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One of the problems with Shortcuts on iOS is finding a use for them!

This week's tip video demonstrates some real-life examples that Don used on a recent holiday. If you've ever cruised, you know just how expensive Internet access can be, and what a palaver it is, switching Wi-Fi on and off, accessing the ship's webpage and messing about with Mobile Data settings.

Why not create some shortcuts and add them to your Today View as Widgets? Or even trigger them using Siri?

This tip video explains all...

A quick and easy way to create voice memos or any audio recordings and have them sync across your iPad, iPhone, and Mac.

Voice Memos has had a full redesign and is now available on all of your devices (except Apple Watch!).

With the plethora of iOS and Mac devices in the average Apple home, the frequency and size of app installs and updates can make a significant dent in your internet bandwidth. Add in the amount of iCloud data that now needs to be synced with all your devices and the amount of internet-based traffic increases considerably.

With just a few clicks, you can switch on Content Caching and use your Mac as a staging post for all your shared content and iCloud data to reduce bandwidth usage and speed up installation on supported devices.

In this tip video, Don demonstrates just how easy it is to set up Content Caching on your Mac.

Following on from our recent tip show on installing and managing fonts on macOS, this week we turn our attention to font management on iOS.

Although external font support is not built into iOS 12, it is possible to install external fonts using an app such as AnyFont.

AnyFont allows you to install external fonts as configuration profiles so all of your applications can use them. This is perfect for creating and editing documents across platforms, by having access to the fonts on your iPad and iPhone that are also installed on your Mac.

In this tip video Don demonstrates how to convert font files into configuration profiles using AnyFont.

Battery health is critical when dealing with mobile devices such as iPhone and iPad.

With the introduction of iOS 12, Apple now delivers a wealth of information about your battery's health, its charging history and how the applications you use affect your battery consumption.

In this tip video, I take a look at the new charts and lists available to help you keep on top of your battery usage.

With the limited screen real estate on the iPad, you can use Split View to arrange two applications on the screen at the same time - providing they offer support for Split View.

In this episode, Don shows you how to make the best use of split view when working with your iPad, including several tips using Safari and Split View.

With respect to the Camera application, most of the changes in iOS 12 are under the hood, while iPhone XS and XS Max bring in some new features.

In this tip video, I revisit the Camera app using the iPhone XS Max by doing a refresher on some old features, as well as taking a look at the new ones.

iBooks is now Books and has had a complete revamp.

The changes are more pronounced on iOS 12 with new "Reading Now" and "Want to Read" sections.

This week I take you on a tour of Books on both macOS and iOS.

Following on from our recent iOS 12 release show, I go over the revamped Stocks app, now available on iPad as well as iPhone.

Following on from our recent iOS 12 release show, I cover some of the improvements and additions to Security & Privacy in iOS 12.

iOS 12 is Apple`s newest OS for the iPad and iPhone. Scheduled for release on September 17 2018 - iOS 12 brings increased performance across the board, along with some updates to existing features and some brand new ones.

In this tutorial, Don takes you through some of the obvious and not so obvious changes in iOS.

Taking screenshots on iOS devices is a snap in iOS 11. There are also some handy annotation features to mark up your screenshots and share them with people. You can also discard screenshots easily if you don't want to keep them indefinitely.

If you do wish to save them, the Photos app stores them in a special Screenshots album for easy retrieval. You can even take screenshots from Apple Watch and they sync automatically to your iPhone and iPad via the iCloud Photo Library, and can also be marked up or shared via the Photos app.

I cover all this and more in this week's tip.

Live Photos are a great addition to the iPhone and you can further transform them using one of three effects: Loop, Bounce and Long Exposure.

I love using the Long Exposure effect on any running water or fountains. It makes a huge difference on your photos, without the need for specialist photo equipment or in-depth technical knowledge.

However, when out and about recently, I had a brain freeze and couldn't remember how to access the Live Photo effects - not everything in iOS is as discoverable as it should be. So I thought it would be a great topic for a refresher tip video!

AirDrop is a safe and secure way to transfer files between Apple devices. It requires virtually zero configuration and only needs Bluetooth and WiFi to create an encrypted connection between devices. However, there are some precautions you need to take to ensure you remain in control of AirDrop.

In this tip video, I take a look at setting-up and using AirDrop on both the Mac and iOS.

Two quick updates in this week's tip show:

Text Expansion

Back in episode 0738, we covered using the built-in features of Text Auto-correction in both macOS and iOS. This is an easy way to use abbreviations to expand to simple words and phrases. However, text expansion is not just limited to simple words and phrases. It can also be used for multiple paragraphs, making Text Auto-correction so much more useful! In this tip, Don shows you how to create a multiline text snippet that will sync across your devices.

Subtitles or Captions in Safari

One of the main support issues we come across are people being unable to switch off subtitles when viewing tutorials on the ScreenCastsOnline website or, even worse, seeing two sets of subtitles displayed at once. This is easily fixed and is due to Safari itself displaying subtitles. In this segment, Don shows you how to easily switch both sets of subtitles off, giving you an uninterrupted view of your tutorials.

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.