Table of contents for February 2023 in MacFormat

With millions of apps to choose from on the App Store for iPhone and iPad and the Mac App Store on Mac, you’re never far away from some truly great software. On the Mac, of course, you have even more choice, thanks to the ecosystem that exists outside Apple’s walled garden, and a highly creative community of developers who produce all kind of niche and varied fare. Best of all – whisper it – some of the apps are available at low cost or, better still, completely free. To that end, starting on p14, you’ll discover some of the very best apps you can use on your Mac, iPhone or iPad for free – from photo-editing apps to useful utilities. We have included streaming services too. While some content requires…

If you’ve always wanted to show off your singing skills (or lack of them) then a new service from Apple Music might just be for you. Launched last December, Apple Music Sing piggybacks onto the service’s ability to display live lyrics while music is playing – only this time you can adjust the volume of the vocals, so you can sing-along instead. Apple Music Sing works on iPhone, iPad and the new Apple TV 4K, and there will be 50 dedicated Apple Music Sing playlists to help you host the perfect karaoke night. Apple Music Sing should also work on almost any song where live lyrics are available on the service. All togther now [sings]: “Swede carrot lime, duh-duh-duh...”…

To help keep your Mac safe, it won’t open apps unless they’re downloaded from either the Mac App Store or from an identified Apple developer. This is to stop malicious apps installing viruses and other malware on your Mac. But if you get a message saying an app you downloaded can’t be opened (but you’re sure you can trust the developer), you can open it using the following procedure. Go to > System Settings (Ventura) or System Preferences (Monterey or earlier), then head to Privacy & Security, and find the Security section. Here, make sure your Mac is set to open apps from ‘App Store and identified developers’. There’s a message here about the last app you tried to open that was blocked. If – and only if – you’re…

There are plenty of free App Store offerings that take advantage of the iPad’s bigger screen. You can stream TV shows and movies with a freebie app, for example, or watch videos at your convenience on the YouTube app. Or, if you’re more of a reader, why not enjoy ebooks on the Kindle app, read web comics on WEBTOON and much more. Here are just a few ways you can get even more out of your iPad at work or play. Kindle > FROM App Store > NEEDS iPadOS 14 or later While there’s no substitute for a dedicated Kindle with an e-ink screen, downloading the Kindle app to use on your iPad is pretty handy. The app is great to use with ebooks that have pictures or diagrams, or…

IT WILL TAKE > 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN > How to use the new features in Notes YOU’LL NEED > macOS 13, iOS 16, iPadOS 16 or later Genius tip! > To enable access to Quick Note from Control Centre, go to Settings > Control Centre and tap ‘+’ next to Quick Note. Apple’s Notes app was, for a long time, unloved both by users and, seemingly, by Apple itself. Updates were uninspiring and did nothing to help it compete with the dozens of other note-taking apps available for Mac, iPhone and iPad. And there was a disastrous dalliance with skeuomorphism when Apple decided it would be a good idea to make digital notes look like more like paper. All that has changed, though. And the last couple of…

However, Matter is the common language that enables smart devices to talk to each other, while Thread is a wireless networking technology that creates the actual connection between the devices. Many smart devices, such as light bulbs and security cameras, use Wi-Fi to connect to your home network. Wi-Fi is fast enough to handle streaming audio and video, and provides good range throughout your home, but it does require quite a lot of power. Some smart devices opt for Bluetooth instead – which uses less power, but has limited range, and can’t connect to your wider home network. Thread is the solution, as it provides good speed and range, but requires a lot less power than Wi-Fi. That makes it ideal for smaller, battery-powered devices, such as security sensors, that…

Quick-fire questions Is High Sierra’s APFS compatible with Ventura? > Only backwards, so that Ventura understands High Sierra’s older version of APFS. There are many features in Ventura’s APFS that High Sierra doesn’t know about at all, so be careful when working with them on the same Mac. How to create folders at the top of Macintosh HD? > You can’t do this from Catalina onwards as Macintosh HD has become two separate volumes. The root level is on the System volume, which can’t be modified except by Apple, to ensure that it remains safe from malware. You can only add folders to the Data volume, which in practice means inside your Home folder as much as possible. by KIM MONCASTER Permissions gone haywire Q Aftera file-sharing session, permissions on…

VERDICT › Fast charging for three devices, in a neat, portable design. + Three devices at once + Fast charging + Compact carry case + Everything in one box M ophie’s Travel Charger might be the ultimate companion for keeping your Apple devices charged when you’re away from home. It features a compact felt case with three compartments to house each of the components, and fastens shut via an elasticised loop which hooks over a large black button. It’s stylish, easy to use and offers protection for the contents. There’s a 3-in-1 travel charger in the main section. This folds out to reveal three charging pads: a magnetic Apple Watch puck, which can be angled from flat through to 90°; a wireless charging pad for your AirPods, or other Qi…

Group test Reviewed by HOLLIN JONES ON TEST… > Adobe Premiere Elements 2023 > Apple iMovie > CyberLink PowerDirector 365 > HitFilm (Creator) > Lightworks Create > Wondershare Filmora Apple gives iMovie away for free, and while it’s a great A app for making quick and simple movies, it’s not designed for more in-depth projects. That’s not to say, however, that you have to step up to a much more complex system to achieve great things. The apps on test offer a convenient middle-ground, with significantly more powerful editing tools and more features, while retaining a sensible price point and, for the most part, not placing too high a technical burden on you. Some of these apps focus more on guiding you through the process of movie-making and using effects,…

£10.99 FROM intruderinantiquonia.com NEEDS OS X 10.11 or later Being a short game, it feels a little rushed, without having the time to build the backstory Mac format VERDICT ›A disappointingly forgettable adventure. + Good level design - Clichéd storytelling - Unrelatable characters - Limp, floaty animations Intruder in Antiquonia centres on a girl named Sarah who wakes up I outside a small Spanish town with no memory of who she is or how she got there. People in town shun the internet and distrust outsiders, and soon you start to get the feeling you are being followed. The game is a point-and-click adventure where you must use clues in your environment to uncover Sarah’s story. What is her real name? What lies in her past? How did she get…

> PHOTO EDITOR Luminar AI £59 skylum.com > If you want to improve your photos without spending too much, this is the app for you. ★★★★★ MF361 > PRODUCTIVITY TIMER Vitamin-R 4.14 €27.95 (about £30) publicspace.net > Break your working day up into short bursts of distraction-free activity. ★★★★★ MF384 > TEXT RECOGNITION TextSniper 3 £6.99 textsniper.app > TextSniper can quickly recognise and extracttextfrom anythingyou can see on your Mac’s screen. ★★★★★ MF364 > OUR TOP 3 ANTI-VIRUS Intego Internet Security X9 > £60/year > MF377 > intego.com Bitdefender Antivirus > £30/year > MF377 > bitdefender.com Clario > £53/year > MF377 > clario.co > OUR TOP 3 WEB BROWSERS Firefox > Free > MF369 > mozilla.org Opera > Free > MF369 > opera.com Vivaldi > Free > MF369 >…

As Sting once sang in the hit song Message in a Bottle, by his band A The Police, “I’ll send an SOS to the world”. Well, now he actually can, thanks to Apple’s Emergency SOS, which has launched in France, Germany, Ireland, the UK and the US. So, it doesn’t matter if you’ve broken your leg exploring the Pyrenees, lost your map in the Black Forest, or you’re stuck up to your waist in a bog in Ireland, if you have an iPhone 14, you can now contact emergency services via a satellite, even when there’s no mobile phone connection available in your area. But how does it work? When there’s no other coverage available you can dial 112 or long-press the volume and power buttons to call emergency services.…

APP OF THE MONTH [MAC APP] Pixelmator Pro is one of the best image editors on the Mac, and now there’s another reason to consider it: video editing. New to version 3.2 ‘Lumiere’ is the ability to edit all kinds of video in up to 8K resolution, with support for layers, colour adjustments and other tools familiar to Pixelmator Pro users. Version 3.2 also supports Live Photo editing and GIF creation, and includes a range of cinematic and social media templates that can help give your home movies some extra pro-level gloss. Plus the app offers full support for Apple silicon M1 and M2-equipped Macs, although you will need to be running at least macOS Big Sur for it to run. Best of all, Pixelmator Pro remains an accomplished photo…

Image credits: William Gustafson, The Bean Word Processor Software,Blackmagic Design Pty Ltd, Kovid Goyal, Anyakichi, BBC, Nate Weaver, OpenEmu Team, Eskimo Software, what3words Ltd, Cider Software LLC, Apple Inc, Netflix, The HandBrake Team, Skype Ltd, The Apache Software Foundation, Google LLC Image credits: Ookla LLC, iterate GmbH, The GIMP Team, Valve Corporation, The Transmission Project, VideoLAN, Ian Page, RR Donnelley & Sons Co, Titanium Software, IMDb.com Inc, Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Brent Simmons, MobilityWare, WEBTOON Entertainment Inc, OneFootball, Apple Inc There are some great free apps available for all your Apple gear. They’re not just handy utilities or simple games either. There are some surprisingly powerful software suites available at no cost, with a quality that rivals – or even surpasses – their professional equivalents. These apps are…

From social media to social gaming, from multi-format messaging to mighty reference tomes, you name it, there’s probably a free iPhone app for it. Open the App Store on your iPhone and search for an app. If there’s a ‘Get’ button instead of a price, then the app is free to download and use (although there might still be in-app purchases needed for certain features). Facebook > FROM App Store > NEEDS iOS/iPadOS 13.4 or later What could we write about Facebook that you haven’t read already? Not much we’ll wager, but as it’s one of the major social-media platforms and has a great free application for the iPhone and iPad, we won’t exclude it from our list. Using the free Facebook app is far more convenient than accessing the…

IT WILL TAKE > 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN > How to select LogIn Items and Background items YOU’LL NEED > macOS 13 Genius tip! > Having a lot of background items running on your Mac can make it slow down, so it’s a good idea to turn off any that aren’t essential. Whenever you shut your Mac down, it always asks if you want to reopen any apps or windows that are currently open when you turn the Mac back on again. This is a handy way of carrying on any work that you were doing when you last shut your Mac down. However, there’s another way of setting all your key apps to open automatically when your turn on your Mac. Hidden in the depths of System Preferences…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to get the most from Sleep Focus and sleep tracking YOU’LL NEED watchOS 9 Genius tip! Unfortunately, you can’t keep track of your sleep and charge your watch at the same time. Make sure you’ve got a fair bit of charge on your watch before you settle down to sleep. Sleep matters, but there’s much more to it than simply how long you spend in bed. The quality of your sleep is what really counts, and your Apple Watch can help you work on that. There are two key ways in which your Apple Watch can help you sleep more soundly. The first is Sleep Focus, which enables you to set a bedtime schedule and customise what your watch does through…

Q Afterupgrading my Mac to Ventura, trying to connect it to my Epson XP-750 printer fails with an odd error. Is it now incompatible? by LIZ DENTON A Venturamakes no substantial changes to printer support provided that yours includes AirPrint, which Epson XP-750 series printers do. However, if you’ve installed Epson’s own software for the printer, that might be causing this error. If you do have Epson software, uninstall that first, if possible using the uninstaller provided with it. Then click on the existing printer in System Settings > Printers & Scanners to open its settings in a dialog. Click on the Remove Printer… button at the foot, and shut both your Mac and printer down. Start your Mac up first, let it settle for a couple of minutes, then…

by FRANK HARRIES Q WhenI use Find in a Finder window to look for movies, why do I see .ts files? How can I remove them from those results? A macOSdefines types of file that it considers to be movies in Spotlight search, including those with the .ts extension, which are MPEG-2 transport streams. A simple solution would be to set the search criteria to be movies, except those with the .ts extension. While Find in the Finder lets you include results with a specified extension, it can’t exclude them. This is unfortunate as Spotlight does have the ability to use more sophisticated search criteria, but not in its Finder interface. For that you need HoudahSpot, which opens up far more powerful searching, can readily exclude .ts files, and much…

Mac FORMATE BEST ON TEST Filmora strikes the perfect balance of features and design, marrying the friendly approach of iMovie with the much wider feature set of some of the other apps we tested. Despite having a ton of powerful features it manages to feel fast and approachable, keeping everything inside one nicely designed window. Performance is excellent and it even adds in some unique features such as screen recording and beat-matching picture to music. Lightworks Create gets a notable mention, with very powerful tools especially in the audio department, albeit also with a slightly more clinical interface. HitFilm (Creator) also performs well and doesn’t require too much learning, though you might want to opt for the Pro version to access the more advanced effects. Ultimately however, if you are…

£8.99 FROM tim.neat.software NEEDS macOS 11 or later You just set up a group for each client and within those groups, create tasks VERDICT A simple, privacyfocused time tracker that’s ideal for anyone who is paid by the hour. + Easy to use + Privacy focused + Excellent visual data display - Need to remember to start and stop timers Anyone who works on a freelance or contract basis knows how A important it is to keep track of how much time you spend working on a project or piece of work, especially if you’re paid by the hour. The simplest way to do that is to use a time-tracking app that you can just start and stop when you need to. And while there are several of those apps…

EXPECTED APR 2023 UPDATED APR 2021 iMac > From £1,249 > Ever since the Bondi Blue iMac debuted in 1998, Apple’s all-in-one desktop computer has been setting standards for design and performance. The current 24in model is certainly Apple’s finest yet – thanks to its 4.5K (4480x2520) Retina display and the Apple-designed M1 chip, which is available with either an 8-core CPU/7-core GPU at the entry-level, or an 8-core CPU/8-core GPU on the mid-range and top-tier versions. All models come with 8GB of memory as standard (upgradeable to 16GB), with solid-state drive (SSD) storage ranging from 256GB on the entry-level and mid-range versions to 512GB on the top tier, although you can add more – up to 1TB on the entry-level and up to 2TB on the mid-range and top-tier…

Apple’s Self-Service repair programme has finally arrived in the UK and Europe, just 13 months after its debut in the United States. The program provides the tools, parts and know-how you need to carry out repairs on a limited number of Apple devices, and has been driven by both Right to Repair legislation and growing consumer demands for devices to become more repairable. Currently limited to the iPhone 13, iPhone 13 and Apple silicon-based Macs, the Apple Self-Service programme has its own store at selfservicerepair.eu/en-GB/home Apple says more than 200 parts are available with tools to buy or rent. Tool rental is £54.90 per week, while an iPhone 13 Battery Bundle (new battery, display adhesive and screws) is £70.78. Self-service repairs for Mac are currently limited to the 2020 M1…

You have another three years to save up for that Apple Car you’ve been craving – although you’ll need deep pockets, if the latest rumours are correct. The Apple Car – codenamed Project Titan – has been rumoured now since at least 2014, with the project taking all kinds of twists and turns. Rumours have ranged from imminent launch dates to news that Apple had abandoned plans with the project going through multiple shutdowns and team changes, as well as gossip around partner manufacturers and more. The latest news, though, is that the Apple Car is now on schedule for release in 2024 with a price below $100,000 (£97,828). While that’s still a heck of a lot of money for a car, it is $20,000 less than previous rumours have…

Apache OpenOffice > FROM openoffice.org > NEEDS Mac OS X 10.7 or later If you’re having compatibility problems when passing on files or need a feature that no other free option offers, it’s worth a look at OpenOffice. The app offers a range of apps, namely Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation app), Draw (vector graphics), Math (equation editor) and Base (database management). Crossplatform and inter-app operability is strong, making it a good option for sharing files or if you use different computers and software. Admittedly, if you’re looking more for free productivity tools, Apache OpenOffice isn’t the best of the bunch. It’s not as accessible as Bean for word processing, nor as Maclike and friendly as Apple’s own Pages, Numbers and Keynote. But for multi-doc type collaboration it…

If there’s a website you regularly use on your iPhone or iPad and would prefer to have it on the Home Screen like an app, open the site in question and tap the Share icon. Scroll up until you see the Add to Home Screen option. Tap it, and you’re given the chance to edit the site name and URL. Tap Add and it appears on the Home Screen as an icon – now can launch the site as if it was an app. Rival Pirates > FROM App Store > NEEDS iOS 15 or later Swab the decks, me title, if a little over-complicated hearties! This is a in the meta-game. You sail an multiplayer death initially weak vessel crewed by match on the high seas. a trio of…

IT WILL TAKE > 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN > How to discover duplicate images and save the best quality versions YOU’LL NEED > Photos app Syncing and importing issues may cause duplicates to clog up your Photos Library We take so many videos and stills on our iPhone that we run the risk of filling it up, leading to the dreaded ‘Storage Full’ notice popping up just as we are about to take an amazing photograph. By the time we’ve scrolled through our Photos library, and manually deleted a few shots to free up storage space, our photo opportunity will have passed. To avoid such storage issues, your Photos app’s Optimise iPhone Storage setting offers the option to sync your photographs with iCloud Photos and store the full versions…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to make the on-screen keyboard even more useful YOU’LL NEED iPadOS 16 Genius tip! If you find it hard to see lower case letters on the keyboard, go into Settings > Accessibility > Keyboards and disable Show Lowercase Keys. It’s easy to take for granted now, but when the iPhone was launched many people were unsure about the prospect of tapping on glass. “Typing is done by pecking on the screen with thumbs or fingers, something hardly anyone outside of Apple has experienced yet,” the New York Times reported, while also describing the virtual keyboard as “the biggest worry” about Apple’s yet-to-be-launched smartphone. If you want to get the best out of your keyboard, you’ll find additional customisation options under Settings…

YOU WILL LEARN What Matter is, and how it works with smart devices from different manufacturers Key fact The Matter website (buildwithmatter.com) includes a list of all the companies that plan to support Matter. As mentioned, this includes Apple, Amazon and Google, along with other big names like Samsung, Philips, Belkin and British Telecom. One notable absentee is Microsoft, with its Cortana voice assistant, which could be left out in the cold if Matter takes off. There’s an old saying in the computer industry: “The great thing about T standards is that there’s so many of them”. Unfortunately, there are times when having too many competing standards prevents new technologies from taking off and gaining widespread acceptance. For years, people have been talking about smart homes full of smart…

by ZHONGWEI QIN Q MyiMac 27-inch running High Sierra won’t connect to my M1 MacBook Air using Target Display mode. What am I missing? A TargetDisplay Mode is only available with specific combinations of Macs running certain versions of macOS. The Target, to be used as a second display, must be an iMac introduced between 2011 and mid-2014, or a 24- or 27-inch iMac introduced in 2009/10. That must be running no version of macOS later than 10.13 High Sierra. The Mac connecting to that must have been introduced in 2019 or earlier, and be running macOS 10.15 Catalina or earlier. Connecting the two requires a Thunderbolt or Mini DisplayPort cable depending on the models. Apple provides full details at bit.ly/ mac386imactarget. You thus can’t connect any Apple silicon Mac…

Q WhenI updated macOS, I lost the ability to enter accented vowels in all my apps. How can I restore that? by HUGH GALLAGHER A Thisis most probably the result of a keyboard misconfiguration occurring in that update. Open System Settings > Keyboard (Keyboard pane). In its Text Input section, click on Edit for Input Sources to open a dialog with a list of keyboards at its left. Ensure All Input Sources is selected there, and the top item is enabled, to show the Input menu in the menu bar. Then check the list of keyboards on the left of that dialog, to ensure it includes your preferred keyboard layouts. If it isn’t, click the ‘+’ and add them from the list. Then click Done and select your preferred keyboard…

Surprisingly unobtrusive for an app that’s monitoring your Mac’s hardware T here is a slightly uncomfortable truth that nobody can be absolutely sure that their webcam and microphone haven’t been compromised. While suggestions that government agencies may be spying on you veer somewhat towards the outlandish, it’s certainly the case that malware exists and can be a problem. The Mac platform is secure but it’s not perfect, and just because the little green light by the camera is not active doesn’t mean you are 100% safe. In our constantly connected world, cyber theft and spying are issues that we do need to be aware of. If you have concerns about this, Protectstar makes Camera Guard, an app for Mac that can block your microphone and webcam and also provide access…

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