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Category: Tip

Adam Engst 2 comments

Adjust Touch Duration for Haptic Touch on the iPhone and iPad

You can adjust the length of time necessary for a touch-and-hold action to activate. That might be a welcome customization for many people.

Adam Engst 18 comments

Do You Use It? Proxy Icons Quietly Boost Productivity

The results of our poll asking about proxy icon use are in, and we hope that this article’s explanation of what proxy icons are good for encourages those who haven’t used them to give them a try.

Adam Engst 17 comments

TipBITS: Restart Your iPhone or iPad Using Siri

If you need to restart your iPhone or iPad, you can now ask Siri to perform that task for you rather than pressing hard-to-remember button combinations. Alas, the feature doesn’t work on other Apple devices that could also use it.

Adam Engst 2 comments

TipBITS: How to Avoid Live Text in Preview More Easily

Mea culpa! It turns out that Apple provided commands for controlling whether dragging in Preview draws out a rectangular selection or selects text. Adam revisits his previous article to set the record straight.

Adam Engst 4 comments

TipBITS: Edit Slack Messages More Easily on the Mac

A recent update to Slack alerted Adam Engst that the app had an option to restore a much-missed feature to open the last message for editing with a single keystroke. If you’ve been pining for that feature, read on.

Adam Engst 14 comments

TipBITS: Always Show Window Proxy Icons

Adam Engst stumbled across an Accessibility setting that ensures that window proxy icons—those little icons that appear next to window titles—show at all times, rather than after a 1-second hover. This setting returns proxy icons to their former utility, and if you’re not clear what that was, Adam explains that too.

Adam Engst 12 comments

How to Create App Aliases in iOS 15

Adam Engst discovered that iOS 15 lets you move apps to the Home screen after finding them in a search… and then he stumbled across something even more exciting: you can now make aliases to apps!

Josh Centers 10 comments

TipBITS: Stop Grouping Reminders Notifications

iOS tends to stack notifications on the iPhone’s Lock screen to prevent them from taking up too much space. But that can be a problem for critical apps like Reminders where missing an obscured notification can be problematic. Thankfully, you can turn off notification grouping on a per-app basis.

Adam Engst 14 comments

The Hidden Trick for Capturing Document-Modal Dialogs in Mac Screenshots

Sometimes you want to take a screenshot of a dialog that’s attached to a window. It turns out you can do this by pressing Command-Shift-4, pressing the Space bar, and then holding down the Command key when you mouse over the desired dialog.

Adam Engst 1 comment

Manage iPhone Home Screen Apps in Bulk with iOS 14’s App Library

Adam Engst has discovered a technique that lets you add and remove multiple apps at once from iOS 14 Home screens. The trick is stacking the apps with one hand while navigating to and from the App Library with your other hand.

Adam Engst 40 comments

iOS 14’s Back Tap Feature Provides Interaction Shortcuts

Deep in the Accessibility settings of iOS 14 is a new feature called Back Tap that lets you assign a variety of system and accessibility actions—and anything you build in the Shortcuts app—to a double or triple tap on the back of your iPhone.

Adam Engst 27 comments

Five Tips for Easier Rearranging of iOS Apps

iOS 14’s App Library might make it easier to find apps, but if you want to clean up your existing Home screens and folders, these tips will make it easier regardless of what version of iOS or iPadOS you may be running.

Adam Engst 35 comments

TipBITS: Stop Getting Finder Windows in Tabs

Frustrated by having drives and folders in the Finder open in tabs instead of new windows, Adam Engst discovered that there are two preferences that control this behavior, and one is in a surprising spot.

Adam Engst 11 comments

TipBITS: Google Drive Sorting Can Hide New Documents

If you rely on Google Drive for collaborative work, bear in mind that a hidden sort setting can cause new documents to fall to the bottom of the list of files in a folder where you might not think to look for them. Adam Engst suffered from this for a week before he discovered the solution.

Adam Engst 22 comments

TipBITS: Enable the Startup Chime on New Macs

Have you been missing the startup chime on a new Mac? It’s once again possible to enable it with a simple Terminal command.