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31 LITTLE-KNOWN SETTINGS ON YOUR PHONE AND LAPTOP YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

You’d have to be really, really bored to devote some time to scrolling through all the settings on your phone or laptop—so the devices you rely on every day may well offer a selection of options and features that you’re completely unaware of. Here’s a rundown of 31 of the best lesser-known settings that you might find useful.

As usual, we’ll be talking about the most recent versions of these platforms at the time of writing, and for the sake of brevity we’ll concentrate on the stock (Pixel) version of Android 10—the settings on your own devices might vary somewhat.

ANDROID

1) Tweak your Quick Settings

You don’t have to settle for the default options on the Quick Settings panel—drag two fingers down from the top of the screen to see it, then tap the pen icon (lower left) to remove or add tiles. Some of the ones hidden by default are toggle switches for the system-wide dark mode and the recently launched Focus mode in Digital Wellbeing.

2) Configure default apps in Android

Unlike iOS, Android lets you set default apps—apps that launch automatically when you follow web links or want to send an SMS. To configure which apps are used by default, open Settings on your Android device, then choose Apps and notifications, Advanced and Default apps: All the available app categories will be listed on screen.

3) Hear audio output in mono

We might be talking to a small proportion of people here, but we’ve always found it useful to be able to turn a phone’s output to mono instead of stereo for those times when you have just one earbud in (at work, on the subway, on a bike). You can do this in Android: The relevant option can be found in Settingsby tapping Accessibility and scrolling down.

4) Limit notifications on the lock screen

You don’t necessarily want your most private and sensitive messages getting previewed on the lock screen where they can be seen by anyone who glances at your phone. To hide the previews, open Settings then choose Display and Advanced—tap on Lock screen display and Lock screen to set how much information shows up before your phone is unlocked.

5) Keep chatting to the Assistant

If you missed it, Google added a new Assistant feature called Continued conversation—it means you don’t have to keep saying “hey Google” every time you’ve got a follow-up to your original question. To make sure this is enabled in Android, open Settings then tap on Apps and notifications and Assistant to find the Continued conversation toggle switch.

6) Use Android with a screen protector

Android has a built-in setting that will boost screen sensitivity and should make your phone or tablet easier to operate if you’ve got a screen protector on top of the display. To see whether or not it makes a difference on your particular device, open Settings and then select Display and Advanced to find the Increase touch sensitivity toggle switch.

7) Run Android by your Rules

This is an Android 10 and Pixel exclusive for now, though it may roll out more widely in the future—if you open Settings and choose System, Advanced and Rules, you can set up some basic automations. For example, you could have your phone switch to silent mode when you reach the office. There’s not much here yet, but it should expand over time.

IOS & IPADOS

8) Automatically remove apps you’re not using

When it comes to saving space on your iPhone or iPad, there’s a very handy feature called Offload Unused Apps under General and iPhone Storage in Settings. It automatically uninstalls the apps you use least frequently when you’re low on room, but keeps the app documents and data intact, in case you reinstall the app at some point in the future.

9) Make text easier to read

A surprising number of people—at least in the social circles I move in—don’t know that you can change the default text style and size on iOS/iPadOS in order to make it easier to read (or to fit more on the screen). To see the various options that are available, from Settings pick Display & Brightness, then look for the Text Size and Bold Text options.

10) Optimize battery charging

Every battery in every modern smartphone or tablet degrades over time, but iOS and iPadOS can help you keep your battery healthy for as long as possible by charging it more intelligently, based on your past usage habits. Open Settings, then choose Battery and Battery Health to find the relevant Optimized Battery Charging toggle switch.

11) Send out auto-responses when driving

One of the neat features in Do Not Disturb mode lets you send out a preset response automatically if someone texts you while you’re moving at high speed in a car. To make sure this feature is turned on, and to specify what you want the message to say, head to Settings and Do Not Disturb, then go down to Do Not Disturb While Driving.

12) Customize the mouse cursor

iPadOS now has full support for mice and trackpads, and connecting them is just a question of going through a quick Bluetooth pairing process. Don’t just accept the default cursor size, transparency, and speed though. You can customize all of these options by going to Settings and then choosing Accessibility and Pointer Control.

13) Make your device attention-aware... or not

If you’ve got a device that supports Face ID, it can tell whether or not you’re actually looking at the screen, and keep it active if you are. You may or may not find this feature helpful, but it’s up to you whether it’s enabled or not: To set attention awareness on or off, go to Settings, then Face ID & Passcode, to find the Attention-Aware Features option.

14) Renew or cancel your subscriptions

An essential settings screen to know about—especially if you don’t want to be charged by Apple after a particular free trial ends—is the one where you can view and manage all your active subscriptions. From Settings, tap on your Apple ID name at the top, then choose Subscriptions to see both your current and past subscriptions in the Apple ecosystem.

15) Avoid live sports scores

By default, iOS and iPadOS will show you live sports scores for the teams you’re interested in (and maybe some that you aren’t) inside the TV app. If you don’t want to know live scores (you’re catching up with the games later, perhaps), then you can stop this from happening by turning off Show Sports Scores in the TV menu from the Settings screen.

16) Have Siri read out your messages

If you’re got second-gen AirPods or certain Beats headphones connected to your iPhone or iPad, you can have Siri read out your incoming messages without having to unlock your device. To set this up, go to Settings and then select Notifications and Announce Messages with Siri—and you can opt to reply to messages with your voice as well.

17) Make the Control Center your own

What appears in the Control Center panel is very much up to you, so don’t keep the default gallery of icons in place if they’re shortcuts that you never use. From Settings, pick Control Center and then Customize Controls: From the dark mode toggle switch, to the built-in screen recorder, to the iOS/iPadOS QR code recorder, it’s up to you what shows up.

WINDOWS

18) Link your phone to Windows

Windows is getting better and better at letting you use your phone through your laptop or desktop—especially if you have an Android phone, in which case you can send and receive texts and make and take calls through your computer. All of this is managed through the Phone option on the Settings dialog box (you’ll need to install an app on your phone too).

19) Use a slideshow as your wallpaper

Avoid Windows background fatigue by cycling through a series of pictures as your desktop backdrop, rather than relying on one image and having to change it manually every time. From Settings, select Personalization and Background, then open the menu under Background and pick Slideshow. You’ll be prompted to choose a folder of images to use.

20) Change colors with the wallpaper

While we’re on the topic of customization—which Windows handles rather well—you can have the systemwide accent color change based on the wallpaper that’s currently selected. This keeps everything consistent, and you can set it by going to Settings, Personalization, Colors and Automatically pick an accent color from my background.

21) Make the most of HDR

If you’ve got an HDR-enabled display attached to your Windows computer, then you certainly want to make sure that you’re taking advantage of it, and there’s a setting inside the operating system for this: Head to Settings and select System, Display and Windows HD Color settings to make adjustments to the display output (if it’s HDR-ready).

22) Make sure programs don’t overstep the mark

When you install applications on Windows, they can request access to your camera, microphone, and various other bits of the system. If you want to manage these settings and revoke any permissions, head to Settings then Privacy: Select any of the permission types on the left to see the applications that have access to that particular data.

23) Reclaim your focus

One of the features recently added to Windows is Focus assist: Open Settings, then System, then Focus assist to find it. It’s essentially a sophisticated Do Not Disturb mode, for managing notifications and other interruptions when you’re gaming or working. Windows will fill you in on everything you’ve missed once Focus assist is disabled again.

24) Streamline the Start menu

You’ve got more control over the look of the Start menu than you might realize... at least until Windows decides to change it all around again. From Settings, choose Personalization and then Start, and you’ll be met with a lengthy list of menu elements (recently added apps, recently opened items and so on) that can be shown or hidden.

MACOS

25) Stop apps launching automatically

A crowd of apps will attempt to launch themselves automatically as soon as you log into macOS, but if you don’t need them right away, they can take up memory space and other system resources unnecessarily. To edit the list of items, open System Preferences, then go to Users & Groups—click on your username and then switch to the Login Items tab.

26) Trim down Spotlight

Spotlight is great at finding just about anything from anywhere, but maybe you don’t want results from the web and your documents and your calendars and your emails mixing freely together—especially if you only use Spotlight for one job. From System Preferences choose Spotlight then Search Results to limit the reach that the search tool has.

27) Tell macOS which wifi networks you prefer

If you’re in a spot where multiple wifi networks are available, then macOS might lock on to one that you don’t want by default, rather than the one that you do. To take control over how this works, head to System Preferences and then select Network and Wi-Fi: You can drag the wifi networks into your preferred order, or remove them from the list completely.

28) Type requests to Siri

You might not always be in a situation where you feel comfortable speaking out your requests to Siri, but if that happens, you can type out a message instead. From System Preferences you need to open up the Accessibility pane, then choose Siri and tick the Enable Type to Siri box. Click the Siri icon on the menu bar to start typing commands.

29) Put a message on the lock screen

You can put a message on the lock screen of your Mac if you want to warn off potential intruders, identify which computer is yours, or make it easier for someone to return your laptop if it gets lost. Open up System Preferences, then choose Security & Privacy, General, and Show a message when the screen is locked to enter your message,

30) Change window behavior

Getting around open application windows on macOS is a lot easier if you know that you can double-click on a window title bar to increase its size (and double-click again to shrink it back to its original dimensions). You can change this so that windows minimize instead by going to System Preferences, then Dock, and Double-click a window’s title bar to....

31) Get your Mac to announce the time

Here’s a fun one you might never have come across: macOS will announce the time for you if you want, so you can get an audible reminder of how quickly the day is slipping away. From System Preferences, select Date & Time and then Announce the time—you can have it read out every hour, every half an hour, or every quarter of an hour as needed.

CORONAVIRUS FACE MASK CAUSING GLASSES TO FOG? HERE'S HOW TO PREVENT MISTY LENSES

Homemade face masks are becoming the norm as the coronavirus epidemic continues to ravage the United States, with some states — namely New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and beyond — now requiring them in public. But if you are a glasses wearer, you may have noticed that wearing a face mask can cause your lenses to fog. So what can you do to prevent this?

Thankfully, there appears to be a simple solution. In a 2011 study from the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, researchers advised washing the glasses with soapy water "immediately" before wearing a face mask.

After shaking off any excess water, "let the spectacles air dry or gently dry off the lenses with a soft tissue before putting them back on. Now the spectacle lenses should not mist up when the face mask is worn," they wrote.
Wondering why this works? The researchers explained this as well. When wearing face masks, air exhaled from your mouth moves upward and comes into contact with the lenses, ultimately causing them to fog.

More specifically, "The misting occurs from the warm water v***r content condensing on the cooler surface of the lens, and forming tiny droplets that scatter the light and reduce the ability of the lens to transmit contrast," they wrote. "The droplets form because of the inherent surface tension between the water molecules."

Washing the glasses with soapy water before wearing them, they said, "leaves behind a thin surfactant film that reduces this surface tension and causes the water molecules to spread out evenly into a transparent layer. This 'surfactant effect' is widely utilized to prevent misting of surfaces in many everyday situations."

There are other methods to help your glasses from fogging. For instance, placing a tissue under the top of your face mask can help absorb some of the droplets, leading to clear lenses. Wearing a mask that can form to the bridge of your nose — one with wire, for instance — can help prevent the warm air from your mouth from reaching your lenses, ultimately fogging them.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR MAC SCREENSHOTS WITH THESE HOTKEYS

When you’re using Command + Shift + 4 to draw a square around some part of your screen to take a screenshot, and you mess up and start it in the wrong spot, don’t give up. Instead, hold down the space bar and you’ll be able to move that rectangle anywhere you want. Release the space bar, and you can continue resizing it like before.

But that’s not all.

If you hold down CTRL + Command + Shift + 4, then the screenshot you take will save to your clipboard, not your desktop. If you’re just looking to copy and paste something elsewhere, this saves you quite a few steps.

Jab Command + Shift + 4, and then release it while you’re still holding down on your trackpad or mouse, and you can then use Shift to lock the rectangle’s x- or y-axis. If you hold down Option/Alt instead, you’ll be able to expand and contract the rectangle from its center (not the corner, by default).

And if you want to get wild and only take a screen capture of your Touch Bar for whatever reason, that’s Command + Shift + 6.

Of course, you could also just hit Command + Shift + 5 in macOS Mojave or later to pull up its screenshot app, which gives you plenty of options for customizing what you’re taking a picture of, where the resulting file will save, and whether you’d like to enable a timer or not.

USE CYBER MONDAY TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM ANNOYING MARKETING EMAILS

You won't get this clear a shot at spammers for a whole year.

Welcome to yet another Cyber Monday, that annual bacchanal of discounted Instant Pots. Whether you’re partaking in deals this year or passing them by, take a moment to embrace the season’s true gift: all the emails you’ve been meaning to unsubscribe from, all in one place, all at the same time.

It’s a tip so simple that it barely registers as one, but maybe it will help you regain some inbox zen. Today more than any other, every single marketer in possession of your email address has set their phasers to send. Luggage startups, dog DNA kits, so many clothes companies, all pushing percentage discounts SITEWIDE in the FINAL HOURS of THE BEST MONDAY OF THE YEAR, to quote just a few. If you’re a Gmail user, check your Promotions inbox. They’re all there waiting for you, except for the few that managed to slip over to the Updates tab.

How deep you’re buried under deal emails depends on how many lists you’ve signed up for along the way; I’ve gotten over 70 Cyber Monday offers in the past 24 hours alone, including multiple from a few brands that seem especially parched. (Pottery Barn, please relax.) And at the bottom of each and every one is a link to unsubscribe. In fact, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 legally requires bulk emails to include a clearly articulated way for you to opt out. It usually just takes a couple of clicks.

Most email providers also give you a small shortcut. Gmail automatically appends an Unsubscribe link next to the sender’s name when you open a marketing email on the desktop. Click it and a pop-up will ask if you’re sure you want to go through with it. Hit Unsubscribe one more time, and you’re set. There’s no comparable unsubscribe option in the Gmail app, but you can block a given sender by opening an email, tapping the three-dot menu on the right side of the screen, and selecting Block. Since most companies use different email addresses for spam and receipts, blocking deal emails won’t keep the latter from coming through going forward.

The iOS Mail app and Outlook both offer a similar Unsubscribe link at the top of emails, saving you from scrolling to the bottom and combing through the fine print for one. As a bonus, they also work on mobile. (And while you’re fiddling around on iOS, maybe take a minute to cancel any lingering subscriptions you’re not using anymore.)

Yes, there are automated tools that will do all of this for you. But when you link a service like Unroll.me to your Gmail account, they can—and do—then turn around and use your “transactional emails” to fuel marketing reports. That came as a nasty surprise to Unroll.me users in 2017, and maybe still would in 2019.

You can, of course, do your unsubscribing on an ad hoc basis, canceling emails as they come in. But that’s what makes Cyber Monday such a splendid opportunity for razing your inbox: They’re all there in one place, stacked atop one another like desperate Jenga blocks. Just go to your Promotions tab, scroll back to whenever feels right—if you’re feeling truly ambitious, start last Thursday for the Black Friday surge—and start unsubscribing from any brand you don’t want to hear from ever again, or at least until the next time you inadvertently wind up on their list. Just know that retailers have up to 10 days to process your request, so a few missives might slip through before the cancelation takes hold.

Maybe you don’t want to unsubscribe from everything; that’s fine, too! But it’s worth taking a few minutes out of your life today to make your inbox’s invite list a little more exclusive. It’ll be a whole year before you get this clear a shot at it again.

16 USEFUL GEMS IN APPLE’S NEW IOS 13

iOS 13, Apple’s new operating system for the iPhone, comes with tons of new tools under the hood. Here are some of the most helpful.

Every September, Apple offers the world a new update of its iOS software for iPhones. This year’s version, iOS 13, didn’t exactly have a graceful landing; since its release in September, Apple has produced no fewer than five follow-up versions intended to fill feature holes and fix bugs. A sixth version, 13.2, is in beta testing now.

But never mind all that. Apple has said plenty about what it considers the most important new features: Dark Mode, which gives all your apps a slick, white-on-dark, inverted-colors look; QuickPath, which lets you type by swiping sloppily across the relevant keys instead of tapping them, as you can on Android phones; and a rewritten Maps app.

But when you give thousands of software engineers a whole year to improve your phone software, you wind up with dozens of features that don’t get a lot of press. Here, then, is a treasure map to the hidden gems of iOS 13.

VOICE CONTROL

You can now do everything on the phone by voice alone: tap and drag, operate buttons and sliders, edit text, even “push” the buttons on the edges of the phone. The feature is intended for disabled iPhone fans. But it’s so complete, easy, and fast, it might appeal to other kinds of people, too: those whose hands are wet or grubby, for example, or those who are reclining and tired.

To turn on Voice Control, tap Settings >Accessibility >Voice Control.

At this point, you can navigate by saying, for example, “Go Home,” “Open Maps,” “Go back,” “Open app switcher,” and “Open Control Center.”

You can “use your fingers” by saying, “Tap Reply,” “long-press Mail,” “swipe up,” “scroll down,” “zoom in,” “pan up,” “swipe left three,” and so on. Instead of pressing the hardware buttons on the phone, say, “Turn volume up,” “Mute sound,” “Rotate to portrait,” and “Take screenshot.”

The real miracle is text editing. You can say “Delete that” to backspace over the last utterance (or, say, “Delete previous two lines”). Best of all, you can speak corrections, which is heaven-sent when you have to fix the errors (either yours or Siri’s) in a dictated message. Just say, “Replace ‘Never call me again’ with ‘Best of luck.’”

If there’s something you want to tap, like a spot on the map, that has no identifying labels, say, “Show numbers,” “Show grid,” or “Show labels.” You get tiny numbers, words, or grid squares overlaid on the screen. Speak what you want to tap.

When you say “Show numbers,” Voice Control shows everything you can tap.

And don’t worry about triggering accidental functions. The phone ignores everything you say (“Hey, can I borrow your charger?”) that isn’t a command (“open Messages”).

A REMINDERS OVERHAUL

The Reminders app is a far more competent To Do manager in iOS 13. One welcome touch: you can now create “subtasks” for a reminder. For example, for a reminder called “Tonight’s hot date,” the indented subtasks might be “Shower,” “Pick up dry cleaning,” and “Get braces removed.”

To create a subtask, long-press the subordinate item’s name and then drag it beneath the primary one. It indents itself.

The new Reminders app lets you create nested To-Do items, as shown here by the Shopping reminder.

To make Reminders more useful, iOS 13 lets you create them right from within Messages, Mail, Photos, Maps, and other apps. Select some text (or a photo, or a location, or whatever), tap the Share button, and then tap Reminders. You’ll see the new To Do the next time you open Reminders.

Finally, this one’s worth its weight in gold: When you’re creating a Reminder, you can turn on “Remind me when messaging” and then tap Choose Person to pluck somebody’s name from Contacts. When you next begin messaging this person, the reminder will pop up.

It’s ideal for those moments when you’re preparing for bed and remember: “Oh shoot — I forgot to ask Robin to return my Tesla.”

TEXT-EDITING GESTURES

There’s no more Loupe — the magnifying glass that has made placing the text-insertion point easier for the last 12 years. Instead, you’re supposed to drag the blinking insertion point with your finger. It gets larger as you drag it into position.

Alternatively, use the iPhone’s invisible trackpad. When you long-press the Space bar, all the keys go blank; you’ve just turned the entire keyboard area into a trackpad. Keep your finger down; slide it around to move your cursor.

Once you’ve highlighted some text, you can tap anywhere with three fingers to summon a new toolbar, bearing icons for Cut, Copy, and Paste.

But toolbar, schmoolbar — it’s even faster to use the new three-finger gestures.

For Copy, pinch on the screen with three fingers. For Cut, do that twice. For Paste, tap where you want to paste, and then unpinch with three fingers (spread them).

You, no doubt, never make mistakes — but for the record, you can now do Undo by swiping left with three fingers. (Swipe right for Redo.)

OFFLINE FINDING

In the beginning, there was Find My iPhone: a feature that let you locate a lost phone from iCloud.com.

In iOS 13, incredibly, that works even if the phone has no internet connection — if, for example, you left it in some Montana bus stop that has no signal.

Apple has turned the world’s 1.4 billion other iPhones, iPads, and Macs into remote detectors for your phone. Any passing iOS 13 iPhone will, unbeknown to its owner, pick up your phone’s silent Bluetooth beacon signal and relay its location back to you.

To make all of this happen so securely that neither Apple nor anybody else can locate your phone, Apple designed a solution that requires you to own a second Apple device; it’s the only machine capable of decrypting your phone’s location.

(You can turn the feature off in Settings >[your name] > Find My > ​Find My iPhone.)

THE NEW PHOTO VIEWER

The Photos tab of the Photos app presents your entire photos collection in a delightful and efficient way: As grids of photos labeled Years, Months, and Days. (Videos play silently in place as you browse.)

Each presents representative photos; the software omits duplicates, duds, and screenshots. You can time-zoom in or out — from Years to Months to Days, or the other way — by pinching or spreading two fingers.

Handily enough, you remain on the same photo as you zoom. For example, if a photo of a bleary-eyed you is the sample photo for 2019, you’ll land on the same photo when you zoom into Months (as the October photo), and again into Days (for this week).

As you zoom from Years to Months to Days, the Photos app keeps your place, making it easier to recognize the context of the original key photo.

The Edit screen has some new options: Vibrance, Sharpness, Definition; vertical and horizontal perspective correction; and Vignette, which darkens or brightens the four corners of the photo. For the first time in iPhone history, you can zoom in on a photo while editing.

Perhaps most valuable of all: You can perform any editing maneuver on videos just as easily as on photos. That includes all the color-correction tools, perspective-fixing tools, cropping tools, and even rotating tools. At last, you can fix videos that the phone mistakenly captured sideways.

MISCELLANEOUS

You’d need a hundred articles like this one to document all of the minor improvements, but here’s a teaser list:

• No more fiddling at the subway turnstile. In cities whose transit systems accept Apple Pay, like New York City’s, you can breeze through the gates without the button-pressing and ID-authenticating steps that used to be required every time. To set this up, visit Settings -> Wallet & Apple Pay -> Express Transit Card, and choose the credit card you want to pay your fare. Now just hold the phone near the turnstile sensor and blow on through.

• In the Calendar, you can attach files, photos, Word or PDF documents to appointments. That’s handy for itineraries or business documents for a meeting.

• In the iCloud Drive (Apple’s version of Dropbox), you can now create or open .zip files, compressing or decompressing a file on the fly. Just long-press the file to view the commands.

• In Maps, iOS 13 displays addresses that it finds in your Calendar appointments, to save typing when getting directions.

• Silence Unknown Callers (in Settings-> Phone) offers a small weapon against obnoxious robocallers. Every incoming call will go straight to voice mail without making your phone ring, buzz, or display a notification — except calls from people in your Contacts and people you’ve called yourself.

• Your battery’s life span will be much longer if you turn on Optimized Battery Charging in Settings->Battery. This option makes the iPhone stop charging at 80 percent except when it thinks you’ll need the extra oomph, which it learns by studying your daily charging patterns. (Lithium-ion batteries last longest if you avoid charging them fully every day.)

• In Mail, when you’ve started addressing a message, you can tap the “i“ beside someone’s name to see a choice of their email addresses.

• Email formatting has had a huge upgrade. Now you can decorate your outgoing messages with typefaces, styles, formatting, attachments, and photos. It’s all waiting in the new formatting bar, which appears when you tap the < at the right end of the typing suggestions bar.

• In Messages, you can shoot canned responses right from the conversation list. Long-press a conversation’s row to view the available short replies. They’re usually along the lines of “Thanks,” “Yes,” “No,” and “Talk later?”

• Siri can play the radio. It instantly begins to play any of 100,000 radio stations; just ask. “Hey Siri: Play WCBS.” “Play BBC Radio 1.” “Play 98.1 The Breeze.”

• To choose a Wi-Fi network, you no longer have to burrow into Settings. Just open the Control Center (swipe up from the bottom of the screen, or, on recent models, down from the top right “ear”); long-press the Wi-Fi cluster; and then long-press the Wi-Fi icon. There’s your list of available hot spots. By long-pressing, you can get to the list of available Wi-Fi networks right at the Control Center.

All of this, of course, is a lot to get used to — and change, as we all know, is hard. But look at the bright side: You have a whole year to get used to the new software before Apple changes it again next fall.