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With the introduction of iOS 11.4 & macOS 10.13.5, Apple have delivered on Messages for iCloud. No longer are messages hit and miss on your various devices, now you can store an encrypted archive in iCloud for use by all devices.

In this week's tip video, Don takes you through some of the limitations of the old Messages architecture, demonstrates switching on the new Messages in iCloud and takes a look at how it works in operation.

This tip video was recorded prior to the release of macOS 10.13.5, so to setup Messages in iCloud on your Mac, open Messages - Preferences - Accounts - Select your iCloud Account and switch on "Enable Messages in iCloud"

There are plenty of very capable and very sophisticated text auto-correction apps on the market. However, if your needs are simple, why not use the text auto-correction features built into macOS and iOS?

In this week's tip video, Don walks you through setting up and using auto-correction and auto-completion on the Mac and iPhone, and shows you how those text snippets sync in real time between devices.

Some oldies but goodies: One of the benefits of using a soft keyboard is that it can do so much more than a conventional hardware keyboard.

In this week's tip I remind you of some of the not-so-obvious features hidden in the standard iOS soft keyboard.

This weekly tip video covers a workaround to allow people without Macs (or any computer) to access iCloud.com on an iPad or iPhone.

This is necessary in order to create iCloud-based Mail rules and to access some additional preferences not available on iOS devices.

Two tips this week...

Siri News on iOS

No need to feel left out if you don't have a HomePod. You can get the news spoken to you from your iOS devices and as long as they support hands-free "Hey Siri" commands.

Hidden Files & Folders in macOS

Display your hidden files and folders with a simple keyboard shortcut. No longer do you need to conjure up some obscure Terminal command to make this happen.

Your Apple ID is a crucial part of how you access your devices, apps and all Apple services.

It goes without saying that you really need to look after your Apple ID and make sure that you can regain access in the event of some mishap.

In this week's tip video, we take a look at the website that's designed to help you maintain your Apple ID: appleid.apple.com

Continuing on from last week's tip video, we transition from setting up Apple Mail rules on the Mac to server-based rules on iCloud.com.

Although not as granular as the local Mail rules, server-based rules can run 24/7 and work across all of your macOS and iOS devices.

iPads and iPhones are extremely popular with children, but as adults, we have a responsibility to protect them from accessing harmful or inappropriate material.

Apple acknowledges this fact, and provides a wide range of ways to tailor the iOS experience for children of all ages.

iOS 11 contains "Restrictions" that allow you as a parent or caregiver to enable or disable access to apps, services and content on the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, as well as access to certain physical parts of the device such as the Camera.

In this weekly tip video, we explore the wide range of restrictions available to you.

We may have covered the major points of iOS 11 in the full shows, but there are still further hints and tips to share.

This tip show covers three really useful tips when using iOS 11.

One of the problems of moving to a new iPhone is that the restore process brings everything across. As well as the important information, you also end up with a tonne of applications that you never use and just can't be bothered to weed out.

Wouldn't it be nice to start off with a fresh build of iOS and just the stock apps? You can do this of course (instead of restoring your iPhone) but you'll loose all your Activity, Health and Watch data.

In this tip video, I demonstrate how you can do a partial restore to a new or existing iPhone to remove all the detritus, yet keep all your Activity, Health and Watch data. A third-party utility is used to achieve this (do so at your own risk) and there is no guarantee that it will work with future releases of iOS. However, I used it on my iPhone X and it worked amazingly well! The developers have stated that it is supported on iOS 11.2 beta so it looks promising!

Decipher Activity Transfer is free, but there is a paid version that allows you to transfer additional components in addition to your Activity and Watch data.