The easiest, built-in solution to this admittedly first-world problem for Apple users is Safari Reader on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, which you can use to “hide navigation menus and other distracting items.”

Apple is careful not to say that Reader hides ads—which it does, most of the time—to avoid conflict with publications that rely on advertising, some of which may even be placed by Apple itself.

Beyond hiding distracting items, Reader displays articles as a single page and automatically generates a summary and table of contents for longer articles to make navigation easier.

Even better, you can configure Safari to show articles in Reader automatically for specific websites, so you don’t have to turn it on manually for each article.

Here’s how to use it.

Switch to Reader

Since Reader’s reformatting would break many non-article Web pages, Safari offers Reader only when you’re viewing a page that it can reformat. As a reminder, Safari on the iPhone and iPad shows a brief “Reader Available” mention in the address bar when you open a Reader-compatible page.

To display a compatible page in Reader, tap the website button at the left of the address bar ➊, then tap Show Reader ➋. Safari immediately reformats the page, removing many extraneous items and potentially changing the background and font.

The reformatting can be even more significant in Safari on the Mac, where websites often add columns of ads, pop-ups over the text you want to read, and more.

When Reader decides a page is long enough and has enough headings, it automatically generates a summary and table of contents, displaying them in expandable sections at the top. This feature is, frankly, a little random. We couldn’t always predict when Reader would generate those sections, and it even sometimes varied by device.

Adjust the Look of Reader

By default, Reader uses a white background with Apple’s San Francisco sans-serif font. That’s entirely acceptable, but you can switch to a sepia, gray, or black background, choose from a selection of serif and sans-serif fonts, and increase or decrease the font size.

Tap the page icon at the left of the address bar to pick from those options.

The presentation looks a little different on the iPad (left) and Mac (right), but the options are essentially the same.

Use Reader Automatically

For websites you regularly read, it’s best to set Reader to kick in automatically. It won’t reformat pages that don’t make sense, such as section pages that contain links to multiple articles. How you enable this option varies by platform:

• iPhone and iPad: Whether or not you’re in Reader, tap the icon at the left of the address bar, tap the ••• button, scroll down in the page menu, and turn on Use Reader Automatically.
  
• Mac: When you’re not in Reader, click the website icon at the left of the address bar, choose Website Settings, and select “Use Reader when available.”
  

If you want to manage which sites use Reader automatically all together, on the iPhone and iPad, open Settings > Apps > Safari > Reader (way at the bottom), and on the Mac in Safari, choose Safari > Settings > Websites.

Helpfully, Safari syncs appropriate website settings between devices via iCloud, so once you set a site to use Reader automatically, all your other devices will default to that as well.

Switch Back to Standard View

Although Reader works well most of the time, it’s possible to run across an article with interactive elements that don’t display in Reader. If something seems wrong about an article in Reader, you can switch back to the standard presentation of the page. Just tap the page icon at the left of the address bar and tap Hide Reader.

The hardest part of using Reader is getting started. Once you’ve become accustomed to switching into it and setting it to trigger automatically for websites you visit regularly, you’ll find reading the Web easier, more relaxing, and less likely to tempt you down a rabbit hole of additional content.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/Tippapatt)

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The price hikes took effect on June 25. In a statement to the press, Apple blamed the AI industry’s insatiable appetite for memory chips, which has caused prices for memory and storage to increase up to sixfold:

The consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge. The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage. We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly. We have shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products.

Apple’s price increases vary widely. The base model of the Apple TV 4K took the biggest percentage hit, jumping from $129 to $199—a 54% increase that’s particularly puzzling given the device has only 64 GB of storage and 4 GB of memory. It may be setting a new price floor for the next-generation Apple TV. At the other end of the percentage increase spectrum, the Vision Pro rose just 6%, from $3,499 to $3,699.

Mac and iPad Price Changes

The Mac lineup saw significant increases at both the low and high ends:

• MacBook Neo: $599 → $699 (+17%)
• MacBook Air (13-inch): $1,099 → $1,299 (+18%)
• MacBook Pro (14-inch base): $1,699 → $1,999 (+18%)
• Mac mini (M4): $599 → $799 (+33%)
• Mac Studio (M3 Ultra): $3,999 → $5,299 (+33%)

The $1,300 increase for the M3 Ultra model of the Mac Studio is the largest absolute dollar jump in the lineup—a reflection of just how much high-memory configurations are affected by the shortage.

iPads saw increases of 15–30%, with the base iPad hit hardest:

• iPad: $349 → $449 (+29%)
• iPad mini: $499 → $599 (+20%)
• iPad Air (11-inch): $599 → $749 (+25%)
• iPad Air (13-inch): $799 → $949 (+19%)
• iPad Pro (11-inch): $999 → $1,199 (+20%)
• iPad Pro (13-inch): $1,299 → $1,499 (+15%)

Base prices tell only part of the story. Memory and storage upgrade prices also jumped dramatically, with the 64 GB and 128 GB memory upgrades for M5 Max models of the MacBook Pro doubling in price.

Why iPhones and Apple Watches Were Spared

Apple left the prices for the iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods, and Studio Display unchanged. The Studio Displays and AirPods likely escaped because they use minimal memory. The iPhone and Apple Watch are a different story—Apple may be willing to accept lower margins on its flagship products, betting that stable prices will drive enough additional sales to offset reduced profit per unit.

There’s also the timing factor. New iPhone and Apple Watch models are expected in September, and rumors suggest Apple will introduce only high-end (and higher margin) iPhone 18 models then, with more affordable models held until early 2027. That makes buying a current-generation iPhone now potentially the better deal—new models will almost certainly debut at higher prices.

Apple Isn’t Alone

The memory crisis has hit the entire consumer electronics industry. Microsoft raised prices on all Surface PCs. Samsung is raising prices on its Galaxy smartphones. Lenovo, HP, and Dell have all raised laptop prices.

The culprit is the industry’s rapid expansion into AI. Data centers are consuming memory and storage at a pace the industry wasn’t equipped to handle. Memory chip suppliers like Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix have directed production toward AI chipmakers like Nvidia, who are willing to pay top dollar, leaving consumer electronics to compete for whatever remains. Industry observers expect the shortage to persist through at least 2027 due to the time required to build manufacturing capacity.

What Should You Do?

If you need a Mac or iPad, some retailers may not have updated prices yet, but that won’t last. Similarly, you could look for a refurbished Mac from Apple or a certified pre-owned Mac from retailers like OWC, but those prices have largely increased as well.

For the iPhone and Apple Watch, the calculus is unusual: normally, we’d encourage waiting for September’s new models, but this year, buying now at current prices may save you some money.

Ultimately, the only options may be to bite the bullet and pay current prices, buy a less-expensive model or configuration, or hold on to your existing hardware in the hopes that prices come back down.

(Featured image generated by Adam Engst with ChatGPT)

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The answer is yes, and the specifics depend on the type of device, whether it’s used for work or personal tasks, and how central it is to your daily life. Here’s our advice, including recommended timeframes and the warning signs that suggest it’s time to upgrade.

Mac Upgrade Cycles

Macs boast impressive longevity, particularly those with Apple silicon. With proper care, a Mac can easily remain productive for 5–7 years, though business environments typically benefit from shorter replacement cycles. Apple provides security updates for the current macOS version and the two previous versions, giving you roughly 2 years of security updates after a Mac loses support for the newest macOS.

For business use, we recommend a 3–5 year replacement cycle. Research shows that hardware problems increase after this point, performance lags compared to current machines, and resale value drops. The loss of productivity from slow performance and downtime outweighs the cost of a new Mac. If you don’t already have one, make an inventory of all your Macs, including purchase dates, and use it to create a replacement schedule. Also consider shuffling Macs around—an employee doing video work might get annual upgrades to the most powerful Mac available, with their old machines handed down to others.

Consider upgrading a Mac when:

• It no longer receives security updates: Once security updates stop, the Mac becomes increasingly vulnerable to attack. Intel-based Macs are coming due here—macOS 26 Tahoe is the last version to support them, so security updates will end in 2028.
• Its battery no longer holds a reasonable charge: For MacBooks, battery degradation often drives upgrade decisions. Although Apple will replace the battery for $149–$249, it’s usually more effective to upgrade the entire MacBook.
• Performance hampers productivity: If apps launch slowly, you see the spinning beach ball regularly, or you find yourself waiting on the computer throughout the day, a newer Mac will increase your productivity.
• Storage is perpetually low: Running low on storage can reduce performance, block software updates, and force distracting cleanups. If you can’t offload files to external or cloud storage, consider upgrading to a Mac with more capacity.

For personal Macs, you can extend the replacement cycle to 5–7 years or even more as long as the Mac meets your needs and continues to receive security updates.

iPhone Upgrade Cycles

Despite the rough treatment they often receive, iPhones are remarkably durable, with many users keeping them for 4–5 years without significant issues. Apple typically supports iPhones with software updates for 5–6 years after release, making them the longest-supported smartphones on the market.

For business use, we recommend a 3-year replacement cycle. That ensures employees always have devices that support the latest security features and iOS capabilities, including Apple Intelligence, which requires an iPhone 15 Pro or later. A 3-year cycle also means better resale or trade-in value—iPhones depreciate more gracefully than most technology, but that advantage diminishes after the third year.

For personal use, replace your iPhone when:

• Battery health drops below 80%: Check in Settings > Battery > Battery Health. Below 80%, you’ll notice significant performance throttling and shortened battery life. Replacing the battery for $69–$119 through Apple—it’s best to avoid third-party replacements—can extend a phone’s life by another 2–3 years if everything else works well.
• It no longer receives iOS updates: Once security updates stop, it’s worth considering replacing it. Typically, Apple releases updates only for the current version of iOS, but this year, it has been providing iOS 18 security fixes for the iPhone XR and XS models, and even released a few critical security updates as far back as iOS 15 and iOS 16.
• Storage is consistently full: If you’ve enabled Optimize iPhone Storage (Settings > Apps > Photos), turned on Offload Unused Apps (Settings > Apps > App Store), and are still frequently managing storage to make room for new photos, videos, and iOS updates, it’s time to upgrade.
• The camera no longer meets your needs: Camera improvements have been substantial year over year. If photography matters to you and your iPhone is more than 3–4 years old, a new model will deliver noticeably better results.

iPad Upgrade Cycles

iPads have a longer practical lifespan than Macs or iPhones. It’s not unusual for an iPad to remain useful for 6–7 years, particularly for basic tasks like Web browsing, email, video streaming, and reading.

The upgrade trigger for iPads is usually one of three things:

• Battery life has declined noticeably: iPads from 2024 and later (starting with the M4 iPad Pro, M2 iPad Air, A17 Pro iPad mini, and A16 iPad) display battery health in Settings > Battery > Battery Health. For older iPads, you can check battery health using Mac apps like coconutBattery or iMazing. If capacity has dropped below 80% or the iPad no longer holds a charge through a typical session, it’s time to upgrade. Apple offers iPad battery replacement for $99–$199, but upgrading may make more financial sense.
• Performance becomes frustrating: iPads used for demanding tasks like video editing, illustration, or running multiple apps will show their age faster than those used for content consumption.
• Software support ends: Apple supports iPads for roughly 5–6 years. Once updates stop, security risks increase.

For business use with demanding workflows, a 3–5 year cycle makes sense. For general business use (email, documents, presentations), an older iPad will probably work well enough for 5–6 years. Personal iPads used primarily for media consumption can last until software support ends.

Apple Watch Upgrade Cycles

Apple Watch upgrade cycles depend heavily on how you use the device. Battery degradation is the primary limiting factor—most users report noticeable battery decline after 3–4 years of daily use.

Consider upgrading your Apple Watch when:

• The battery no longer lasts a full day: Check your battery’s condition on the watch in Settings > Battery > Battery Health. If maximum capacity has dropped below 80% or you’re charging midday to make it to bedtime, the battery has degraded significantly. Battery replacements cost $79–$99 from Apple, but given the watch’s age at that point, upgrading usually makes more sense.
• Performance feels sluggish: Newer watchOS versions can bog down older hardware. If apps take a long time to launch, Siri responds slowly, or the interface stutters, a newer watch will feel dramatically faster.
• New health features matter to you: Apple regularly adds meaningful health capabilities. Recent additions like sleep apnea detection may be worth upgrading for.

For most users, a 4–5 year upgrade cycle is reasonable. If you rely on your Apple Watch for health monitoring or use it heavily for workouts, you might prefer a 3–4 year cycle to ensure accurate sensors and reliable battery life.

Other Apple Devices

What about the other items in Apple’s product lineup?

• Apple TV: Most people can keep an Apple TV for 5–7 years without issue. The only real reason to replace an Apple TV HD or 4K is if performance has become sluggish or you want specific new features like Thread support for smart home devices.
• AirPods: Battery degradation is unavoidable in devices this small. Most users find that AirPods need replacement after 2–3 years as battery life diminishes. Battery replacement costs $49–$79 from Apple, but the economics and new features usually favor replacement.
• HomePod: HomePods have long useful lives with little reason to upgrade. Replace a HomePod only if it stops working or if you want features exclusive to newer models, like sound recognition for smoke alarms.
• AirTags: You can replace the CR2032 batteries in AirTags, so the main reason to replace an AirTag is if it’s lost or physically damaged. Apple released a second-generation AirTag with improved range, but if your current AirTags are working fine, there’s no compelling reason to upgrade.
• Vision Pro: There’s now an M5-based Vision Pro, but it’s a modest update—if you have the original M2-based model, there’s no reason to upgrade. If you have a Vision Pro, enjoy it—you’re still pretty much on the bleeding edge.

If you’re unsure whether it’s time to upgrade a specific device, we’re happy to help you evaluate your options.

(Featured image generated by Adam Engst with ChatGPT)

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Text expansion speeds up typing words or phrases that you use regularly, and it’s especially helpful for character combinations that your fingers find awkward—just try touch-typing “Hyundai IONIQ 5” or “acetaminophen.” Apple has long offered text expansion capabilities in macOS, iOS, and iPadOS, and third-party utilities take them even further.

Configuring and Using Text Expansion

To configure the built-in text expansion on the Mac, look in System Settings > Keyboard > Text Replacements; in iOS and iPadOS, go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement. In each, a text replacement consists of a shortcut and a replacement phrase.

Then, in almost any app, type the shortcut, followed by a space or a punctuation character, and its phrase will replace it. If text expansion doesn’t work in a Mac app like Mail or Safari, make sure Edit > Substitutions > Text Replacement is selected.

If you’re signed into the same Apple Account on all your devices, text expansions sync between them automatically. So, you can type omw and tap the Space bar to have “On my way!” typed out for you, regardless of what device you’re using.

Tip: To create replacements more quickly, you can export a list of text replacements, edit the list, and re-import it; Apple provides instructions. This export/import capability also lets you share text replacements with someone else.

What Text to Expand

Replacements can be as short or long as you like—up to about 1900 characters—and can contain anything you can type from the keyboard, including spaces, returns, symbols, accented characters, and emoji. It can be hard to know where to start, but once you try text expansion, possibilities quickly become obvious. A few common categories include:

• Your email address, phone number, and postal address
• Boilerplate text for common email replies (“To subscribe to our mailing list…”)
• Email signoffs (“Sincerely, your close personal Internet friend…”)
• Frequently shared URLs or email addresses (https://www.apple.com/feedback/)
• Long scientific, medical, or technical terms (esophagogastroduodenoscopy)
• Proper nouns with unusual spelling, capitalization, or accents (Zoë Saldaña)
• Words you consistently misspell or mistype (teh)
• Unix commands with arguments (ls -la)

Shortcuts are usually shorter than their replacements, but you can also use text expansion to simplify entering individual characters that are hard to access.

• Commonly used emoji (🙄 or 👍)
• Special characters (½ or →)

One helpful convention is to start shortcuts for special characters with a colon. For example, :roll for 🙄 or :tu for 👍. The colon prefix makes these shortcuts easy to remember and prevents accidental expansions. Make sure not to create shortcuts that you’ll also want to type normally. It might seem like a good idea to use mm for “Mickey Mouse,” but that will get in the way of writing about 35mm film.

Third-Party Text Expansion

With such a useful feature built into macOS and iOS, why would you want to spend money on a third-party utility like TextExpander (macOS and iOS), Typinator (macOS and iOS), or TypeIt4Me (macOS)?

Apple’s built-in text expansion works well for most everyday uses, but it has some limitations—its interface is cramped, it doesn’t work in every app, and you can’t include formatted text or images in your expansions. Third-party utilities fill those gaps.

They can include styled text and graphics in expansions, insert the current date and time, respect case when expanding abbreviations, include the contents of the clipboard in expanded text, automatically fix common typos, and much more.

So think about which bits of text you might want to expand automatically, and give Apple’s built-in text expansion feature a try today! If it seems constraining after a while, a third-party app can take text expansion to the next level.

(Featured image generated by Adam Engst with ChatGPT)

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Apple’s Focus feature on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac can silence those interruptions, but Focus is considerably more complex than the straightforward Do Not Disturb feature it replaced in 2021. Misconfiguring Focus such that it activates unexpectedly can cause you to miss important calls, messages, and other notifications.

What Focus Does

Focus lets you create customized notification environments that block unwanted interruptions while allowing important ones through. You can have a Focus for different situations—when you’re at work, eating dinner, at the gym, and more—each with its own rules about when it activates and which people and apps can reach you.

When a Focus is active, it can:

• Silence notifications from selected people and apps
• Allow specific people and apps to break through
• Change your Lock Screen appearance
• Hide certain Home Screen pages
• Automatically reply to messages explaining you’re unavailable
• Filter content in apps like Mail, Calendar, and Messages
• Make a certain profile or tab group active in Safari

Focus can share your settings across all your Apple devices, which saves you from having to configure it on each device but can also create confusing interactions.

The Built-In Focus Modes

Apple provides three essential Focus modes that cover most people’s needs:

• Do Not Disturb: A general-purpose Focus for when you need to ensure your iPhone doesn’t interrupt you. It’s ideal for doctor appointments, workouts, movies, and similar situations. You can schedule it, but it’s often best to activate it manually from Control Center for a specific amount of time or until you leave the current location.
• Sleep: This Focus activates according to the Sleep schedule you set on the iPhone (in either Settings > Focus > Sleep or in the Health app) to minimize nighttime interruptions. It lets you choose a specific Lock Screen, Home Screen, and Apple Watch face to limit distractions at night.
• Driving: Automatically activates when your iPhone connects to a car’s Bluetooth system or detects driving motion. (The Bluetooth connection may be best if you’re frequently a passenger and want to use your iPhone while being driven.) It blocks nearly all notifications to keep your attention on the road and can send custom automatic replies to people who text you.

For further customization, you can create additional Focus modes—Apple suggests modes for Gaming, Mindfulness, Personal, Reading, and Work. For instance, if you take a spin class every Tuesday at noon and yoga on Thursdays at 7 AM, you could create a Focus for Working Out that would automatically activate during those times.

Configuring a Focus

To set up a Focus, go to Settings > Focus on your iPhone or iPad, or System Settings > Focus on your Mac. Select the Focus you want to configure or create a new one, then:

1. Choose allowed people: Decide whether to allow or silence notifications from specific people. You can also specify whether phone calls from certain groups (Allowed People, Favorites, Contacts, or Contacts groups) can break through.
   
2. Choose allowed apps: Similarly, allow or silence specific apps. You can also enable Time Sensitive Notifications, which lets urgent alerts (like delivery notifications or security alerts) come through even from disallowed apps.
   
3. Set a schedule: Have the Focus turn on at certain times, locations (on when you arrive, off when you leave), or when using specific apps (but not when apps are in the background). App-based triggers are useful for presentations, live performances, and games. A Smart Activation option on the iPhone can automatically turn on a Focus based on your location, app usage, and time of day.
   
4. Add Focus Filters: Customize how Calendar, Mail, Messages, Safari, and others behave when the Focus is active—for example, showing only certain Safari tab groups and your work email accounts during a Professional Focus.
   
5. Intelligent Breakthrough & Silencing: If you have Apple Intelligence enabled, this option “intelligently” allows priority notifications to interrupt you and silences others. It doesn’t override your explicit settings for allowing or silencing notifications.

The Complexity Problem

While Focus is powerful, its complexity can create unpredictable behavior. Here are common pitfalls to avoid:

• Unexpected activation: With automatic schedules based on time, location, and apps, it’s hard to predict when a Focus might turn on. You may not realize notifications are being silenced until you’ve missed something important. This is especially important if your routine is interrupted. Perhaps you normally work out at noon, but today you are at a professional conference or dealing with a family emergency.
• Cross-device confusion: By default, Focus syncs across all your Apple devices via the Share Across Devices option. Syncing means a Focus activated on your iPhone—such as Sleep—might also silence notifications on your Mac when you’re working late and need to communicate with colleagues. Consider turning off Share Across Devices unless you’re certain you want synchronized behavior.
• Unpredictable AI: Focus includes two features that rely on machine learning—Smart Activation and Intelligent Breakthrough & Silencing—to make contextual decisions about when Focus should activate and which notifications are important enough to bypass it. We recommend against using them because they make an already unpredictable scenario even more unpredictable.
• Silenced notifications indicator: When a Focus is active, people who text you in Messages see that your notifications are silenced. While this can be helpful, it can also confuse others when a Focus activates unexpectedly.
  
• The forgotten Focus: A Focus that activates automatically when you go to a specific location or open a particular app might remain active longer than you expected. For instance, what if a Focus activates when Mail is your frontmost app, but you have to leave unexpectedly and your Mac doesn’t sleep automatically, so Mail remains the active app over the weekend? That might be particularly confusing when a Focus Filter hides certain accounts or data.

Practical Recommendations

To get the benefits of Focus without the confusion:

• Keep it simple: Start with Do Not Disturb, Sleep, and Driving. These three cover the needs of most people and have the most predictable behavior. If you created Focus modes you’re not using, delete them.
• Be conservative with triggers: If you add schedules or triggers based on location or apps, keep them to a minimum. The more triggers you add, the harder it becomes to predict when a Focus will be active.
• Allow more calls: These days, unexpected calls from people you know well are fairly uncommon, and those that do happen are more likely to be important. So consider allowing calls from family and close friends (perhaps via Favorites or a Contacts group) and enabling Allow Repeated Calls, which lets someone through if they call twice within three minutes.
• Check Focus status when troubleshooting: If you or someone you know is missing notifications, check whether a Focus is unexpectedly active. The easiest place to check is Control Center.
• Review Share Across Devices: If you experience unexpected Focus behavior, turn off Share Across Devices and configure each device’s Focus settings independently.
• Control notifications directly: Rather than rely on Focus, limit notifications to just those that are actually important to you. Many apps are unnecessarily chatty.

Focus is a powerful tool for managing the constant stream of notifications from our devices, but it requires careful configuration. When in doubt, keep it simple: Sleep to protect your sleeping hours, Driving to block distractions in the car, and Do Not Disturb for ad hoc appointments and performances may be all you need.

(Featured image by iStock.com/DragonImages)

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Here’s how to configure Reminders to get your attention at the right moment, whether through time-based alerts, location triggers, or when you chat with someone in Messages. Particularly helpful is the new alarm feature in iOS 26.2 that ensures you can’t miss time-based alerts. We’ll focus on the iPhone here, but the iPad and Mac interfaces are similar.

Time-Based Notifications

The most straightforward way to be reminded is at a specific date and time. When creating or editing a reminder, turn on the Date and Time switches to set when you want to be notified. You can also enter natural language times in the title, such as “tomorrow at 3 PM”—tap the autocomplete suggestion to convert it to the actual notification time. Voice commands via Siri also work especially well, such as “Siri, remind me to call my mother at 8 PM.” When the time arrives, you’ll receive a standard notification banner on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch.

For recurring tasks, after setting a date, select an option from the Repeat menu: daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or custom intervals. Recurring reminders are perfect for routine tasks such as taking out the recycling or submitting weekly reports. (Medication reminders are often used as an example of recurring reminders, but they’re more effectively handled in the Health app.)

Early Reminders

Although reminders are seldom as time-sensitive as calendar events, where you can set multiple alerts ahead of the actual event, it can still be helpful to receive an additional notification to prep for the reminder’s time. For instance, you might want an early notification a week before “Cancel free trial subscription” to evaluate whether you want to keep the service.

After setting a date and time for a reminder, choose an item from the Early Reminder menu to receive an additional notification minutes, hours, or even days before the scheduled time. This gives you a heads-up that something is coming due without replacing the original notification at the scheduled time.

Alarms in iOS 26.2 and iPadOS 26.2

For most reminders, it isn’t important that you start the task as soon as the notification appears. It doesn’t matter exactly when you cancel the free trial, as long as it happens before the renewal date, so a notification that remains on the Lock Screen is sufficient. But for other tasks, missing a notification would be a big problem. If the turkey needs to go in the oven at 2 PM so it’s ready for Thanksgiving dinner, you don’t want to get distracted by the football game and miss the notification.

To help, Apple added an alarm feature in iOS 26.2 and iPadOS 26.2 that lets Reminders trigger full-screen alarms that behave like those in the Clock app. It’s essential for critical reminders that absolutely cannot be missed. Alarms only work for the person who created the reminder, even if the reminder is on a shared list.

To enable an alarm for a reminder, set a date and time, then turn on the Urgent switch. (It doesn’t appear to be possible to enable Urgent via Siri.) When the reminder comes due, instead of a simple notification banner, you’ll see (and hear) an alarm on your iPhone (and Apple Watch) with options to dismiss or snooze it for 9 minutes. The alarm will continue to sound until you respond, making it much harder to ignore than a standard notification. You can even reschedule snoozed alarms if necessary.

This feature can be a lifesaver for time-sensitive tasks like picking up a prescription before the drugstore closes, joining crucial meetings, or any reminder where a simple banner notification isn’t enough. We hope Apple adds alarms to the Calendar app as well.

Location-Based Reminders

Reminders can also be triggered based on where you are. Location-based reminders are ideal for tasks like “Pick up dry cleaning” when you’re near the cleaners or “Defrost the chicken for dinner” when you arrive home.

Turn on the Location switch when creating a reminder to choose from options like:

• Current location
• Saved locations like Home and Work
• Custom locations
• Getting In or Getting Out (of a car; these options require a CarPlay or Bluetooth connection to your vehicle)

For the location options, you can request alerts when you arrive or leave. To set a custom location, search for an address or point of interest. You can adjust the geofence radius to control how close you need to be for the reminder to trigger.

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When Messaging Someone

If you associate something you want to remember with a particular person, Reminders can notify you when you’re communicating with them in Messages. It’s perfect for things you want to mention but aren’t important enough to warrant starting a conversation—“Ask John about their new puppy.”

When editing a reminder, enable When Messaging and select a contact. The next time you open a Messages conversation with that person, a notification will appear reminding you of the task.

Choosing the Right Alert Method

Each notification type serves different purposes:

• Time-based notifications work well for scheduled tasks and deadlines, with early reminders for advance warning and alarms for critical tasks that can’t be missed.
• Location-based reminders are ideal for errands and place-specific tasks.
• When Messaging ensures you remember to discuss something with a specific person.

By combining these options, you can ensure that essential tasks receive the attention they deserve and are delivered in the way most likely to prompt action.

(Featured image by iStock.com/champpixs)

Social Media: Apple’s Reminders app offers more than simple notifications—from location-based alerts to the new alarm feature in iOS 26.2, here’s how to make sure you never miss an important task.

(Featured image by iStock.com/lakshmiprasad S)

Social Media: Apple’s new DJ‑style AutoMix transitions between songs in the Music app aren’t to everyone’s taste (and sometimes flub the jump). Here’s how to switch back to a timed Crossfade or disable transitions in Music on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

In iPadOS 26, Apple acknowledged that many of those efforts fell short of user expectations and completely revamped the iPad’s multitasking, basing it mainly on the windowing approach we’re all accustomed to on the Mac. Even better, if you prefer the traditional one-app-at-a-time approach, you can stick with that entirely.

Here’s how to get started with windowed apps in iPadOS 26.

Turn on Windowed Apps

When you upgrade to iPadOS 26, you’re prompted to turn on windowed apps, but you can always turn the feature on or off later in Settings > Multitasking & Gestures.

Switch Between Apps

Switching between windowed apps relies on approaches familiar from the Mac and previous versions of iPadOS. You can:

• Switch from the Home Screen: If you’re not already there, swipe up from the bottom of the screen, and then tap an app icon on the Home Screen. Swipe right to see more Home Screen pages or get to the App Library, which holds all apps.
• Switch from the Dock: Either swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen to return to the Home Screen or swipe up just far enough to reveal the Dock, then tap the desired app. Tap the rightmost icon on the Dock to reveal the App Library.
• Switch by swiping: Just as on the iPhone, swiping right or left on the bottom of the screen switches you between recent apps. Or you can swipe right or left with four or five fingers.
• Switch using Exposé: Swipe up from the bottom of the screen, pause in the center, and lift your finger to activate Exposé, which shows all open apps (and windows, if an app has more than one open). Swipe right or left to see more. Tap an app to switch to it. If you have an external keyboard, you can press the Exposé key or Globe-Up Arrow to enter Exposé.
  

Work with Windows

By default, even in windowed apps mode, apps open full-screen. But now you can do much more, just like you do on the Mac. iPadOS windows now have the same traffic light buttons as macOS windows, and they work the same way. If you don’t see them in a full-screen app, swipe down from the top of the screen to see the controls in the menu bar.

• Resize windows: Drag any window corner to resize. You’ll see a handle only in the bottom-right corner, but any corner works. Or touch and hold the traffic light buttons and choose a Move & Resize option. When windows are arranged, you can drag the slider between them to adjust their sizes.
  
• Move windows: Drag the top edge of a window. You can drag it partially off-screen to make more room.
• Close windows: Tap the traffic light buttons to expand them, and then tap the red Close button to close the window for good.
• Minimize windows: Tap the traffic light buttons, and then tap the yellow Minimize button to hide the window. You can also start dragging a window, and then flick it into the Dock.
• Reveal hidden windows: Touch and hold the app’s icon in the Dock, and then choose a window from the Open Windows part of the menu. Alternatively, choose Show All Windows and then tap the desired window.
• Zoom windows: Tap the traffic light buttons, and then tap the green Zoom button. Or just drag a corner of the window to expand it until it occupies the entire screen.
• Arrange windows: Touch and hold the traffic light buttons, and then choose a Fill & Arrange option. Alternatively, to put two windows side by side, start dragging a window and flick it to the side of the screen. Then flick another window to the other side.
• Open new windows: Touch and hold the app’s icon in the Dock, and choose New Window.

Too much to remember? Although most of these techniques are nearly identical to how things work on the Mac, there’s another Mac-inspired interface element to help: the menu bar.

Use the Menu Bar

To reveal the menu bar for the app you’re in, swipe down from the center of the screen. (This gesture works differently on the Home Screen, where swiping down from the middle reveals Notification Center instead.) If you’re using a trackpad or other pointing device, you can also move your pointer to the top of the screen.

Every app will have a menu bar, but only those updated for iPadOS 26 will have custom menus; everything else will use standard menus like File, Edit, Format, View, Window, and Help. Apps tend to offer roughly the same menu items as they have on the Mac.

Using the menu bar works just like it does on the Mac: tap a menu to open it, and then tap an item to choose it. For those getting used to windowed apps in iPadOS 26, the big win is the Window menu, which lays out all the options discussed above.

Use Slide Over

In the initial release of iPadOS 26, Apple removed Slide Over, which allowed the user to keep a window floating over other apps and move it off-screen and back easily. After an outcry from iPad users accustomed to using it as a place to stash reference materials and other windows they wanted quick access to, Apple brought Slide Over back in iPadOS 26.1.

To put a window into Slide Over, swipe down to reveal the menu bar, tap the traffic light buttons, and choose Enter Slide Over. Once a window is in Slide Over, you can flick it to either the right or left side of the screen to hide it—a little handle briefly reminds you it’s there—and swiping in from that side of the screen reveals the Slide Over window again. Slide Over windows can be resized like any other window by dragging a corner. Only one app can be in Slide Over at a time; choosing Enter Slide Over in a different app replaces the current Slide Over app. You can also touch and hold the traffic light buttons in the Slide Over app and choose Exit Slide Over to make it a standard window again.

If iPadOS 26’s new approach to multitasking feels like it will improve your iPad productivity, and you don’t already have them, consider adding a keyboard and trackpad. The combination of faster typing, more precise pointing, and Mac-like multitasking can go a long way toward improving your iPad workflows.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/AmnajKhetsamtip)

Social Media: iPadOS 26 finally brings Mac‑style multitasking to the iPad. Learn how to enable windowed apps, use the new menu bar, work with windows, and master Slide Over (back in iPadOS 26.1) for faster workflows.