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GOLD 100 must-have apps for your iPhone

ISSUE 225

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Welcome

iCreate 225 “Not even Apple’s default apps are the best available for the stuff we do every day” How often do you visit the App Store? If you’re an infrequent app browser then there is every chance that one of the truly special ones – the likes of which are often showcased in the store window around the time of release or after a significant update – could go undiscovered. It’s good practice to evaluate your iOS App Library every so often, just to make sure that the apps you use frequently haven’t been superseded by something flashier that perform key tasks better. So we have mined for App Store gold this month to bring you the 100 greatest apps currently available for iPhone. Remember, not even Apple’s default iOS apps are the best available for the stuff we do every day, so why not give your apps an upgrade? Turn to page 14 now to check out our hot 100. Also in this issue we report on Apple’s latest wave of hardware, including new M1-powered colourful iMacs, the new iPad Pro and AirTag – the first all-new Apple product in ages. These little trackable devices will ensure that you never lose anything ever again, although the fact that the lost objects need to be mostly static rules out the possibility of attaching them to your pets. Much to their blessed relief no doubt. Enjoy the issue!

Ryan Butt Editor

Meet the experts David Crookes

Shaun McGill

George Cairns

This issue, our iOS expert shows you how to block messages from unwanted callers and stop people from swiping through your iOS photos and seeing things that they really shouldn’t.

Our resident tech specialist shows you all of the best Mac and iOS apps that you can use to maintain your workflow and look after yourself while continuing to work remotely.

Our creative genius shows you how to create miniature photography with your iPhone, record better quality audio in iMovie and create captivating POV shots in Final Cut Pro.

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Contents

Love iCreate? Subscribe today

Discover the creative treats in store this month

On the cover

iCreate regulars

News, look-backs and expert advice

08 Trending: News We check out the exciting new range of iMacs that are available in seven colours and are powered by Apple’s M1 chip

10 Trending: 5 Things New stuff that we’ve discovered this month, including Apple AirTag, the new iPad Pro and the release of iOS 14.5

12 Trending: iCandy Apple hardware new and old, like you’ve never seen it before

86 Genius Bar Our resident Apple Genius solves all of your tech troubles

98 Time Machine

GOLD

Take a trip down memory lane with classic Apple hardware

iCreate reviews Latest hardware and apps, rated

The 100, must-have apps currently available for your iPhone

92 Polk REACT Soundbar and REACT Sub 94 MagicBridge Extended Mac Keyboard 96 Software

Visit the iCreate online shop at

direct.com

for back issues, bookazines & DVDs

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iCreate tutorials Creative projects and guides for getting more from your Apple devices

44 Explore all of the new features in Apple’s iWork apps 46 Discover how to convert documents between Pages and Gdocs 48 Take control of your macOS environment with Magnet 50 Learn how to move tracks from your Music library to your iPhone 52 How to use the Taskade app to plan projects and hobbies

68 70 72 74

Create your ultimate clipboard Enjoy articles in Google News Block unwanted text messages The 10 best Apple Music secrets

iPadOS Tutorials 76 Stream any radio station on iPad 78 Enjoy reading comics on your iPad

watchOS Tutorials 80 Learn how to use the new Time to Walk feature in Fitness+ 82 Get ﬁt with a virtual dog friend

iOS Tutorials Creative Tutorials 26 Create miniature photography with the magic of your iPhone 28 Produce better sounding audio in your iMovie projects 30 Discover how to create captivating POV shots in Final Cut Pro 32 Learn how to stereo pan your GarageBand tracks 34 Polish your Logic Pro projects using Force Legato

62 Discover how to translate foreign books using your iPhone 64 How to stop people scrolling through your photos 66 Change your Home app’s wallpaper with HomePaper

macOS feature

tvOS Tutorials 84 Connect next-generation console controllers to your Apple TV

CARRY ON

WORKING FROM HOME macOS Tutorials

How to ensure that you can maintain your work demands and look after yourself when working remotely

38 Master the login/lock screen secrets on your Mac 40 The PDF-annotating secrets of the Preview app revealed 42 How to forward emails and set up vacation responses 225

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#Trending

The big story

Say hello (again) to coloured iMacs! Coloured iMacs are back! Apple has also made M1 iMac super thin and super fast APPLE HAS BROUGHT A SPLASH OF COLOUR BACK TO THE IMAC WITH A NEW SUPER-THIN 2021 MACHINE AVAILABLE IN SEVEN GORGEOUS COLOURS. The 2021 iMac also has a super-fast M1 processor a 4.5K Retina display, new camera, mics and speakers, plus it brings Apple’s Touch ID to the iMac range for the first time. “M1 is a gigantic leap forward for the Mac, and today we’re excited to introduce the all-new iMac, the first Mac designed around the breakthrough M1 chip,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing at the Spring Event launch in April. The new iMac colours – green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver – mimic the original coloured iMac that Apple launched in 1998. This time around the iMac features softer colours and thinner borders on the front to allow you to focus on your content, while the back contains the bold colour. You can choose from three models of Magic Keyboard with gorgeous aluminium enclosures that are colour-matched to the iMac as well. It’s certainly more sophisticated than the original iMac design – each iMac comes with a new power connector that attaches magnetically and a woven two-metre-long colour-matched cable. The new M1 processor has enabled Apple to make the new iMac significantly thinner at just 11.5mm thick. Enabled by the system-on-chip architecture and

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amazing power efﬁciency of M1, the logic board and thermals are dramatically consolidated and reduced in size compared to the previous generation’s, allowing the side proﬁle of iMac to be the smallest one yet. Apple claim the much more compact design reduces the volume of iMac by 50 per cent, allowing it to take up less space. With Apple claiming speed increases of 85 per cent thanks to the M1 processor, you can expect the new iMac to instantly wake from sleep and apps to launch more quickly. Apple claim you’ll be able to run hundreds of tabs at once in Safari. The new model features an expansive 24-

inch 4.5K Retina display with narrower borders and 11.3 million pixels. With a P3 wide colour gamut and over a billion colours, plus 500 nits of brightness, images are more vivid. This new display also features True Tone technology, which automatically adjusts the colour temperature as the environment changes for more natural viewing. In addition, the 4.5K Retina display on the new iMac has an industry-leading anti-reﬂective coating for greater comfort and readability. The new iMac features a brand new 1080p FaceTime HD camera which delivers high-quality video and great performance in low light. iMac also takes

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There are seven new colours to choose between if you’re looking for a new iMac…

advantage of the image signal processor in the M1 chip and the Neural Engine, enhancing camera image quality with better noise reduction, greater dynamic range, and improved auto exposure and white balance. So you’ll always look your best on a video call. To complement the camera, the new iMac features a studio-quality threemicrophone array for clearer calls and recordings, the best ever in a Mac. The mics are positioned to reduce feedback, while directional beam forming allows them to better ignore background noise and focus on your voice. As a result, conversations are more natural and

rdings are crystal clear. The new iMac features what Apple claim to be the best sound system ever in a Mac. It has two pairs of force-cancelling woofers placed side by side for an impressive bass response, while reducing unintended vibrations. Each pair is balanced with a high-performance tweeter. The result is a six-speaker sound system that produces a massive sound stage with strong bass and crystal-clear mids and highs. All of these speaker innovations, coupled with advanced algorithms, enable iMac to support spatial audio when playing video with Dolby Atmos. The new iMac could be the best yet for watching movies.

One addition to the iMac line that we’ve been waiting for is Touch ID Implemented wirelessly on Magic Keyboard, it uses a security component that communicates with Secure Enclave in M1, creating an encrypted channel to protect your fingerprint data. So if you’re making a purchase with Apple Pay, you can enjoy a faster, more secure experience. Additionally, Touch ID works with Fast User Switching, so you can change to a different user profile with just a single press of a finger. The brand new iMac is available to order now and ships in the second half of May. Prices start at £1,249.

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#Trending

New iPad Pro

Things we learned this month

Introducing AirTag

iOS news

New iOS 14.5 adds Siri features and App Tracking Transparency

Apple expands the ‘Find My’ ecosystem with AirTag Apple’s long-awaited AirTags have ﬁnally been released. Whether attached to a handbag, keys or backpack, AirTag taps into Apple’s global Find My network and can help locate a lost item, all while keeping location data private and anonymous with end-to-end encryption. AirTag can be purchased singularly or in packs of four for just £29 and £99 respectively, and are available now. Attractive leather key rings to house them are also available for £35.

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Apple has released the latest iOS 14.5 which adds AirTag support, improved Siri functions and the ability to unlock your iPhone with your Apple watch while wearing a face mask. Just glance at your Apple watch and you’ll get haptic feedback on your wrist to let you know your iPhone is unlocked. The new Siri features include more diverse voices and the ability to announce and answer incoming calls when wearing AirPods or Beats headphones. The new App Tracking Transparency requires apps to get your permission before tracking your data across apps or websites owned by other companies for advertising, or sharing their data with data brokers. Apps can prompt users for permission, which can be tracked in Settings.

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The power of the M1 comes to iPad Pro Apple has announced a brand-new iPad Pro featuring its latest M1 chip, ultra-fast 5G and a stunning 12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR display. iPad Pro now includes support for Thunderbolt and an all-new Ultra Wide front camera enables Centre Stage, a new feature that automatically keeps you perfectly framed for even more engaging video calls. “The revolutionary M1 chip has been a breakthrough for the Mac, and we’re incredibly excited to bring it to iPad Pro,”

New Apple TV

said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. The eight-core CPU design of the M1 processer features the world’s fastest CPU cores in low-power silicon – delivering up to 50 percent faster CPU performance and 40 percent faster GPU performance than the previous A12Z Bionic. The new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro is available in silver and space grey ﬁnishes and with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB memory conﬁgurations. The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at £749, and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro starts at £999.

Podcasts update

Apple unveils the next generation of Apple TV 4K

Apple introduces the premium Podcasts subscriptions model

With an all-new Siri Remote, innovative colour balance technology, and high frame rate HDR, the new Apple TV 4K just made watching your favourite shows even better. At the heart of the new Apple TV 4K is the A12 Bionic chip that provides a signiﬁcant boost in graphics performance, video decoding, and audio processing. The all-new Siri Remote features an innovative clickpad control that offers ﬁve-way d is also touch-enabled for the al swipes Apple TV users love. re are reports that the new n’t feature the accelerometer found in the previous one, and doesn’t appear in ‘Find My’ by default.

Apple has unveiled a new marketplace for premium subscriptions from your favourite podcasts, alongside the millions of free shows already available. Starting in May, you can sign up for premium subscriptions that include a variety of beneﬁts curated by creators, such as ad-free listening, access to additional content and early or exclusive access to new series. You will be able to enjoy premium subscriptions from independent voices and premier studios, including Tenderfoot TV and QCODE, to leading media and entertainment brands, including NPR and the Los Angeles Times.

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iCandy Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (1997) Released to mark Apple’s 20th birthday, the TAM featured a 250 MHz PowerPC processor, TV/FM tuner, S-Video input and a custommade Bose sound system.

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APP STORE

GOLD 100 must-have apps for your iPhone

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100 greatest iPhone apps

e all have our favourite apps. Apps that deliver our daily news, apps to work out with, apps to entertain us, apps to stay in touch with our loved ones, plus a smattering of others that have no doubt been offloaded from our iPhones through lack of use. Well now is the time to give your app sets a makeover by ditching those tired, bordering-on-obselete apps in favour of the newer, shinier stuff. Here we present the 100 best apps available for the iPhone today, including plenty of replacements for the default Apple ones.

Discogs Anyone with a slightly obsessive compulsion to collect music will love this app’s cataloguing capabilities and the way it provides a running total estimated value of your vinyl records, CDs, cassettes, etc. You can also use the app to buy and sell music.

Google Maps It seems like Apple’s own Maps app is constantly playing catchup to this navigational masterpiece. It has the most detailed, up-to-date geographic information and has honed its street view and indoor maps features to perfection. Always our go-to app for directions.

Chip

TikTok

If you find it hard to save money then this app provides an easy way to do it when you aren’t looking. It tracks your spending and then skims off a small amount based on your needs and stores it in a separate Chip account for you. It magically accumulates quickly and you can withdraw funds back at any time.

A source of much joy during the COVID-19 lockdown, TikTok allows you to capture and share your own videos easily and swipe through an endless stream of uploaded videos based on the themes you love. It’s great fun to dip into for an instant lift and can make a viral star out of anyone.

IMDb

Portal: Escape Into Nature Though better suited to larger iPad displays, Portal is nevertheless a delicious slice of escapism. Through over 40 varied scenes complete with audio, you can use this app to wind down to sleep or focus during the day.

If you love film and TV then this app is a trove of information. You can check out the top picks on what to watch, get cast information or filmographies for particular actors and read up on in-depth trivia for any film or TV series, which has won us many a pub quiz!

Widgetsmith ed widgets that could be r oa e e you have set your widgets up they can nd n enjoy some of the more basic widgetto on (£1.99/£19.49) to unlock the various seasonal themes and extras.

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100 greatest iPhone apps THE 5 BEST GAMES IN APPLE ARCADE Hot Lava A superb-looking, hi-octane first-person jumper, Hot Lava has you bounding across platforms, swinging from rails and bouncing off walls as you try to make it to the end of the assault cause levels without ever touching the molten lava floor.

Mission to Mars AR Through captivating augmented reality, this app lets you explore the red planet in glorious 3D and also take control of one of the Mars rovers and drive them around your house.

SoundCloud A social network for musicians looking to test the water with new recordings and a great place to discover new music. The interface makes it easy to find the type of music you’re passionate about and it also points you towards interesting new artists to discover before they go stratospheric.

MindMate – For a healthy brain

Sneaky Sasquatch In this enjoyable game you get to live out the life of the mythological Sasquatch. Sneak around campsites pilfering food from picnic baskets, searching for treasure, partaking in fun mini-games and avoiding those pesky ‘hoomans’.

Memory games are quite common, but few offer as much variety as MindMate. At times it almost feels like a mobile Nintendo Wii experience, the quality is that good, and so you can enjoy yourself while you improve your brain. A very clever app.

NBA 2K21 Arcade Edition Stunning to behold, NBA 2K21 lets you take to the court with the sport’s biggest names, play multiplayer with your friends and even embark on your own career mode journey to NBA legend status. The best sports sim on iOS.

Simon’s Cat – Story Time Everyone needs a decent puzzle game simmering on the back burner. Based on the popular animated series, this tile-matching puzzle game has you earning coins in order to upgrade and restore a proposed local building site to its former glory. Good fun in small doses.

Sonic Racing Even on the small screen this game takes your breath away. Race as one of the Sonic universe’s 15 most recognisable characters and then beat your opponents around the perilous tracks using an array of power-ups.

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PS Remote Play If your household TV is being used by someone then you can stream your PlayStation 4 or 5 to your iPhone or iPad through this app and then use that as the screen. It’s easy to pair the two devices but your internet speed could be an issue.

Pixelmator This powerful, full-featured, layer-based image editor lets you touch up and enhance your iOS photos, as well as sketch, paint and create advanced image compositions. It’s easy to use and well worth the £4.99 price tag.

100 greatest iPhone apps Procreate Pocket Offering hundreds of handmade brushes, a suite of artistic tools, an advanced layer system and the new Valkyrie graphics engine, this app has everything you need to create expressive sketches, rich paintings, eye-catching illustrations and beautiful animations.

Evernote – Notes Organizer Recently rebuilt from the ground up, Evernote is one of the best note-taking apps on iOS and Mac and now features the all-new ‘Home’ dashboard that provides snapshot widgets of your content, including a notes widget, scratchpad widget and recently captured content widget.

AmpliTube We have been stoic supporters of this app since it was first launched well over a decade ago. With the aid of the iRig peripheral, you can connect your electric guitar to your iPhone and make even the cheapest of planks sound like a rock golden axe thanks to the various cabs, amps and effect pedals that are p pp

Lake: Colouring Books As colouring books have become an effective way of de-stressing, this app provides a simple toolset for colouring images while the fog clears from your mind. There is much to enjoy for free but the best comes via a subscription.

David Bowie is An innovative way to enjoy art without ever leaving your home, this app takes you on an AR-infused journey through the iconic musician’s history. You can view handwritten lyrics, notes and sketches, marvel at his stage outfits in full 3D, explore an archive of images and watch all of his music videos.

Capo – Learn Music by Ear Although seasoned musicians can play back a tune on a single listen, for the rest of us we have this handy app. What it does is listen to songs or your own compositions and then identify what chords are being used. It’s a great way to help you learn new songs quickly.

Overcast A far better podcast player than Apple’s own iOS app, Overcast lets you manage your content and tailor it to your listening needs. You can boost speech to make it more defined, remove silent pauses and even speed the podcast up without distorting the audio. It also makes it much easier to find new stuff.

Ulysses If you wish to write on your iOS device then this is the best app for the job. It provides a focused writing environment, effective document management tools, seamless sync across all of your devices and flexible export options.

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100 greatest iPhone apps Cheatsheet Notes

Just Press Record

This is a handy app that places important details, like door codes, number plates, etc, within easy reach by turning them into icons on your Home screen or displaying them on your Lock screen. No more fumbling around trying to find a note.

Better than your iPhone’s native Voice Memos app, Just Press Record not only lets you record any audio, it also transcribes recorded speech for you – which is a massive bonus – and can start recording instantly by holding the app icon. It costs £4.99 but is definitely worth it.

1Blocker: Ad Blocker & Privacy

Gboard –

Once set up, this app can eradicate those bothersome cookie notices, obtrusive ads and trackers that hamper your internet enjoyment. You can enjoy some benefits for free but the full package is recommended.

Duolingo – Language Lessons

Keyboard If you use Google as your preferred search engine then this is an effective all-in-one app that incorporates easy typing and searching by placing everything within easy reach. Many of its feature have now been incorporated into iOS, but it’s a good place to get the hottest new typing features first.

MindNode – Mind Map This app helps you capture and map your thoughts to create a clear picture of your idea. Your initial idea sits centrally and then every thought branches off from it. Great for o t your maps in a range of formats.

Although apps such as Apple’s own Translate reduce the need to learn new languages outright, some of us still like the more personal approach of communicating, and for that this fun, free app helps you learn over 35 different languages. Duolingo’s approach of applying the learning process to a ga in tra of m

Golf Pad: Golf GPS & Scorecard If you play golf, then select

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If you’re struggling to honour New Year resolutions or just need a little extra motivation to complete daily tasks then this app lets you track up to 12 things ranging from exercise to eradicating bad habits.

Moleskine Studio

2 This app is essentially a

This feature-packed n hand. can onic along

to. Expensive, but worth it.

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100 greatest iPhone apps Fantastical Far superior to Apple’s own Calendar app, Fantastical features a lavish interface, complete with your daily schedule, weather forecasts and a vast database of fun and informative calendars that you can subscribe to.

THE 5 BEST iPHONE FITNESS APPS Zombies, Run! What better motivation to run for faster and longer is there than being chased by in in ad to

Strava: Run & Ride Training The go-to app for millions of athletes, runners and

LastPass Password Manager Keychain is all well and good for storing your online passwords, but what if you want to access them outside of the Apple eco-system? This app stores your passwords securely for times of need and even lets you share them with other people easily.

Libby Instead of purchasing ebooks and audiobooks, why not try borrowing them from your local library? Through Libby you can access your library with your account number and pin and then borrow and j y

cy an p activities can be also be exported to the iOS Health app.

MyFitnessPal A healthy diet is essential to your overall fitness, and this app can play a big part in that. With a food database of over six million items, plus a built-in barcode scanner, you can easily find what you intend to eat and then catalogue and monitor your calorie intake.

Tunity: Hear any muted TV Have you ever wanted to listen to the football commentary in the pub but can’t hear it over the noise? With this app you can point your iPhone at the TV, scan it, and then get the TV audio streamed straight to your iPhone.

Kickstarter If you have money to spare then why not invest it in new creative projects that you’re passionate about? You can help get new albums recorded, books published and much more. Get involved and track the progress through this simple easy-to-use app.

Workouts This app can be used to create personalised workouts that can be done at home or at the gym, based on the equipment that you have, the muscles that you want to target and the required duration. It works brilliantly with Apple Watch too.

Couch to 5K Runner If you’re looking to start getting fit then you can ease yourself in with an app like this. It helps you alternate between running and walking via a voice coach and it gradually ups the ante over eight weeks.

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100 greatest iPhone apps THE 5 BEST MOBILE STREAMING APPS Netflix An obvious choice we know, but Netflix sports masses of quality content, a slick interface and some cool features geared towards making your viewing experience as pleasurable as possible, such as skipping the intro sequences of the shows that you’re currently binge-watching. Your best friend in lockdown.

Disney+ Worth the entry fee for The Mandalorian alone, this app also provides a means of enjoying the latest Marvel related films and TV shows and gives you instant access to every episode of The Simpsons. It also includes robust parental controls for younger viewers.

Crunchyroll Crunchyroll lets you stream from the world’s largest library of anime films and TV shows and its premium package even gives you access to the very latest episodes, one hour after they air in Japan. There are plenty of gems to discover and enjoy here.

BBC iPlayer Whatever you’re into – documentaries, music, light entertainment or classic comedy, the BBC has it in abundance on its catchup streaming service. For essential content, also check out the All 4 app, but don’t bother with ITV Hub or My5!

YouTube It would be mad not to feature the world’s most popular streaming service in this collection. It offers the most comprehensive compendium of videos under the sun and is many a person’s first port of call for entertainment.

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Citymapper: All Your Transport As we crawl out of lockdown, and with international travel still off the agenda, city breaks could be the way forward, which is where this app could come in handy. It helps you navigate many of the world’s most bustling cities easily either by foot or public transport.

Drum Pad Machine – Beat Maker Perfect for when melodic inspiration strikes and you fancy tapping out a new drum rhythm, this app features a colourful set of pads to help you bash out your beats. It features a range of musical styles and full recording and sharing capabilities.

Waze Live Traffic An essential app for motorists, Waze sources the best route to your destination, avoiding accidents, roadworks and anything else that is likely to delay you and will even find you the cheapest fuel along the way too.

CARROT Weather As well as using Dark Sky’s super-accurate weather data, this app also adds personality. Just choose how you would like the app to behave (from Professional to Overkill) and you can get your daily reports with an e t a do op o att tude.

Things 3 If Apple’s own Reminders app isn’t powerful enough to handle all of your to-dos then this award-winning task management app could be for you. At £9.99, it’s quite expensive, but the way in which you can break down your to-dos into smaller steps is very appealing.

Dropbox: Cloud Storage, Backup Useful to have in addition to iCloud, Dropbox lets you back up your photos and videos, access your stored content from any device and easily share files with other people. A reliable cloud storage option.

100 greatest iPhone apps Rightmove property search

Star Walk

If you’re looking to buy or rent a property then Rightmove’s app leads the way in terms of househunting. You can browse properties in the area and set your own criteria, plus you can view floor plans of the houses and, in some cases, even take a virtual tour. If you’re relocating then this app provides all of the info you need to scout the housing market in any given area, and it’s very clean and easy to use. Of course, kicking back and browsing virtual property porn is also good!

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delegating housework.

Using AR, this app lets you explore the night sky in vivid detail. With iPhone in hand, you can go out and identify thousands of stars and constellations, track celestial bodies in real-time and even travel through time.

Primephonic – Classical Music This subscription-based service helps you discover classical music and learn more about composers responsible. It includes access to 24-bit lossless music files, playlists that go way beyond the obvious, a d uc o e.

Onion Browser The original free and opensource web browser allows you to surf the internet with more safety and privacy than Safari currently offers thanks to Tor-powered user anonymity.

OpenTable: Restaurant Bookings Using comprehensive filters, you can search from over 52K restaurants around the world, browse menus, read reviews and book tables. It’s a great way to discover the best eateries and makes it easy to find those that specialise in your a ou te cu s e.

100 greatest iPhone apps Twitch: Live Game Streaming The place for hardcore gamers, Twitch lets you watch live gaming streams from around the world, converse with fellow game-addicts and even host your own gaming live stream. It’s a great place to discover more about the games you are passionate about.

Essential Anatomy 5 There is a reason why this is the world’s most used medical study and reference app. With more than 8,200 3D models of human anatomy that you can explore in stunning detail, plus an intuitive interface and masses of information, it’s the gold standard in medical apps.

Airbnb As has been proved, Airbnb is win-win all round; holiday makers can enjoy nice places to stay and home owners can earn some coin while they’re away from home. This app lets you find and book the perfect accommodation and, if you’re a host, manage your bookings and share your availability.

TIDAL Music The music streaming app for audiophiles, TIDAL features over 70 million audio tracks in lossless, high fidelity, MQA and immersive sound formats such as Dolby Atmos and 360 Reality Audio. If you have a state-of-the-art sound system at home then this is the service you need to do it justice.

Slack This app lets you stay in touch with your work colleagues, providing a quick way of communicating and collaborating remotely, which has proved hugely beneficial to millions during the COVID-19 lockdown. The clean interface is easy to use and you can also make and take calls in-app.

BBC Sounds An all-in-one entertainment app, BBC Sounds lets you listen to your favourite BBC radio stations live, catch-up on any shows you’ve missed, listen to BBC podcasts and even send tracks you like to Spotify or Apple Music. A tidy app that’s rich in content.

Trainline: Buy train tickets When normal, post-COVID service resumes, the need to book train tickets for regular commuting or occasional journeys will arise. This app lets you check train times and purchase your tickets, taking away any undue hassle at the station.

My Tamagotchi Forever About 30,000 years ago (in youth years) in 1999, Bandai launched the Tamagotchi, a digital virtual pet on a keychain that you could hatch from an egg and raise into a fully-grown creature. They proved more distracting than an actual pet and, in Japan at least, creches were established to care for these things while the owners were at work, doing adult jobs. Well now they’re back. In this cute app, the Tamagotchis are significantly more advanced than how we remember them. They inhabit a town, can do more things and are a lot more fun to have around. Just don’t allow the notifications or they’ll be bothering you all day long.

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100 greatest iPhone apps Camera+ 2 The sequel to an already powerful photo editing suite, Camera+ 2 does way more than the default iOS Photos app, such as allowing you to fine-tune your images with an advanced set of editing tools and then set up capture presets to apply to other images. It also lets you g

edjing Mix – DJ Mixer App This app transforms your iPhone into a portable DJ mixing booth by allowing you to import tracks from Apple Music, Soundcloud and other sources and add awesome new effects and samples to remix them to your own flavour. It requires a subscription but is very worth it.

THE 5 BEST APPS FOR SAVING THE WORLD My Footprint This app challenges you to reduce your carbon footprint by turning your everyday actions, such as travelling, eating and generally consuming power into tasks that you can track and also providing plenty of help and insight into how you can live a greener life.

Wordpress If you want to set up and manage your own simple website then Wordpress has for long been the go-to service. This app allows you to do all of that on your iPhone, making it incredibly easy to update your sites on the move and give your visitors the up-to-the-minute content that they crave.

Clips This is one of Apple’s own apps that doesn’t come as part of iOS on your iPhone, but it’s well worth downloading. You can use Clips to make quick videos, using simple drag and pinch gestures to add smooth pan and zoom animations and layering on loads of fun effects. Perfect for e p ess g you se .

PayPal This app is an essential tool for securely transferring money quickly and easily. You can send funds to friends, request cash and buy and sell items effortlessly by scanning QR codes. In an increasingly cashless society, the PayPal app is the leading light.

what3words This app is useful in so many ways. By pinpointing your location to three square meters (every square is assigned three unique words), it makes it easy to accurately share with other people, like the emergency services, for example.

Trees Everyday With this app you can offset your carbon footprint by planting trees. How? By setting up an account, choosing a location to plant and then reading, watching or answering questions from affiliated green-thinking companies.

Giki Badges Whether you care about climate change, avoiding toxic chemicals or animal welfare, this app allows you to scan thousands of UK supermarket products to see if they are sustainable, healthy and fair, and also earn fun achievements for making changes for the better.

Ecosia As many of us browse the internet every day, why not turn your searches into trees by switching to this browser? Like other search engines, Ecosia makes money from search ads, but it then uses this money to fund the mass planting of trees where nature and people need them the most.

Green Kitchen If you want to phase the meat out of your life and switch to a healthier diet then this app is packed full of enticing recipes to make the transition easier. You’ll never be stuck for inspiration and the recipes include shopping lists.

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100 greatest iPhone apps THE 5 BEST APPS FOR LEARNING STUFF Twinkl Little Red Coding Club This brilliant app teaches the building blocks of coding through a fully immersive AR and 3D gaming experience. It supports up to four players (two active, two passive) and is a great learning tool for children.

PictureThis – Plant Identifier With so many beautiful flowers around our green and pleasant land, shouldn’t we at least know their names? With this app launched, you can simply take a picture of the plant in question and get it identified. It also provides expert gardening tips and insight.

Dig Up History This app harnesses the power of augmented reality to turn anywhere into a dinosaur museum. Perfect for capturing the imagination of young children, you can dig for virtual bones in your garden and turn them into a fully-formed skeletons.

Smart Bird ID (Europe) Their soothing (and at times torturous, depending on how early it is) song is all around us, so why not find out which birds are making what cacophony with this handy app? It will listen out for the sounds and get a match in seconds.

Barefoot World Atlas Is your geography severely lacking? Can’t tell one country’s flag from a flannel? Then use this app to enhance your knowledge. It teaches you what’s where, fascinating facts about each country and more.

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Readly – Magazines & Newspapers For a subscription fee, you can access and read thousands of magazines and newspapers from all around the world on your iPhone. g physical turning of a page for a swipe across the screen, but it’s a great way to get plenty of insightful and inspiring content from an expanse of different publications for little outlay. The reading interface is simple yet effective and you can also search for keywords across all to read about.

Royal Mail This app makes sending e. You can buy postage, generate labels to print out or create a QR code that your local post office can scan and print. Of course, you can also use the app to track any parcels that you post and use an AR Parcel Sizer to calculate the size.

Fender Guitar Tuner It makes perfect sense for guitar players to have a tuning app to hand and this is the one we use. It includes manual or auto-tune modes and also a chromatic mode that helps you tune any note on the scale. It also lets you access preset tunings and create your own custom tunings.

Kindle A good alternative to Apple’s own Books app, Kindle allows you to do everything that reading app can, and much more besides. Unique features include X-Ray, Whispersync, Page Flip and flashcards – which are particularly useful for students studying a particular book. Download it for free now!

Currency Converter Plus When you need to convert a currency it is likely that you are in a hurry and this is where this app comes in. You can quickly select the two currencies at the top, enter an amount and immediately see the result. It’s also co t ua y updated.

100 greatest iPhone apps Big Bang AR You have to try this app to believe it! Using AR, it lets you understand the beginnings of the universe from the palm of your hand, and it will use your hand via the camera as the hub for all of the educational visuals it presents.

WhatsApp Messenger

Halide Mark II – Pro Camera

If you haven’t got this installed already then you must be mad. It provides a simple and secure means of group-chatting with your friends and lets you make free voice and video calls whenever and wherever. Simply a must-have.

Though only free for seven days, time spent with this app will convince you to subscribe. It’s a camera app that features a gorgeous interface, advanced editing tools, and employs one-handed gestures to change exposures and manually focus. It also supports ProRAW format.

marketplace – buy & sell Still the best all-round service for selling unwanted items finding sought-after collector’s items, eBay makes it easy to buy and sell goods and employs filter and alert systems to never miss an item.

HYPEBEAST This app offers daily news and unique content on fashion, art, design, music ydigestible manner. Keen to know about the latest pair of limited edition Adidas trainers? This is the app for you.

Footpath Route Planner This app should be much better known than it already is. With millions of people around the world using Google Maps to get around on foot this solution is arguably easier to use and with many more options to create your own routes.

Tom Cat Okay, we admit, we lost a bet and so had to include this one. In case you aren’t familiar with Talking Tom, he’s a virtual cartoon cat that repeats what you say and can be interacted with for all kinds of shenanigans. Kids absolutely love him.

Grammarly – Editor If you’re one of those nd emails being grammatically perfect, then al keyboard that can be used across all of your apps when typing.

Video Star This app lets you create eos d make them really pop. When you consider the h pp’s simplicity really takes the p***!

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Photos Developer Apple Inc Difﬁculty

Time needed

Create miniature photography with the magic of your iPhone Learn how to creatively shoot and process toys to make them look full-size with these useful tricks…

ne way to create eye-catching content on your social media feeds is to shoot scale models (or toys) in such a way that they look like full size objects. If you do it right people will be intrigued to know the actual size of the subjects in your shots. For a successful miniature shoot you need to avoid snapping the subject from a high angle. To shoot a small object you’ll be tempted to get close to it, resulting in a sharp looking toy against a blurred background. This background blur (bokeh) gives the game away that the subject is a scale model. We’ll give you some shooting tips to make your toys look full size.

Shoot your models in real locations so that the lighting and shadows on the toys matches their surroundings

How to shoot miniatures Make toys look like full size subjects

Knowledge base Dematerialise Shoot your model from a tripodmounted iPhone, remove the model and shoot the clean background. You can then use an app such as Photoshop to mix between the two shots and create a cool-looking, semitransparent teleporting subject for your sci-fi scenes.

Go wide By shooting a toy using an iPhone’s Ultra Wide lens you can create a larger sense of perspective. The Ultra Wide (0.5x) lens uses a narrower aperture which enables you to get foreground and background toys in focus.

Go low Super silhouettes By placing our model subjects with the sun directly behind them we can create a silhouette effect that helps disguise the fact that they are five-inch toy figures. This composition also creates more dramatic lighting.

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By placing your model subjects on a high surface such as a wall you can shoot them from a low angle. This helps mimic the eyelevel angle that we use when photographing full size subjects such as people.

Terrific tints The Tint slider is designed to reduce the presence of green or magenta tints. You can use it creatively to add a sunset look by pushing the slider to the right.

Creative Photos Step-by-step

Shoot and edit scale photography

Choose an angle

From a high angle, toys look like toys – as we see here. Find a wall so that you can capture your models from ‘ground’ level. A low angle gives them an ‘eye level’ look.

Lighting

Increase Vibrance

A combination of ultra wide angle lens and low angle viewpoint helps create a bigger sense of perspective in your compositions. A rear light source helps, too.

Increase Contrast to 0.25 to emphasise the shape of the silhouetted toys against the sky. Push Vibrance to 0.30 to boost the strength of typical landscape colours.

Not too close

Import Raw file

Tweak the tint

The iPhone 12 Pro Max’s 5.1mm wide angle lens uses a wide f1.6 aperture that causes the distant police box to look out of focus. This blur gives the game away.

We snapped our shot in Apple ProRAW format, enabling us to adjust the image without compression artefacts. File>Import our supplied Model.DNG file into Photos.

Toggle open the White Balance panel and set the drop-down menu to Temperature/Tint. Drag the slider to 27.00 to add a magenta tint to the shot.

Stay sharp

Brilliant technique

Moody vignette

By using the iPhone’s ultra wide 1.54mm angle we can have a narrower aperture of f2.4, creating a less shallow depth of field, and keeping the image in focus.

Go to Edit>Adjust tools. Drag the Brilliance slider up to 0.50 to simultaneously reveal more colour and texture in the sky and illuminate more midtone detail.

Open the Vignette panel and increase the Strength slider to 0.50 to add a sense of mystery as the edges darken. A Radius of 0.60 makes the shadows encroach more.

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iMovie Developer Apple Inc

Produce better sounding audio in your iMovie projects Discover how improve your sound by creating a handy wireless microphone using your AirPods and an iPhone

Difﬁculty

Time needed

15 Download available

hen recording a handheld selfie your footage will sound great. However, if you record yourself talking to the camera from a distance then the audio may sound very poor, especially in a windy location. By recording audio from an Apple AirPod into an iPhone you can capture clearer, wind-free audio, then use iMovie to replace the distant tripod-mounted camcorder’s poor quality sound with the iPhone’s clearer audio track. In effect, your iPhone becomes a wireless radio mic. We tried out this technique in a windy Scottish location and you can download and work with our example footage and audio in iMovie.

Did you know that you can use your AirPods as a handy wireless mic?

Sync sound tracks Replace poor sound with a better quality version Poor quality

Access the EQ By clicking here we can give the ‘flat’ AirPod recorded sound more impact by choosing the Bass Boost preset.

The audio recorded on our tripodmounted video recorder suffers from wind noise. The walking subject is far less audible when he moves further away from the camera.

Knowledge base Stay steady

In sync

AirPod to iPhone

Here we’ve synced up the tripod-mounted camera’s sound with the AirPod’s audio track. We then reduced the volume of the camera’s sound to zero to replace it with the better quality AirPod sourced sound.

By using an Apple AirPod we can capture audio onto an iPhone in our pocket via the Voice Memos app. This gives us the ability to capture clear and consistent quality sound from a distance and in windy locations.

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The DJO OM 4 stabiliser ships with a mini tripod. This enables you to place the gimbal on the ground so your iPhone can track you as you walk around. If the OM 4 is too expensive for your budget (at £139) you could consider the static Manfrotto Pixi Smart tripod with phone clamp which will set you back around £40.

Creative iMovie Step-by-step

Sync audio and video

Set up AirPods

Connect your AirPods to the iPhone in your pocket. In the Control Centre, turn on Do Not Disturb to stop incoming phone calls from interrupting your voice recording.

Sync sound

Drag the zoom slider right. Put the playhead at the footage’s clap. Drag the green auto bar to match the iPhone clap’s waveform peak with the footage’s clap.

Step-by-step

Record voice

Drop the volume

Open the Voice Memos app and press Record. Set your camcorder recording. Clap your hands to create a sync point on the iPhone and camcorder’s audio tracks.

Drag the video clip’s volume control bar to zero to remove the wind sound. Play the clip. You can now hear the clearer synced AirPod recorded iPhone sound instead.

Import assets

Enhance sound

Action!

Open iMovie. Browse to import our supplied video and audio tracks. Drag the ‘Main Footage’ clip into the timeline and play it. The wind noise makes the sound unusable.

The AirPod’s sound is quite ‘flat’. Click on the green audio bar. Click the Equaliser icon above the viewer. Set the Equalizer drop down to ‘Bass Boost’ for better sound.

Using a gimble

with a gimble To record yourself talking to the camera from a distance you can pop your iPhone on a tripod for some stability. For even more control, we placed our iPhone onto a DJI OM 4 gimbal. We then used the DJI Mimo iOS app to make the gimbal tilt and pan to track our every move. This set-up makes our footage look like we have a more professional standard camera operator on hand, so we don’t need to worry about accidentally walking out of shot, for example. Heres how the DJI set-up works…

Use a gimbal

Here the DJI Osmo’s magnetic mount is clamping our iPhone to the gimbal. We launched the DJI Mimo app and set it to Follow & Shoot mode, enabling us to use gesture controls for recording remotely.

We set the Voice Memos app to record on the iPhone in our pocket so it would capture the AirPod’s sound. By making a ‘V’ gesture we then triggered the separate gimbal-mounted iPhone to follow and record.

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Final Cut Pro Developer Apple Inc Difﬁculty

Time needed

15 Download available

Create captivating POV shots in Final Cut Pro How to master the drag and drop effects to create a range of cool ‘point of view’ shots in your Final Cut Pro projects

n TV and film, we often see the action unfold from the protagonist using a POV (point of view) shot. We might view the action through the lens of an SLR camera, or in a wildlife documentary we could see a POV shot from the multi–faceted eyes of a bee flying in search of flowers. You could create graphical components for various POV shots in Photoshop, but Final Cut has a comprehensive collection of drag and drop effects that you can easily modify to customise their look and behaviour. Postproduction POV effects tell a story in an interesting visual way and add an extra layer of texture to your programme’s footage.

Video effects Add and modify effects Keyframes

Add a host of customisable (and in some instances animatable) properties using post-production effects

Working with layers Video effects produce different looks depending on how they are stacked. By placing Handheld above the SLR effect we can make the video clip shake while the SLR overlay remains static, replicating what we’d see when looking though the lens.

Click the diamond-shaped ‘Add a keyframe’ icon to record the position of the slider at a particular point in the timeline. After moving the playhead and adjusting the slider again, a new keyframe is automatically set. The slider will then move between the keyframes.

Knowledge base POV source footage To shoot the urban skyline for our CCTV effect we panned a handheld iPhone 12 Pro Max. The iPhone’s built-in stabilisation created a smooth pan that was similar to one produced by a CCTV camera’s mechanism. We shot the bee’s POV handheld too. By shooting in SloMo the footage looks much smoother.

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Editable properties

Effects browser

After you add an effect to a clip you can adjust a range of properties in the appropriate panel of the Video Inspector. With the SLR effect you can adjust the focus and trigger the camera’s aperture, for example.

Click here to summon the Effects browser. You can search for specific effects by typing into the text field. Alternatively, narrow down your search by clicking on a themed category such as Nostalgia or Stylize.

Creative Final Cut Pro Step-by-step

Mimic a range of POV shots

Import clips

Import our supplied clips to a new Event. Drag Bee and BeePOV to the timeline. Go to Distortion on the Effects browser and drag Insect Eye onto the BeePOV clip.

Add water

In focus

Customise the camera name and date. Drag ‘Water Pane’ onto the clip (from Distortion). In the Inspector, drag Water Pane above the Security effect.

Move the playhead to 17:00 in the timeline. Click the Defocus attribute’s ‘Add a keyframe’ icon. Scrub forward to 18:00. Reduce the Defocus to 0.

Curve the view

Add some SLR

Take a snap

In Video Inspector, select ‘Insect Eye’ and drag Amount to 40 for a denser pattern. Add the Fisheye effect to the clip. Set Amount to -12 and Radius to 0.25.

Add the DSLR clip to the timeline. Go to Stylize in the Effects browser and drag the SLR effect onto the clip. This adds graphics such as a retro SLR camera’s focus ring.

Put the playhead at 18:19. Click the Take Picture attribute’s ‘Add a keyframe’ icon. Scrub to 18:28. Drag the Take Picture slider to 100. Scrub to 18:40. Set Take Picture to 0.

CCTV

Set keyframe

Handheld

Add CCTV. From the Effects browser’s Nostalgia category, drag ‘Security’ onto the clip. Increase Amount to curve the lens. Increase Vignette to darken the edges.

The SLR effect can be animated in the Inspector. Place the playhead at the beginning of the DSLR clip. Set Defocus to 20. Click the ‘Add a keyframe’ icon.

To emphasise the photographer’s POV, drag the Handheld effect onto the DSLR clip. In the Inspector drag Handheld above the SLR effect.

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Garage Band Developer Apple Inc Difﬁculty

Time needed

12-20

Learn how to stereo pan your GarageBand tracks Using stereo panning, you can push audio left and right to achieve interesting effects and widen the sound

egardless of how you record, GarageBand works in stereo, so every track you work with has a left and right channel to position the sound. Playback is then split across stereo speakers to provide a more panoramic listening experience. Track audio is balanced down the middle – but left and right panning controls can vary this. Stereo panning is a crucial mixing technique that can give audio more impact. It can be automated to make audio ‘move’ and enhance the expressiveness of your music. Here, we look at using automation to ‘bounce’ a track’s output left to right, as well as tips on using panning to create a more rounded mix.

You can add a little ‘bounce’ to your tracks with stereo panning…

Panning Points Picking out the GarageBand controls that matter most to adjusting stereo output Pan knobs Found in each track header, these set the left/right stereo balance for each track. Defaulting to zero (0), you can tweak them to set a static state or watch them move when using automation.

Curve points By adding points to the pan automation curve we can adjust the stereo balance. Simply drag a point up or down to pull the curve stereo left or right and pan the track audio accordingly.

Knowledge base Static panning You can use the panning knobs within each track header to manually set a static pan state. This is an important technique for mixing your song and pushing instrument tracks either side of vocals and drums. For example, if you have two complimentary guitar parts, try setting one at -25 (left) and the other at +25 (right) to broaden the sound and add space.

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Pan automation Pan plugins Certain plugins relating to stereo ‘imaging’ are available. Here you can see the Direction Mixer active within the Plugins inspector that has direction (angle) and spread parameters for positioning the stereo audio.

The green automation curve denotes the track’s left/right stereo pan. It starts from wherever the pan knob is initially set – usually zero (0) – and allows us to fully automate panning across a desired duration.

Creative GarageBand Step-by-step

Pan track audio with automations

Sonic boom

We start with an open project containing at least one track. For illustration we have the ‘Jet Flying’ special effect loop, track four of a Top Gun-style song we’re making.

Two points

So for example, setting the Pan knob all left (-64), click the line to add a point. We’ll drag this first one to just where the audio starts, then add another at the end.

Step-by-step

Show automations

Full tilt

With your track soloed for preview, click Mix>Show Automation (A). In the track header, click the Automation Parameter popup menu and select the ‘Pan’ option.

Click and drag the second point, pulling it right down to the bottom. This creates a smooth diagonal line moving the track pan from fully left to fully right (+63) as shown.

Pan knob

Stereo shift

Plugin presets

This shows the green Pan automation curve over the track. This default midpoint is set at zero (0), which will move up (left) or down (right) if you adjust the Pan knob.

Press Play (spacebar) to preview. With stereo speakers you will hear the track output shift gradually from one side to the other and provide that horizontal sense of movement.

Direction Mixer

How to pan using a plugin There is also a plugin you can use for applying certain stereo pans to your projects. This is called Direction Mixer and it boasts some factory profiles for adding left and right pans to a track. Of course, you could also automate this if you wish, but here we’ll show where to find it and apply either pan. Start off by showing the track Smart Controls (B) and, in the Track Inspector, find the plugins area, where we’ll click to show the plugin selection pop-up. Now simply follow these easy steps to try out this technique for yourself.

Direction mixer

Click an empty slot of the Plugins stack and hover down to the Imaging section of the menu. Here, you’ll find the Direction Mixer plugin, which we’ll click to select and add to show the plugin’s settings window.

The Direction Mixer plugin has direction and spread parameters, offering control over stereo panning with manual tweaks to sliders. If you want quick Pan Left/Right settings then pick either preset from the dropdown above.

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Polish your Logic Pro projects using Force Legato

Logic Pro Developer Apple Inc

Learn how to smooth out your MIDI parts and eradicate gaps with Logic Pro’s Force Legato feature

Difﬁculty

ogic’s piano roll editor is an absolute tour de force when it comes to programming MIDI parts, but editing MIDI notes by hand, one at a time, can be a somewhat time-consuming process. For instance, what if you’ve recorded a part using your MIDI keyboard and want to find a way to quickly join all the notes up together? This is known as legato playing, where the notes all flow smoothly into one another without gaps in between, and is typically used for string and pad parts. To avoid having to change all the note lengths individually by hand, Logic has a timesaving feature known as Force Legato that can close up the gaps for you in the blink of an eye.

Time needed

Smooth out gaps and polish your tracks with Force Legato…

Feel the force Smooth things out with Force Legato

problem Because it extends each note until the start of the next detected note, you can sometimes use Force Legato to mimic the effect of a sustain pedal.

Menu diving The Force Legato feature is also accessible via Logic’s main Edit window. Select Edit>Trim and choose one of the two lowermost options.

Knowledge base

All tied up

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Local source

Short shift

Another way to get to the feature is through the piano roll window’s local Edit menu. Click Edit>Trim and choose your preferred option.

The fastest way to bring up the Force Legato dialogue is to use the shift+\ key command after selecting the required notes.

Legato in Italian literally means ‘tied together’, so the instruction on a musical score is telling the player to play the notes smoothly in a connected way. So the function of the Force Legato feature in Logic is literally to eradicate the gaps between the notes, tying them together either by extending notes that are too short or shortening ones that overlap.

Creative Logic Pro Step-by-step

Using Logic’s Force Legato function

Take a note

To start off, create an empty MIDI region on a new MIDI track in Logic. Open the piano roll editor and right-click to create a note slightly shorter than one bar in length.

Mind the gap

Keep

Ctrl+click one of the notes and choose the ‘Trim Note End to Following Notes’ option. This closes the gap between the notes but also lengthens the last note.

Here, Logic correctly detects the chords and a window appears saying ‘Some overlapped notes appear like chords’. Press ‘Keep’ to preserve chords and close gaps.

Copy that

Second trim

Smoothed out

Duplicate the note to create a second note of the same length, but at a different pitch. Place the new note on the downbeat of bar 2, so that there’s a gap between notes.

The alternative menu option is ‘Trim Note End to Selected’, which does the same, but only closes gaps between notes that are selected, leaving the last note unaffected.

All the notes in the chords have now snapped out to a uniform length to fill the gaps. When played back, the transitions between the chords are noticeably legato!

Select notes

Chord in the act

Shorten

The idea behind Force Legato is to close up the gap between notes. First, draw a selection rectangle around both notes, or use the cmd+A shortcut to select them all.

Now let’s try it with some chords. Here we’ve got a set of four chords playing a Rhodes part, but currently the gaps between the notes are various random sizes.

The feature is also useful if you have a part that contains notes that are overly long, or overlapping the start of the following note. To fix this, choose the ‘Shorten’ option.

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System Preferences Developer Apple Inc Difﬁculty

Time needed

Master the login/lock screen on your Mac Customise the login/lock screen and add or remove features and information. Make it more secure, more useful

ou probably never thought about the login/lock screen on the Mac. It is what it is and there isn’t any way to change it. It just works. Well, actually there is a lot you can do with this screen and you can make it more secure or more user friendly. There are many settings and options and you can add information to it, like a message for anyone that starts your Mac. For example, you could put ownership details there. You can hide all the users of the Mac, including yourself, for security. In case you forget your password, you can set it to show hints that will help you remember it. Here we explore all the options.

Step-by-step

Customise the login/lock screen

Use fast startup

Go to System Preferences>Users & Groups>Login Options. Select a user and when the Mac is powered on it goes straight to the desktop – convenient, but insecure.

Extra login security

Normally a list of users appears on the login/lock screen, but with ‘Name and password’ there are none. It offers more security, but try not to lock yourself out!

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You can set your Mac to show you useful password hints, if you forget it

Boost login security

Passwords and pictures

Select ‘Name and password’ to hide users of the Mac for extra security. You are asked to enter a name shown on the left. Write them down exactly as they are.

Select your account in the list on the Password tab. Click ‘Change Password’ if you think someone knows it or could guess it. Click ‘Edit’ on the picture to change it.

Test the settings

Choose a photo

Turn on all features by ticking the checkboxes, then select ‘Lock Screen’ on the Apple menu. All windows and apps remain open. The ‘Log Out’ option closes them.

Select a picture for your account shown on the login/lock screen. Pick one of these, select a photo from the Photos library or select ‘Camera’ to take a photo of yourself.

macOS System Preferences

Get help We wouldn’t normally suggest clicking the help button in the bottom right corner, but in this case, it is a good idea. Read through it before changing anything and don’t lock yourself out!

Automatic login If your Mac is kept in a secure place and you are sure no-one can access it, select your user name in this list to bypass the login screen and the Mac goes straight to the desktop.

iMAC PLEASE!

Show password hints If you are likely to forget your password, turn on this option to enable a hint, something that reminds you what it is. However, it could help a hacker or thief to guess your password.

Knowledge base Use password hints

Convenience vs security ’List of users’ makes logging in easier by showing the names of user accounts: click a user and enter a password. ‘Name and password’ is more secure because a thief must guess both.

Lock after sleep

Go to System Preferences>Security & Privacy. Select the option to require a password after sleep or the screen saver and set a time. The login/lock screen is shown.

Show a message

Tick ‘Show a message when the screen is locked’ and enter any text you want, like how to return the Mac if it’s lost or stolen, ownership details and so on.

We looked at showing password hints to help you remember a password if you forgot it, but where do the hints come from? The option is available only when changing your password. Change it to something else and change it back again if necessary. Go to System Preferences>Users & Groups, select your account and ‘Change Password‘.

Show/hide notifications

Go to System Preferences>Notifications. Apps can show notifications on the lock screen. Do you want reminders and emails to appear on your locked Mac?

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Preview Developer Apple Inc

Preview PDF annotation secrets revealed There is more to annotating PDF files than you may realise. Make use of these great Preview features

Difﬁculty

Time needed

Step-by-step

review is a handy multi-function tool that can be used for a variety of tasks. Its main one is for marking up things, and here we look at its features and functions for annotating PDF files. Many documents and books are available in PDF file format – there are 78 million at pdfdrive.com, for example. As you read, you might want to make notes, highlight important sections and even draw on them. Preview can do all of these activities, and is perfect for reading and annotating PDFs. Although some features are obvious, some are not. We look at less known features, like the annotation inspector panel.

Annotate a PDF ebook or document

Select a tool

It is tempting to select text, go to Tools> Annotate and apply a highlight or underline. Don’t; select the tool first, then click and drag over text. It is a drawing tool.

Place, view notes

Click outside the note to shrink it to a small tile, and drag it to wherever you want to place it in the document. Let the mouse hover over a note tile to read the note.

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Who needs a paid-for pro tool when you have the free Preview app already installed on your Mac?

Effects on effects

View annotations

Apply multiple effects to the same or different parts of the document. Use ‘Highlight Text’, then return to the Annotate options, and click ‘Rectangle’.

Go to View>Highlights and Notes to see annotations in the sidebar. Different types of annotation are shown using colours. Double-click one to go there.

Create a note

Add speech bubbles

Sometimes you might want to create notes and store them in the PDF. Click Tools> Annotate>Note to open a note window in the PDF. It’s ugly, but type your note in.

Highlights don’t explain, and notes are hidden, so a speech bubble can be useful. Select Tools>Annotate>Speech Bubble. Double-click inside it, add text and format it.

macOS Preview

Master PDF annotation

Annotations Inspector

Learn all the tricks for annotating PDFs

Press cmd+I to open the Inspector and select the Annotations tab. It has more features than the sidebar, click an annotation and press backspace to remove it, for example. Drag headings to rearrange columns.

Browse annotations Go to the View menu and show the ‘Highlights and Notes’ sidebar to see a list of all your annotations and what page they are on. Jump to any annotation by clicking it in the sidebar.

Knowledge base Annotations compatibility If annotations are added to a PDF document or eBook, are they preserved when the PDF is passed on to someone else? Are annotations visible in other PDF readers? The answer is yes to both questions. You can annotate a PDF on the Mac, share it with someone else, even non-Mac users, and the annotations will all be visible.

Step-by-step

Colours and styles

Add notes

Use colour to differentiate topics or reasons why a word or sentence is highlighted. Highlight text, ctrl+click it and select a colour. Add underline or strike through with the icons on the right.

Select any highlight in the list and click below to enter notes for it. Use the Annotations Inspector to quickly add notes to all the items you highlighted. Shared documents show the annotation creator.

Using the inspe tor

Use Annotations Inspector Open the Tools menu and select ‘Show Inspector’ to open a floating window that has several tabs. The last icon in the toolbar switches to the Annotations Inspector, and this lists all the annotations that have been added to the PDF document or ebook. At first sight, it looks a bit like the Highlights and Notes sidebar we saw earlier, but it has more features and functions. Keep it open when annotating your next PDF document, as it is very useful.

Navigate and delete

The Annotations Inspector shows all the annotations, the page they are on, type and colour. Click one, then use the keyboard up and down keys to move through the list. Press backspace to remove an annotation.

Notes and columns

Select an annotation like a highlight or underline, and double-click the space below. Enter notes, and add more notes the same way. Click and drag column headers to re-order, and drag column separators to resize.

225

Mail Developer Apple Inc

Forward emails and set vacation responses Use iCloud Mail to set up automated responses when you are away and forward emails to another account

Difﬁculty

Time needed

Step-by-step

here is huge pent-up demand for holidays and it’s likely you’ll be away from work and home sometime soon. What about emails when you are away? Do you ignore messages or spoil your holiday by dealing with them? Set up your email account to deal with messages automatically by sending replies to enquiries and forwarding work-related ones to someone else. This is great for handling work emails when you are away, but it can also be used with personal emails, too. Here we use iCloud because it’s much better for this sort of thing due to being online 24/7.

Set up email forwarding

Open iCloud Mail

Open Safari and go to iCloud.com. Sign in if necessary and then open the Mail app. It is an online version of the Mac/iOS Mail app. Click the Settings icon followed by ‘Rules‘.

Selective forwarding

Suppose you want to only forward emails about a particular subject (you can create other rules to forward other topics elsewhere). Enter a word/phrase to look for.

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Forward emails to a colleague who can take care of them in your absence

Add a rule

Forward and read

There are other ways to set up mail forwarding as we will see, but creating an email rule offers the most features and flexibility. Click the link, ‘Add a Rule’ to begin.

Click just below ‘Then’ and select a Forward option. For example, choose ‘Forward to an Email Address and Mark As Read’. This will mark the message as read.

Set the trigger

Choose the recipient

Click ‘If a message’ and choose a trigger. Select ‘is addressed to’ and add your email to forward everything. However, let’s get creative and use ‘has subject containing’.

Where do you want to send emails that match the rule ‘has subject containing’ and a word or phrase? Start typing into the box and select a contact. Click ‘Done’ to finish.

macOS Mail

iCloud Mail Use forwarding, rules and vacation responses

Create rules The tutorial for creating a rule to forward emails offers the most features and you can select emails to forward based on content or sender. Create rules to forward different types of emails to different people.

Vacation response Going away on a trip or holiday? Don’t let work emails spoil the fun. Set a vacation response, which is an automated reply to incoming messages. Let people know what’s happening or what to do.

Forward emails To forward all emails regardless of sender or content, use this option under the General tab. Tick the box and enter the email address. Unlike a rule, it is quick, easy and applies to absolutely everything.

Knowledge base The problems with Mac Mail Why can’t you use the Mac Mail app? It has the features you need, but it only runs when the Mac is on. It will not do it any harm left on, but a Mac at work might be switched off by someone else. You certainly don’t want to leave a home Mac running for two weeks while you are on holiday.

Rules and preferences Click the Settings icon and select ‘Rules’ or ‘Preferences’ on the menu that is displayed. Both open the same window and three tabs are useful for forwarding emails and creating automated vacation responses.

Step-by-step

Vacation response

Set a vacation response When you are out of the office or away from home and do not want to be disturbed by emails, you can set up a vacation response. This is an automatic reply to any incoming email and you can explain to the sender that you are away or point them to another person in your company that can deal with their enquiry. Only one of these can be set, so you can only enable it for the next trip or holiday, rather than all of them.

Add a response

Vacation responses are set in the same window as rules. Just select the ‘Vacation’ tab. Click in the large box below and enter the message you want to automatically send people that email you when you are away.

Set the dates

Click in the Start date and End date boxes and select the date you go away and come back. Automated replies to emails will be sent only during this period. Tick the box above the date and then click ‘Done’.

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Pages Developer Apple Inc Difﬁculty

Time needed

Explore the new features in Apple’s iWork apps Apple’s Pages, Keynote and Numbers apps just got some great new features. Here we look at the best two

pple iWork apps are great for both work and personal projects. Microsoft Office is popular, but iWork apps are free for Mac users and as good or better for many tasks. Every so often, Apple quietly updates Pages, Keynote and Numbers with new features and if you have automatic updates turned on, you may have missed some recent ones as the apps update in the background. Here we take a look at a couple of features, making phone calls from within the iWork apps and the new media browser that makes finding and inserting photos, videos and music easier than ever.

Here, we’ve made a phone number link on a Keynote slide

New Keynote features

Insert media

Use these in all iWork apps

Click the Media button in any iWork app and then click ‘Photos‘, ‘Movies’ or ‘Music’ to open the new media browser window. To insert media by browsing the disk for the file, click ‘Choose’.

Phone links If there are contact details, like a phone number, select it and click Format>Add Link>Phone Number to turn it into a clickable link. It places calls through your iPhone if it is nearby.

Browse media libraries

Knowledge base Link your iPhone

Link details Click or ctrl+click a phone number link to see the details and to customise it. Change the displayed link text, change the phone number or remove it completely using the options here.

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The first time you make a phone call from a phone link in an iWork document, it may not work. You must give permission for other devices to control the iPhone. Open the Settings app on the iPhone and tap ‘Phone’. Look for ‘Calls on Other Devices’ and tap it. Turn on the ‘Allow Calls on Other Devices’ switch.

Select the ‘Photos’ tab in the new media browser window and you’ll see the sidebar is very similar to the one in the Photos app. Browse the Library, Selfies, Live Photos and more for an image.

macOS Pages Step-by-step

Make phone calls from within Pages

Add a link

Pages and Keynote allow you to turn text into a web link. Now you can make phone number links. Select a phone number and go to Format>Add Link>Phone Number.

Call a number

There is no need to go through the Edit Link feature to call a number. Click the number in the document and then click ‘Call’. Your iPhone needs to be somewhere nearby.

Step-by-step

Edit a link

Confirm the call

The phone number is displayed in underlined text to indicate that it is a clickable link. Before we click it, let’s look at editing it. Ctrl+click it and select ‘Edit Link’.

In case you clicked the link accidentally, meaning to do something else, a notification appears in the top-right corner. Click ‘Call‘ to confirm you want to place a call.

Edit a link

Click and talk

Add music

A small window shows the display text, link type and phone number. Below is the link type and number. Use ‘Call’ to place a call and ‘Remove’ to remove the link if not needed.

When the call is answered, the notification changes and you can see a live display of the audio levels. Click ‘Mute’ or ‘End’ just as you would with your iPhone.

Media browser

Explore the media browser There is a new media browser in all three of the iWork apps: Pages, Keynote and Numbers. It works the same no matter which app you use and here we look at inserting media into a Keynote slide. The media browser enables you to explore categories of media more easily and this allows you to locate the item you want very quickly and with less effort. There are tabs for photos, music and movies and you can preview the media. Here, we will show you how to insert photos and add music into a slide using the media browser feature.

Insert photos

It depends on the iWork app and you might need to position the cursor before clicking the Media button in the toolbar. Click the tab you want in the media browser and drag the window edges to see more.

To play music while this slide is on the screen, select the ‘Music’ tab and then select albums or playlists in the media browser sidebar. Click a track to add it to the slide. Play controls are on the right.

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Pages Developer Apple Inc

Convert documents between Pages and Gdocs Sometimes you have to work with Google Docs, even though you prefer Pages. Here’s how to convert files between them

Difﬁculty

Time needed

Step-by-step

ages is the natural software choice for creating documents for Apple Mac users. It is an excellent app that can be used to create beautiful reports, letters, brochures, CVs and even ebooks. However, many businesses work with Google Docs or Microsoft Word, so you might be forced to use them instead of Pages at your place of work. This raises problems, like how do you edit a Pages document in Google Docs? How do you open a Google Docs file in Pages? One way or another, the Microsoft Word file format is involved and it has become an open standard that many applications can understand.

Convert Pages to Google Docs

Save as Word

There is no option in Pages to save to Google Docs format. Go to File>Export To and select the next best option, which is ‘Word’. It’s a common format.

Open the document

The document on Drive can now be opened in Google Docs. Double-click it or ctrl+click it and select Open with>Google Docs. It reads/writes .docx files.

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Converting documents is made easier with the following tips…

Save options

Convert Pages docs

Do not use the option to require a password to open the file. If .docx is not automatically selected, click the ‘Format’ option and select it. Click ‘Next’ and save.

Did you know that you can directly upload Pages documents to Google Drive? It will not open them, so ctrl+click a Pages file and select Open with>CloudConvert.

Upload to Drive

View and edit

Go to drive.google.com in Safari and open the folder you want to save the document in. Open Finder, find the exported Pages document and drag it to Drive.

Whether you export from Pages and upload the .docx file or use CloudConvert to convert a Pages file to .docx, the resulting document looks very close to the original.

macOS Pages

Pages vs Gdocs

Use CloudConvert

Exchange and convert files between them

Do this if you have Pages documents on your work computer, but not the app. Right or ctrl+click them in a browser and select Open with> CloudConvert. It’s a free online service that converts formats.

Save and upload It is possible to save a Pages document on the Mac and then upload it to Google Drive. Drive cannot open it, but it provides access to an online conversion service that enables documents to be opened.

Knowledge base File conversion accuracy

Use Word files

Pages on Drive

The Word file format has become an open standard that is recognised and understood by many applications and services. If you need to exchange files with Google Docs users, export to Word .docx format.

Upload Pages documents directly to Google Drive and they show up as thumbnail images. You can see them, but double-clicking one will not open it, though. It must be converted to another file format first.

Step-by-step

Simple Pages documents convert to Google Docs and vice versa almost perfectly and there are only minor, easily fixed formatting issues. As documents become increasingly complex, more problems occur when converting documents between Pages and Docs. Multicolumn documents with tables, charts and other objects may not convert as well, but it is usually better than recreating the document from scratch.

Convert Gdocs

Convert Gdocs to Pages If someone shares a Google Docs file with you or if you want to convert a document on your Work computer so it can be opened in Pages on your Mac, the Word .docx file format is the one to use. Pages is pretty good at opening .docx files. It cannot cope with very complex documents, but you should have no problems provided they are straightforward text and images. You may need to tweak the document a little afterwards though.

Export to Word

Open the Google Docs document at drive.google.com. Go to the menu and then select File>Download>Microsoft Word. Save it to disk and if you prefer, move it to the iCloud Pages folder.

Replace fonts

Start Pages and open the downloaded document. Pages lists the fonts used in the document and highlights any that aren’t available on the Mac. Here Roboto is missing. Click the arrows and select the font to use.

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Magnet Developer Pavel Kozarek Difﬁculty

Time needed

Step-by-step

Take control of your macOS environment with Magnet Magnet will complement the Dock and every other part of macOS while making every movement quicker and more efficient

agnet is a very simple app, but it is one that you may use multiple times a day as you eventually forget that it is not a default part of macOS. The way it has been embedded into the interface is extremely subtle, as you have to control each of the customisations you have created using keystrokes only. It never displays anything apart from a tiny icon in the status bar, and will only do its work when you combine the right keys for a specified action. You have full control over how each feature is enabled – the only tricky part will be remembering the combinations. Over time, and with enough use, you will find that it becomes second nature.

Effortlessly manage your macOS workspace

Make your choice

Magnet is only available from the Mac App Store, so you will need to decide if the cost if fair before you buy. In our opinion it proves its worth over time.

The default options

If you click the status bar icon you will see of the actions listed with their corresponding shortcuts so that you can start learning straight away. Click ‘Preferences’.

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Magnet lets you put multiple apps in small spaces to aid multitasking.

Give magnet access

Get some help

Once installed, the first thing you will see is a panel advising you to grant access to Magnet. Follow the simple instructions provided, and Magnet will be ready to use.

Go to magnet.crowdcafe.com to view details of how the actions work. Read through this to understand which ones you will use the most often in the future.

It’s always there

Time to adjust

You will see a confirmation message appear, and the option to launch Magnet at login. You should enable this so that it is up and running while you’re on your Mac.

You can now check each shortcut that is listed and decide which ones you want to adjust to a quicker keystroke. If you can use only two keys then that will speed things up.

macOS Magnet

Magnet can change everything

The right shortcuts

Your macOS desktop will never look or feel the same again

There are a lot of shortcuts to play with, so make sure that you concentrate on the ones that you will use most often initially. You can then build up a full selection over time.

Build a setup The right selection of apps will make for a practical and highly efficient setup to undertake all that you need to accomplish. This is one of the major benefits of Magnet.

The manual interactions You can drag windows to snap them into place as well, but remember that this will be a static feature that will come alive every time you drag an app. The features are on or off.

Knowledge base Versatility is built in You can split the apps into quarters, thirds, halves and a variety of other forms. The ability to quickly move content from one window to another will also help to eliminate the need to multitask as you normally would in macOS. You need to have used the app for some time to truly understand how beneficial it can be.

Cramming it all in Some windows, particularly on a MacBook display, will not be fully usable. All you have to do is click in the window, and you can use the app as normal straight away.

Step-by-step

Create shortcuts

Personalise a shortcut Tweaking the shortcuts for each action is, as expected, very simple to get the hang of, but it is well worth spending a good amount of time making sure that the ones you will use most often have the easiest shortcuts. The command key can be utilised here alongside the arrow keys to make the shortcuts easier to remember, and it is likely that you will use only four shortcuts up to 80 per cent of the time. Make sure that you build your new shortcuts wisely.

Begin the process

Click the ‘X’ next to a shortcut, and ‘Record Shortcut’ will appear. Hit the combination of keys you want, and they will be recorded by the app. If a combination is used elsewhere then it will not be available.

The final customisations

You should try to group your key combinations to each style of action for consistency. Also, we would suggest enabling all three of the options at the bottom of the main Magnet preference panel.

Image credits: Kozarek & Sedlak

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Music Developer Apple Inc Difﬁculty

Time needed

Move your own music to iPhone In the age of streaming there are still many reasons to move tracks to your iPhone

f there is one downside to a streaming service such as Apple Music, it is the fact that when you stop subscribing, you own no music at all. You are effectively paying to rent access to millions of tracks, and while it is good value for money, there are reasons to want to still own a library of music you can retain access to. The problem is that the process to add your tracks to an iOS device is not displayed in an obvious way, so you have to know how to complete the process to take advantage of a dual streaming and local music setup. The process is a one-time event, but it can take time, and you will likely repeat it to keep things up to date.

Keeping your streamed and local tracks within Apple Music makes playback a lot easier

A simple music moving process You can create a local library using various methods Tailor your tracks Within Apple Music on a Mac, you can add as much detail as you need to ensure that each song is easily searchable in the future. The investment will pay dividends.

A traditional feeling When you are moving the music to your library, it will likely feel like the iPod days all over again. This is not a bad thing, and is a worthwhile task.

Knowledge base

So many music moving options

In and out

We have covered moving music via a Mac through Apple Music, and also by using an iOS app connected to Dropbox, but there are other options as well. Apps like EaseUS MobiMover on the Mac offer an alternative which you may find more efficient, and in particular when dealing with a large library of hundreds of tracks.

The more effort you put in to detailing each track and album correctly, the easier they will be to manage in the future. Expect to spend some time building your library.

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Match the theme You can also add your own artwork or allow the app to find the right images for you, which will help to make your library look more polished and consistent throughout.

macOS Music Step-by-step

Create a personal music library

Two computers

You will need to use your Mac to add local music to your iPhone or iPad via Apple Music. Start by opening the Apple Music app and then check the various menu options.

Your own image

You can use your own image by selecting ‘Get Info’ and then double-clicking the blank square at the top. You can also input the song title, artist and other details.

Time to import

Use the cloud

Click the ‘File’ menu and then select ‘Import’. The Finder window will now appear, and you can navigate to the track or tracks you want to include within Apple Music.

Another option is to keep all of your music in Dropbox in a specific folder. This is ideal if you prefer local playback, do not want to sign up to Apple Music.

Add some artwork

Grab an app

If you are adding a track that is likely to be commercially available you can click the ‘…’ icon, and then select ‘Get Album Artwork’. The app will find the correct image.

An iOS app like Cloud Music can download any tracks stored in Dropbox and save them to your iPhone for local playback at any time. It is a highly efficient solution.

225

Taskade Developer Taskcade Inc Difﬁculty

Time needed

Step-by-step

Use Taskade to plan projects and hobbies Bring order and planning to your work and personal projects using a brilliant collaborative app for the Mac

askade is an excellent organiser, task and project manager with collaboration features that can be used for work, personal projects and hobbies. Its uses range from a shopping list to a work project shared with co-workers, and it works across all Apple devices. Here, we look at the Mac version, which is free on the Mac App Store. When you create a free account, it provides unlimited storage, tasks, projects and collaborators. There are paid accounts with a few extras, but the free account is perfectly serviceable. It can be used very simply, but dig deeper and there are advanced features that enable you to organise your projects.

Create your first Taskade project

Get started

Install Taskade from the Mac App Store or from taskade.com. Run it and create a new account. Use the Sign up with Apple option if you prefer. Add a new workspace.

Create a project

After creating a workspace, click ‘New’ to create a project. Templates appear across the top. It is useful to add ‘Get Started with Taskade’, but also add a blank project.

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The free version of Taskade is surprisingly full of features

Create workspaces

Title and tasks

Any number of workspaces can be created – we made Work and Personal to keep work and hobbies separate, but it is up to you. Name it and add an emoji if you want.

Click the dummy title at the top and replace it with the project title. Click below, where there is a checkbox, and type a task. Press enter and add more tasks below it.

Invite others

Tasks and formatting

Other people can be invited to the project and tasks assigned to them. Enter their email address, and they are sent a link. They don’t need to be members.

As you enter tasks, a formatting toolbar appears below. Set bold, italic, colour and so on. Click the indent button to create a series of subtasks for more complex tasks.

macOS Taskade

Workspaces and projects Get to know the Taskade interface

Workspace views This menu bar enables you to view the workspace contents in different ways. This is the Projects view, but click ‘Tasks’ to see the tasks they contain. Click ‘Roadmap’ to see tasks on a calendar.

Create workspaces A workspace is a collection of projects, which can be for any purpose. We created workspaces for work and personal projects, but they can be for anything. It is a way to organise your projects.

Knowledge base Use templates

Create projects

There is so much more to Taskade than just the basics. To get an idea of what it can do, open a workspace and click the ‘New’ button. Scroll to the right of the template thumbnails at the top and click ‘More’. A large collection of project templates will open. Browse and select templates to see the different ways of working in Taskade.

Create blocks

A checklist is not the only type of item that can be added here. Click ‘Add Block’ and choose Check, Bullet or Number lists, or Paragraph. Click ‘Paragraph’ to add notes.

Collaborators and activities

Click a workspace to open it, and then click the ‘New’ button to add any number of projects. Each project can contain checklists, bullet and numbered lists, and text notes. Due dates are optional.

Add text

Type Notes and set it to H1 Heading with the blue style button. Hit enter and type the text into the space below. This is a text block, separate from the checklist above.

Click the ‘+’ icon next to your avatar at the top of the page to invite other people to this workspace, like friends, relatives or work colleagues. Click the bell to see their recent activities.

Dates, people, comments

Move the mouse over a task, and icons appear on the right. Click the first to add a due date, the second to assign this task to a person, and the third to add a comment.

Image credits: Taskcade Inc

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CARRY ON

WORKING FROM HOME How to ensure that you can maintain your work demands and look after yourself when working remotely

orking from home has been a work in progress for most people, and it has taken time for many to find a comfortable setup that works for them. This is not surprising when you consider that for most employers of office-based staff, the actual cost is roughly twice the salary because of accommodation, computing equipment, health and safety, and all of the

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other considerations people receive to get their work done. This should not stop you making the most of your home environment because it takes very little effort to greatly improve your home working setup and to make it more comfortable and more efficient for your needs. We will highlight the simple and effective ways in which you can make working from home for extended periods much more manageable. You’ll feel more balanced as a result of these useful tips.

Be more secure than ever If you are using your Apple products, and in particular a Mac, for work purposes then you will need to pay particular attention to your Security & Privacy settings. You should read up on all of your employer’s rules and regulations, and also check to see what devices you are allowed to use. Hopefully they will let you carry on using your Mac.

Create a barrier

Limit your devices

Simple tasks like enabling the Firewall and the FireVault can have a big impact on your security level. It’s easy to get by with Apple’s enhanced security, but consider your entire home network and check every single possibility.

We would suggest limiting the number of devices that are using the same network as your main work computer. In particular pay attention to non-Apple devices, which may not be as secure as the Mac and iOS systems.

Mind your apps Install only the apps you need and remove any that are not necessary. Pay particular attention to apps that do not come from official channels such as the iOS and Mac App Stores, and disable third party backup services you use.

Change everything Change your passwords regularly, and also take advantage of features such as Face ID on the iPhone and Touch ID fingerprint sensors on MacBooks. Try to think more securely than even your employer does, and you should stay safe every single day.

The big list To carry on working from home you will need the right equipment. We would advise to make a list in an app such as Magpie. It lets you find the right products and allows you to note them with images, pricing and links, which you can then send to your employer. Be realistic with your requests if you can.

A new list

Create a new list in Magpie and spend some time thinking about all of the equipment you will need. You want to find quality products at sensible prices.

Capture the details

Snap a screenshot of the product, copy the link to it, and note the price. This is the minimum detail you will need to get it covered by expenses.

Share the list

You can now share the Magpie list with your employer. Keep your fingers crossed that your choices will be accepted, and enjoy a more comfortable home working experience.

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Carry on working from home

You need a backup! No connection is 100 per cent reliable, and there will be times when your home connection falters. Ironically, it is also likely to go down when you are working on something very important, so it makes sense to have a back-up option just in case. If you have an iPhone and a decent mobile plan then your backup will be closer than you think.

Be safe

Just for you

Make your Personal Hotspot password as secure as you can. While it may not be convenient to input, you should not need to use it often so it is much better to be safe than sorry.

When you enable Personal Hotspot in Settings>Mobile Data>Personal Hotspot we would recommend disabling the ‘Allow Others to Join’ option. You want this connection for yourself only, which should keep the speed

connections

Have some patience

We would advise limiting the number of people who use your connection, and so Family Sharing should be disabled while you use your iPhone connection for work purposes. This will help with consistent speed and also security.

If you have a broadband issue then it is likely that you will need to connect via Bluetooth. Consider the security aspects of this before you connect, and be prepared, as the connection will be slower than Wi-Fi.

Keep calm and carry on Working from home offers you the opportunity to up your mental health game and to hopefully learn some new habits that you will use for the rest of your life. One of the easiest to take up is the Breathing app through an Apple Watch. Once you start using it, you should find that it becomes a positive daily habit.

Set your duration

Open the Breathe app on your Apple Watch, and use the crown to set the duration. Start off with one minute, and increase the duration gradually over time.

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Follow the screen

Follow the simple instructions on screen, which are shown by the main graphic getting bigger and smaller. Breathing mindfully should ideally come naturally to you.

Check your results

You get results at the end of the duration and you should be able to see how you are improving in the Health app as you start to become calmer.

Carry on sharing It is more likely that your employer uses Windows than macOS, but there are ways to ensure that your Apple products can be utilised for your work. Within the Windows environment there are apps that work perfectly well on other devices, and you can share the load between your home and work computers with ease. It adds variety to your day.

The Office apps

There is no reason why you cannot access your work emails on an iOS or macOS device. Outlook can be used within Safari in a perfectly secure manner.

A handy notebook

Jumping to the basic text app in Windows can be annoying when you are busy, so try using your iPad and Apple Pencil as a much more natural digital notebook.

Stay in touch

The big stuff

Microsoft Teams is available as an app, and gives you the chance to use it on an iPad or MacBook while using your work computer for other tasks. It adds flexibility.

Using both Windows and macOS daily will likely lead you to prefer some apps over others. Numbers can be used to create any spreadsheet and then exported to Excel.

Carry on checking!

A better presentation

As we keep saying, please check the terms for any app and let your employer know what you are doing. You will want sign off in writing to cover yourself.

We believe that KeyNote is much more adept at presentations than PowerPoint, so there’s no reason why you can’t use it and export the file to your employer.

A personal group You should set up an ‘outside of work’ group for you and your colleagues to discuss issues that would not be pertinent on a workplace system. This can help with easing frustration or simply keeping in touch and lifting your mental health on occasion. Doing this could be surprisingly beneficial to your outlook when stuck at home.

Find your friends

We would suggest that WhatsApp is a good place to create a group because it can be used by anyone. If everyone uses iOS you can use iMessage instead.

Create your group

Once you have all of the participants ready to invite, you can name your group and add an image for it. At this point the conversations can begin.

Time to chat

This simple idea can enable people to share jokes, talk about work problems and build relationships throughout each day. WhatsApp is also available on macOS and iOS.

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Carry on working from home

Keep active, keep fit, stay occupied When working from home it is too easy to stop moving. You are naturally not moving around so much because you are in one place most of the time, so this is where an Apple Watch can have more of an impact than if you are working in an office. We have some simple tips to keep you moving.

Carry on moving

The daily rings targets make a real difference to keeping you motivated. You may be surprised at how the little targets can mean a lot when you are at home.

Move less, move more

As you will likely be moving less at home your health stats will drop. Check the Health app regularly and react accordingly to ensure that you remain healthy.

Build your trends

Carry on walking!

If you wear the Apple Watch every day you will start to see trends be populated in the Fitness app. Your goal is to keep improving these trends over time.

A quick walk at lunchtime and especially before you start work can have a massive impact on your mental health and general fitness if you are stuck at a desk.

Get some rewards

Mind your sleep

The Fitness app regularly offers medals for achievements, and they do have a strangely powerful effect on the efforts you will make. The monthly medals are rewarding.

Sleeping can be a genuine problem when working from home, so we would advise monitoring your sleep through Health and compare against the exercise you do each day.

Easy weight management With less moving around comes a natural fitness decline and of course the potential to put on weight when you may not want to. To add variety to your day we would suggest that a whole new diet alongside a fitness regime may work wonders. Calorie Counter from NutraCheck is a very good place to start.

Build a routine

As you start to enter ‘everything’ you eat and drink it will soon become second nature. It is amazing how effective this simple habit is for making you understand your consumption.

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Pick a limit

Set a calorie limit for each day and do all you can to stay under it. The app also lets you check your weekly consumption to make sure you are not slipping.

Pick your adventures

The app also offers recommendations for new meals, and you can start to spend time making more healthy snacks. These small hobbies can make your days much more fun.

Take a break Apple Arcade is an affordable way to experience hundreds of games on your iPhone, iPad and Mac, and without any adverts or in-app purchases. Even if you are not a regular game player, you now have the ability to play some wonderfully programmed games on the devices you already own, and they could provide a welcome distraction to the potential boredom.

The daily grind Adventure games offer something to look forward to each day. If you become immersed in a long adventure, and some very good titles are now available in Apple Arcade, looking ahead to your next move after work could have a positive mental effect.

Millions of games The number of games available outside of Apple Arcade is now likely in the millions, and of course when working from home you will possibly have the option of playing a sneaky game on your iPhone at any time.

Try and buy In both the iOS and Mac App Stores you can try the service out before you pay the subscription. This will inform you as to if there are enough titles to keep you entertained while working from home.

Bundling the games Don’t forget that Apple Arcade is also available within bundles, which technically keeps the cost down. Also, your entire family group can play the games, and you won’t have to pay a penny more for everyone to enjoy them.

Leave me alone! One advantage of working from home is that you get time to concentrate on your work and are not open to so many distractions. The problem, however, remains that notifications can still dominate your days if you have them coming in from every app you have installed. It is easy to manage and avoid the ones you don’t really need.

Always there?

From the moment you wake up you are likely to see a stream of notifications ready for you to read and react to. It’s not a good start to a day.

Minimise the noise

Go to Settings>Notifications and then scroll through all of the apps you have installed. Be tough and mute the notifications for all apps, apart from those you really need.

Get some peace

Don’t forget that Do Not Disturb is available on all of your devices, and it only takes a second to avoid all notifications while you need to concentrate.

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Carry on working from home

Structure your days An app like Structured is designed to help you to break your days down into sections and to always know what is coming next. It may sound simple and potentially monotonous, but in actual fact you will find that it helps you to only look forward to the next hour. This can substantially reduce work from home boredom.

Daily repeating tasks

View your week You will notice that weekends are also included so you may want to adjust your tasks a little. There are options to set exactly what days each task is notified on which should help you manage your work days.

When you add a task it will repeat each day until you delete it. This is useful for ensuring that you keep up with good habits and never forget to complete them. Over time you will naturally remember.

Continual prompts

Tap to complete

The app continually prompts you to add new tasks, but the trick is to input only the ones you need to complete. Try to limit how many occur each day so that your work is not interrupted multiple times.

Tap the circle next to any task and it will complete in an instant. Throughout the app there are very few touch points and every single aspect of the setup is as obvious as you could hope for.

Collaborate with colleagues It is easy to collaborate with your team members when at home using monday.com, which is an online service designed to help you cover a multitude of tasks and to share them as a team. It is quite open, so beware of posting confidential information, but it works very well for general work activities.

Set up the team

When you start you will need to input some information about the team and the company you work for. This will help to tailor the service for your needs.

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Lots of guidance

Many tips are built in initially and you can easily choose what you want to share and what stays with you. It is surprisingly adept at bringing people together.

Where is everyone?

You can see where anyone is at a glance and if they are available for a project discussion. If you work for a small company this could be an ideal working from home solution.

Limit app usage When in the office or any workspace it is difficult to have control over how you work and your activities, but this changes when working from home. You naturally have more freedom to work how you want to, which has advantages and disadvantages, but setting some limits can help you to reduce the strain and make your home life a little easier.

Simple screen time access

Go to System Preferences on your Mac and click ‘Screen Time’. The feature is also available in Settings on an iPhone and iPad to ensure that you cover every device.

Limit app access

The ‘Downtime’ option lets you set periods of time where you will only have access to specified apps. This simple setting can allow you to focus on doing your best

View your week

Disable some apps

Click the date at the top to view your past week of usage. This is particularly useful because you can compare your working days with your weekends. They should differ.

You can disable access to certain apps using ‘App Limits’. This is a very useful way to ensure that distractions are kept to a minimum at all times.

Too many interruptions?

Be ultra careful

The ‘Notifications’ section will show you how often you are interrupted during the day. It is likely that you are interrupted by nonessential apps quite often.

The ‘Content & Privacy’ section lets you bar certain content which is especially important if you are using personal and work computers on the same network.

Fill your time When working from home you will have much less travelling to contend with and more time on your hands. It would make sense to use this time to start a new hobby or to do something that you have been meaning to complete for years. No matter what the hobby there will be an app to help you get started.

Invest to learn

MacFamilyTree 9 (macOS) and MobileFamilyTree 9 (iOS) are not cheap, but the features included will help you build a comprehensive family tree.

A time suck

You will need to undertake a lot of research to build an accurate family tree, but the results can be beautifully displayed in the app. It is visually obvious to anyone.

People, places and bonuses

Old photos can be colourised, places can be added on an interactive map and statistics will develop as you progress.

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Translate foreign books using your iPhone

Google Translate

Quickly make sense of a block of text or even read entire foreign language books using the Google Translate app

Developer Google LLC Difﬁculty

Time needed

very now and then, we here at iCreate find books and magazines that we’d love to read, only to discover that they’re written in a foreign language. So we can either bite the bullet, splash the cash and work our way through an online translation dictionary, or we can grab our iPhone, fire up the Google Translate app and let it do all of the hard work for us. Built into this app is the ability to take a photograph of a page. From that point, it’s possible to make use of all of the text that the app is able to pick up. We’ve used it to quickly photograph chapters of books, watching with glee as text is quickly translated into English.

The scanning process only takes seconds to complete…

Make use of the translated text Once a translation has been created, there are a few things you can do with it Listen to it Tap the speaker icon at the top of either the original or the translated text, and the app will read the words out to you.

Copy the translation You can tap the Share button to use the translated text in other apps. The final button on this row will also let you copy your translated text so you can paste it elsewhere.

Use the words to search When you select the Google icon, the Google app will launch if you have it installed, and search the web for the words you’ve decided to translate.

Save a translation Although every translation you create is listed on the main screen of the Google Translate app, you can tap the star icon to save it. This only works for short translated texts.

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Knowledge base Download languages for offline translation If you want to translate text without connecting to the internet, consider downloading your most-used languages for offline translation instead. Simply tap a language at the top of the screen in Google Translate to see a list of available languages. Then tap the download icon next to the one you wish to use offline. The app will tell you how big the language pack is, and you can tap ‘Download’ to proceed.

iOS Google Translate Step-by-step

Scan and read foreign text

Choose a language

Download Google Translate from the App Store and launch it. Now, choose the lingo you want to translate to and from by tapping the languages at the top of the screen.

View the text

A photo will be taken of the text, and the app will show you exactly which words it has managed to pick up: in this case, all of one page and parts of the preceding one.

Use the Camera

Select the text

Tap the Camera icon and you can instantly make use of live translations. Simply hover your phone over foreign text and the app will seek to translate the words.

Tap ‘Select All’ to have the app translate every word it has picked up, or rub your finger across the text you want to use. When finished, tap the arrow at the top.

Take a photo

View the translation

Sometimes, the app struggles to instanttranslate long prose. It’s easier to tap the scan icon at the bottom of the screen, position the camera and press the shutter.

Now you can view the text in the original language and, when you scroll down the screen, you’ll see the translation too. This is placed in a blue box for easy identification.

Image credits: Google LLC

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iOS 14 Developer Apple Inc Difﬁculty

Time needed

Step-by-step

Stop people scrolling through your images If you want to show someone a photo but you don’t want them swiping through your images, simply lock it down

any iPhone users have images stored on their devices that they’d rather others didn’t idly swipe through. Perhaps you have some goofy photos of yourself on holiday, or snaps of an ailment you’re hoping to show the doctor. Or maybe you simply just don’t like people nosing through your photos. If you want to show someone a specific image, how do you hand over your iPhone and know that they’re not going to start swiping left and right? Unless you’re ready to snatch the device back, you may want to prepare by popping certain photos into a hidden album, or by temporarily disabling the swipe function.

Disable the iPhone’s swipe function

Delve into the settings

We need to make use of the Guided Access feature built into iOS, so launch the Settings app, tap ‘Accessibility’ and select ‘Guided Access’ at the bottom of the screen.

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Just triple-click to start and end Guided Access

Activate Guided Access

Turn on Guided Access, tap ‘Passcode Settings’ and then tap ‘Set Guided Access Passcode’. Enter a passcode and use Face ID so only you can deactivate the feature.

Turn on the shortcut

Tap ‘Back’ and turn on the ‘Accessibility Shortcut’. This will ensure Guided Access is an option whenever you triple-click the iPhone’s side button (or Home on some iPhones).

iOS Guided Access

Hide photos in a folder Lock photos, store photos in albums, and hide them

Knowledge base Can I lock photos more easily? The methods described here require some effort: you either need to be more organised by making full use of your folders, or press a few buttons before handing over your iPhone. There is a simpler way: you can zoom into an image ever-so slightly before you let someone view a photo. This locks the image into place.

View your options Open an image in the Photos app and tap the Share button in the bottom-left corner of the screen. That will give you a list of options.

Add to an Album You can pop photos into an album by tapping ‘Add to Album’. Don’t worry if you can’t see a suitable suggested album when you do this: tap ‘New Album’, give it a name, and use that.

Hide the hidden folder The hidden folder is actually hidden in plain sight – it’s in the Albums tab under Utilities. Hide that album by exiting the Photos app and going to Settings>Photos>Disable Hidden Album.

Hide the image Really don’t want someone to view that photo? Tap ‘Hide’, confirm that’s what you want to do, and it will be placed in the Hidden album on your iPhone.

Find a photo

Now, you need to follow the next three steps. Open the Photos app, find an image you want to show someone, triple-click the side/Home button and tap ‘Guided Access’.

See your options

The Guided Access screen will appear with your image. Select ‘Options’ in the bottom-right corner to show the functions that you can give someone access to.

Start Guided Access

To only allow someone to see a single image, turn off ‘Touch’. Tap ‘Start’ and hand your iPhone to someone. Press ‘End’ and enter your passcode when they hand it back.

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HomePaper for HomeKit Developer Pearce Media Ltd Difﬁculty

Time needed

Step-by-step

Change the Home app’s wallpaper with HomePaper Personalise your Home app by expanding the range of wallpapers you can use thanks to the HomePaper for HomeKit app

ou may find yourself using the Home app more often these days. Smart home devices are growing in popularity, and the app is a great way of controlling your HomeKitcompatible gear. Home is certainly not the bestlooking of Apple’s apps, but you can change that by altering its wallpaper. Simply do this using an image from your Photos app. Or you can download the HomePaper for HomeKit app and create something more special. It offers gradient backgrounds to which an image can be added and blended. The app is free, but there’s a one-off sum of 99p to pay in order to use the export feature more than once.

Create bespoke Home app wallpapers

Find a photo

Install and open the HomePaper app, then tap the top-left Photo icon. Choose an image from your library, take a fresh shot or use one from the free photo library, Unsplash.

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Exported images in HomePaper can be set as wallpaper in the Home app

Select a gradient

Photos are in the top-right of the screen, but the display retains the default colour and gradient. Change the gradient by tapping the next icon down and selecting one.

Tweak the gradient

Tap the third icon from the top. The gradient settings control how your photo bleeds into the background. Experiment with Radial and Curved, and slide the Mask Level.

iOS HomePaper

Choose a new Home app background It’s easy to change the background of the Home app

Knowledge base Can I use HomePaper on my iPad?

Select the Home app You can’t see it here, but there’s a Home icon in the top-left corner of the screen. Tap it, select Home Settings, and this card will appear.

Yes. It’s perfectly possible to create wallpapers for your iPad using the HomePaper app. Just be aware that it will require iPadOS 14.0 or later (just as the iOS version needs 14.0 or later). You should tap the settings cog within the app and ensure that the slider for ‘Generate for iPad’ is turned on.

Scroll down Once you’re viewing this card, scroll down until you see the Home Wallpaper section. You’ll see that the wallpaper currently being used is displayed.

Choose an existing image When you export a wallpaper from HomePaper, it’s stored in your Photos app. By tapping ‘Choose From Existing’ you can find and use that wallpaper or select any other image to use.

Take a Photo Fresh images can be taken and quickly turned into your Home app wallpaper by selecting ‘Take Photo’. You’ll need to grant the app access to your Camera.

Refine the colours

Each background can gradually shift from one colour to another, and you can change both of them. Tap the top colour circle and, under the Grid tab, select a colour.

Use the Spectrum

For more colour options, tap the Spectrum and Sliders tabs. To work with an existing background colour, tap the pen icon and move the selector tool over the colour.

Save your image

Try playing around with the Opacity slider to determine how much of the colour will be shown in your background. When ready, tap the download icon to save it.

Image credits: Pearce Media Limited

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Copied Touch

Create your ultimate clipboard on iOS and Mac

Developer Kevin Chang

You can now visualise an alternative to copy/paste

Difﬁculty

Time needed

Step-by-step

ou probably copy multiple text snippets or web links throughout a normal day without even realising. When you need to use them you have to go through a process of opening them in alternative apps or sharing, which can be time consuming, but there is another way. Copied Touch can act as a repository for anything that you copy, and you can then deal with every clip in your own time. The app lets you organise all of your clips into lists, or you can manage multiple clips and deal with them faster. Simplicity is paramount in this app – it’s functional, efficient and works brilliantly on iOS and macOS.

Copy and share in style

Let it work

You need to allow access to the iOS clipboard for Copied to work. ‘Allow While Using the App’ means that not everything will be copied, which is actually an advantage.

Copied Touch is a repository; a tool and a clip manager in one…

Hold and manage

Tapping any copied entry will pop up a new panel. From here you can then share it to another app or person, or save it to a specific list to deal with when you have time.

Copy as normal

Manage your lists

Copying is undertaken using the standard process, so the learning curve is minimal here. Copy a link or some text, then open the Copied app.

Manage lists from the front screen by holding and tapping any list to change the colour or name. You can also add a new list at any time as your collection grows.

Your new content

Swipe is everywhere

The link will be stored in Copied automatically. You should be offered enough detail to understand what it is without needing to open it in Safari or another app.

Swipe is available throughout in the Lists section and to help you manage any clip. The simplicity of the gestures works perfectly with the simple mechanics throughout. Image credits: Kevin Chang

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iOS Copied Touch

A perfectly curated list Your clips will always be available when you need them

Knowledge base Take Copied even further

A quick swipe Swipe on any clip to add it to one of your lists, delete or share with others. There is no single part of the Copied Touch app that is hard to understand.

‘Save to Copied’ is also available in the Share Sheet and adds some extra functionality to the app. You can, for example, grab a screenshot and then share it immediately to Copied, where it will be displayed as an attractive thumbnail. With web links, text and image support in the app, almost every action you will need is catered for.

Extra information Below each clip is a small line of extra information such as word count, the list it is assigned to and the time that you copied it. A useful extra.

Instantly obvious Each of your clips will be presented in a manner that enables you to understand the content in an instant so that you can deal with each accordingly.

Jump to settings This unobtrusive icon lets you instantly jump to the settings, which allow you to tweak text formatting, scripts and Siri Shortcuts. There is a selection of useful customisation options.

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Google News

Enjoy articles from dozens of publishers in Google News

Developer Google LLC

Google News Showcase gives you access to lots of curated articles

Difﬁculty

Time needed

Step-by-step

ublishers have long looked for ways to better monetise their content online. One way is to strike licensing deals with tech companies, and that’s what many publishers are doing, with Google News Showcase among those working with local and national publications to attract more readers. Content is curated by each publication’s editors, giving them control over the articles placed within Google News (and in Discover, which is part of the Google app and website). Editors also control how articles are presented, and the result is a service that gives access to lots of interesting content – including articles that may otherwise be behind a paywall.

Read news relevant to you

Log into account

Ensure you’re using the latest version of the Google News app and, after launching, login to the Google account you want to use. You’ll see your briefing in the ‘For You’ tab.

Follow your favourite publications to curate your content…

Customise your news

You will see a huge number of publications, both local and national, if you swipe down. To include a source in your feed, select ‘Follow’ in the relevant panel.

Check your sources

Hide a source

Scroll down to a section called ‘Your News Sources’. Any news providers you are following will be presented here. Swipe left, and you will also see suggestions.

Each panel contains two options which can be viewed by tapping the ‘…’ menu. These let you either go direct to the source to read more or hide all stories from it.

Explore providers

Get full coverage

Keep swiping left for the ‘Explore More Sources’ option. Tapping this takes you to the Newsstand tab (or you can tap the tab to go direct). Tap the arrow in the top-right corner.

If you see a story you like in a panel, simply tap to open the article on the news provider’s website. You can also tap its logo to view all of the available current news. Image credits: Google LLC

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iOS Google News

Manage how you read your news View a news publisher’s page to make it easier to receive information

Open the menu Up here, next to the star (which will be black if you’re following or white if you are not), there is a menu button. Tap it and you’ll see the options in the window at the bottom of the screen.

Share the page As the name suggests, tapping this icon will take you to iOS’s Share Sheet so you can share a link via Messages, Mail, social media and more. You can also add it to your Reading List.

Download the page This option will only appear if you have liked a page. It allows you to download content for offline reading. If you’re reading an article, you can find an option to ‘Save for Later’ in the menu.

Add to Siri This is a useful function. It allows you to instruct Siri to open this page in Google News. Simply add a shortcut name – the command you’ll utter in order for it to happen.

Knowledge base What news sources are available? Google has been busy signing up news publishers from across the world In the UK alone, for instance, there are now 120 publications delivering curated content for News Showcase. These include national titles such as the Financial Times, The Independent, The Telegraph and New Statesman but there are loads of local publishers, including Newsquest, Reach and JPI Media. Each panel tells you when the content was last updated.

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Messages Developer Apple Inc Difﬁculty

Time needed

Step-by-step

Block messages from unwanted callers Keep receiving nuisance texts? Stop them from appearing and even filter out all unknown senders

t’s always nice to receive a message – unless it’s from a company you’d rather not hear from, a scammer, or people you’d prefer stay in the past. Thankfully, it’s easy to block them, though this means you won’t get calls from them either. Unfortunately, it’s not 100 per cent effective. People may hide their caller ID to disguise their number, call from another phone, or spoof a number you ordinarily want to receive texts from. Now, we have a solution to the first instance, and you’ll have to keep blocking to stay ahead of the second situation. The third, however, can only be solved by being alert and watching out for anything that looks suspicious.

Stop texts arriving in Messages

Identify a message

Received an SMS or MMS in the Messages app from an unwanted person or organisation? Simply block the sender by tapping the profile icon at the top.

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Filtering messages from unknown senders? You’ll be given options to view them

View the options

You’ll see three options beneath the profile icon, but we can discard two of them (unless you want to call for a chat or speak over FaceTime). To continue, just tap ‘Info’.

Consider hiding alerts

If you still want texts from a sender to appear in Messages so you can monitor them, but don’t want to be notified when they arrive, activate ‘Hide Alerts’.

iOS Messages

Manage your messages Gain greater control over who can send you texts

Knowledge base Block messages before a sender has even sent one

Reach this screen Open Settings and tap ‘Messages’. You can personalise your messages with a name and photo or turn off Read Receipts.

What if you’re expecting a text, and would rather they didn’t contact you? You’re not going to be able to block them via Messages. Instead, launch the Phone app and tap ‘Contacts’. Either press ‘+’ to create a contact, or find an existing contact on your phone. You’ll be given an option to ‘Block This Caller’.

View blocked contacts Want to see a list of the senders you’ve blocked so far? Tap ‘Blocked Contacts’, and you’ll see a list. To unblock any of them, tap ‘Edit’, then the red icon next to a contact, and select ‘Unblock’.

Filter Unknown Senders Don’t want to see messages from senders who are not in your contacts? Toggle this switch. Their texts will be viewable only via pressing ‘Filters’ and selecting ‘Unknown Senders’.

Stop seeing mentions If someone mentions your name in a Messages conversation, you’ll be notified by default. You can prevent this happening by toggling the switch next to ‘Notify Me’.

Tap Info icon

Assuming you do still want to block a sender, simply tap the ‘Info’ icon towards the top of the screen, and you will see an option appear called ‘Block this Caller’.

Block the contact

Tap ‘Block this Caller’, and you’ll be asked to confirm. Do so by tapping ‘Block Contact’. You won’t receive phone calls or FaceTime requests from the sender either.

Unblock the caller

Blocking is not permanent, and you can change your mind later by following the same steps and selecting ‘Unblock This Caller’. Texts sent while blocked won’t appear.

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The most useful Apple Music secrets Here are ten ways how you can make your Apple Music experience even better… Apple Music has grown over time to become a very efficient and easy-touse service that you will rarely think about. It does not matter how often you play music or interact with the service, it is so seamless in use that you will quickly become so familiar with how it works that you will feel little incentive to see what options are available. The fact is, however, that there are some features buried within Apple Music and more widely within iOS that will help you to get even more from your mobile music experience. Each one differs in terms of impact, but we are sure that the seconds they take to learn will more than pay off in the long run as you enhance your music library and experience new sounds in different ways. Apple Music just got even better.

Like to learn

If you take the time to tag tracks and albums, the service will understand what music to recommend to you in the future. Tap the ‘…’ icon and then tap ‘Love’ or ‘Suggest Less Like This’ to help Music understand your tastes for future recommendations.

The simple layer Underneath the simplicity is a huge amount of functionality in Apple Music

It’s your music If you understand the features below the surface of Apple Music and make efforts to rate tracks, you will be rewarded with a continually curated selection of new music to enjoy every day.

It is growing We are gradually seeing new features being added to Apple Music, and not all of them are presented in an obvious fashion. Some, like Apple Music TV, need to be discovered by the user.

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Make it yours There are multiple options to not only help Apple Music curate new music for you, but to present all of your music library in a way that works for you. Take time to explore these options.

Search and discover If you only remember a part of a lyric you can actually search for that in Apple Music, and the correct song title will be presented to you.

10 best Apple Music secrets

Create new alarms

Siri knows everything

Your own stations

In the Clock app, tap ‘Edit’ and tap on any alarm. Now tap ‘Sound’ and scroll until you see ‘Pick a song’. At this point you can choose any song that you have added to your Apple Music library and use it as the alarm sound. You now have unlimited and fun alarm sounds.

Siri works in tandem with Apple Music to give you access to anything you need in a variety of ways. For example, say, “Play the number one song from 15 April 1987“ and the track will immediately start playing in Apple Music. You can have lots of fun with this feature.

Tap the ‘…’ icon next to any song and then select ‘Create Station’ to instantly build a station based on the song you are playing. The trick here is to do this only for songs that you really like, and the end result should be many more songs that you will fall in love with.

Choose your sound

Apple Music TV

Check a schedule

With the advent of streaming services has come the belief that you are likely getting the best possible sound quality, but this is not always true. Go to Settings>Music>EQ and select a specific genre to see what it sounds like to you. The result may surprise you.

You can now also experience TV within Apple Music through a curated selection of shows that are sure to keep your interest. Go to the ‘Browse’ section, then scroll down to the ‘Apple Music TV’ section and you can instantly begin watching. It’s an Apple TV alternative.

You can tap the small calendar icon next to a radio channel in Apple Music to see the full schedule of shows that will be coming next. This is a simple and effective way to ensure that you have a selection of varied shows to keep you entertained throughout the day.

Save some space

Search by lyrics

In Settings>Music>Downloaded Music you can see a list of every track or album that you have downloaded from Apple Music. Tap ‘Edit’ and then the red ‘–’ icon next to any of the listings to remove albums or tracks. This can save you a huge amount of invaluable space.

The search function in Apple Music is extremely clever and you can use it in almost any logical way. For example, simply start typing a lyric and, if it is spelt correctly, the song titles and appropriate links should be returned for you to immediately start listening to.

Browse by genre

To view music within a particular genre, go to the ‘Browse’ section and then scroll down all the way to the bottom. Now tap ‘Browse by Category’ and then select your preference from the list. This feature is somewhat hidden, but worth checking out to find new music.

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Broadcasts Developer Steven Troughton-Smith Difﬁculty

Time needed

Stream any radio station straight to your iPad With Broadcasts, you can quickly build a collection of radio stations to stream at any time, anywhere

he ability to stream multiple radio stations is not a new phenomenon, but many of the solutions available to allow this are overly complex or only include the radio streaming as an additional feature. Broadcasts, however, takes a different approach: one that focuses solely on ease of use and the quickest possible building of a varied and interesting collection

of streamed content. The interface is not futurist in any way, and offers a somewhat traditional aesthetic, but this actually makes perfect sense, because it reduces the learning curve and allows the audible content to shine through. We will show you all of the main features and how to build a new collection, and then you can enjoy every station you want to listen to.

The Broadcasts app is extremely simple to use and infinitely expandable…

Step-by-step

Alternative radio streamers

Apple Music

If you already subscribe to Apple Music, you may want to check out the Radio section. It is limited when compared to Broadcasts, but it may just offer enough for your needs. You could still find what you’re looking for.

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TuneIn Radio

This versatile app is very well presented, and includes enough functionality to be your radio and also your preferred podcast player. For the premium features, however, you will need to activate the subscription feature.

A free solution

Go to radio.garden and you can access thousands of radio stations for free within an interactive world map. It works on iOS devices, as well as within any standard web browser, such as Safari.

iPadOS Broadcasts Step-by-step

Build your own radio station

Download for free

You can download the Broadcasts app for free from the iOS App Store. The good news is that there is no continual subscription setup here; just a reasonable one-off asking price.

Simple visual tweaks

The interface icon at the bottom lets you hide the collections view and see the stations denoted with much larger thumbnails. This is useful if you are listening while busy.

A blank page

Choose your country

The interface is incredibly simple throughout, and you will have to wait for the built-in stations to download and populate the main panel. You can listen straight away.

Tap the ‘+’ icon at the bottom, and a selection of countries will appear. Select yours, and a list of stations pops up. Click the Play button next to any station to listen.

Just one collection

Add the station

At the start you can listen to one collection of Irish radio stations – nine in total. These will give you a sense of how quickly the stations stream.

Tap any station name and a small panel will appear with an ‘Add’ option shown in the bottom right. This allows you to add it to your favourites in the main panel of Broadcasts.

8 7

Time to pay

At this point you will be prompted to pay the one-off fee to access all of the features in the app. The cost is reasonable for the amount of usage you are likely to get.

Build a collection

Tapping the Command icon at the top will pop up every option included. From here you can build new collections, such as news, dance music and chill music. It’s highly expandable.

Image credits: High Caffeine Content

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comiXology – Comics & Manga Developer comiXology Difﬁculty

Time needed

Enjoy comics and graphic novels on your iPad For a comic book app to work well it needs a huge library, excellent presentation and ease of use, like comiXology…

s we know, reading on your iPad feels totally natural. The screen dimensions are similar to the printed page of a book, magazine or comic and you can swipe to turn the pages. There are many options open to you to read comic books on your iPad, but to ignore comiXology would be like ignoring Netflix and Apple TV, and watching just terrestrial TV. The library included with comiXology is huge, you will have instant access to any of the titles that are listed and, of course, the fact that Amazon is involved opens up your options immensely. The trick is setting up your account correctly to ensure that you can get new comics easily and then the rest is quite straightforward and obvious in use throughout. Ultimately, however, it is the way the comics are presented which matters most and here not one trick has been missed in ensuring that you will enjoy every single page and caption.

Step-by-step

Visit the site

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t ti ithi iX l i i t t and realistic at all times. It is a joy to use…

Buy new comics

Go to comixology.co.uk and log in. You cannot buy comics in the app on an iPad due to Apple and Amazon restrictions. Now, browse the titles on offer and make your choice on what to buy.

Buy a comic

Add the comic to your cart and complete your purchase. Your Amazon payment details will be used to complete the process, which should speed up all of your future comic purchases.

Time to read

The comic will be immediately available in the comiXology app, and all you need to do is tap the download icon and start reading. You will own a varied and easily accessible comic library in no time.

iPadOS comiXology Step-by-step

Read your favourite comics anywhere

When you open the comiXology app, sign in with your Amazon account, unless you already have an existing comiXology account. This will help with future purchases.

A real comic

The app does offer a genuine comic experience and it does not take long to get used to how the issues look on the iPad screen. Sometimes the detail is even better.

Go for free

Minimal options

You’ll see a free selection of comics to try, which allows you to understand the controls and see how realistically displayed the comics are on an iPad.

You can choose from a small selection of options when reading a comic, but everything you need is included. Play with each setting to see which ones work best for you.

Guided View

Flip to read

Guided View, often displayed as ‘GV’, presents one panel at a time for you to see all of the captions and artwork in greater detail. Tap to jump straight to the next caption.

In Guided View, you can turn the iPad to landscape to see the panel you are reading in much greater detail. It offers the best of all worlds in terms of visualising the story.

8 7

Gain an overview

Tap at the bottom of the screen to see a quick overview of the comic pages on one screen. This can be useful if you have forgotten where you last left the story.

Tap and hold

Tap and hold any comic on the main page to manage the publication. You can archive any that you have read, view book and series details, and even change the status of the comic.

Image credits: Iconology, Inc

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Apple Fitness+ Developer Apple Inc Difﬁculty

Time needed

Make your daily walks much more inspirational a variety of backdrops for your daily walks

t first glance, the new Time to Walk feature embedded in Apple Fitness+ may not appear to offer much that is new. You can already play a podcast when walking with your Apple Watch, as well as other kinds of audible entertainment, such as audio books and music, but there are small features in Time to Walk that make it worth checking out. For starters, you get to listen to some highly motivational speakers tell you interesting stories, which are timed to correspond to a set walking distance, plus there are bonuses included that may surprise you. We will detail all of the features that are included and highlight the benefits they offer, but it is true to say that it is unlikely you will only use it once, because it is an impressive experience throughout.

Step-by-step

Enjoy your new motivated walking

A new workout

Open the Workout app on your Apple Watch, and you will see a variety of Time to Walk workouts at the top. It initially feels like there is just one option available to you.

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o Walk io and rience uinely ational

It all begins

When you start the workout, the audio will begin, and you can walk as you would normally. The fact that the audio is so immersive will make the time pass quickly.

Choose your environment

Experiment with the sound options available, especially if you are using AirPods Pro. It is likely that the ‘Off’ sound option will work best for Time to Walk workouts.

watchOS Apple Fitness+

Walk and talk Inspirational exercise is now available to you every day The best voices Apple has managed to bag some impressive names to launch the Time to Walk service. Their voices are professionally calming, and their words are often highly motivating.

Knowledge base The alternative The alternative to Time to Walk is to play a free podcast while walking. This will be cheaper, but you may have to only listen to half the podcast, and it requires more manual intervention than the instant Time to Walk setup. Think of Time to Walk as merely a very clever extra part of Apple Fitness+.

Find your interests You can read up on the topic that will be covered during your workout, and this makes sense. You don’t want to spend 30 minutes listening to something that won’t inspire you.

Pure integration

A whole service

Apple Music is integrated in the workout as well, should you wish to up your walking game. Related tracks are listed for you to jump to in an instant.

Select a talk

Tap the green icon to choose a different talk to listen to. As with anything, not every talk will be to your taste, but the quality of content is very impressive.

A Fitness+ subscription is required to use Time to Walk, and you will have to judge if it is worth it to you. Remember that Fitness+ includes many more features.

Visuals as well

You may feel a vibration from your Apple Watch during a walk. Lift your wrist, and you will be shown an image, which adds related visual context to the spoken content.

A decent workout

We were surprised to see that our stats at the end of a Time to Walk workout were slightly improved over normal stats, which suggests that the feature really does work.

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StepDog – Watch Face Dog Developer Yingchi Wang Difﬁculty

Time needed

Get fit with a virtual dog friend Look after a virtual pet on your Apple Watch while getting fitter

t seems as though there are hundreds of different fitness apps available that work with the Apple Watch and that is, of course, a good thing. The problem is that many of them either struggle to differentiate themselves from the default Fitness app or they fail to provide the same level of motivation. This is not a problem that Stepdog suffers from because it is truly a different solution and it is one that brings some fun to the exercise regime that you may be putting yourself through. It feels like a virtual pet on your watch, and your iPhone, but there is a real-world benefit behind it that will help to ensure that you are trying just a little harder.

e your g toys, m and m play

iPhone and Apple Watch in tandem Few apps utilise both devices in such a complimentary way All about steps There is no doubt that StepDog is all about step tracking and little else in terms of exercise. Don’t discount, however, just how important increasing your steps each day can be.

Get the extras You can subscribe to choose from many more breeds of dog or cat and to also see the weather and leaderboards when you are tracking your steps each day.

Choose your favourite Naming your dog and choosing the breed really brings home the virtual personality of your pet. You can make the experience personal to you.

Knowledge base Make your pet fitter

They are everywhere Your virtual pet can be displayed on your Apple Watch complication and also in a widget on your iPhone. They will become a familiar sight.

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There is no reason why you cannot use StepDog to track the amount of exercise your dog is doing. You can make a concerted effort to take your real dog with you most of the time and get fitter together. The only difference is that your real dog will be happy to keep going when you want to stop.

watchOS StepDog Step-by-step

Get fit the fun way

A friendly complication

Once installed you can choose the Stepdog complication to see a friendly face on your main watch display. Simply tap it to see how close you are to your daily goal.

Cute interactions

The dog will audibly bark when tapped and you can experience all sorts of other cute moments throughout the day. The dog really does get under your skin after some time.

Change the complication

Business as usual

You can choose what is displayed in the complication either on the Apple Watch or in the Watch app on your iPhone. The steps complication option is particularly useful.

When you are exercising and monitoring your progress the Stepdog app will not be seen, but everything you do in terms of steps will be added to the app. It’s very subtle.

Check your progress

Time to sleep

You can see your progress in the simplest of displays when the complication is tapped. The percentage achieved and the number of steps taken are clearly displayed.

When you’ve achieved the goal, your virtual pet can rest – it’s pleasing to see them so relaxed. As crazy as it sounds, your pet starts to feel alive to you.

Image credits: DCL 2020

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Apple TV Developer Apple Inc Difﬁculty

Time needed

Step-by-step

Connect next-generation console controllers to Apple TV Managed to bag yourself a PS5 or Xbox Series X/S? Then you’ll have a new controller to connect to Apple TV too

ure, you’ve bought a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X or S to play the latest and greatest games that the next-generation of consoles have to offer, but your fun doesn’t have to stop with these amazing machines. It may have taken a little while for the powers that be in Cupertino to catch up but they’re now letting you connect the gamepads made for these consoles to your Apple TV, allowing you to take advantage of these next-gen controllers for lots more apps and games. Connecting them to Apple TV is simple and you can even customise the controls. Don’t forget, you can also use older PS4 and Xbox One S pads if you have some of those knocking around. And it’s possible to pair these – and the PS5 or Xbox Series X/S pads – to your iPhone and iPad as well.

Pair PS5 and Xbox Series X/S pads

Update the software

To use your next-gen gamepad, you must update your Apple TV to tvOS 14.5 or later (Settings>System>Software Updates). Once done, go to Settings>Remotes and Devices.

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With tvOS 14.5, you can use the latest PlayStation and Xbox controllers

Choose Bluetooth

Use your Apple Remote to select Bluetooth from the menu. It’s a good time to ensure your PlayStation 5 DualSense or Xbox Series X/S Wireless controller is charged.

Pair a PS5 pad

Let’s start by pairing a PS5 DualSense. Press the PS button located between the two thumbsticks while also pressing the Share button positioned left, above the D-pad.

tvOS Settings

Customise controller pads in Apple TV Select the pad you’re using in the Bluetooth menu and you will have access to a few useful options Use controller with Steam Link Steam Link is an app which lets you stream PC games to your Apple TV. Here you can customise the controller settings and button assignments so that the games play the way they should.

controller Not sure if the controller you have in your hand is the one which has been connected to Apple TV? Select ‘Identify Controller’ and it will send a vibration to the paired pad.

Unpair the device If you don’t want to continue pairing your controller with Apple TV, simply select ‘Unpair Device’. You may also see an option called ‘Disconnect Device’. This will stop the Bluetooth connection between your controller and Apple TV.

Customise your controller There are a number of custom settings for your controller. You can prevent the pad from vibrating or capturing video clips and you can also determine what each button does by selecting each one and choosing an action.

Choose PS5 controller

You should see DualSense Wireless Controller appear under Other Devices. Use the Apple TV Remote to select it. It will move to My Devices and show it’s been connected.

Knowledge base Why can’t I see the customisation options? As well as keeping your Apple TV up-to-date, it’s important that you also update your games consoles. Both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S machines have issued firmware updates that affect the controller and you should be offered the opportunity to bring them up to speed the next time you power up. We had limited options available for our Xbox controller within Apple TV until we updated the pad via the console.

Pair an Xbox pad

If you have an Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S controller, again follow steps one and two. But on this pad, press the pair button which is located at the top of the device.

Select Xbox Wireless

Xbox Wireless Controller should appear under Other Devices. Select this to pair. You can now use your gamepad to navigate the Apple TV menu and play games.

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Genius Bar

Our Apple devices and the software on them are some of the finest products on the planet, but even they have their moments. We’re here to give you expert advice and get you back up and running in no time

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macOS Notes

The place to come for key terms made easy ------------------------------

Disk Utility This is one of your Mac’s default applications than can be used to repair, partition, erase and restore disks and can be used on your Mac HD as well as connected external drives. ------------------------------

Handoff mode When using Apple apps that are used by Mac and iOS (Mail, Safari, Messages, etc), you can switch from using your iPhone to your Mac (and vice versa) using Handoff mode. Go to System Preferences/ Settings>General on Mac and iOS to enable it.

Is there a way to get coloured text in my Mac’s Notes app? I can’t seem to ﬁnd a way of doing it Rebecca Wyllie

------------------------------

Picture in Picture When watching a video in Safari, Picture in Picture mode transfers the video to its own separate viewing window, meaning you don’t have to watch it in the web page. You can manually drag the corners to increase the size of this window and drag it to various snap-to positions on your desktop.

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Click the menu

While in the Notes app, click on Format>Fonts and you will see the ‘Show Colours’ option – select this. You can also press the cmd+shift+C keyboard shortcut to instantly access this feature.

Choose a colour

The colour picker device will now appear, which you can use to select any colour you want. Drag the slider to adjust the brightness of the colours and then click on the colour you want to use in your note text.

Start writing

You can preselect a colour and then start writing from scratch in that colour, or you can just write in the default style and then highlight and change the colour of your text later.

ius Bar Ba macOS Mail

Apple Expert The one-stop column for Genius advice -----------------------------I have bought a new iPhone and have set it up with a new Apple ID. However, when I try to download the Music Memos app I can’t find it in the App Store. Why?

How can I scan documents to attach to outgoing emails on my Mac using my iPhone? I prefer typing on Mac Hanka Gall It’s amazing how all of the devices in Apple’s technological ecosystem work together and feed off each other. Make sure your devices are

Compose your email

In your Mac’s Mail app, compose an email, place your cursor on a blank line and go to File>Insert from iPhone and you will see options to add photos, documents and sketches.

Scan the document

With the document suitably framed, click on the shutter button and it will be scanned and automatically sent to your Mac and attached to your draft email.

running the latest versions of macOS and iOS and enable Handoff mode on both devices (although this may not be essential).

Switch to iPhone

Markup if necessary

That’s because Apple has retired Music Memos and nudged its users towards the built-in Voice Memos app instead (which is still good for quickly recording musical ideas). Music Memos was officially retired at the start of March but you will still be able to download and use it if it’s linked to an existing Apple ID. You can also export your recordings to the Voice Memos app, so you won’t lose all of your old stuff, but only if you previously owned the app.

Choose ‘Scan Documents’ and a pop-up iPhone icon will appear and your iPhone will automatically wake and launch the required app. Now position the document in view.

If you wish to add notes and annotations to your scan, hover your cursor over the attached scan and click on the arrow icon in the top-right corner. Choose ‘Markup’ from the menu.

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Gen Genius e iOS Music

Apple Expert

Is there any way to see my listening history in Apple Music, as it has auto-played songs I’ve liked? Carys Lloyd-Davies

The one-stop column for Genius advice -----------------------------How can I watch YouTube videos in Picture in Picture mode on my Mac? The method of activation seems to have changed… It has changed. You used to be able to activate it by right-clicking on the viewing window twice and selecting the option, which may still work depending on the version of macOS installed. But in Big Sur you must start watching a video and then click and hold on the blue sound icon that appears to the right of the URL/Search bar. This will access a menu, so just select the ‘Enter Picture in Picture’ option.

Open Music

Launch your Music app, start playing a track, any track. While it is playing, tap on the track at the bottom of the screen and you will enter fullscreen mode. Note the three icons at the bottom.

Tap ‘Up Next’

Tap on the right-most icon (Up Next) and all of the tracks on the current album will be listed. However, you need to scroll down past all of them. You should come to a section clearly marked ‘History’.

View history

All of the tracks that have previously been played in Apple Music will be listed, including all of those that have auto-played based on the music you were playing. You can tap ‘Clear’ to wipe your history.

iOS Settings How can I set up my iPhone so that it alerts me if my music is being played too loud? Ashleigh Ward

Active in Settings Notifications can be activated by opening the Settings app and then going to Sounds & Haptics>Headphone Safety. Once there, you will see these options displayed on your screen.

Set your level Move this slider to set the sound level at which you want to be notified of exceeding. It can be set as low as 75 decibels or as high as 100 decibels – which is as loud as an ambulance siren.

View your alerts Reduce loud sounds You can set your own sound limit, ensuring your device won’t let you pump audio through your headphones above a certain decibel level. Turn this option on.

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Notifications indicate if your device has been playing audio too loud over the course of seven days. This is where you can see just how many sound notifications you have received.

ius Bar Ba macOS Disk Utility I heard that it is possible to speedup an older iMac by running macOS from an external hard drive. Is this relatively easy and safe to do? Henrik Christie We certainly cannot vouch for its effectiveness for every iMac, but it definitely works for the Retina 4K, 21-inch late 2015 iMacs that cannot be upgraded with extra internal memory. The external hard drive that you use is also a factor. We used a 2TB, USB 3.0 desktop hard drive, which had no trouble running macOS Big Sur 11.3. Just make sure you back up your Mac HD to Time Machine before attempting the following procedure and be aware that you will have to re-install all of the third-party apps that you use onto your portable hard drive.

Open Disk Utility

Connect your external HD to your Mac and launch the Disk Utility app. Select the new drive in the sidebar and then click on the ‘Erase’ button to format it.

Format the drive

Name your drive and set the format to ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’ and the scheme to ‘GUID Partition Map’. Then click ‘Erase’ and wait for the process to complete.

Download Big Sur

Now go to the App Store, search for ‘Big Sur’, click on the macOS Big Sur page and then click ‘Get’ to download the installer. It will launch when downloaded.

Knowledge base Restoring from a Time Machine backup

Launch the installer

Start the installation process and, when you see your Mac HD, click ‘Show All Disks’ and your formatted HD will be shown. Select it and click ‘Continue’.

Switch disks

Wait for Big Sur to be installed on the external drive, then restart the Mac and hold the option/alt key when you hear the startup chime. Now simply choose your new HD.

By following this guide, you will get a totally fresh Mac running from your External HD. You can then connect your Time Machine backup disk to the Mac and restore your ‘new’ Mac with the backed up data, files, apps, etc, from your ‘old’ Mac. Just open Time Machine, select a backup and away you go!

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Gen Genius e iOS Settings My iPhone storage has suddenly vanished to the point that I can no longer install apps! What is going on? Jay Rowson

Knowledge base

There are potentially lots of reasons why your storage space has diminished, but we’d wager that two apps in particular are the main culprits. Firstly, have you taken loads of photos or captured tonnes of video? Both of these can eat up your storage. Second, do you listen to podcasts? In which case your iPhone could be full of podcasts that you have listened to as well as new episodes for all of the podcasts that you subscribe to. Thankfully, your iPhone has built-in storage management tools that you can use to root out the main storage eaters, as well as steps you can take to ensure that your storage space isn’t all consumed by such apps again.

Open Settings

Claw back space

Go to Settings>General>iPhone Storage and immediately you will see suggestions on how to save space. Tap ‘Show All’ to see them all.

As you delete podcast episodes, the numbers next to Documents & Data will be reduced. See how you can reduce this figure for your other apps too.

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Offload or delete? When you select an app in Settings>General>iPhone Storage you will be presented with two immediate options; Offload or Delete. The Offload option should be tapped if you wish to retrieve the storage space used by a big app, such as a game, but retain the app’s documents and data. The app can be re-downloaded at any time from the App Store as it is tied to the Apple ID that was used to purchase it. The Delete option removes the app and all data from your iPhone.

Select Podcasts

Tweak the settings

Scroll down and you’ll see all of the apps listed that eat into your storage, with the main offenders at the top of the list. Tap on ‘Podcasts’ to see how it is abusing space.

Now go to Settings>Podcasts and, if you use other Apple devices as well, turn off the ‘Sync Podcasts’ option. Make sure ‘Removed Played Downloads’ is enabled.

Delete episodes

Disable auto-download

By default, new episodes of podcasts that you subscribe to are downloaded and stored on your iPhone. Swipe left on any you don’t need and then tap ‘Delete’.

Finally, under Automatic Downloads, disable the ‘Enable When Following’ option to prevent new episodes from being automatically downloaded to your iPhone.

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Reviews

Polk REACT Soundbar & Wireless Polk REACT Sub £249/$249 Key features

Learn more

Available from

Alexa built-in • Bluetooth • Dolby Digital • DTS • HDMI Arc

polkaudio.com

amazon.co.uk

THERE HAVE BEEN SOME TRULY AWESOME SOUNDBARS RECENTLY. Majority’s K2 produced a big, broad sound for under £100, whereas’s Harman/ Kardon’s Citation MultiBeam 700 produced skyscraper-shaking sound (and brought a lovely touchscreen interface to the party) for just under £500. So what do you go for if your budget only stretches to somewhere in-between the two? The answer lies here…

We two are one We should point out each of the units featured here – the REACT Soundbar and the Sub – are sold separately. For

“The wireless bass unit adds a huge rumble to your music that is seismic enough to cause heart palpitations ” your £250 you get the REACT Soundbar, whereas the REACT Sub will set you back an additional £179. That is a big outlay for a standalone sub, especially as the Soundbar does a decent job of handling the bass on its own, but the two in unison are formidable. The sizeable bass unit is

wireless, automatically connects to the Soundbar when powered-on and instantly adds a huge complimentary rumble to your music that is seismic enough to cause heart palpitations. The REACT Soundbar is so-called because that’s what it does, react to your voice. With Amazon Alexa built-in (which can be connected to Wi-Fi and calibrated via the Alexa iOS app), you can throw the full barrage of smart speaker commands at it. Connecting the speaker to your Mac or iOS device is slightly trickier and involves the supplied remote control. Sadly, the REACT Soundbar doesn’t support AirPlay, so if you want to start playing tracks

Engineered for Dolby and DTS, you get roomfilling surround sound with no extra speakers…

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“You can use Polk’s Voice Adjust technology to boost the dialogue of films and TV shows to hear every word” from Apple Music, you’ll need to connect with Bluetooth. And with no apparent pairing button on the speaker itself you’ll have to hold a button on the remote for this action. This isn’t a massive deal, it’s just a shame this device isn’t instantly discoverable, as so many are.

Expertly engineered The REACT Soundbar’s internal tweeter, mid-range and woofer speakers do an amazing job of handling your audio and they’re engineered to produce room-filling sound without the need for additional speakers (but they can be added if desired). If you connect the soundbar to your TV (and with a free high-speed HDMI cable included, why wouldn’t you?)

then you can also use Polk’s Voice Adjust technology to boost the dialogue and hear every word. The only aspect of the REACT Soundbar that didn’t impress us was its appearance. While we approve of the general slim, low profile design and the light strip that indicates the mode (such as Bluetooth, Dolby, Night mode, etc), the large, very plastic, very ugly disc of control buttons on the top cheapens the look considerably. Judged on sound though, the REACT Soundbar is as impressive a sound slab as you’ll find for this price. Pair it with the REACT Sub too and you’ll really start to feel the audio.

Verdict

A control panel on top of the soundbar lets you mute the mic and adjust the volume

Connection ports include AUX, USB (for service only), optical and HDMI…

Super-responsive, super-sounding, the REACT Soundbar can handle all of your smart speaker needs while delivering high-quality, room-filling audio from any source. A light bar on the top edge of the speaker tells you the status (Bluetooth, Dolby, etc)

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Reviews

Extended £44.95/$39.99 Key features

Learn more

Available from

Lightweight design • Easy access to connection ports

twelvesouth.com

amazon.co.uk

PERFECT FOR CREATIVE TYPES who are very particular about the positioning of their Apple Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad 2, Twelve South’s new peripheral ensures that they stay together and don’t ride apart, leading to a bad work posture.

Easy access Available in black or white versions to compliment Apple’s silver or Space Grey Magic Keyboards with Numeric Keypad, the MagicBridge Extended is an attractive tray in which your keyboard and trackpad can sit. The polycarbonate unit is super-lightweight and so won’t hamper Bluetooth signals and has a grille along the rear edge that has been precisely engineered to provide easy access to power switches and lightning power ports.

Also included is a removable frame into which the keyboard can sit, the idea being that you can position your keyboard on either side of the MagicBridge to please both right and left-handed users. Silicone pads on the underside of the MagicBridge ensure it grips your desktop and remains still, but if you also want to work with your keyboard on your lap then it provides a stable, unified base for your Mac accessories. If your Magic Keyboard doesn’t have a built-in numeric pad then a shorter MagicBridge is also available. Ultimately, this is one of those peripherals that you probably didn’t realise you needed. But once your keyboard and trackpad are sat securely in the unifying tray and moveable as one, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

Expertly engineered openings on the back of the tray provide easy access for cables…

The tray is designed to house a Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad and Magic Trackpad 2

Verdict A stylish solution for a problem you possibly didn’t realise that you had! The MagicBridge Extended is a brilliant tool for keeping your iMac keyboard and trackpad neatly together.

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If you want to work on your lap then the MagicBridge provides a stable base…

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Software

“160 presets provide a mind-blowing insight into what this digital instrument is capable of”

Price £28.99/$29.99 Image credits: Moog Music Inc

Requirements macOS 11.0 or later • 149.5 MB

Learn more moogmusic.com

Available from Mac App Store

Model 15 Modular Synth Game-changing presets Unleash the power of the Model 15 with 160 unique presets

Expert tuition Tutorial patches are on hand to get you up to speed with the Model 15

Moog’s iconic synthesizer comes to Mac & iOS FOR THIS MODULAR Editor’s SYNTHESIZER and synthesis Choice educational tool, Moog cannily utilised Apple’s Metal tech to ensure that every zoom, pan and modular patch feels completely natural – which is key to this app’s appeal. Every facet of Moog’s iconic Model 15 modular synthesizer has been meticulously recreated to capture the character, harmonic complexity and mystique of the Model 15’s modules, including the 921-series oscillators and 904A Low Pass Filter. You can instantly access a traditional Moog keyboard, a 1150 ribbon controller, an eightstep sequencing arpeggiator and the award-

winning Animoog Keyboard that has 22 built-in scales and polyphonic modulation capabilities to help you start generating pleasing sounds. What’s also good is that tutorial patches are also included to help bring novices up to a decent level of operation and introduce more seasoned users to more expert techniques. It’s an absolute joy to use and the 160 unique presets provide a mind-blowing insight into what this incredible digital instrument is capable of. You can also create your own favoured presets (which you can share) and the real-time looping recorder with overdub lets you create synth snippets that can be instantly exported. A must-have for electronic music makers.

Verdict

Drag and drop You can click and drag the wires to patch in new sounds…

225

A staggeringly good recreation of Moog’s iconic synthesizer that is packed with presets to help you hit the ground running on your projects.

iOS game Podcast

Image credits: Tilting Point LLC

Star Trek: Legends Price

Requirements

Learn more

Available from

Arcade subscription

iOS 13.5 or later • 878.2 MB

ftxgames.com

iOS App Store

AS THE FATE OF THE GALAXY RESTS IN YOUR HANDS, it would be rude not to dive into this Star Trek themed turn-based RPG. You get the keys to the USS Artemis to pilot into the Nexus, where you’ll get to beam down and explore new worlds, recruit new team members, and engage in combat with all manner of unsavoury types. The game is well-structured with multiple routes through each mission so that you have ample reason to replay them. As your team grows in size, you can assign them tasks onboard the ship to boost their stats and purchase upgrades to make them more powerful in battle. The turn-based combat works well and makes every encounter a chin-stroking puzzle.

The Apple WatchCast Podcast Apple WatchCast

The strategic, turn-based combat system works very well…

Music

Verdict An enjoyable, huge, sprawling space adventure that does the weighty brand justice.

Assign roles to your team members to boost their stats

macOS app

Typhoons

Corkulous Professional

Image credits: Corked Labs, LLC

Sometimes it’s hard to find decent coverage for the Apple Watch, especially in terms of new apps, so this is a nice listen for anyone keen to get the most out of their wearable tech.

Price

Requirements

Learn more

Available from

Free

macOS 10.15 or later

corkulous.com

Mac App Store

AS MACS ARE SYNONYMOUS WITH CREATIVITY, it’s good to have one place where you can dump your ideas. This app lets you store notes, labels, photos, contacts, mindmaps and PDFs and also provides sketch tools, shapes, lines and loads of other creative resources to help you generate your ideas. When you first launch the app you’ll be presented with subscription options to unlock all of the features, but you can ignore these and crack with populating your own personal cork board with content. Just click on an item in the sidebar and it will appear on your board. From there you can add text and various other embellishments and then drag it where you want.

The Brighton duo flesh out their distinctive sound with synths for their third longplayer – and it works. The songs sound fuller, funkier and destined for the world’s biggest stadiums.

Books

The Castle on Sunset Shawn Levy £3.99/$4.99

Verdict A clean and intuitive app for emptying the contents of your mind and generating creative ideas.

Royal Blood £9.99/$9.99

Corkulous provides a clean environment for generating and storing ideas

An entertaining insight into the love, fame, death and scandal at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont hotel.

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Time Machine Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA To email, enter firstname.surname@futurenet.com

Editorial

Editor Ryan Butt Art Editor Newton Ribeiro Production Editor Olivia Weaver Head of Art & Design Rodney Dive Senior Art Editor Jo Gulliver Photographer Phil Barker (Future Photo Studio) Contributors Mark Billen, George Cairns, Dave Clews, David Crookes, Shaun McGill, Philip Morris, Roland Waddilove Cover images and Photography Relevant photography, icons and imagery courtesy of Apple Inc, Sony Computer Entertainment and MasterTux Advertising Digital or printed media packs are available on request. Commercial Sales Director Clare Dove Chief Revenue Officer Zack Sullivan Head of Commercial Dave Randall Senior Advertising Manager Sasha McGregor Account Director Andrew Tilbury Account Manager Isabel Lincoln-Moore International iCreate is available for licensing. Contact the licensing team to discuss partnership opportunities. Head of Print Licensing Rachel Shaw licensing@futurenet.com Print subscriptions & back issues Web www.magazinesdirect.com Enquiries help@magazinesdirect.com Tel 0344 848 2852 International +44 (0) 344 848 2852 Circulation Head of Newstrade Tim Mathers Tel +44 (0)1202 586 200 Production Head of Production US & UK Mark Constance Production Project Manager Clare Scott Advertising Production Manager Joanne Crosby Digital Editions Controller Jason Hudson Production Manager Vivienne Turner Management Chief Content Officer Aaron Asadi Editorial Director William Gannon Global Brand Director Andy Clough Group Editor-in-Chief Graham Barlow Group Operations Director Angie Lyons-Redman Commercial Finance Director Dan Jotcham Printed by William Gibbons, 28 Planetary Road, Willenhall WV13 3XT www.williamgibbons.co.uk Tel: 0190 273 0011 Distributed by Marketforce, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5HU www.marketforce.co.uk Tel: 0203 787 9001

iMac G3 (BondiAugust Blue) 1998

Disclaimer All contents © 2021 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any other changes or updates to them. This magazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein.

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Release date

As Apple reintroduces a splash of colour back to its iMac range, let us reacquaint ourselves with the machine that started it all – the original Bondi Blue iMac. Drastically different from any other mainstream computer on the market at the time, this Mac comprised of a translucent, egg-shaped case housing a 15-inch CRT display and stereo speakers. Built into the attractive blue case was a handle and a flip-down door, which could be opened to reveal perhaps the iMac G3’s biggest innovation. Abandoning the previous peripheral connection stalwarts of the Macintosh range (ADB, SCSI and GeoPort serial ports), the iMac G3 went exclusively USB, including as the connector for its matching keyboard and mouse. Also shown the door was the 3.5-inch floppy drive – ever-present in every Mac since 1984 – in favour of recordable CDs and something called ‘the internet’. The future had well and truly arrived… and it was blue.

Next issue… iCreate 226, on sale 17 June 2021

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