Have you ever wanted to activate the shutter button for your iPhone’s camera—for either a still photo or a video—when you’re not holding it? Selfie sticks often come with Bluetooth buttons that can do that, and starting in iOS 26, you also can use your AirPods 4 or AirPods Pro as a camera remote. While you’re wearing your AirPods, turn on the feature in Settings > AirPods > Camera Remote, where you can choose between triggering the shutter with a single press or a press and hold. Note that whichever option you turn on will override the usual actions for those triggers.
(Featured image by iStock.com/PeopleImages)
Social Media: Your AirPods can now double as a camera remote in iOS 26. Here’s how to set it up so a press or press-and-hold triggers the shutter to take a photo or start and stop a video.
Since the pandemic, video calls have become a fact of life for many of us, so much so that it’s now possible to sit down for a meeting without thinking about whether you’ve changed out of your pajamas or brushed your hair. (No judgment; we’ve all done it.) To ensure that you’re presentable before you connect, use the Mac app Hand Mirror. It adds an icon to your menu bar that, when clicked, shows you what your webcam sees. Hand Mirror is free, but you can pay $6.99 for Hand Mirror Plus, which adds features like snapshots, a mic check, quick access to reaction icons, different window types, and more.
(Featured image by iStock.com/Tatsiana Volkava)
Social Media: About to join a video call? The free Mac app Hand Mirror adds a menu bar icon that instantly shows your webcam view so you can check your hair before anyone else sees it.
If you’re still using Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac, on July 13, 2026, an expiring certificate will cause your copies of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook to enter “reduced functionality mode,” meaning you can view and print documents but cannot edit or create new ones. To check if you’re affected, open Word and choose Word > About Microsoft Word (or the equivalent in any other Office app). If it says you’re using Office 2019, you need to act before July 13. Some newer versions are also affected but can be updated—for Office 2021 and Microsoft 365, an update is required for app versions under 16.83, and macOS 12 Monterey or later is required. For Office 2019 users, options include subscribing to Microsoft 365 ($99.99/year), purchasing a one-time license for Office 2024 for $179.99 (Home) or $249.99 (Home & Business with Outlook), or switching to alternatives like Apple’s iWork apps (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote), LibreOffice, or Google Docs. New purchases of Microsoft 365 or Office 2024 require macOS 14 Sonoma or later, so users whose Macs can’t upgrade must use Microsoft 365 on the Web, consider the alternatives, or upgrade their hardware.
(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/grinvalds)
Social Media: Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac will become read-only on July 13, 2026. Check your version now and explore your upgrade options before you lose the ability to create and edit documents.
Apple’s Dictation feature is a great way to avoid slow typing on the iPhone and iPad, and it can be welcome on the Mac as well. But it struggles with proper nouns—it guesses wildly at unfamiliar names and often fails to capitalize common words that are part of a name (so you get “New York Public library”). Apple doesn’t provide a user-editable dictionary, but there’s a backdoor solution: create entries in Contacts. When you create a fake contact for a troublesome word or phrase, Dictation learns to recognize it correctly across all your Apple devices. Put the word or phrase in the First Name field and add an emoji like 🙉 in the Last Name field so these fake contacts sort to the bottom of your Contacts list and don’t clutter the display. For stubborn words, you may need to train Dictation by dictating a few practice sentences in Notes and correcting mistakes when iOS offers alternatives. This trick works for place names, organization names, technical terms, or any word that Dictation consistently gets wrong.
(Featured image by iStock.com/Jacob Wackerhausen)
Social Media: Frustrated when Dictation on the iPhone mangles what you meant to say? Create fake contacts for troublesome words, and Dictation will learn to recognize them correctly across all your Apple devices.
If you can work comfortably with the Mac’s four Finder views, you’ll enjoy an easier experience when you try to get to your folders and files. Each view has its pros and cons, so using the best view for the job at hand will make you more productive. Here’s a look at the Icon, List, Column, and Gallery views, plus tips on quickly switching views and setting up default views.
You switch between views in the active window by choosing View > as Icons, as List, as Columns, or as Gallery. Alternatively, click one of the view icons in a window’s toolbar. It’s worth memorizing the keyboard shortcuts for List (Command-2) and Column (Command-3) views so you can switch to them quickly if a particular window isn’t in your preferred view.
Icon View
Viewing files and folders as thumbnails is the most visual approach and works best for people who think spatially—this icon is below that other one. Such people often prefer to arrange icons manually to create memorable groupings, but the Finder can also automatically arrange them in a grid, sorted by different criteria. Icon view works well for:
The Desktop: The desktop can only display its contents in Icon view, though you can open the Desktop folder in a window and use any view in that window.
Folders with few items: When a window shows only a handful of items, icons make selection easy. That’s why most software distribution disk images use Icon view to display the app and an icon in the Applications folder.
Photos or other images: Because icons for images can show a preview of the image (rather than just the document type thumbnail), Icon view with a relatively large icon size provides a useful visual preview.
To customize Icon view, choose View > Show View Options. You can adjust icon size, grid spacing, text size, label position, and background color—or even a background photo. Group By organizes icons into categories, while Sort By keeps them organized by name, date, or other metadata. For folders containing images, increasing the icon size creates a more useful visual preview.
The main limitation of Icon view is that it shows minimal metadata—just the filename and, optionally, item info such as image dimensions. It also becomes unwieldy with more than a few files, since scrolling through numerous icons is inefficient.
List View
When a folder contains more than a few items, List view is usually the most efficient way to work with it. It displays files in rows with sortable columns showing metadata such as date modified, size, kind, and more. List view is ideal for users who think about files in terms of attributes—when something was created, how large it is, or what type it is—rather than visual appearance. Use it for:
Folders containing many items: Once a folder has more items than fit without scrolling, List view makes it easier to view and select items.
Sorting folders by date or size: Whenever you want to see the most recent files at the top, or quickly identify which consume the most disk space, you can click the Date Modified or Size column header to sort by that criterion.
Work with nested folders: Disclosure triangles let you view the contents of multiple nested folders without opening a new window, making it easier to see and move items between them.
Customize the visible columns by choosing View > Show View Options or by Control-clicking any column header. You can add columns for tags, version, comments, and other metadata. Drag column headers to rearrange their order, and drag the dividers between headers to adjust column widths. Sort columns by clicking a column header; click it again to reverse the sort.
Column View
Column view shows your folder hierarchy as a series of columns, with each column representing one level of the hierarchy. Selecting a folder reveals its contents in the next column to the right, while selecting a file displays a preview and metadata in the rightmost column. Column view is popular with power users who frequently navigate between folders and appreciate seeing the path to the current location. It’s perfect for:
Navigating deep folder structures: Move through nested folders quickly without opening multiple windows.
Understanding file locations: The column layout shows exactly where a file sits in your folder hierarchy.
Quick previews: Select any file to see a preview without opening it or using Quick Look.
Drag-and-drop organization: Easily drag files between folders visible in different columns.
One useful option in View > Show View Options is “Resize columns to fit filenames,” added in macOS 26.1, which automatically adjusts column widths to accommodate the longest visible filename. Alternatively, you can manually resize all columns at once by Option-double-clicking any column divider. You can also set a default column width and choose whether to show icons and the preview column.
Gallery View
Gallery view dedicates most of the window to a large preview of the selected file, with a row of thumbnails along the bottom and a metadata sidebar on the right. Those who work primarily with images find it useful. It’s designed for:
Reviewing photos and videos: The large preview makes it easy to evaluate images without opening them.
Previewing documents: PDFs, presentations, and other documents display their first page, which can help with identifying similarly named files.
Quick Actions: The sidebar includes Quick Action buttons for common tasks such as rotating images, using markup tools, creating PDFs, and trimming video.
Checking metadata: The sidebar can show detailed information, including EXIF data for photos.
Gallery view becomes less useful for folders containing mostly text documents or applications, where the large preview adds little value. Honestly, we seldom use it.
Setting Default Views
The Finder remembers your view preferences for each folder individually, so once set, they should stick. However, if you’re in Column or List view and open a folder set to appear in Gallery view by selecting it or clicking its disclosure triangle, you’ll stay in the previous view. To open the folder in its assigned view, double-click its icon.
When you create a new Finder window with File > New Finder Window, it opens the folder specified in Finder > Settings > General. Set that folder to your preferred view so new windows open as you like.
To ensure a specific folder always opens in a particular view, select it, choose View > Show View Options, and select the Always Open In checkbox. To have its subfolders open in that view too, also select Browse In, if available.
You can also apply view settings to other folders. In View Options, configure the settings exactly as you want—icon size, text size, visible columns, and so on—then click Use as Defaults. This makes those settings the default for any folder displayed in that same view type (Icon, List, or Gallery) that doesn’t have its own custom settings. You must set defaults separately for each view type; Column view lacks this option entirely. To revert to system defaults, hold the Option key and the button changes to Restore Defaults.
There’s no need to commit to one view. Switch freely based on what you’re doing—List view for finding recent files or cleaning up, Column view for navigating a folder hierarchy, or Gallery or Icon view for reviewing images. The best view is whichever helps you accomplish your current task most efficiently.
(Featured image generated by Adam Engst with ChatGPT)
Social Media: Icon, List, Column, or Gallery? Each Finder view has its strengths. Match the right view to your task and spend less time wrestling with your files.
We always recommend buying from reputable manufacturers rather than no-name brands, especially for products with lithium-ion batteries, such as power banks, Bluetooth speakers, flashlights, power tools, e-bikes, and more. In a 2025 study, industrial scanning company Lumafield CT-scanned over 1,000 lithium-ion battery cells from ten different brands, including reputable manufacturers like Samsung and Panasonic, as well as low-cost and outright counterfeit brands sold through retailers like Temu. The results were troubling: nearly 8% of the low-cost and counterfeit batteries had dangerous manufacturing defects that significantly increase the risk of internal short-circuiting and battery overheating, potentially leading to fires. None of the name-brand batteries showed these defects. The few dollars you might save on a no-name battery aren’t worth the risk.
(Featured image by iStock.com/Pradit_Ph)
Social Media: A study found that nearly 8% of cheap lithium-ion batteries have dangerous manufacturing defects that can cause catastrophic failure—even fires—while name-brand cells had none. Stick with reputable brands.
