Apple’s Do Not Disturb feature has evolved into the ecosystem-wide Focus, which provides so many options and capabilities that it may be impossible to predict when notifications will work and when they won't. Adam Engst shows you how to use Focus and suggests that you stick to the basics.

Feeling overwhelmed by negativity? Adam Engst shares some 2021 wrap-up posts showing that even in a pandemic-ridden year, a lot of good stuff happened that didn’t make the headlines. He also looks at the solution to a macOS upgrade problem and explains how to bring back the menu command for creating an ad hoc Wi-Fi network.

Annoyed by constantly picking up his wife’s MacBook Pro instead of his MacBook Air, Adam Engst decided to decorate the laptops with inexpensive full-color vinyl skins. It worked like a charm, and the skins also make the laptops more secure to carry and offer protection against scuffs and scratches.

Did you know that pressing Control-H in Mail deletes the current message? You do now. Adam also shares a story about a Pakistani security researcher reporting a vulnerability on the TidBITS site and a reader tip about avoiding USB hubs when updating an iPhone from a Mac.

In keeping with our tradition, we’re going to take off the last few weeks of 2021, which this year means slightly larger gatherings with our immediate families and video calls with far-flung relatives. You can expect the next email issue of TidBITS on 10 January 2022. Thanks for reading TidBITS, and we hope our content has enriched your life.

Adam Engst shares how he has significantly added to his HomeKit-based home automation system over the past year and muses about the true benefits of home automation. Hint: it’s not about making things physically easier.

TidBITS Talk readers shared an insightful essay that nicely describes the motivation of many TidBITS members in supporting us and a tip that the Gmail app now supports non-Gmail accounts.

Apple has updated the firmware in all currently supported AirPods models but hasn’t said what it’s supposed to change.

A collection of well-known Apple developers, podcasters, and professors have signed on to the Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking, a call to action among software developers and users alike to encourage capabilities that allow linking between information resources, both local and on the Web.

TidBITS has been bringing you the Apple news, advice, and technical details you need for over 31 years, but the only way we can keep it up is if you chip in a few bucks to make it happen. Join the TidBITS membership program today!

watchOS 8 wished Adam Engst a happy birthday recently, which was both a nice touch and a small surprise. He also discusses some quirky problems related to printer drivers.

We’re taking the next email issue of TidBITS off to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, although we’ll continue to publish articles on our Web site. You can look forward to the next email issue on 6 December 2021.

After lobbying against right-to-repair legislation for years, Apple has seemingly done an about-face by announcing the Self Service Repair program, which will provide genuine Apple parts, tools, and repair manuals to individuals who want to repair their Apple devices.

Thanks to Apple’s Weather app picking up features from Dark Sky, the company that Apple acquired in early 2020, you can now turn on next-hour precipitation notifications in iOS 15. But they aren’t reliable for some users—how about you?

This week, Adam asks for help tracking down an email formatting bug in TidBITS issues, points those worried about ransomware to RansomWhere and Retrospect 18, and looks at more utilities that perform OCR on text in images.