AI agents—software that can take actions on your behalf using artificial intelligence—are having a moment. The appeal is obvious: imagine a robot butler that triages your inbox, manages your calendar, and handles tedious tasks while you focus on more important work.

That’s the promise driving the recent surge in popularity of OpenClaw (formerly known as Clawdbot and Moltbot), which is now all the rage in tech circles. Token Security found that at least one person is using it at nearly a quarter of its enterprise customers, mostly running from personal accounts. That’s a shadow IT nightmare—employees connecting work email and Slack to an unsanctioned tool that IT doesn’t know about and can’t monitor. Whether you’re an individual tempted by OpenClaw’s promise or a manager wondering what your users are up to, you need to understand the risks these AI agents pose.

OpenClaw is an AI agent built around “skills”—installable plugins that let it integrate with your messaging apps, email, calendar, and more. You communicate with OpenClaw via Messages, Slack, WhatsApp, and similar apps. Because it’s open source, you’ll need to provide your own API keys for AI services like OpenAI or Anthropic, which means ongoing costs that can add up quickly—people have reported spending $10–$25 per day.

The more serious problem? Security researchers have discovered serious vulnerabilities, including misconfigured instances exposed to the internet that leak credentials, API keys, and private messages, and a supply chain vulnerability where malicious skills uploaded to the ClawdHub library can execute arbitrary commands on users’ systems. Even beyond specific bugs, OpenClaw’s fundamental design encourages users to grant broad access to sensitive accounts.

Why AI Agents Are Risky

Security concerns aren’t unique to OpenClaw—they apply to any AI agent that acts on a user’s behalf. Here’s what’s at stake:

• Credential exposure: For an AI agent to send emails, manage your calendar, or post to Slack, it needs your authentication tokens or login credentials. If the agent software stores these credentials insecurely, or an attacker gains control, they could be exposed.
• Prompt injection: AI agents work by following instructions, but they can’t easily distinguish between prompts and data in the content they use. A class of attacks called “prompt injections” trick AI systems by hiding malicious content in emails, websites, or documents that will be processed. An attacker could embed instructions in an email that would cause your agent to search for and forward email messages containing passwords or financial data, follow links to malware sites, or take other harmful actions. There is currently no foolproof defense against this class of attack.
• Data exfiltration: An AI agent with access to your email and your computer’s filesystem could be manipulated to extract information from elsewhere on your computer—financial data, customer lists, or personal details—and send it to an attacker.
• Unvetted extensions: OpenClaw and similar AI agents let users install “skills” or plugins to extend functionality. Libraries that allow users to share custom skills often have minimal or no security vetting, making it easy for attackers to submit poisoned skills. Installing such a skill could grant malicious code access to everything your agent can touch.
• Exposed control interfaces: Security researchers found OpenClaw control servers exposed on the Internet, potentially leaking API keys, VPN credentials, and conversation histories. This risk is unique to OpenClaw at the moment, but future AI agents may suffer from similar vulnerabilities, particularly as they’re adopted by less technically savvy users.

How to Reduce Your Risk

We’ll come right out and say it: we strongly recommend against installing OpenClaw or other AI agents on your Mac. In a year or so, Apple may have updated Siri to provide many of these capabilities with significantly stronger privacy and security. But for now, just say no.

If you decide to use AI agents despite these risks, here are practical steps to protect yourself:

• Use dedicated accounts: When possible, create separate accounts specifically for agent use rather than linking your primary personal or work accounts.
• Limit permissions: Grant the agent access only to accounts it absolutely needs. If you only want help with your calendar, don’t also connect your email and messaging services.
• Avoid connecting sensitive services: Never connect anything involving money, healthcare, or confidential business information. The liability is too high if something goes wrong.
• Review agent actions: If the platform offers logs or activity feeds, check them regularly. Look for unexpected messages sent, files accessed, or connections made.
• Vet extensions carefully: Don’t install skills or plugins from unknown sources, and even with known libraries, look for evidence of others using and reviewing the skills. Treat skills like any other software you’d install on your computer.
• Keep software updated: Security patches for OpenClaw and similar tools address known vulnerabilities. If you’re running an agent, keep it up to date.
• Run agents in isolated environments: Technical users should consider running agents in sandboxed environments or virtual machines to limit potential damage.

If you run a business, you should assume that some employees have already installed OpenClaw or will soon, and may have connected their work email and Slack accounts without realizing the associated risks. Here’s what you can do:

• Educate before it’s a problem: Proactively explain the risks to employees. People are more receptive before they’ve already invested time setting something up.
• Update acceptable use policies: Make clear that connecting work accounts to unsanctioned AI agents is prohibited, and explain why.
• Offer sanctioned alternatives: If employees want AI assistance, point them toward safer options that don’t require handing over credentials to sensitive accounts.

What About Claude Cowork and OpenAI Codex?

Not all AI agent platforms carry the same level of risk. Anthropic’s Claude Cowork and OpenAI’s Codex take a different architectural approach from OpenClaw. Rather than requesting authentication tokens for your email, messaging, and other personal services, they operate within their own controlled, sandboxed environments. These systems work primarily with files, code, and data you explicitly place into their workspace, which substantially limits the fallout from an attacker gaining some level of control.

This containment approach reduces risk, but does not eliminate it. Prompt injection remains a concern whenever an AI system processes untrusted content, even inside a sandbox. An AI agent analyzing a malicious document could still be manipulated into taking unintended actions within its allowed environment. Similarly, any code generated by these systems—particularly code that touches the network or executes system commands—should be reviewed carefully to make sure it hasn’t been compromised by prompt injection.

The key distinction is scope. Claude Cowork and Codex are designed to operate within a defined workspace, whereas tools like OpenClaw require standing access to your most sensitive accounts. From a security perspective, a compromised sandbox is a recoverable incident; a compromised email or messaging account may not be.

The Bottom Line

AI agents promise a lot and may provide genuine convenience, but at a cost beyond just paying for API tokens. Before you or anyone in your organization connects an AI agent to sensitive accounts, consider: What’s the worst that could happen if this system were compromised by an attacker? If the answer involves passwords being stolen, private email being exposed, or photos being posted to social media without your knowledge, proceed with extreme caution. If you can imagine a way financial accounts could be accessed or business data stolen, don’t proceed at all.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Thinkhubstudio)

Apple has introduced Apple Creator Studio, a subscription bundle of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage, priced at $12.99 per month or $129 per year (with education pricing at $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year). The bundle also includes premium content and a few AI tools for the iWork apps: Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. These apps will prompt you to download the new version 15, but don’t worry—they remain free for all existing features; only the new AI capabilities and premium content require a subscription. You can also still purchase Mac versions of the pro apps, though the iPad versions of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro are now available only to subscribers. Up to six family members can share a Creator Studio subscription via Family Sharing.

(Featured image by Apple)

Have you noticed that when you restart your Mac or relaunch an app, your previous windows and documents sometimes reappear exactly as you left them, but at other times you’re greeted with a clean slate?

This behavior is controlled by Resume, a technology introduced in OS X 10.7 Lion back in 2011. Resume automatically reopens app windows and documents so you can pick up where you left off after a restart or app relaunch. Apple’s goal was to make macOS work more like iOS, which tries to preserve your place in apps. However, many Mac users found it confusing when apps opened old documents or appeared in unexpected positions when the number of displays changed. Some also objected to how long it took to open old documents that were not relevant to the task at hand. Apple quickly reversed course and made reopening apps and windows optional.

Users are much more familiar with how the iPhone and iPad work now, so you may wish your Mac apps remembered their open documents and window positions. Various settings control this behavior, but it can be hard to find them and understand what they’ll do. Let’s explore how Resume works and how you can make it do what you want.

First, note that Resume operates in two distinct situations. One applies only at restart or logout, and you decide at that moment. The other governs what happens every time you quit and relaunch an app and is controlled by a persistent system setting.

The “Reopen Windows” Option at Restart

Whenever you restart, shut down, or log out of your Mac, macOS asks whether you want to reopen your apps and windows when you log back in. You’ve undoubtedly seen the checkbox in the confirmation dialog: “Reopen windows when logging back in.” When the checkbox is selected, macOS dutifully relaunches the currently running apps after you log in, putting you back where you were. If you uncheck it, your Mac will start fresh, without reloading previously open apps.

macOS remembers how you’ve selected this checkbox, so if it’s checked when you click Restart, it will also be selected the next time you restart, and vice versa. If you ever perform a forced restart or skip the dialog by holding the Option key when choosing Restart or Shut Down, macOS uses the last known state of that checkbox on the next startup.

Many users either love or hate the “Reopen windows” behavior. For those who enjoy having their entire workspace restored after a reboot, keeping that checkbox checked makes sense. For others, including many IT professionals, the point of a reboot is to start fresh. Pick whichever behavior you prefer.

Controlling Resume When Relaunching Apps

Resume also governs what happens each time you quit and reopen an individual app. This behavior is controlled by a switch in System Settings > Desktop & Dock under the Windows section, labeled “Close windows when quitting an application.”

When this “Close windows” switch is turned on—it’s the default—macOS will close all windows and discard their restorable state before allowing an app to quit. Because macOS has closed the windows before quitting, there’s nothing for Resume to restore when you next launch that app. Effectively, the app will always start fresh with no memory of past windows (unless it has its own session-restore mechanism).

On the other hand, when this option is turned off, quitting an app will not discard its windows, so when you reopen the app later, Resume will automatically restore whatever documents and windows you had open, putting you right back where you left off.

There are three main scenarios where Resume can have effects that you may or may not like:

• Document-centric apps: With these apps, like Pages and Numbers, you work on individual documents, each of which opens in its own window. When “Close windows” is enabled, apps start fresh on each launch; when it’s disabled, the documents you were working on when you quit reopen automatically.
• Unsaved documents: As a corollary to the previous scenario, if you have unsaved documents open when “Close windows” is on, you’ll be prompted to save your changes before the window is closed. When “Close windows” is off, you won’t be prompted because those documents—with all their unsaved changes—will open automatically at the next launch.
• Window-based apps: Other apps, like Mail and Messages, display their content in a main window. They’ll open this window regardless of the “Close windows” setting. However, Resume determines where that window appears. If “Close windows” is turned on, macOS does not remember which display or Space the window occupied, so the app often reopens on the primary display, even if that’s not where it was when it quit.

Most users have no idea that this “Close windows” setting exists or what it does. If you’re irritated by having to reopen Pages documents you were working on before or reposition Mail’s window after every relaunch, make sure “Close windows” is turned off. Conversely, leave it on if you want apps to start fresh.

Exceptions and Caveats

For most people, controlling Resume using the “Reopen windows” checkbox and the “Close windows” switch is sufficient. However, some people may want more control or wonder why some apps ignore those settings.

• Nonstandard apps: Everything we’ve said so far describes the behavior of standard apps using Apple’s recommended development frameworks and tools. Some apps don’t use Apple tools or play by Apple’s rules—we’re looking at you, Microsoft—and will ignore the Resume settings. Don’t be surprised if Word, Excel, and PowerPoint fail to act as described.
• Turn off Resume per launch: If you set apps to restore their windows by turning off the “Close windows” switch, you can override that on a one-off basis in some apps by holding the Shift key down as they launch. This trick doesn’t work in all apps, but it’s worth trying.
• Custom session restore: Some apps manage session restoration on their own, most notably Safari and apps built with the Electron framework, such as Slack, Discord, and Notion. For instance, in Safari > Settings > General > Safari opens with, you can choose a new window, a new private window, all windows from the last session, or all non-private windows from the last session. With such apps, look for internal settings that control their behavior.
  
• Login Items: Even if you deselect “Reopen windows” when restarting, apps and documents that you’ve added as login items in System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions > Open at Login will still open. Think of this as a manual Resume—you’ll restart to a preset workspace, not to the way things were when you restarted. Some software may also install helper apps that control what appears at launch.
• Full-screen apps and Spaces: Apps that were last used in full-screen mode reopen into their own Spaces when “Close windows” is disabled. After a restart or relaunch, the app may appear not to have reopened because it is occupying a separate Space that is currently not visible.

In practice, Resume comes down to a simple set of choices:

• If you want your workspace restored after a restart, select “Reopen windows when logging back in.” Ensuring that apps—even if they’re set as login items—open full-screen or in particular Spaces also requires “Close windows when quitting an application” to be turned off.
• If you want apps to remember documents (even unsaved documents), window positions, and displays when you quit and relaunch them, turn off “Close windows.”
• If you want a clean slate, deselect “Reopen windows” and leave “Close windows” turned on.

When windows don’t appear as you expect, check these two settings as your first troubleshooting step.

(Featured image by iStock.com/BigNazik)

Apple has now sufficiently refined macOS 26 Tahoe to make an upgrade worthwhile for interested users. You don’t need to upgrade immediately, but there are no strong reasons for most people to delay further.

Unlike last year, when Apple was releasing new Apple Intelligence features with each macOS 15 Sequoia update, the company launched nearly all the promised new features in Tahoe with version 26.0. There’s no need to wait for the more personalized Siri upgrade Apple promised for 2026—we won’t know how good it is until it ships.

Tahoe is now stable and polished enough for most users to upgrade with confidence, particularly on Apple silicon Macs. While there are some minor concerns—such as dissatisfaction with Liquid Glass, higher baseline resource usage, a few battery and performance issues, and the removal of Launchpad—none are deal-breakers. Of course, Apple will continue releasing macOS updates in 2026. You can expect macOS 26.3 in January, 26.4 in late March or early April, and 26.5 in May, along with several security and bug-fix updates in between.

Although Tahoe is ready for prime time, you can still delay the upgrade as long as you’re running macOS 14 Sonoma or macOS 15 Sequoia and are staying current with Apple’s security updates. Older macOS versions no longer receive security fixes, making them more vulnerable to attacks. 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’re ready to upgrade, aim for when a little downtime won’t be a problem.
• You rely on incompatible software: Most modern apps should now be updated for Tahoe—Adobe recently qualified its Creative Cloud apps. But if a necessary app is known to have issues, you’ll need to wait for an update or find an alternative that works.

Despite the visual changes from Liquid Glass, using Tahoe remains straightforward—it’s still macOS. Even if you’re not an immediate fan of Liquid Glass, Tahoe has new features that might appeal to you. Control Center is now fully customizable, and you can make folders easier to identify by assigning them colors and badges. Spotlight has become an even better app and action launcher, and it now includes access to your clipboard history, a feature previously available only with third-party software. The Phone app has come to the Mac, allowing you to make and take phone calls on your Mac as long as your iPhone is nearby. Live Translation automatically translates text in Messages, provides translated captions in FaceTime, and offers real-time spoken translations in the Phone app.

Before You Upgrade

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

• Update apps: Make sure all your apps are up to date. If you regularly delay updates, now’s the time to let them complete so you have Tahoe-compatible versions.
  
• Clear space: Tahoe may require up to 25 GB of free space to upgrade, and the Tahoe installer itself can take up to 17 GB, so we recommend ensuring you have at least 50 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 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. For iCloud Drive users, another easy way to save space 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 install a macOS update or upgrade without first making sure you have at least one current backup. Ideally, you should have a Time Machine backup, a data-only duplicate, and an Internet backup. This way, if something goes wrong, you can easily revert.
  

Upgrading

After finishing those tasks, make sure you won’t need your Mac for a few hours. There’s no way to know precisely how long the upgrade will take, so don’t start an upgrade if you need your Mac soon.

To start the upgrade, go to System Settings > General > Software Update in Sequoia, Sonoma, or Ventura (System Preferences > Software Update in previous versions of macOS), click the Upgrade Now button, and follow the prompts. For more help, see Joe Kissell’s ebook Take Control of Tahoe.

After You Upgrade

One reason to set aside ample time for your Tahoe upgrade is that cleanup tasks typically follow. We can’t predict exactly what you’ll encounter—it depends on your current macOS version and the apps you use—but here are a few scenarios we’ve seen before:

• macOS may prompt for your Apple ID password and your Mac’s login password. If you have multiple Macs, you may also need to approve the upgrade from another Mac signed in to the same Apple Account. Don’t worry that malware has compromised your Mac—these authentication prompts are normal.
• Some apps may request additional permissions even if you previously granted them. Again, that’s okay.
• 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 feature in System Settings > Touch ID & Password (or Login Password on a Mac without Touch ID). In older versions of macOS, it was located in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General.
• If you use Gmail, Google Calendar, or other Google services, you might need to log in to your Google account again.
• Websites that remember your login state will likely require you to log in again. However, if you’re using a password manager like Apple’s Passwords or 1Password, that’s easy.
• You might need to re-enable text message forwarding to your Mac. You do this on your iPhone by going to Settings > Apps > Messages > Text Message Forwarding.

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

(Featured image by Apple)

We can’t always guarantee optimal lighting for video calls, especially when using laptops on the go. A new feature in macOS 26.2 Tahoe called Edge Light might help. It’s a video effect that uses the outermost pixels of your Mac’s display to create a bright white rectangle that illuminates your face during video calls. It acts like an on-screen ring light in low-light conditions. You can activate it from the green video camera icon in the menu bar (shown when the camera is active), and on Macs from 2024 and later, you can set it to turn on automatically in low-light environments. Click the disclosure triangle next to Edge Light to adjust the light’s width and color temperature. Mouse awareness allows the light to recede automatically when you move your pointer toward it. While Edge Light won’t replace external lights, it can help make your face visible in otherwise dark rooms.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Dima Berlin)

When the iPad debuted, it was essentially a large iPhone. But classic productivity tools rapidly made their way to the iPad, and over the years, Apple has introduced multitasking features, such as Slide Over and Split View, to make it easier to work back-and-forth between apps—imagine writing in Pages while referring to a Web page, or entering data from a PDF into a Numbers spreadsheet.

In iPadOS 26, Apple acknowledged that many of those efforts fell short of user expectations and completely revamped the iPad’s multitasking, basing it mainly on the windowing approach we’re all accustomed to on the Mac. Even better, if you prefer the traditional one-app-at-a-time approach, you can stick with that entirely.

Here’s how to get started with windowed apps in iPadOS 26.

Turn on Windowed Apps

When you upgrade to iPadOS 26, you’re prompted to turn on windowed apps, but you can always turn the feature on or off later in Settings > Multitasking & Gestures.

Switch Between Apps

Switching between windowed apps relies on approaches familiar from the Mac and previous versions of iPadOS. You can:

• Switch from the Home Screen: If you’re not already there, swipe up from the bottom of the screen, and then tap an app icon on the Home Screen. Swipe right to see more Home Screen pages or get to the App Library, which holds all apps.
• Switch from the Dock: Either swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen to return to the Home Screen or swipe up just far enough to reveal the Dock, then tap the desired app. Tap the rightmost icon on the Dock to reveal the App Library.
• Switch by swiping: Just as on the iPhone, swiping right or left on the bottom of the screen switches you between recent apps. Or you can swipe right or left with four or five fingers.
• Switch using Exposé: Swipe up from the bottom of the screen, pause in the center, and lift your finger to activate Exposé, which shows all open apps (and windows, if an app has more than one open). Swipe right or left to see more. Tap an app to switch to it. If you have an external keyboard, you can press the Exposé key or Globe-Up Arrow to enter Exposé.
  

Work with Windows

By default, even in windowed apps mode, apps open full-screen. But now you can do much more, just like you do on the Mac. iPadOS windows now have the same traffic light buttons as macOS windows, and they work the same way. If you don’t see them in a full-screen app, swipe down from the top of the screen to see the controls in the menu bar.

• Resize windows: Drag any window corner to resize. You’ll see a handle only in the bottom-right corner, but any corner works. Or touch and hold the traffic light buttons and choose a Move & Resize option. When windows are arranged, you can drag the slider between them to adjust their sizes.
  
• Move windows: Drag the top edge of a window. You can drag it partially off-screen to make more room.
• Close windows: Tap the traffic light buttons to expand them, and then tap the red Close button to close the window for good.
• Minimize windows: Tap the traffic light buttons, and then tap the yellow Minimize button to hide the window. You can also start dragging a window, and then flick it into the Dock.
• Reveal hidden windows: Touch and hold the app’s icon in the Dock, and then choose a window from the Open Windows part of the menu. Alternatively, choose Show All Windows and then tap the desired window.
• Zoom windows: Tap the traffic light buttons, and then tap the green Zoom button. Or just drag a corner of the window to expand it until it occupies the entire screen.
• Arrange windows: Touch and hold the traffic light buttons, and then choose a Fill & Arrange option. Alternatively, to put two windows side by side, start dragging a window and flick it to the side of the screen. Then flick another window to the other side.
• Open new windows: Touch and hold the app’s icon in the Dock, and choose New Window.

Too much to remember? Although most of these techniques are nearly identical to how things work on the Mac, there’s another Mac-inspired interface element to help: the menu bar.

Use the Menu Bar

To reveal the menu bar for the app you’re in, swipe down from the center of the screen. (This gesture works differently on the Home Screen, where swiping down from the middle reveals Notification Center instead.) If you’re using a trackpad or other pointing device, you can also move your pointer to the top of the screen.

Every app will have a menu bar, but only those updated for iPadOS 26 will have custom menus; everything else will use standard menus like File, Edit, Format, View, Window, and Help. Apps tend to offer roughly the same menu items as they have on the Mac.

Using the menu bar works just like it does on the Mac: tap a menu to open it, and then tap an item to choose it. For those getting used to windowed apps in iPadOS 26, the big win is the Window menu, which lays out all the options discussed above.

Use Slide Over

In the initial release of iPadOS 26, Apple removed Slide Over, which allowed the user to keep a window floating over other apps and move it off-screen and back easily. After an outcry from iPad users accustomed to using it as a place to stash reference materials and other windows they wanted quick access to, Apple brought Slide Over back in iPadOS 26.1.

To put a window into Slide Over, swipe down to reveal the menu bar, tap the traffic light buttons, and choose Enter Slide Over. Once a window is in Slide Over, you can flick it to either the right or left side of the screen to hide it—a little handle briefly reminds you it’s there—and swiping in from that side of the screen reveals the Slide Over window again. Slide Over windows can be resized like any other window by dragging a corner. Only one app can be in Slide Over at a time; choosing Enter Slide Over in a different app replaces the current Slide Over app. You can also touch and hold the traffic light buttons in the Slide Over app and choose Exit Slide Over to make it a standard window again.

If iPadOS 26’s new approach to multitasking feels like it will improve your iPad productivity, and you don’t already have them, consider adding a keyboard and trackpad. The combination of faster typing, more precise pointing, and Mac-like multitasking can go a long way toward improving your iPad workflows.

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

Here’s something new to watch out for: poisoned chatbot conversations surfaced in Google searches. The sharing features in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and other chatbots allow users to publish their conversations as public Web pages, which can be indexed by search engines and appear alongside traditional websites in search results. Attackers can seed those conversations with malicious commands, and the conversations themselves look trustworthy in search results because the URL points to a well-known AI company. This risk isn’t theoretical—security firm Huntress documented a macOS malware infection that began with a Google search result linking to a shared chatbot conversation that contained malicious Terminal instructions. Treat chatbot conversations found via Google as you would random forum posts—potentially useful for background or ideas to start your own conversation, but not as authoritative instructions. Be especially suspicious when they offer step-by-step guidance or ask you to copy anything verbatim.

(Featured image by iStock.com/tadamichi)

One place where the Liquid Glass transparency in iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 can be annoying is the time display on the Lock Screen. Liquid Glass tries—but often fails—to adjust the clock’s transparency so it’s readable over whatever photo you chose or the Photo Shuffle option displayed. Starting in iOS 26.2 and iPadOS 26.2, you can manually adjust the clock’s transparency: touch and hold the Lock Screen, tap Customize, tap the clock, tap Glass, and drag the Transparency slider (left and middle). If it’s still not readable enough, you can switch to the previously available Solid view (right).

(Featured image by iStock.com/Wavebreakmedia)

A new feature for Apple Music subscribers in the Music app in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26 is AutoMix, which Apple says causes songs to “transition at the perfect moment, based on analysis of the key and tempo of the music.” It fades between songs as a DJ would, but it’s not always successful. If AutoMix’s transitions aren’t to your taste, navigate to Settings > Apps > Music > Song Transitions in iOS and iPadOS, or Music > Settings > Playback > Song Transitions in macOS, and switch back to the longstanding Crossfade option, which transitions between songs over a user‑specified number of seconds. Or, just turn off the Song Transitions switch and let one song end completely before the next one starts.

(Featured image by iStock.com/lakshmiprasad S)

In earlier eras of word processing, users were much more likely to encounter explanations of document structure—not because everyone had to become an expert, but because knowledge was shared differently. Software shipped with detailed manuals, user groups and training classes focused on how documents worked under the hood, and power users routinely shared mental models and tips. (Who remembers being turned onto WordPerfect’s Reveal Codes?) Today’s writing tools are simpler to use and much better at hiding complexity, but that also means fewer opportunities for users to learn that invisible characters even exist, much less that they have different attributes and consequences.

We’ll look at five invisible characters that shape how text behaves: the regular space, non-breaking space, tab, hard return, and soft return. You already use regular spaces and hard returns, but understanding the other three—and when to employ them—can help you create cleaner, more professional documents and troubleshoot layout problems.

How to See Invisible Characters

Nearly every text editor, word processor, and page layout app includes an option to show “invisibles” (the term may vary, but the concept is the same). When Show Invisibles is enabled, you’ll see dots, arrows, paragraph marks, and other symbols that represent normally invisible characters. They typically appear in a color different from the default text color, such as the blue characters in the screenshot below.

Regular Spaces Versus Non-Breaking Spaces

Everyone knows what a space is—it’s a breakable separator between words. By “breakable,” we mean the next word can wrap down to the next line of text. A regular space expresses the default intent: separate words and allow normal line wrapping.

However, there are situations when you want two words to stay together because it could be confusing if the second one wraps down to the next line. In those situations, you can use a non-breaking space—inserted by pressing Option-Space on the Mac or (usually) Control-Shift-Space in Windows, and represented in HTML by  . Word processors usually distinguish non-breaking spaces from regular spaces when showing invisibles—for example, Microsoft Word uses a small open circle for non-breaking spaces and a dot for regular spaces.

When would you use non-breaking spaces?

• Numbers with units: The most common use of non-breaking spaces is to keep numbers with their units, such as “1 TB” or “72 ºF.”
• Names with titles, and initials with surnames: Non-breaking spaces are also useful for names with titles, such as “Mr. Spock,” and for people who go by their initials, such as “J. K. Rowling.”
• Short phrases that function as a single unit: Some short phrases are conceptually one piece and should not be split across lines. This includes dates (“January 19”), times (“9:41 AM”), version numbers (“iOS 26”), and textual references (“Figure 4”).

If you are using page layout software, check whether it has character styling that keeps words together, such as Adobe InDesign’s No Break style.

Tabs Versus Spaces

Because spaces separate words, many people overuse them to increase visual separation between words and to align text, such as in a résumé with a job title on the left and the associated dates on the right.

Unfortunately, spaces work poorly for aligning text because most fonts are proportional, meaning a lowercase i is thinner than an uppercase W. Therefore, spaces can’t align text perfectly—not because spaces differ in width, but because the characters before them do. Ragged alignment in a printed document is easily noticeable and looks unprofessional.

The simple solution is to use a tab, which aligns to a fixed position marked by a tab stop. Pressing the Tab key inserts a tab to the next tab stop, which can usually align text to the left, right (shown below), center, or decimal point. Most apps have a few default tab stops, and you may never need anything different. However, you can usually customize the behavior and location of the tab stops. First, put your insertion point in the paragraph you want to work in, or select a swath of paragraphs. Then, either use the ruler to customize the stops or use dedicated tab controls, such as in Microsoft Word’s Format > Paragraph > Tabs dialog. More advanced users will want to customize tab stops within paragraph styles.

Although we can now use tables and layout tools for much of what tabs were necessary for in the early days of word processing, tabs remain useful in some situations, such as:

• Horizontal placement: If you want your signature to appear below a letter on the right, you could right-align the entire line, but a right-aligned tab stop gives you more control over where the signature appears.
• Simple lists: For a short contact list that includes name, phone, and email, setting a few tab stops could be easier than inserting and formatting a table.
• Quick outlines: When creating a quick outline, such as an agenda with left-aligned times and indented session titles, use tabs to create indentation. This preserves the outline structure and makes it easier to adjust later.

If you’re trying to align text rather than separate words, a tab expresses that intent far better than spaces ever can.

Hard Returns Versus Soft Returns

Most people understand hard returns, which separate one paragraph from the next. Pressing Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) creates a hard return. For example, you’d put a return between a heading paragraph and the following body paragraph. Less well-known are soft returns, which start a new line within a paragraph, but do not end the paragraph. An important side effect of a soft return is that whatever paragraph formatting is applied to the paragraph will continue to apply to the new line. To type a soft return, type Shift-Return or Shift-Enter. (In HTML, paragraphs are marked with a pair of <p></p> tags, while soft returns use the <br> tag.)

The most common reasons to use soft returns include:

• Multi-line formatting: Some blocks of text are conceptually single paragraphs displayed across multiple lines. Think of postal addresses, poetry, and song lyrics.
  
• Maintain numbering or outline level: In lists and outlines, hard returns increment a list number or add a new outline entry, whereas soft returns insert a line break without creating a new number or outline entry. (HTML uses <li></li> tags to denote list items, but you can still use <br> tags within list items.)
  
• Narrow layouts: Soft returns are often necessary to force text down to the next line in columns, sidebars, captions, and callouts. They are a helpful supplement to non-breaking spaces.
• Intentional formatting: In multi-line headings, captions, and labels, aim to keep lines roughly equal in length, with the last line slightly longer than the others. Use soft returns to adjust line lengths as needed.
  

In short, use hard returns to separate paragraphs that are standalone units of text. Use soft returns to add line breaks within a chunk of text that is conceptually a single paragraph.

When Invisible Characters Cause Problems

Understanding non-breaking spaces, tabs, and soft returns is important because they can appear in your text without you noticing. Someone might have intentionally added them, or you might have accidentally included them by copying and pasting from PDFs or the Web. Some common invisible character issues you might encounter while formatting include:

• Short lines: If a line appears unusually short, it could be caused by a soft return moving text to the next line or a non-breaking space causing two words to wrap down together.
• Fragile alignment: If aligned text shifts when you change fonts or alignment, it’s usually because spaces are being used instead of tabs.
• Text gaps: If there’s unexpected white space between words, check if a tab is there instead of a space.
• Broken list numbering: In an automatically numbered list, broken numbering may be explained by a soft return being used instead of a hard return. Fix it by deleting the return between the misnumbered line and the one above, pressing Return to insert a new hard return, and repeating as needed.

Remember, you don’t have to type with invisible characters showing, but if your text has mysterious white space or odd line wrapping, you can likely resolve those problems quickly by viewing invisible characters and making sure they are doing what they should.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Fabio Principe)