Inhoudsopgave van March 2025 - MacFormat

Whether you’ve been lucky enough to get a brand new Mac or not over the last few months, everyone loves a speedy machine – especially one that’s not wheezing under the weight of unwanted apps, bulky, old and unused files, or just takes ages to get going every time you try to start it up. To that end, this month’s lead feature will help. Starting on p20, you’ll discover 85 ways to back up, clean up and speed up your Mac, from taming login items to moving your media, photos and other libraries. And if that’s still not enough, we’ll also show you how to do a clean install, all the while making sure the files you want to keep are protected using Time Machine. Plus, we explore ways you…

Apple has long enjoyed a reputation for strong privacy and regularly adds features to protect user data. That’s why it might be surprising to learn that the firm has settled a $95 million lawsuit amid claims that Siri listened to users without their consent and that Apple sold the resulting data for marketing purposes. However, Apple has denied the claims, saying that it settled to “avoid additional litigation so we can move forward from concerns about third-party grading that we already addressed in 2019”. Apple added that “Siri data has never been used to build marketing profiles and it has never been sold to anyone for any purpose.” While Apple’s terms lay out that some Siri data is sent to the company’s servers, the raw audio is not stored by…

Wondering what the most downloaded iPhone and iPad apps were in 2024? Apple has just revealed its top charts in the UK over the past 12 months, and the company has also named the winners of its App Store Awards for 2024. There are many familiar names to be found in the download charts. The most popular free app was shopping title Temu, while Driving Theory Test 4 in 1 Kit took the top paid app crown. Block Blast was the most popular free game, with Minecraft number one for paid games. As for Apple Arcade, Football Manager 2024 Touch was the most downloaded game. Apple also honoured well-made apps with its App Store Awards. The prize for iPhone App of the Year went to videography tool Kino, with music…

Detoxing your Mac isn’t all that difficult. You just have to know what to do and how to do it. If your Mac is running slowly or hanging often, it could be for a number of reasons. The startup disk might be almost full, leaving macOS with less space to play with. Temporary files can sometimes build up, taking up valuable drive space. If it takes a while to start up, look at the login items, that is, apps and extensions you have it launch automatically whenever you boot your Mac. Are there any that could be removed? These are just some of the tips and tricks we cover in this feature. With our help, you can trim your storage drive, delete apps and data you no longer need, reinstall macOS…

These days, storage drives are pretty cheap. For less than £100, you can get several extra terabytes, and there are plenty of decent drives for less if your budget is more modest. Modern drives are also fast. With solid-state drives (SSDs) getting cheaper and larger, and faster data transfer ports such as Thunderbolt and USB-C commonplace, keeping files on an external drive is more convenient than ever. External drives come in two main types: desktop and portable. A desktop drive gives you more storage space for your money, but it has to be powered from the mains, making it inconvenient when out and about with your notebook Mac. A portable drive is powered by the data port, that is, the port you plug it into on your Mac. You don’t…

1 Apple silicon Macs Check your processor. Click the Apple menu, then select About This Mac. If the listed chip is an Apple M-series, you have Apple silicon. Back up your Mac with Time Machine before you start the reinstall. 2 Boot into Recovery This has changed with Apple silicon Macs. Instead of using keyboard combinations, you simply shut down your Mac and, to reboot, press and hold the power button until you see a ‘loading startup options’ message. 3 Check your options When you get to this screen, click Options, then click the Continue button that appears. You see the Apple icon, with a progress bar again. After a brief wait, you find yourself on the macOS Recovery tools screen. 4 Recovery tools This is the Recovery window, and…

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IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN To add the Weather app as a menu bar item and make the most of its features YOU’LL NEED macOS 15.2 or later You could, of course, look out of the window to see if the sun is shining or if it’s pouring with rain but that won’t tell you the temperature, wind speed, humidity levels, pressure or air pollution levels. For that level of detail, you can simply glance at your Mac thanks to Apple’s wonderful Weather app which is now making it even easier to get the information you need. With macOS 15.2 or later, you can check the weather in gradual steps. Activate the new menu bar item, for instance, and you’ll be able to see a very short snapshot…

IN PRINT ON iPAD & iPHONE ISSUE 413 FEBRUARY 2025 Top free apps for Mac, iPhone & iPad How to get fit with your Apple kit! Master your Apple Music library Best antivirus apps for Mac ISSUE 412 JANUARY 2025 Mac mini: the definitive verdict 137 essential time-saving Mac tips On test: M4 iMac and MacBook Pro Part 1 of our Apple Music superguide ISSUE 411 DECEMBER 2024 Be inspired! 26 amazing Apple projects On test: iPhone 16 & Apple Watch 10 50 awesome gifts for any Apple fan Say hello to the new M4 Macs To order back issues of the print magazine, go to bit.ly/macformat_backissues or phone +44 (0)330 333 1113 and we’ll post them out to you. Download back issues onto your iOS device at any time and keep them…

£199.99 FROM philips.co.uk FEATURES 2x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, HDR 10 While Mac users are in the market for stand-alone monitors less often than their Windows counterparts, the release of the new Mac mini will likely spur quite a few to seek out a good value display, and the market can be hard to navigate. Philips’ Evnia 27M2C5501 is a curved, 27-inch gaming monitor – though fear not, at this price you’re not paying a premium for gaming features, and it’s just as good used as an everyday monitor. Finished in white, it comes with a stand and internal power supply meaning no external brick. At 27 inches, it’s also manageable on a smaller desk, though there are larger options on the market. It is subtly curved to immerse…

£79.99 FROM gamesir.com FEATURES TMR thumbsticks, Hall effect triggers, nine remappable buttons, changeable ABXY button layout, customisable RGB lighting, wireless charging stand included, connects to iOS, macOS, Nintendo Switch, Android When you change the ABXY layout, the projections are rotated. There’s even a little viewing window Unbox GameSir’s Tarantula Pro controller and the initial signs are good thanks to a well-made, sturdy construction. It’s got just enough heft to feel substantial without being heavy, and the grippy handles ensure it’s always easy to hold. There are subtle RGB highlights sprinkled here and there, alongside an understated (albeit unexciting) camo pattern on the front. The Tarantula Pro is highly customisable, with nine remappable buttons and changeable lighting effects. There are switches on the back to change the triggers’ range of motion…

Group test Reviewed by CLIFF JOSEPH ON TEST… > Amazon Eero Max 7 > Asus ZenWifi BT8 > Linksys Velop Pro 7 > Netgear Nighthawk RS300 > Netgear Orbi 770 > TP-Link Deco BE65 Apple has taken its time introducing Wi-Fi 7 to its product range. None of the latest M4 Macs include the technology yet, and it’s only the iPhone 16 that currently supports Wi-Fi 7 – and even this seems to have been implemented in a way that prevents the iPhone 16 from achieving the highest speeds that are available with Wi-Fi 7. But, after a slow start, Wi-Fi 7 is now becoming a mainstream technology, and routers and mesh Wi-Fi systems with Wi-Fi 7 are starting to become more affordable. Admittedly, Wi-Fi 7 is so blisteringly fast…

Free (offers IAPs) FROM themitycompany.com NEEDS iOS 18 or later Stuff is full of neat touches, with haptics and animations put to good use throughout Stuff is an app built to organise all the, well, stuff in your life using reminders and to-do lists. Yet while its pleasing design belies an impressive level of functionality, it’s not a must-buy app yet. Stuff is designed around simplicity, with a layout that’s clean and attractive with bold fonts and bright colours. Adding new entries is quick and easy – just tap the ‘+’ button in the bottom-right corner to create a task, list or space (the latter groups both tasks and lists into one section). Stuff is full of other neat touches, with haptics and animations put to good use throughout. Yet you shouldn’t…

Apple’s foldable iPhone is widely understood to be in development, but there’s been little in the way of specifics. Analyst firm Meritz Securities has bucked that trend by releasing what it predicts will be the foldable iPhone’s measurements. The company claims the device will have a screen measuring between 7.6 and 7.9 inches across, while the front cover screen (on the outside when the product is folded) will be 5.3 to 5.5 inches across. While the former specification is in line with other foldable phones, the cover screen is noticeably smaller than the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, which comes with a 6.3-inch cover.…

Rumours have long swirled that Apple is developing a large foldable device that’s much larger than the foldable iPhone we mentioned on p7. This product may still be a few years out, but that hasn’t stopped a slew of claims leaking out about what it could look like. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman recently published a report that sheds much light on the foldable device. For instance, Gurman says it will be about the size of two iPad Pros sitting side by side when it’s unfolded, giving it a total diagonal measurement of 18 to 20 inches. One of Apple’s main goals is to eliminate the crease down the centre of the display, Gurman contends. This is a flaw that has affected many rival folding devices. While Apple’s device has a “nearly…

Onkyo Creator GX-30ARC > $299 (about £295) > From onkyo.com > As good as the speakers built in to your Mac can be, they’re still no substitute for a proper stereo setup, especially if you like to listen to music, watch movies, or fashion your own crowd-pleasing creations – and that’s where Onkyo’s new Creator GX-30ARC comes in. Available in black or white as part of a wider Creator series family that also includes the $199 (about £195) GX-10DB, the GX-30ARC comprises a pair of active desktop monitors, each containing a 4-inch woofer, 3/4-inch tweeter and driven by an integrated 2x25W Class D amplifier. They’re also festooned with connectivity options including Bluetooth, USB-C, HDMI ARC, digital optical, RCA (phono), a subwoofer pre-out and a 3.5mm aux port. You even get…

Astartup disk that’s almost out of space can affect how well your Mac runs. When your computer’s internal memory, or RAM, runs low, macOS uses the startup drive as virtual memory. If the drive is almost full, there’s less room available to use as virtual memory, and the Mac slows down and hangs a lot. Naturally, there’s an easy way to fix the problem. Simply free up space on your startup disk. We’ll come to deleting apps and moving media later, but for now, let’s look at how to identify large files and duplicates you no longer need and get rid of them. 1 Empty the Bin It’s a very simple tip, but also a very effective one. Moving files to the Bin doesn’t delete them immediately; they still take up…

SanDisk Desk Drive From £303.99, shop.sandisk.com Want a high-capacity external drive but require more speed than a hard disk drive can offer? If so, the small yet speedy SanDisk Desk Drive is worth a look. It offers a 1,000MB/sec sequential read performance, and comes in capacities of 4TB and 8TB. WD Elements Desktop HDD Storage From £112.99, westerndigital.com For when only the biggest drive will do! This desktop hard drive from Western Digital comes in capacities from 4TB to 24TB. The largest drive sets you back a penny shy of £490, but you’re getting a lot of drive for your money. Though it’s not as fast as an SSD, of course. Seagate Portable Hard Drive From £51.19, seagate.com If you do most of your computing on the go and want an external portable…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to stream audio and video from your Mac YOU’LL NEED AirPlay compatible devices and macOS 15 or later One of the things we love about Apple is that its best ideas travel – so the best iOS features soon move to the Mac and vice-versa. AirPlay is one of those good ideas. It wirelessly streams audio and video to HomePods, to Apple TV 4K and to all kinds of devices including Bluetooth speakers and smart TVs. And it’s as simple to use on Mac as it is on iPhone and iPad. To AirPlay, you’ll need your Mac and the destination device to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network, to be running a recent version of Apple’s operating system (iOS/iPadOS 14…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to get more information on things you photograph using Visual Intelligence YOU’LL NEED iOS 18 or later, an iPhone 16 model (Camera Control required) For a while now, you’ve been able to snap a photo of something on your iPhone and use Visual Look Up to find out more about it, whether it’s a flower, a meal, an animal, or something else. But Apple has taken things a step further with the introduction of Apple Intelligence and the Camera Control in the iPhone 16 range. That evolution comes in the form of Visual Intelligence, which harnesses artificial intelligence (AI) to give you even more useful data and features. Now, you can tap into ChatGPT and Google to find out more about…

Final Cut Pro Alternative to iMovie > £299.99 > FROM apple.com/uk > FEATURES Advanced tools, large range of effects, high-res format support Easy to get to grips with, iMovie is ideal for beginners and casual hobbyists who want to combine video clips. It’s a relatively simple tool for making basic cuts and adding titles, sounds and transitions to create reasonably polished-looking results. However, more serious hobbyist filmmakers should consider upgrading to something more capable. Among the many contenders, Apple’s own Final Cut Pro is one of the very best options, powerful enough to be used by those working in professional postproduction. While the price is pretty hefty, it’s a one-off purchase with free automatic updates. What you get for your money is an extensive set of professional tools that enable…

The first two Accessibility sections you will encounter are primarily aimed at users who have a visual or hearing impairment. You’ll find options that let you adjust the Mac’s display colours and enlarge text and you’ll discover features that work with a Braille display. You’ll be able to pair ‘Made for iPhone’ hearing aids or sound processors and not only stream audio directly from your Mac but select Hearing Devices and make adjustments. Yet many of the functions will also prove useful for other users. If you’re easily distracted, for instance, you can head for Accessibility’s Display section and prevent annoying animated images from autoplaying. You can also select Hearing and click Audio to activate background sounds. This will minimise any potential environmental distractions by having your Mac fill the…

BUYING ADVICE Our authoritative reviews help you make more informed choices Contact us Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com Our ratings Our reviews are totally independent; we’re not affiliated with Apple or anyone else, nor are we influenced by advertisers. A truly exceptional product. Award given solely at the discretion of the editor. The best example of its kind when pitted against comparable products. A brilliant thing Strongly recommended Worth considering Notable flaws A waste of your money…

£1239.00 FROM asustor.com FEATURES Bays for four 3.5-inch hard drives and four M.2 NVMe SSDs, two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, Time Machine support, with both SMB and AFP available A full Time Machine backup of 180GB took just 8 minutes to a pair of SSDs Growing support for 10 Gigabit Ethernet could bring far better performance to network attached storage, if only more NAS systems could join in. Asustor’s latest third-generation Lockerstor systems are unusual mid-range NAS with two 10-and two 2.5 Gigabit ports matched with fast processors and four PCIe 4.0 SSD slots to deliver the best performance of any NAS we’ve tested. Inside is an AMD Quad-Core Ryzen processor with 16GB of ECC memory expandable to 64GB. Four bays tuck 3.5-or 2.5-inch hard drives away in its slimline…

Wi-Fi 7 is so fast that even the modest 4.3Gbps of the Amazon Eero is more than fast enough for most home users. However, the Eero is surprisingly expensive, even without its additional subscription, and several of its rivals offer better value. Netgear’s Orbi and Nighthawk RS300 are more affordable, but both products have limited parental controls and suffer from Netgear’s habit of selling add-on subscriptions. In contrast, Linksys provides good performance and value for money with its 10.8Gbps Velop Pro 7, but is let down by a fiddly app that leaves its parental controls lingering in ‘beta’ limbo. The Deco BE65 from TP-Link gets pretty much everything right, with good performance and free parental controls. However, it’s pipped at the post by Asus’ ZenWifi BT8. This is clearly the…

£12.99 FROM feralinteractive.com NEEDS iOS 17 or later Stick your imperial flag into the soil of as many other nations as possible Feral Interactive has been porting The Creative Assembly’s historical strategy titles to iOS for some time now, and has finally arrived at 2009’s Empire, the most up to date of the games in terms of its setting. The empire in question is an 18th century European or Asian one, rather than Galactic, Cylon or Idiran, and it’s a game of massed musket barrages, cannons, naval battles, and the very real possibility of cavalry charging with war elephants. By now, we should be used to Feral’s Total War ports. On Mac they were great games, and they lose nothing in their transition to touchscreen devices. In fact, they gain…

We’ve only just started 2025, but already Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman has laid out Apple’s entire year of product releases. With the report in hand, there might not be too many surprise announcements over the next 12 months. First up, according to the report, is the MacBook Air. Both the 13-inch and 15-inch models will get an M4 chip, but very little else will change. Gurman says that Apple could drop the M3 version and keep the M2 model on sale alongside the new M4 laptop. It’s expected to launch ‘relatively soon’, the report says. We’re expecting chip upgrades across iPads, MacBooks and Macs After that, we will apparently see a slate of iOS and iPadOS products in the spring: the iPhone SE 4, a new entry-level iPad, an iPad…

APP OF THE MONTH [MAC APP] Your MacBook doesn’t provide much battery info. If you want to know things like overall battery health or how many charge cycles it’s had, you need coconutBattery. This handy utility provides detailed statistics for your Mac’s battery and for any connected Apple devices. You’ll see how hot the battery is, its full charge capacity (compared to its design capacity), precisely what percentage it’s currently at, and more. Version 4 redesigns the app’s interface and adds a slate of new features, including realtime Mac battery metrics, improved device details, lifetime battery health stats for Macs, and a host of bug fixes and smaller tweaks. The main app is free, but you get a number of extra features if you go for the Plus edition, priced…

While January can be an otherwise bleak month, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) shone bright once more and that wasn’t just because it was held under the bright lights of Las Vegas. For those lucky enough to traverse the halls and booths of one of tech’s most important annual events, there was a huge assortment of innovative goodies to see, touch and hear, and most of those cutting edge devices will be heading our way over the coming months. Although Apple itself wasn’t showcasing any of its own wares (it has its own events for that – the first of which will be coming soon), there was plenty of third-party kit to keep us happy. We spotted devices that will help you get the most out of your iPhone, iPad…

Cleaning out your Mac involves more than deleting that movie you watched months ago and dumping apps you never use. There are all sorts of ways you can trim your storage drives, reclaiming space without removing anything you’d rather keep. 1 System junk As mentioned before, system junk such as old caches and system log files can build up over time, taking up a surprising amount of space on your Mac. To reclaim this lost space, you need a maintenance app such as CleanMyMac, Cleaner-App or CCleaner for Mac. They all offer free versions to get you started. 2 Removing apps Open a Finder window (click on the desktop and press Cmd+N), and in the sidebar, click Applications. The trick we shared on p22 about showing the contents as a list…

Reinstalling your Mac’s operating system doesn’t mean wiping the startup disk and starting over. You can reinstall macOS over the top of your current install, which doesn’t affect the files and apps you also have installed. There are several reasons why you might want to do this. Over time, some system files might become corrupted. You might have damaged your current install by deleting or modifying a system file, or a poorly programmed or badly modified piece of software could do this too. Reinstalling macOS isn’t something you need to do often, but if your Mac is having problems and you’re out of ideas, it’s worth a try. If you have an Apple silicon Mac, follow the steps on the next page. If you’re unsure whether your Mac has Apple silicon…

When surfing the web with your browser of choice, that browser stores cookies, caches, history of pages visited and so on. This is to make your browsing faster. For example, if you navigate away from a page, and then tap the back button to go back to the page you just left, its elements can be drawn from the cache instead of being downloaded again. This shouldn’t affect your browser’s performance, but occasionally files can get stuck in the cache, or it might simply get too full, affecting the app’s performance. For these times, try clearing the cache. For most iPhone and iPad users, Safari is the browser of choice. To clear its cache, go to Settings > Apps > Safari and tap ‘Clear History and Website Data’ near the bottom…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to create original images using AI and Apple’s Image Playground app YOU’LL NEED macOS 15.2 or later, M1 chip or later Artificial intelligence (AI) is all the rage at the moment, and Apple is getting in on the act with Apple Intelligence. This AI is woven throughout macOS 15 (Sequoia) and helps power up Siri, rewrite text, organise your emails, and more. A key element of Apple Intelligence is the Image Playground app, which is all about creating AI-generated images. It’s very easy to use but offers a lot of power and flexibility, and whether you want to whip up a personalised image for a friend or create your own custom emoji, it’s a good place to start. You can also…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to create a collage, ‘step out of the frame’, and turn one person into twins YOU’LL NEED Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025 Our social media feeds are packed full of eye-catching images but, thanks to Photoshop Elements 2025, we can compete for ‘likes’ and attention by making our own creative images (without being a Photoshop expert). For the novice image editor Photoshop Elements provides Guided Edits that show you step by step how to produce fun effects – such as making a person appear to step out of a picture frame! Photoshop Elements also enables you to combine a collection of images into a creative collage in a few clicks, and we’ll show you how to download different collage templates to suit…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to record on top of your recordings YOU’LL NEED iOS 18.2 or later and an iPhone 16 Pro Macs and music go together like rock ‘n’ roll, drum and bass or Lennon and McCartney. But sometimes you’ll get a musical idea that doesn’t require the gear of GarageBand, let alone the limitless power of Logic Pro. And sometimes musical lightning may strike when you’re on the bus or on your bike, far from your Mac and any audio interfaces. That’s where the newly updated Voice Memos app on your iPhone 16 Pro comes in. From iOS 18.2 onwards it enables you to record not just one track of audio on your Pro, but two. The reason this new feature is only…

Logic Pro Alternative to GarageBand > £199.99 > FROM apple.com/uk > FEATURES Pro-grade tools, vast sound library, MIDI control, track stacking GarageBand is handy for jotting down musical ideas and can be used to create some excellent-sounding results. Despite the addition of many new features added over the years, however, it’s not quite a professional-level digital audio workstation (DAW). For that, Apple’s own Logic Pro is a good option. Less pricey than alternatives such as Cubase Pro and Ableton Live Standard/Suite, it’s also more user-friendly than most. Go large If you’ve used GarageBand, Logic Pro’s interface will be comfortably familiar, with a timeline-based layout for audio tracks, which can be assigned to built-in sounds, third-party audio units or external MIDI devices. It also has similar piano-roll, drum and score editors…

Whether you physically struggle to use a keyboard or simply have your hands full while needing to use your Mac, the latest Accessibility features can be worth their weight in gold. With the correct combination of settings, it’s possible to navigate your desktop without touching a single key. Instead, you could issue voice commands to open apps and interact with various on-screen elements, perhaps even using the camera on your MacBook or iMac to navigate using head movements and facial expressions. You can also delve into the Switch Control settings and choose to navigate your Mac using gamepad buttons or third-party accessibility devices. One thing’s for sure, with many options to consider, you can tailor your Mac experience to suit your needs. Only by playing with the settings will you…

Essentials £44.99/year; Premium £54.98/year; Ultimate £114.98/year FROM eset.com NEEDS macOS 11 or later (iOS/iPadOS 13 or later) With macOS ramping up security protection in Sequoia, and adding its own password manager, most users shouldn’t need to pay a subscription for more. ESET Home Security adds value with its software firewall and unlimited VPN though, and is a particularly good option for those with Windows PCs or Android devices to support. Installation proceeds well until its improved installer has to negotiate the usual tripwires in macOS. There it has to install extensions that macOS fusses over, but after flicking a few switches in System Settings it should end well. ESET’s malware protection is based on a mature and efficient engine that scans shortly after starting up, then keeps a watchful eye…

iMac From £1,299 In October 2024, Apple updated its 24in iMac with the M4 chip, and the iMac now has the wonders of Apple Intelligence built in. You can choose between an 8-core CPU/8-core GPU at entry-level, or an 10-core CPU/10-core GPU on the mid-range and top-tier versions. The entry model now comes with 16GB of memory as standard, configurable to 24GB; the mid-and toptier versions are configurable to 24 or 32GB (32GB only available with 512GB or more of storage). The solid-state drive (SSD) storage starts at 256GB on entry-level and mid-range versions, and 512GB on the top-tier iMac, although you can add up to 1TB on the entry-level model and up to 2TB on mid-range and top-tier models. You still get a 4.5K (4480x2520) Retina display, with top-tier…