Five Tip Friday ~ Some tips for iOS 10: PDFs to iCloud; Notes and Calendar

iOS 11 is imminent – most of these will work for that too, though, so here’s to 10.

1/ Save a PDF to iCloud — If you can print a particular item in iOS 10, you can save it as a PDF. You can also share a newly created PDF through a message or an email.
First open any app you can print from. In this case, I’m using Safari, so I’ll start the printing process by tapping the Sharesheet icon (an upwards arrow in a rectangle – it’s circled in the image at left). Once the options screen opens, swipe to find Print along the bottom row of icons and once you tap that, you will see a preview of how my webpage would look if you printed it.
But here’s the hidden feature: place two fingers on the screen and pinch outwards to open on the little preview image and you will be taken to the PDF version of the item. Yet another Sharesheet allows you to save the PDF to iCloud Drive with an icon on the bottom row of the subsequent screen
You can also do the typical sharing stuff with your PDF: add it to a message or an email, or other options.
[From Melissa Holt at  Mac Observer.]

2/ In Notes on iPhone/iPad, use an On My [Device] account — If you’re really concerned about the security of data you type into your notes, you should probably lock the important ones. Also, though, you can choose to store certain notes only on one device or another as opposed to syncing them all through iCloud. You could keep a list on your iPhone but not pull it onto the family iPad that’s signed into your iCloud account, for example.
Visit Settings on the device you’d like to store local notes on, and then go to the Notes section. At the bottom is a toggle for adding an On My [Device] account. Turn that on, and you can choose where to add any new notes by visiting the section in question from your main Notes window; for example, choose Notes under On My iPhone to create or edit anything that lives only on that one device.

3/ Stop; collaborate and listen — If you’re writing a note and look at the top of your screen, you’ll see a silhouette icon. Tap that, and your device’ll walk you through adding someone as a collaborator.
This means that anyone you add to that note will be able to see changes you make to it, which could be handy for all sorts of shared tasks. The only caveat is that you can only use this feature through iCloud, so you’ve gotta be logged in. (And if you need more info, check out Apple’s support article on this.)

4/ Save media you add to Notes — If you need to remember to buy or do something, taking a picture within a note is a good way to accomplish that. To do so, just tap on the little plus button within a note if you don’t see the toolbar then pick the camera icon to snap a picture.
The default means that none of those saved images and videos are added to your photo library, but if you’d like to switch that up, visit Settings> Notes and change that option. Afterward, the media you save in Notes will be saved in Photos, too.
(Within Settings> Notes, there’s also an option labeled New Notes Start With. If you’re not fond of your notes always having a big bold title or heading at the top, you can change that to ‘body’ and it’ll all just be regular text.)
[These Notes tips also came from Melissa Holt at Mac Observer.]

5/ Automatic reminders for events you set in Calendar — There’s no need to manually add a reminder to each and every meeting in your calendar. Instead, you can set the iOS Calendar app to automatically add a reminder for any new events you create. Tap Settings, choose Calendar, then tap the Default Alert Times setting.
Now select automatic alert times for up to three different types of Calendar events: birthdays, generic events and all-day events. For birthdays and all-day events, you can set a default alert anywhere from a week before to the morning of the event. For standard events, your auto-reminder choices range from a week before to the moment the event begins.
You can even add a Time to leave reminder that’ll let you know when to start commuting to an event, provided you’ve filled in the event’s Location field. Just enable the Time to Leave setting.
Back out of the Settings screen, head back to the Calendar app, and create a new event. When you do, you will see an alert already set up. [There are more iOS Calendar tips at Here’s The Thing.]

Five Tip Friday ~ Checking the weather Reminders, Night Shift Calendar & extra extras

1/ Check the Weather quickly using Spotlight — If you’re curious what the weather is like, you can launch the stock or a 3rd party weather app, sure, or just pull down on a Home Screen page to get Spotlight (device and ’net search) to appear. Type in “weather (and location)” to get the weather report for that spot. You’ll get the details you’re looking for. The same applies to any day within the normal seven-day forecast period. This Spotlight trick works on iPad, too. (It even works on macOS in Spotlight.)

2/ Delete all Reminders in a list — Sometimes, you want to quickly delete all reminders in a list. People use the Reminders app as a catch-all for everything we want to remember, whether it’s work-related or a group of tasks we need to cary out.
Within iOS, there’s a way to delete not only the list, but also all the reminders within that list. This works for things you’ve marked as completed, along with tasks that you haven’t tapped to show them as done. Launch the Reminders app and navigate to the list you want to delete.
Now, tap the Edit button in the top right corner of the app.
Scroll to the bottom (if you can’t see it it) and find the item that says Delete List.
Tap that option and confirm you want to delete all the reminders. (This is a viable on Mac too: secondary click (right- or Control-click) the name of the list and choose Delete. If you are working in iCloud.com, you can go to a Reminders list, click on Options, and then choose Delete. When you delete a Reminders list from one device, that action will take place on every device logged into the same iCloud account.

3/ Night Shift Mode into Staying on All the Time — You can have Night Shift on iOS on all the time if you prefer the softer lighting (it’s more yellowish) of Night Shift mode all the time. Night Shift is most useful after sunset, you may want to have it enabled all the time. This display-based setting makes your screen “warmer,” usually at night, to cut down on blue light exposure which is believed to keep people awake. To get to this setting: Settings> Display & Brightness> Night Shift. The default is to have the mode activate at sunset, and then deactivate at sunrise but you can also set custom start and stop times for the mode.
To keep Night Shift on during the day, you need to set custom hours for the feature. Unfortunately, you can’t set the start and stop times the same so you have to decide on a one-minute time of the day (or night) when it’s okay for the mode to briefly deactivate: for example, Night Shift could temporarily stop at 1:59am. Then, the mode turns back on at 2am.

4/ Set your default Calendar across devices — People can find their Mac set to add events by default to one calendar while their iPhone is adding them automatically to a different one. This can make it seem that iPhone events are colour-coded differently to Mac events, which is confusing.
All your Apple devices that can sync with your iCloud account have a “default calendar” setting that’ll be applied when you don’t specifically change which one you’d like to add an event to. On the iPhone and iPad, this option is listed under Settings > Calendar. On the Mac, this setting is within Calendar > Preferences under the “General” tab.

5/ Dealing with other calendar services — When a device is set to sync to a calendar (say, a Google one) and that particular calendar isn’t even configured on another of that person’s devices, it will make it seem like everything from one device is disappearing. You can check which accounts you’ve got set to sync calendars on the Mac under System Preferences > Internet Accounts.
Any of your accounts that have “Calendars” listed in grey underneath their names are syncing that service with your Mac. Verify that you’ve got the same list turned on for your iPhone or iPad at Settings > Calendar > Accounts.

Extra – The Health app: as Apple Insider puts it in a detailed explanation, the launchpad for all things is the Health Data tab, which lists all of the categories the app can handle. While Activity, Mindfulness, Nutrition and Sleep are front-and-center, others include Body Measurements,  Health Records, Reproductive Health, Results and Vitals. These all break down into numerous subcategories, where the real meat of the app is found. Under “Activity,” for instance, are items like steps, workout duration, and active energy consumption. Tapping on one displays a graph with adjustable views, as well as an explanation, suggested apps, and a set of configuration options.

Extra extra — the logic of iPhone/iPad Force Quitting: The Mac Observer has a detailed description of why and when you may need to do this, and when you should’t worry.

Five tip Friday ~ The Calendar App and iCloud

1/ Edit appointment details using the Calendar Inspector in macOS Sierra — The Inspector window appears when you add a new event, or double-click on an existing event in the Calendar app in macOS Sierra, or click and event once and choose Command-e.
Inspector shows you all the details of your events, including who’s invited, and where and when you want the event to occur. Start typing an address and Calendar suggests matching locations. Start typing the name of a contact in your Address Book and Calendar suggests matching names based on contacts you’ve entered in the Contacts app.
You can even see your event locations on a miniature map in the Inspector. (If you click this mini map, the Maps app opens a full size view.)  The mini map includes an estimate of the travel time to your appointment destination from your current location in the event Inspector as well as the weather forecast for that day. (For travel time estimates, directions and weather, you need to turn on Location Services in System Preferences.)

2/ Use your iCloud account in macOS Sierra’s Calendar app — iCloud is included with macOS. Once you sign up for your free iCloud account, you can push calendar updates across your devices, share your iCloud Calendar, and see your calendar on the iCloud website.
If you have an iCloud account , you can use iCal to access and manage your iCloud calendars. If you set up the iCloud Calendar service on several devices and computers, your iCloud calendar and reminder information is kept up to date on each device and computer.
Set up your iCloud calendar account from System Preferences to see your iCloud-based calendars in the Calendar window. In the System Preferences app, click iCloud and sign in.
If this is your first time signing in from this computer, you’ll be asked if you want to use iCloud for contacts, calendars, and bookmarks. Make sure that the calendars option is selected (checked), then click Next.
If you’ve previously signed in to iCloud, you’ll see a list of iCloud services – select the check-box next to Calendars to have them sync.

3/ Add calendars to macOS Sierra’s Calendar from other services besides iCloud — You can use your iCloud account in macOS Sierra’s Calendar app to add an event, and this appears as if by magic on all your other Apple devices linked to that same Apple ID. But you can also add appointments from other popular services to your calendar in Calendar app, including Exchange, CalDAV, Facebook, and Yahoo:
Choose Apple Menu () > System Preferences.
Select Internet Accounts.
Click the Add Account (+) button at the bottom of the window.
Choose the account type you want to use, and enter your account credentials.
Make sure the option Calendars is selected (checked) to display the events associated with this account in the Calendar app. [These three Calendar tips came form the Apple World Today.]

4/ iCloud Drive and syncing iWork documents to your iOS devices — Those files aren’t necessarily being stored on your iPhone or iPad. Meaning that if you’re out and about, heading into a bad cell area may cause you to lose access to said files. Which is a bummer.
To check out what your situation, just open any of the iWork apps (Pages, Numbers, or Keynote) on your iOS device. When you do so, you’ll see a list of your documents of that type. If some of the files are in iCloud but aren’t downloaded, you’ll see a tiny cloud icon on those.
Of course, you can tap to download any one you’d like, but if what you really want is to keep all documents of that kind on your iPhone or iPad at all times, head over to your Settings. Scroll down until you see the section for the app you’d like to download stuff for and tap it.
Within that, look for the “On-Demand Downloads” toggle.
Turn that OFF, and everything you’ve got within that app will download so you can keep all your documents on your iPhone. This is great if you’re going on a trip and don’t want to use cellular data, for example, or if you just know you always need access to your spreadsheets. But be careful—I strongly suggest that you go into the app in question and make certain that the process has completed before you hit the road. You might even want to turn on Airplane Mode for the device and try to open a file or two. Paranoid? Heck, that’s just who I am. Almost a decade of tech support has traumatized taught me well.

5/ iSee the status of uploads in iCloud Drive — While we’re messing with iCloud,  you can turn on Finder’s Status Bar, the option for which is under the View menu click on the iCloud Drive option in Finder’s sidebar (shown above), and suddenly you’ll get a lot more information about your uploads.
Also turn the Path Bar on (View > Show Path Bar, shown below). This is helpful if you’d like to have a trail of breadcrumbs, so to speak, leading back within the folder structure you’ve navigated through – this appears at the bottom of folder windows. Any of the location icons in the Path Bar are double-clickable, as well, to return you to someplace you’ve been. Useful if you tend to drill way deep down into folders and then forget where you came from! Not that I ever do that myself, oh no.

Five Tip Friday ~ Tidiness tips for macOS

1/ Minimise apps into their icons — You can click the yellow pill button in the upper left corner of a window to minimize an app’s window into the Dock in macOS Sierra, but if you minimize a lot of windows, the right side of the Dock quickly becomes cluttered.
The solution is to minimise windows into their app icons.
Open System Preferences from the Apple menu and choose Dock. Check the box next to ‘Minimize windows into application icon’ (shown above). Now they minimise down into the originating app’s icon – click-and-hold on that in the Dock to see your files (below).

If you have a lot of minimized app windows, and have trouble finding what you’re looking for, control-click (hold down the Control key on your keyboard and click) the app icon to reveal a list of that apps minimized windows. Choose an item from the list and it will open.

2/ Group windows by application in macOS Sierra — macOS Sierra introduced system wide tabs for most (but not all) apps, allowing you to merge multiple windows into a single window or separate merged windows.
With two or more windows of a supported app open, go to the Windows menu in the Finder and choose ‘Merge All Windows.’ All windows of the same app will be grouped into a single window. Each file you have open will appear as a tab inside the single window.
To separate the merged windows into standalone windows of their own, select the merged window to make it active. Go to the Windows and click the ‘Move Tab to New Window’ option. Click it to move the selected tab to a separate window.
This won’t separate all tabs into windows of their own, but separate the current tab to its own window. All remaining tabs will remain grouped into a single window unless you separate them one at a time.
Click the close button on a merged window, and it will close all tabs you have open in it.

3/ Move multiple Events between Calendars — If you’ve got several events you need to move to a different calendar, change to month view by pressing Command-3 or click on the Month option in Calendar’s toolbar or at top-centre of Calendar.
Now find the events you’d like to move, hold down Command on your keyboard and click on each one to select them all in turn.
When your events are all highlighted, right- or Control-click on any one of them. From the contextual menu that appears, choose the ‘Calendar’ option and pick the one you’d like to move your selected events to. Simple.

4/ Multiple ways to move items to Trash — Trash is a To put item(s) in the Trash, once can simply drag the item(s) to the Trash icon, or move highlighted file(s) to the Trash using the keyboard combo Command-Delete. If you realize you made a mistake, you can Undo the operation by choosing File > Undo, or the keyboard combo Command-Z.
If you’d like to delete highlighted items immediately, you can hold down Option and select File > Delete Immediately…. Alternately, you can use keyboard combo Command-Option-Delete. Either way, you’ll received a confirmation dialogue that the operation is permanent and can’t be undone.

5/ Empty stubborn Trash items — ToIf there are files in the Trash, which you can confirm visually because you’ll see items in the Trash, you can empty it by either choosing Finder > Empty Trash…, or using keyboard combo Shift-Cmd-Delete. You’ll be presented with a confirmation dialog asking if you’re sure. You can also hold down Option and select Finder > Empty Trash, or use keyboard combo Shift-Option-Command-Delete. Notice that since there isn’t a trailing ellipsis after the choice, it will be done immediately without a confirmation dialogue. [If this still doesnt work, you need Terminal, as detailed here.]

Five Tip Friday ~ iOS 8 and your iPhone/iPad; Reminders and Calendar

1/ Make calls straight from Reminders — Apple’s Reminders app can come in handy on your iPhone, particularly since it’s very easy to create them using Siri. To make a call from Reminders, create a reminder like ‘Call Jo Public at 8am’. Make sure it starts with “call” and that you have the person in your Contacts already.
When you have it set up, it’ll pop up at the right time to remind you. When you see it on your lock screen, put your finger over it and swipe left, and the option to call directly appears if the reminder includes a contact with a phone number even in the lock screen. Now you can save steps when you’re using Reminders to set up phone calls.

The List button on iPhone

2/ Switch between day and list view — If you tap on a date in Calendar on your iPhone, you’ll get an expanded view of your daily appointments. Scroll up and down to see which hours are free and which are booked, with each event color-coded depending on the calendar it’s assigned to.
In the day view, you’ll find the list button (it looks like a tiny bulleted list, shown above) in the top-right corner of the screen, to the left of the Search field. Tap it, and your upcoming events are arranged in one big, scrollable list (left).
(There’s no list button in the iPad version Calendar—you just have the monthly view, which boasts details for each day’s events.)

3/ See your entire week on your iPhone — The iPad version of the Calendar app has four clearly marked views to choose from: Day, Week, Month, and Year. On an iPhone, the Day, Month and Year views are (relatively) easy to find, but what about the Week view?
Just tilt your iPhone into landscape orientation and your week will twirl into view, no matter which calendar view you were checking.

4/ See event details from the month view — The standard month view in Calendars for iPhone offers a blank, rather unhelpful grid of dates — tap one, and you jump to the expanded daily view. To see the whole month again, you’ll have to tap the Back button. But the Details button, which sits unobtrusively next to the Search button in the top corner of the screen, shows a list of events for the selected date, with the rest of the month still visible. Tap another day of the month, and you’ll see the events for that day. You can even switch months by swiping up and down.

5/ Drag and drop calendar events — The most obvious way to change the time of an event in Calendar is to tap it and edit its “start” and “end” times, but there’s actually a much easier way.
Just tap and hold an event until it pulses, then drag it anywhere you like in your calendar. You can also grab one of the little handles above or below an event to pad it out or cut it short.

Five Tip Friday for Waitangi Day ~ some hidden iOS 8 features

This is late as it’s a holiday in New Zealand, but here are some cool, hidden iOS tips (https://macnzmark.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/5tf-for-ios8/).

There are all sorts of EQ presets for music, and even a special Late Night option that works with video too.

1/ Found a lost iPhone? Siri can help you find its owner — There’s a way for you to be a Good Samaritan, and that way’s name is Siri. Simply activate Siri on the phone, as this can be done even if the device is locked,and ask Siri “who does this phone belong to?”
Siri will give you the owner’s contact information from phone number to email depending on the user’s settings. Now you know exactly how to contact the phone’s owner, earning yourself some karma in the process.

2/ Save your hearing with the Late Night EQ option — Within iOS, there’s a setting that’s been around since iOS 6: a special EQ option that compresses whatever audio you’re listening to so that the loud stuff will be quieter and the quiet stuff louder. With this, you don’t have to turn your volume up so much when you’re on public transportation or in some other noisy place. For podcasts or iTunes movies, it’s pretty handy.
Open the Settings app, and then tap Music. Under that heading is EQ: pick that. Here you’ll see all sorts of audio adjustments you could try, includingTreble Booster, Small Speakers and Rock. Most only apply to music you’re listening to, but Late Night works on video output, too.
Once you tap Late Night you’ll see the small checkmark appear next to it. Just remember to turn the EQ setting to another option when you’re wanting to listen to music.

3/ Hide iCloud iBooks — Sometimes under iOS 8 you don’t seem to be able to delete purchased books. When you try, you may see the book cover still there, except with a ‘download from iCloud’ symbol at the upper-right corner of the book. This is pretty annoying if you want to get rid of books after reading them. Here’s how to fix is: first go out to your main library view (by tapping Library if you’re in the middle of reading a book, or by tapping My Books at the bottom if you’re anywhere else). Then ‘All Books’ at top centre. On the next screen you’ll see your collections, but down at the bottom, the option you need is Hide iCloud Books.
Toggle that on, and you’ll only see the items you’ve actually downloaded to your device.

4/ Auto-delete old Messages — Once you’ve been using your iPhone for a while, you build up quite an archive of text messages. This can take up unnecessary space (do you really need those texts and pictures from two years ago?). iOS 8 now allows you to automatically delete these old messages after either 30 days or one year, potentially freeing up gigabytes of storage.
Tap Settings>Messages and scroll down to Message History – here you can select how long you’d like to keep your old messages: forever, 30 days or one year.

5/ Create custom repeating events in Calendar — Launch the Calendar app, create a new event, tap the Repeat setting, then tap Custom. Here, choose the frequency with which you’d like the event to repeat: daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.
Next tap Every, and make a selection: once a month, for example. You can choose twice a month, three times a month and so on.
Tap ‘Each’ if you want to create an event that repeats on a certain day, say, the 10th of each month, or tap ‘On the…’ to pick a specific day of the week, such as the first Thursday of every month.
Once you’ve made your selections, just back up to the New Event screen, then tap the Done button when you’re finished editing.

Five Tip Friday — Mac Maps, Calendar and your personal Apple support page

 

1/ Finding locations in Maps —If you are trying to get directions using the Mac’s Maps program, but you don’t know the address, there are a couple of simple ways to do that. First of all, if the place you’re headed to has a landmark icon next to its name, click that to bring up the location’s address and a small selectable ‘i’ you can use to get directions.

2/ Right- or Control-click — If the location you want directions to has no icon to click (if you’re trying to get to an intersection, for example), the secret lies in right- or Control-clicking directly on the spot. Doing that will bring up a handy contextual menu, from which you can drop a pin or open a new window. But best, perhaps, is the ‘Get Directions’ option: pick that, and Maps will automagically take you right to the place you need to go.

3/ Straightening out mangled URLs — If you’ve typed in a URL bar in Safari or tried to edit back to a back slash to move up a level or two, but got it wrong so you get a ‘Page cannot load’ or similar message, the fix is to hit the ESC key (at top left of all Mac keyboards) once. The browser stores the original URL when the page is first loaded, and when you hit ESC, that page’s original URL is returned to the address bar, overwriting any edits

You can easily add multiple URLs to Calendar Events

4/ Add multiple URLs to Calendar Events — When you create a new event in Calendar, there’s a clickable area titled ‘Add Notes or URL’. Clicking it brings up separate sections for Add Notes and Add URL. Rather than entering the URL into the Add URL section, click on Add Notes. Now start typing or pasting URLs into the Notes section. Don’t worry about ‘http:// ‘at the beginning of the URL, just typing an address like mac-nz.com will turn the URL into a clickable link when you press Return on your keyboard. You’ll see the address turn blue and gain an underline, indicating that it can be clicked, and since you’ve pressed Return, you can proceed to type in or paste subsequent web addresses.

5/  Apple has a customer-support page built just for you — If you have a Mac, an iPhone and maybe an iPad or two, and you have a problem and you want to find out if something is still under warranty (and what that warranty covers), you can find out all that and more in one place — a place many Apple users have never heard of.
Apple has a standard Support website, but we’re talking about your own Support Profile page. There, you can view a list of all of your Apple products, check their warranty coverage, access troubleshooting resources, and contact Apple’s support team. Here’s how to take advantage of all that. You’ll need to log in to ‘My Support Profile’ (main picture, above) with your Apple ID email address and password.
It pays to log in and make sure all your devices are in here.