteed throughput. But that extra monthly expense turned out to be unnecessary once we tracked the problem to a malfunctioning cable modem. Other problems we’ve seen involved occasional network dropouts (a bad Ethernet switch), flaky Wi-Fi access (a dying AirPort base station), and Internet slowdowns (squirrels gnawing on an outdoor coaxial cable).

Networking infrastructure is often the very definition of “out of sight, out of mind.” Modems, routers, and switches are usually hidden away in corners, closets, or machine rooms where few people notice them regularly. In addition, most users rely on Wi-Fi–equipped laptops, tablets, and smartphones and put no thought into how those Wi-Fi connections get their Internet access. Nor do many people realize the extent that physical cables—Ethernet, coaxial, fiber optic—are required.

Plus, because network cables and gear are so hidden, they tend to stay in place for years. For the most part, that’s fine. Most network devices other than those involving network-attached storage have no moving parts to fail, and cables that aren’t exposed to extreme environmental conditions or physical movement will last for a long time. But even solid-state electronic devices wear out, and while cables seldom degrade on their own, they’re easily damaged by movement. And never underestimate the damage mice and squirrels can inflict!

It’s worth making sure you or someone in your organization has a solid knowledge—and documentation—of your network infrastructure. For instance, can someone answer these questions:

• Where does your Internet connection come into the building?
• What cable modem or other router are you using? Do you own or rent it?
• Does your network rely on multiple Ethernet switches? Other networking gear?
• Is your Ethernet cabling Cat 5 (obsolete, limited to 100 Mbps), Cat 5e (capable of 1 Gbps), Cat 6 (up to 10 Gbps), Cat 6a (10 Gbps at longer distances), or Cat 6e (a meaningless marketing term)?
• Where is your Ethernet cable strung, and is it reasonably accessible? Can you isolate portions of your network for testing?

We also recommend putting an installation date sticker on the bottom of your network devices. That way, if you’re troubleshooting a problem like poor performance or intermittent connections, you can check quickly to see if any suspect devices are truly ancient. Even when older devices like cable modems seem to be working correctly, they may lack support for newer standards or firmware updates that provide better stability and throughput. We’ve also seen that issue with powerline networking adapters that are useful for extending connectivity to areas that can’t easily be served by Wi-Fi or Ethernet—newer adapters can provide significantly more performance. Plus, hardware does degrade over time—in particular, we’ve seen Ethernet switches and Wi-Fi routers get flaky as they age.

Finally, if solving a network problem requires new gear or cables, we strongly encourage purchasing quality hardware and cabling. Spending a little more upfront can save a lot of money in troubleshooting down the road, especially when it comes to pulling new cables.

(Featured image by iStock.com/klmax)