Adam Engst investigates the mysterious “Lens cleaning hint” feature introduced in iOS 26. Despite his best efforts—including one involving a tomato—the warning message never appeared. Is it broken, or just random about what counts as smudged?
Troubleshooting an inaccessible server is challenging at the best of times and doubly so when you are out of practice. Read how Claude guided Adam Engst through troubleshooting and mitigating a denial of service attack.
iPhone 17 and iPhone Air owners should update to iOS 26.5.1 promptly—it fixes a bug that blocks USB charging when the battery is nearly dead. macOS 26.5.1 addresses an enterprise-only shutdown issue.
Does Dictation substitute a contact’s name for a common word, fail to capitalize proper nouns, or mangle unusual spellings? You can fix these frustrations by adding—or subtly editing—entries in Contacts.
Apple updates sometimes toggle settings without warning. A recent case involving iCloud Private Relay illustrates the problem—and raises the question of whether we can track what changes during an update.
Apple lets you export and import text replacements by dragging them to and from the Text Replacements dialog. It’s great for backups and sharing, but if you try to import thousands of entries, such as from the TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary, things may fall apart unpredictably.
Don’t panic about the newly discovered macOS bug that freezes TCP networking after 49 days of uptime. Between security updates, sleep cycles, and typical usage patterns, most Mac users will never encounter this edge-case failure.
If iCloud syncing has been unreliable since you updated to iOS 26.4, relief has arrived. Although Apple’s release notes don’t mention it, developers confirm that iOS 26.4.1 and iPadOS 26.4.1 fix the CloudKit bug. Apple also released macOS 26.4.1 Tahoe, presumably to incorporate the same code changes.
A CloudKit notifications bug in iOS 26.4 breaks real-time iCloud sync for some apps and users. Data isn't lost, but changes will either be delayed or won't appear until you switch apps. A fix is in the iOS 26.5 beta.
After upgrading to macOS 26.4, some users found Script Editor refusing to open certain older AppleScripts—even though most of the scripts still ran fine from apps like BBEdit. Here’s how to fix affected scripts.
A switched input source can make a Mac reject the correct login password. Here’s how an accidental keyboard layout change locked a user out—and the simple fix that got her back in.
Network connections like Wi-Fi and Ethernet don’t always work well for low-level tasks, such as installing firmware updates. Guest author Suman Chakrabarti had to ditch wireless entirely and return to the device’s simplest connection method—a USB 2.0 cable—to resurrect a nearly decade-old laser printer.
Apple’s latest updates for older operating systems extend certificates so iMessage, FaceTime, and device activation continue to work after January 2027. Meanwhile, iOS 16.7.14 may address a Telstra network issue affecting older iPhones in Australia.
Tired of truncated filenames in Finder’s column view? macOS 26 Tahoe adds a checkbox that automatically resizes columns to fit filenames—and you can enable it in earlier macOS versions too.
Gmail is dropping support for POP fetching from other accounts and the Gmailify feature. Most users won't notice, but those with complex email setups should start planning a migration.