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Migrate to a New Mac Right Away, Rather Than Waiting
Migrate to a New Mac Right Away, Rather Than Waiting
The next time you buy and set up a new Mac, make sure to migrate data and apps from your previous Mac to it right away during the initial setup. It can be tempting to see what it’s like to use it fresh from the factory or to delay migrating because doing so would force a macOS upgrade, but waiting is a mistake. The problem is that if you do real work in an account on the new Mac, when it comes time to use Migration Assistant to bring over data from your old Mac, there’s no way to merge the old and new accounts. The best workaround is to make sure all important data on the new Mac is also stored in a cloud service like iCloud Drive or Dropbox, and then replace the new account on the new Mac with the old account from your previous Mac. Bring all the data back down from the cloud afterward.
(Featured image built with images from Apple and Marc Mueller from Pexels)
We’ve got more migration tips here.
- A Step-by-step guide to Migration Assistant.
- Migrate Your Data from an Old iPhone to a New One with iOS 12.4’s New Feature
- Make a Backup before Upgrading to Catalina or iOS 13!
- Making the switch: Strategies for Switching from a Windows PC to a Mac
In Case of Emergency, Create an iPhone Medical ID
Want to Use Your Friends’ Nicknames in iOS? Here’s How
Want to Use Your Friends’ Nicknames in iOS? Here’s How
If you have a friend whom you refer to only by his nickname, it can be annoying to feel like you should use his proper first name when adding him to Contacts. Worse, then he shows up in Messages with a name you don’t recognize as easily. Here’s how to convince iOS to use his nickname instead. Open his card in Contacts, tap Edit, scroll to the bottom, tap Add Field, and tap Nickname. That puts a Nickname field at the top, under his proper name, for you to fill in. To get iOS to use it, go to Settings > Contacts > Short Name and enable Prefer Nicknames. From then on, you can enter your friend’s nickname instead of his proper name in apps like Messages and Mail, and iOS will also display it instead of his name everywhere.
Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash
Moroe great iOS tips!
- New Organization and Editing in Photos in iOS 13 and iPadOS 13
- The iPhone 11 Camera App’s Shutter Button Works Differently: Here’s How
- Set Your Preferred Name and Photo for Messages in iOS 13
- iOS 13 Replaces 3D Touch with Tap-and-Hold
Use AirPods to Improve Your Hearing
Use AirPods to Improve Your Hearing
An ever-increasing number of people have hearing loss due to exposure to loud noise and age. If you’re in that group, but don’t yet need hearing aids, try using your AirPods to help you hear better in certain situations. iOS’s Live Listen feature uses your iPhone’s mic to pick up specific sounds and then sends that audio directly to your AirPods, helping you focus on what you want to hear. To enable Live Listen, go to Settings > Control Center > Customize Controls and tap the green + button next to Hearing. Then put your AirPods in, open Control Center, tap the Hearing button, and tap to turn on Live Listen. Fine-tune what you’re hearing by moving the iPhone closer to what you want to hear and pointing the mic at the source of the sound—pay attention to the sound level meter dots—and by adjusting the iPhone’s volume controls. To stop listening, tap Live Listen again or just remove your AirPods.
(Featured image by kyle smith on Unsplash)
Check out our all-time favorite tips…
More great tips from the archives…
- Two Secret Key Combos for Forward Delete on the Magic and MacBook Keyboards
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- Ever Wondered Which Words to Capitalize in a Title? Use Capitalize My Title!
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- Tips for Better Videoconferencing
- Set Your Preferred Name and Photo for Messages on iOS
- The Fastest Way to Change Wi-Fi Networks in iOS
- What to Put at the End of Your Emails
- Apple Business Manager Is a Win for Apple-Driven Workplaces
- Find Wasted Space with Storage Management
- Forrester Research and IBM Studies Show Macs Are Cheaper than PCs
- Being an Apple User Means You’re Not the Product
- How to Ask for Tech Support So You Get Good Answers Quickly
- Apple Business Manager Is a Win for Apple-Driven Workplaces
Annoyed by Your Holiday Music Playing out of Season? Stop It with This Tip
Annoyed by Your Holiday Music Playing out of Season? Stop It with This Tip
“Winter Wonderland” may be a great song to listen to when the snow flies, but if you’re sweltering in the summer heat, having it pop up while iTunes is shuffling through your music feels wrong. Happily, there’s a way to prevent holiday music from playing out of season—this trick is also useful for keeping children’s songs from shuffling alongside tracks from Abba, Beethoven, and The Clash. In iTunes, select the songs you want to prevent from being included when you shuffle all tracks, and choose Edit > Get Info. In the Get Info dialog, switch to the Options pane, select Skip When Shuffling, and click OK to save your changes. Note that the easiest way to find such music may be by selecting Genres in the sidebar and then Children’s Music or Holiday in the list that appears.
Image by Malachi Witt from Pixabay
Random tips to make you happy…
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Read More Easily on the iPhone with Safari Reader
Do you sometimes find it difficult to read articles on your iPhone because of ads, banners, extraneous layout, social media icons, and too-small fonts? We certainly do, and there’s often a quick fix for the myriad ills of modern Web pages: Safari Reader. Whenever you see the Safari Reader 
icon to the left of the site’s domain name in the address bar, tap it to switch to a cleaner view that dispenses with all the unnecessary trimmings and presents the content in a larger, more readable font. Tap the font 
icon at the right side of the address bar in Safari Reader to change the font, font size, and background color. Safari Reader isn’t always available, and it can occasionally fail to format an article properly, but it’s a big win when you can use it.
(Featured image by Atlas Green on Unsplash)
