How-To Guides from Gadget Hacks: Page 2

NameDrop lets two iPhones, or an iPhone and Apple Watch, swap contact cards by holding the top edges close together and confirming a prompt that appears on both screens. It works by sharing contact information using AirDrop, and it's available now on any compatible iPhone running iOS 17.1 or later (Apple Support). This guide covers how to use NameDrop on iPhone step by step: which devices qualify, how to control exactly what gets shared, and what to check when the screen refuses to show up.

Ask three different people what "Microsoft Copilot" does, and there's a good chance you'll get three different answers, and all of them will be partially right. That's the problem. Microsoft Copilot isn't one product. It's a family of surfaces, and each one sees a different slice of your data. Mixing up Copilot Chat with Microsoft 365 Copilot, or a Teams meeting assistant with the standalone Researcher agent, is a common reason people asking how to use Microsoft Copilot for research end up with...

iOS 27 began rolling out on September 14, and it arrived with a screen most people may be tempted to tap through without reading: a prompt titled "Improve Siri & Apple Intelligence" offering two choices, "Share Audio and Text" or "Not Now."

Apple Music subscribers don't have to wait until the end of the year to see their listening habits laid out. The 2026 Replay playlist has been updating since early February, tracking top songs throughout the year rather than appearing only as a year-end recap.

iOS 27 now lets iPhone owners create their own Apple Wallet passes without a developer account.

Some Mac owners running macOS 27 have watched Apple Intelligence balloon to 20GB or more in the Storage pane, well beyond what Apple's own documentation says it should need. If you're trying to figure out how to remove Apple Intelligence models on Mac and claw back some of that space, start by separating what's actually been measured from what's circulating on Reddit.

The Apple CarPlay settings worth changing after that first pairing live in two places: the iPhone's Settings app and CarPlay's own Settings app on the vehicle display.

Audible's Timer sits right on the playback screen, but some of the app's more useful controls are easier to overlook. Shake to Extend lives in Player settings, while End of Chapter and finer 0.05x speed adjustments give listeners more control over when and how they listen.

Open System Settings after installing macOS 27, and Apple Intelligence might be claiming far more space than Apple's own numbers suggest it should. That's the pattern surfacing on Mac forums this week: multiple owners running Apple's newest macOS release are seeing Apple Intelligence storage usage on Mac systems run well past what Apple's support documentation lists as the requirement. MacRumors measured 20.67GB on its own M4 Pro Mac mini, already above Apple's published 14GB ceiling for that...

CarPlay automatically adds every compatible app on the iPhone to the display, with no ranking of what actually matters while driving (Pocket-lint, two months ago). That means the default layout may not reflect what's useful behind the wheel. Apple built CarPlay to put iPhone tasks, navigation, calls, messages, onto the car's built-in display rather than the phone screen (Apple Support, last year). Connecting the phone gets those tasks on screen, but the deeper controls, app order, notification...

If the dedicated Copilot key on your laptop keeps opening an AI assistant you never asked for, here's how to remap the Copilot key in Windows 11 so it does something useful instead. Use Windows Settings if you want the key to open Search or a specific app from its built-in list. Use PowerToys Keyboard Manager if you want the key to fire a keyboard shortcut or open whatever's pinned to your taskbar. Turning the key into a standalone Ctrl is also possible through PowerToys, though it behaves...

Google Drive's "Organize My Files" tool lets Gemini scan loose files sitting outside your folder structure and suggest where they belong. Nothing actually moves until you review the recommendations, select the files you want moved, and approve the batch.

The 78th Emmy Awards aired live on September 14, 2026, but anyone who missed the ceremony can still watch the 2026 Emmy Awards without cable.

By the end of this guide, the regular Gmail Inbox does the sorting itself. Priority senders stay visible, receipts and newsletters get labeled and archived automatically, and subscriptions that just add clutter get canceled at the source. None of it runs through Gemini, Smart Reply, or Gmail's own tab classification, since this is a guide to Gmail inbox automation built entirely from rules typed in by hand.

Apple began offering new and qualifying returning subscribers three free months of Apple One with the purchase of an eligible device on September 17, 2026. If you're trying to figure out how to get the Apple One 3-month free trial after buying a new device, the first question isn't which iPhone you bought. It's whether your Apple Account qualifies at all.

Some PCs upgrading from Windows 11 23H2 or 24H2 to 25H2 have run into a confusing failure: "We couldn't update the system reserved partition," sometimes accompanied by error code 0x800F0922 or 0xC1900104.

Apple seeded tvOS 27 RC, build 24J360, to developers and public beta testers yesterday, and the update is now available through Software Update on enrolled compatible Apple TVs (MacRumors, yesterday; iClarified, yesterday). If you're trying to figure out how to install tvOS 27 RC, the requirement comes first: it runs on Apple TV 4K (2nd generation, 2021) or newer, and it does not run on the Apple TV HD (2015) or the original Apple TV 4K (2017) (iThinkDiff, 2 weeks ago; iClarified, yesterday).

Chrome didn't kill ad blocking. It killed one specific technical approach, and took a popular extension's full functionality down with it. If ads have started slipping through since your last Chrome update, or an old uBlock Origin install stopped filtering the way it used to, the good news is that ad blockers that still work in Chrome are easy to find, once you know which one actually matches your problem.

If you own an older Pixel, you may have noticed something Pixel owners have not generally expected to see: a promotional notification sitting in the shade next to your texts and calendar reminders. After the Pixel 11 launch, Android Authority reported this week that many users, including one of its own writers, started receiving ads for the new phone on their older Pixel devices.

Pixel 11 Pro XL Extreme Charging mode can be activated from the phone's Battery and charging settings, the lock screen when eligible, or Quick Settings after the feature has been activated once.