EU users may not get some Apple Intelligence features for quite some time, but ChatGPT's impressive macOS app has been steadily gaining fresh features in the interim.

A new companion window rolled out last month, but now the app has added its Memory feature for EU and Korean users.

The feature, that lets users store some data in ChatGPT that persists from session to session, should make it easier to strike up a conversation with the chatbot and get results more quickly, and tailored to your specific preferences.

How to use ChatGPT memory

Once you've updated the app to its latest version, hop into the menu and then the Personalization section.

From here, you can toggle 'Memory' on (it's off by default). This will help ChatGPT to remember how detailed you like your responses, what your preferred name is, and even life details (the app's example is "I just got a puppy!").

From the same menu, you can adjust the memory and remove anything you'd prefer ChatGPT not to remember. 

To add data, simply chat with the bot. For example, "I am a 34-year-old freelance writer in tech, based in the UK" triggered the response "memory updated".

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Final Cut Pro got a pretty huge update back in June across both the Mac and iPad app and now Apple is going on the offensive to promote both with a couple of new videos (they're ads).

The first video, which is focused on Final Cut Pro version 10.8 for the Mac, talks about the new update's "powerful media organization, AI-enhanced features, and incredible performance." You can check out that video below:

For the Final Cut Pro for iPad 2, Apple says that the new version "reimagines video creation for iPad and puts the power of a production studio at your fingertips. Find out all the details about the new features in version 2."

You can check out that video below:

Apple wants to eat Adobe's lunch

While Apple may have killed off its amazing photography app Aperture years ago, the company has really put a ton of work into keeping both Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro going. The company has even, in recent memory, released apps for the iPad and most recently the Final Cut Camera app for iPhone.

With Adobe as its main competitor in the video editing space, Apple is showing that it really wants you to chose not only its software, but its hardware as an all-in-one solution for recording, editing, and publishing.

While Adobe still only allows you to purchase Premiere Pro through a subscription, Apple still offers Final Cut Pro for a one-time purchase of $299.99. Unfortunately, the company has gone with a subscription model for the iPad app, charging either $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year.

We'll have to see how things continue to shake out, but Apple clearly plans to stay in the video editing software game for years to come. Now it just needs to bring back Aperture.

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ChatGPT for Mac has received a big update, with an update to the companion window as the standout feature, letting the AI assistant be a constant presence, wherever you are on macOS.

According to OpenAI’s release notes, version 1.2024.212, pressing Option + Space on one of the best Macs when ChatGPT is active will open the app as a new window, wherever you are on macOS. For example, if you’re browsing the web in Safari in full-screen mode, pressing this shortcut will summon ChatGPT, ready for you to ask the AI assistant any query you may have. You can also change the shortcut and the position of the window in the Settings section if needed.

Using a 'companion window’ could be a very useful feature for many users, as it removes the hassle of having to look for ChatGPT in the macOS dock or cycle through the list of active apps with Command+Tab. Instead, a quick press of the keyboard shortcut will instantly bring up the assistant in a new window, and you can simply close it when you’re done.

If you haven’t received the update yet, go to the Menu Bar when ChatGPT is active, click on ChatGPT > Check for Updates, and the update should be available to download.

What else is new in this new update?

There’s more than ‘companion window’ in this new update to ChatGPT on macOS! If you use charts and data analysis with the app, you can now expand generated charts to get a better view of the data, as well as being able to download them for offline use.

More shortcuts are available, such as ‘Command + .’ to stop ChatGPT if it’s generating a long response to your query, along with the ability to have the app launch once your Mac switches on.

Overall, this is a significant update to ChatGPT on macOS that’s only going to help your productivity, if you choose to use it.

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Stripe owes the developer of NotchNook hundreds of thousands in sales, but so far refuses to pay.

Developer Igor Marcossi posted on LinkedIn on August 7, explaining how, after NotchNook became a big hit with Mac users in July thanks to its ability to give Macs a Dynamic Island, Stripe is refusing to pay the sales amount generated by the app. “Yesterday they started the retaliation. Even though they already had all the documents from the company, they decided to pause sending money to my bank account and ask for some business docs,” Marcossi explains. “I sent them but they decided the corporate “bank owner account” wasn’t aware of where the money was coming from. They’ve now decided to CLOSE the account WITHOUT ANY NOTICE! There’s a risk of my company failing because Stripe decided to STEAL all our money. I literally don’t know what to do, I’m desperate, I have people to pay but Stripe won’t send me MY MONEY!!!!”

iMore reached out to Marcossi, who explained that NotchNook’s success has turned into a nightmare — all thanks to Stripe. “It’s been a nightmare, I already hired a lawyer nonetheless. I can’t develop with so much stress on me.” A representative from Stripe subsequently commented on Marcossi’s post, saying ‘We’re digging into things now.” Yet there hasn’t been much change at the time of writing.

We’ve also reached out to Stripe for comment and will update the story if we hear back.

What makes NotchNook so good?

Some of the best Mac apps usually fulfill needs that you hadn’t considered before. MacWhisper, a transcription app, and Whisky, a utility that can run Windows games on Apple silicon Macs, are great examples of this.

In the case of NotchNook, the Dynamic Island that the app places on a Mac can supercharge your productivity. It makes tasks like controlling music and checking Calendar straightforward, and it moves the volume and brightness indicators to NotchNook’s Dynamic Island, eliminating a big annoyance of macOS.

If you haven’t tried it yet, show your support by downloading a three-day trial. Currently, NotchNook can be bought as a $3 per month subscription or for a $25 lifetime fee.

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Earlier today, X appeared to removed the Twitter app from the App Store on the best Macs. The official Mac app was abandoned, stuck with a lack of updates and rebranding since the changing of Twitter to X in 2023.

After removing the Twitter app, a pop-up in the app instructed users to use the X iPad app on their Macs. But you may want to hold off on doing so.

A number of users are reporting that their accounts are getting suspended, after using the X iPad app on their Mac. One Reddit user shared that their X account got suspended as soon as they logged into the iPad app on their Mac.

For anyone that isn't sure, developers can allow their iPhone or iPad apps to be installed on Mac. While X didn't allow this before, the iPad app can now be installed on Macs.

Wait, what happened to the Twitter app for Macs?

Many people, myself included, stuck to using the older Twitter for Mac app, as it still runs well, carries the old branding, and doesn't display ads. But those days appear to be officially over, as the Twitter app for Mac now appears gone for good.

As noted by one developer, Vedant, on X (ironically), the absence of the Twitter for Mac app from the Mac App Store suggests that X, formerly known as Twitter, has finally delisted the outdated software. Up until now, X has remained silent on the app being removed, so it's unclear if this is permanent or not. It is possible that the Mac app has been removed to be rebranded. But the more likely scenario is that it has simply been killed off.

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Last year, Elon Musk rebranded Twitter to X. While nobody actually uses the new name, it was rebranded across all platforms, except the Mac app. The official Mac app was abandoned, stuck with a lack of updates and rebranding since the rebranding of Twitter to X in 2023.

Many people, myself included, have stuck to using the older Mac app on the best Macs, as it still runs well, carries the old branding, and doesn't display ads. But those days appear to be officially over, as the Twitter app for Mac now appears gone for good.

As noted by one developer, Vedant, on X (ironically), the absence of the Twitter for Mac app from the Mac App Store suggests that X, formerly known as Twitter, has finally delisted the outdated software.

Despite its removal, users who had previously installed the app can still use it. At the moment, I can still run the app on my Mac Studio. But some are reporting that the app is now bricked when they try to use it. Either way, the future of its functionality remains uncertain, as X could permanently disable the app at any time.

How can Mac users access X now?

With the official Twitter for Mac app no longer available, X now prompts users to "upgrade" to the iPad version of X, which has recently been made compatible with Apple Silicon Macs.

This change is a mixed bag for users: for users with Apple Silicon Macs, the transition to the iPad version may offer a functional alternative. For users with older Macs, they will be left without an app option and will need to access X through a web browser.

It's worth noting that the iPad app for X offers an arguably worse experience. Newer branding aside, it shows ads throughout X, as you'll find on other platforms. While that is the norm for the social platform these days, it's a disappointment for anyone who enjoyed using the old Mac app. You can, of course, subscribe to X Premium to remove ads.

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NotchNook, an app that transforms a MacBook’s notch into a Dynamic Island, has been updated to display when volume and brightness settings have changed, along with a few new features.

Announcing the 1.2 update to one of the best Mac apps in their Discord server, the NotchNook team explained that any media playing on your Mac will now show up in Dynamic Island. This includes watching videos on YouTube, VLC Player, listening to music through SoundCloud, and even podcasts on Spotify. The media will display just like on an iPhone with a Dynamic Island, complete with cover art and a small wavy line to indicate it’s playing.

But that’s not all that 1.2 features. In previous versions, users had to manually arrange widgets to fit across the width of the Dynamic Island. This meant that if you wanted to add or remove any more, you had to do this manually. In 1.2, you can add as many widgets as you want, and the Dynamic Island will automatically adjust, allowing you to scroll across to Calendar, music controls, and more.

The highlight of NotchNook’s 1.2 update is how it replaces the brightness and volume displays. Previously, changing one of these in macOS resulted in a frosty square appearing, showing the levels of brightness and volume. However, these square windows would usually obstruct something, such as when you’re watching a video in Safari. This annoyance was similar to the volume toggle on the iPhone before it was moved closer to the volume buttons. Now, when you change the brightness or volume with NotchNook 1.2, the indicators are in the Dynamic Island, finally getting rid of a big annoyance of macOS that’s been present for years.

If you haven’t tried NotchNook yet, we strongly recommend it. The app is free to download for a three-day trial and can be bought as a $3 per month subscription or for a $25 lifetime fee.

The team behind NotchNook is just getting started - iMore’s take

NotchNook gives the best Macs a feature you didn’t expect would work so well. I’ve had the app installed since I first heard about it in early July, and it’s made tasks like controlling music and checking Calendar so straightforward, that I’m puzzled Apple hasn’t added something similar to macOS already.

To mark the 1.2 update this week, I reached out to the NotchNook team to see what else they were working on. It turns out that updates like moving the brightness and volume indicators to the Dynamic Island are just the beginning, according to Igor Marcossi, NotchNook’s main developer and designer. “NotchNook's main feature is still to come: Pipelines. The app will allow the creation of custom "drop actions" that will be able to run terminal commands behind the curtains, which will virtually allow any type of interaction with the files,” Marcossi reveals. “ You can drop files here to zip/unzip, drop files here to get a public link, and drop files here to resize them. Those are called Pipelines and users will be able to share their own Pipelines.”

Marcossi is very excited about Pipelines’s potential in NotchNook. “It's the biggest feature we have planned for NotchNook. We plan to release it in a few months!” Hopefully, we won’t have long to wait to see how Pipelines can manage our files. In the meantime, we recommend giving NotchNook a try, even if you have a Mac that doesn’t have a notch. Having a virtual Dynamic Island may surprise you with how useful it can be on macOS.

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Adobe is introducing a range of helpful AI updates to its Photoshop and Illustrator apps this week, focusing on boosting your productivity.

In a blog post, Adobe explains what’s new in Photoshop, its photo-editing app. A new ‘Selection Brush Tool’ lets users easily separate and adjust different layers in a project, enabling them to add new backgrounds with no rough overlaps between layers. Previously in beta, both Generate Image, an Adobe AI feature that can create images from a text prompt, and Adjustment Brush Tool are now available for all users. The new Brush Tool can change the color of certain objects in an image, such as hair, a vehicle, or a sign. Using AI, Photoshop will know which part of the image you’re trying to manipulate, ensuring that the new color won’t bleed out of the selected object.

In another blog post, Adobe lays out the latest updates currently rolling out to Illustrator, the company’s graphic and vector-editing app. Generative Shape Fill can fill in a vector shape with a variety of colors and patterns using an AI text prompt. Mockup, a new beta feature, transforms any rough drawing you make within the app into a 3D object that can be displayed on products like cereal boxes and more, helping to give users a better idea the mockup fits a certain brief. In addition, Text to Pattern has been improved to offer more refined colors and shapes generated from text prompts.

All of these features are now available for Adobe Creative Cloud users on Mac. If you don’t see them, open the ‘Creative Cloud’ app, then press ‘Check Updates’ to see if you’ve got the latest versions of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

Will Apple Intelligence offer similar features when it’s available?

With Adobe rolling out these AI features to its suite of apps, you might be wondering whether Apple will be offering something similar once Apple Intelligence, its own set of AI features, is made available to U.S. users later this year on the best iPhones, Macs, and iPads.

In short: not exactly. For example, Image Playground, shown above, is Apple’s take on generative AI, offering three styles: Animation, Illustration, or Sketch. After you type in a description within the app, Apple Intelligence will create an image that you can share in apps such as Messages, Mail, and more.

A similar feature to Adobe’s Adjustment Brush Tool is the Clean Up tool in Apple’s Photos app. Once available, you’ll be able to remove distracting objects in photos thanks to Apple Intelligence.

Both of these features from Apple will be helpful to those who may want to generate images or edit their own photos. However, if you’ve been using Photoshop and Illustrator for a while, Adobe’s new features are available right now and can even help you visualize how your projects might look on products such as drink cans and posters.

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The Dynamic Island has been one of many features I’ve enjoyed since upgrading to an iPhone 15 Pro Max last year. Replacing the notch that first appeared in the iPhone X in 2017, the animated pill lets me control my podcasts, notifies me when battery life is low, and much more. When I found out about an app that can add a Dynamic Island to my MacBook, I was trepidatious, but after a day, I was sold.

Called NotchNook, the app offers a two-day free trial, after which you’ll need to pay a $25 lifetime license or a $3 per month subscription fee. The app instantly surrounds your MacBook’s notch with a customizable menu. However, if you have a Mac that doesn’t feature a notch, such as an M3 iMac, the app will appear as a small menu where the Notch usually is. If you use Spotify or Apple Music, you can launch either app, and once you play a track, it will automatically show in the notch exactly as it does within an iPhone’s Dynamic Island. There’s also a fun ‘Mirror’ feature, which switches on your Mac’s FaceTime camera so you can give yourself a glow-up before you jump into a video call.

What I’m really impressed by from NotchNook, though, is the ‘Tray’ feature. Say you’ve got a few photos within a folder that you want to move to Safari, Apple’s web browser. You can drag these files to NotchNook to the ‘Tray’, and once you return to Safari, it’s a simple matter of dragging and dropping the files from the notch and onto a web page. It’s a fantastic way of using this Dynamic Island thanks to NotchNook, and makes me hope that Apple implements something similar for iPhones in the future.

Although I’ve only been using NotchNook for the past 24 hours, it’s already changed how I use my MacBook Pro.

There’s a Notch for that

Some of the iMore team have fallen out of favor with the Dynamic Island on the best iPhones. Yet, as mentioned above, I’ve been a constant fan of it since upgrading to an iPhone 15 Pro Max.

The last time I was so enamored with an app was Whisky, and before that, MacWhisper. NotchNook is already impressing me, but looking through its settings, there’s even more you can do — as well as hints of what’s coming in future updates.

When you go to the ‘Nook’ section, you’re given the option to enable other apps and resize them so you can fit others within the Dynamic Island. For example, when I hover the mouse over the notch, the Dynamic Island appears and will show today’s Calendar entries, a Now Playing widget, and the Mirror toggle. If I wish, I can also swap the Now Playing widget for a Shortcuts one instead. This means I can add a ChatGPT shortcut and enable OpenAI’s assistant within NotchNook instantly.

If you swipe to the end of these toggles, some widgets show as unavailable, such as Apple Notes, To-do’s, and a Quick App launcher, with a note saying that these will be enabled in the near future. I use Notes all the time, so the ability to launch it within the Notch anywhere on my MacBook is very enticing.

Finally, there’s a Live Activities option in NotchNook’s settings. This feature shows apps on the Dynamic Island that are running in the background, such as Music and UberEats. NotchNoo applies the same method to your Mac’s notch. Music playing will show here as you play a game or browse the web on your Mac, as well as upcoming events from the Calendar app. Again, it’s a very useful feature that makes use of my MacBook Pro’s static notch after owning the laptop for three years.

Got a Mac with a Notch? Buy this now

I could go on, but you likely know my feelings about NookNotch already. It is a fantastic app that, despite its small set of features, is already helping me manage files, play music, and check on Calendar entries. It’s so well designed that it seamlessly fits with macOS and my Mac’s notch without being out of place. I’ve already ensured that, whenever I need to restart my Mac, NookNotch will start up as soon as macOS allows it to.

I’m excited to see future updates to the app that it’s already alluded to, such as Notes and the Quick Apps launcher. For now, though, I’m more than happy to pay the $25 lifetime fee to transform my notch into something useful, and you should too.

The artificial intelligence battle has already begun on macOS, with a dedicated ChatGPT app now available on Apple silicon Macs. I’ve been using it since it was made available on June 25, and I’ve come away impressed. So much so that I’m already using it more than Google Search to query some things.

ChatGPT on Mac is free to download for anyone with an OpenAI account. The app uses the company’s latest AI model, called ChatGPT- 4o. OpenAI claims that this is twice as fast as the previous version, ChatGPT-4 Turbo. Although, if you’re a free user, you only get access to 4o for a limited time. Once this expires, the app reverts to the slower ChatGPT 3.5 model for several hours. If you’re a paid user, you can use 4o for however long you wish.

Once installed, you can ask ChatGPT anything you want, such as for help with developing an app, summarizing a report from a website, and much more  — but it goes deeper than that. You can now upload files and images with a query too. For example, asking “When was this store bulldozed?” in regards to a photo will prompt the AI to look for information about the building, and will come up with the answer for you if it can find a match. The app can now also constantly run in the background for immediate access. Pressing Option + Space anywhere on macOS will make a search bar appear, allowing you to ask ChatGPT anything you wish.

It’s these features from the app that made me download it immediately. As a result, I'm now avoiding Google, even for quick queries.". The entire category of AI has often been focused on how it could ‘replace’ certain jobs and creative endeavors in an instant, such as artistry and video game guides. However, I've actually found ChatGPT to be more useful as a potent alternative to Google, thanks to its impressive search capabilities. As mentioned before, it serves as a better alternative than searching for websites when I have a query. In addition, ChatGPT has already shown me how I can improve my protein intake after I’ve come back from a heavy workout at the Gym. I did this very thing earlier today through ChatGPT, and it led to a helpful suggestion: a chicken salad breakfast with added ingredients of salmon and nuts with a protein shake.

ChatGPT on Mac is also a great way to see how Apple Intelligence, the company’s take on AI, could work on my MacBook Pro. It is due to arrive in macOS Sequoia, as well as iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 for compatible devices, for U.S. users later this year, and features ChatGPT integration as standard.

A sneak peek before Apple Intelligence

Announced at WWDC 2024, Apple Intelligence has several AI models that will try to help the user with whatever they’re working on. For example, as you compose an email, you will be prompted to see if you want to have your writing sound more professional or more casual. Apple Intelligence will rewrite your email to cater to one of the choices you’ve selected.

Siri also gets a huge improvement thanks to Apple Intelligence. Apple’s assistant can now perform several app functions it previously couldn’t. For instance, asking Siri to list a bunch of files that a friend may have sent you over the past week is now possible.

A partnership between Apple and OpenAI elevates this experience. If Apple Intelligence thinks that ChatGPT will generate a better answer than Apple Intelligence, it will prompt the user to ask OpenAI’s assistant to look into the query.

The ChatGPT macOS app is also a great taster for Mac users before macOS Sequoia arrives with Apple Intelligence later this year. Especially as any user with an Apple silicon Mac can use ChatGPT right now. This is in stark contrast to Apple Intelligence being available to U.S. users only later this year.

In my short time with the Mac app, I’ve come away impressed so far. I’ll admit, I watched the WWDC 2024 keynote with horror as Apple gleefully showcased how Apple Intelligence could remove certain types of creativity while introducing huge amounts of laziness, especially in regards to the Writing Tools.

ChatGPT is indeed good enough to ignore Apple Intelligence altogether, as it should be seen as a tool, not a replacement for what you do on your PC or Mac every day. Technology should empower us, and that’s what AI can do in certain ways. It also helps that ChatGPT’s app on Mac is available now worldwide, instead of Apple Intelligence being available to U.S. users initially later this year. If you’re still not convinced, give the app a try, even for five minutes — you might get some inspiration into how AI can help you, rather than hinder you in the work and hobbies you do every day.

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For over a year, I've been incredibly frustrated with a lack of Slack notifications often berating the application to my colleagues as I missed important work information.

At first, I tried to find the solution, scratching my head and checking forum posts to see if anyone else had the same issue but despite changing all notification settings in the app nothing seemed to work. So I gave up, moved on with my life, and accepted I needed to have one eye on Slack at all times to ensure I didn't miss important work communications.

Fast forward a year and with the upcoming launch of macOS Sequoia making me want to give my M2 Mac Mini a spring clean, I decided enough was enough. I needed to get to the bottom of why Slack notifications never work on my Mac and unfortunately, the solution has been hiding in plain sight all this time.

I had accepted macOS notification suck

This morning while chatting with my colleagues I had an epiphany, not only do I miss Slack notifications but my Mac never notifies me at all. For over a year, I had presumed I was using my Mac with notifications either turned off or in Do Not Disturb, and as I like minimal distractions when working I was absolutely fine with that. It was only when I realized that I had never edited any settings that my brain started to piece two and two together to get to the bottom of my incompetence.

At iMore we review a lot of monitors, some of the best monitors for Mac to be exact, and when using multiple displays via a dock most require an application called DisplayLink. From a macOS perspective, DisplayLink is sharing your Mac display, in order to preserve your privacy, notifications are turned off by default. This ensures that if you use your Mac to screen share on a video call notifications won't pop up for all your colleagues to see. This also means, using DisplayLink 24/7 automatically prevents notifications from appearing on your Mac.

As soon as I realized, I went straight to Settings to change things up and get my Slack notifications back. Here's how:

1. Open Settings
2. Choose Notifications
3. Toggle on "Allow notifications when mirroring or sharing the display"

As soon as I enabled this setting notifications started popping up left, right, and center — I was no longer living an unintentionally distraction-free computer experience. For many who use DisplayLink to enable multiple display support through a dock, this could be a revelation or I may just be absolutely scatterbrained and everyone knows this setting needs to be enabled. 

Either way, I now have Slack notifications again but considering how annoying the constant pop-ups are I might end up turning them off, again unless I put the effort in to streamline my work notification workflow — considering this has taken me a year to work out due to pure laziness and acceptance, I doubt I'll be bothered.

Microsoft's latest AI tool is called Recall, a Windows 11 feature that acts like your own personal AI assistant: It logs everything you do, every app you use, every meeting you attend, and every website you visit, all neatly accessible through a quick "Recall" action. And it's met quite the divide online. Excited or worried about Recall? We already know what to expect from the feature thanks to this third-party Mac app.

Rewind is dubbed "the search engine for your life." Fancy title, right? Using the muscle of Apple silicon, Rewind claims to compress and store mountains of audio and video recordings, making them searchable. Essentially, it's the lovechild of your diary and an audio-visual scrapbook, all kept securely on your Mac. No cloud prying eyes here.

What does Rewind do?

At its core, Rewind builds upon Scribe, a meeting-recording bot with a user base of 30,000. It's not just a handy app; it’s a surveillance system for your memories, cataloging every word and visual you encounter. Thanks to Apple’s hardware magic, Rewind can shrink 10.5GB of raw data to a svelte 2.8MB, meaning even the tiniest MacBook hard drive can hoard years of your digital life.

The selling point? Local storage. All your recordings stay on your Mac, safe from the clutches of cloud vulnerabilities. Using macOS’s APIs and Optical Character Recognition, Rewind indexes every word on your screen, paired with automated speech recognition to catch all your spoken words. This turns your daily digital chaos into a searchable archive.

It works very similarly to Window's Rewind. Microsoft's new feature is the reincarnation of Windows 10’s defunct Timeline, now supercharged with AI. Like Rewind, Recall logs every interaction on your Windows 11 device. Teams meetings, Excel spreadsheets, web browsing history – it’s all there, neatly packaged and accessible with a simple Recall action. And we know that it's going to work well since Rewind has been available on Macs for over two years.

As Apple’s WWDC 2024 looms, we’re expecting Apple's AI response. Rumors hint at new AI features in Notes and Safari, but what if they took a page out of Microsoft’s book? An Apple version of Recall could seamlessly meld with macOS, offering a privacy-focused, locally stored solution to complement Apple’s ecosystem. I'd love to see it built-in (as long as it's opt-in and can be switched off), rather than having to rely on a third-party app.

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With Apple expected to reveal a slate of generative AI tools and features across its platforms at WWDC 2024, we've already heard that much of the heavy lifting on iOS 18 could be done by OpenAI's ChatGPT LLM.

At the company's showcase event earlier this month, OpenAI revealed a native Mac app is coming, but at the time of writing, you'll need to wait for an invite to check it out - and be on a "Plus" or "Team" plan.

Thankfully, there is a way to check it out earlier if you haven't got the invite, although you will still need one of the specific account types (free users will have to sit this one out for a bit).

It's worth noting that this loophole could be closed by OpenAI at any point, but it could also be a chance to go hands-on with the kind of AI that could be powering your iPhone in the next few months. You'll also need a Mac with Apple Silicon, as per OpenAI's system requirements.

How to use the ChatGPT app for Mac early

To install the app, you'll need to log into the web version of ChatGPT here, then click your profile and "Download the App". You can also download the .dmg file for your Mac here.

As spotted by Diego Jimenez of Instagram and shared via X (formerly Twitter), once you install the app, you'll need to enter your login credentials but be ready to close the app.

Before the login error appears, but after the window size shifts, close out of the app (CMD+Q will work nicely), and then relaunch.

Doing so should have you logged in and able to use the Mac version of ChatGPT without waiting for an invite.

The Mac version of ChatGPT offers handy features like the option to run images and screenshots through it straight from your device, a voice-based chatbot mode, and customization.

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VMware Fusion Pro 13 is now free for all users, allowing you to run Windows 11 on an Intel or Apple silicon Mac without requiring a paid license.

A blog post by Michael Roy, Product Line Manager at VMware, announced that the company’s virtualization products, Fusion Pro 13 for Mac and WorkStation Pro for Windows and Linux, are now free to download. Users can access these apps by signing up to a new account on its support site. This decision follows the company’s acquisition by Broadcom in May 2022 for $69 billion. Broadcom reportedly wants to focus on making its virtualization products accessible to more users now that the deal has closed.

VMware Fusion Pro 13 allows anyone with an Intel or Apple silicon Mac to run Windows 11 virtually in a window, just like Parallels Desktop. These apps can be very useful if you need to use software that’s only available on Windows, such as specific Office tools or a game. We should stress that Fusion Pro’s graphic capabilities lag behind Parallels’ efforts, so don’t expect to run intensive games like Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain at full speed.

If you’re already a paid user of VMware’s products, another blog post explains your options going forward.

How to download VMware Fusion Pro

It’s not as simple as going to VMware’s site to download Fusion Pro for your Mac. Instead, you need to follow these steps to get the free version of the app.

• Go to VMware’s support site
• Tap Register in the top right corner
• Once you’ve registered and signed in, tap on ‘Download Fusion Pro 13’
• You’ll be brought to another page where you can tap on ‘VMware Fusion Pro 13 for personal use’

To use Windows on your Apple silicon Mac, you’ll need to go to Microsoft’s Windows Insider page in order to download the ARM version of Windows 11. Simply load up Fusion Pro, look for the Windows 11 image file, and follow the installation steps.

More from iMore

• Running Windows 11 on a Mac just got even better with Parallels Desktop 19
• How to install Windows 11 on a Mac
• How to play Diablo 4 on a Mac

The launch of Humane's hotly anticipated Ai Pin came, and went pretty quickly thanks to a slew of bad reviews. But there's a new app in town that hopes to do what Humane couldn't.

Limitless is an AI-powered app for the best Macs that wants to be your personal assistant. It listens in on your meetings makes notes, summarizes things, and lets you ask it questions about your previous meetings at any point. Everything gets securely saved to the cloud-based app, so you can look back at any time.

If you give Limitless access to your emails and your calendar, it gets even smarter. When asking about your previous meetings, you'll be able to give it more context. For example, you could ask, "What did me and Lisa talk about in our meeting two weeks ago?" and it would feed back notes from the recorded transcription.

There's a free plan for the app, but that limits you to 10 AI interactions per month. If you want more, you'll need to spring for the $20/month subscription. But Limitless says this app is just the beginning of its plans.

Just the beginning

In the near future, Limitless wants to sync up with all your notes apps. The founder believes that it doesn't matter where your notes or tasks are stored – you should be able to access them in one place. Limitless would combine everything into one, and let you ask the AI assistant to summarise your notes. At this point, it begins to become like a second brain.

But where Limitless really hopes to stand-out is with its wearable pendant device. This will work alongside the app to record your meetings. But soon, it wants to listen to everything. Yep, all your conversations. Why? To act like the most personal of personal assistants, and let you ask about anything in your recent past. But that might be a little way off yet.

This comes before Apple is set to announce new AI features at WWDC 2024. iOS 18 is already said to contain major AI upgrades that work entirely on the device. And we'd expect to see something similar in macOS. Whether or not it'll be along the same lines as what Limitless is trying to do remains to be seen. 

More from iMore

• Apple knows it needs more help with AI — and its hiring spree proves it
• ChatGPT comes to iPhone with Perplexity
• Apple drops major Siri AI upgrade hint ahead of WWDC 2024

Ask most people what they think of macOS’s Stage Manager feature and they’ll probably tell you it’s a case of sadly unfulfilled potential. The desktop-management tool lets you group apps and windows together in a sidebar on your Mac desktop. Click one group and it swaps in for whatever windows you had open before, with the idea that it lets you organise your windows by task and bring a bit of order to the usual desktop chaos.

That’s the idea anyway, but Stage Manager has always felt a little half-baked. Got more than a handful of app groups open? One of them will simply disappear from the sidebar until you make room for it. Moving windows between Stage Manager groups is difficult and unintuitive. And there’s no sign of things improving.

In other words, Stage Manager is crying out for help. Intriguingly, an app called Stage View might be just what Stage Manager needs. It offers little window previews when you hover over a Stage Manager group, similar to what you get in Windows when you mouse over an app in the taskbar. But is it any good? Let’s find out.

Stage View: Price and availability

Stage View charges a $29.99/£24.75 one-off fee for lifetime access or $14.99/£12.40 for a one-year subscription. You can buy it from the developer’s website at noteifyapp.com/stage-view.

Stage View: What I love

Stage View’s previews are particularly handy if you have a Stage Manager group packed with apps and windows, as Apple’s small previews make it tricky to see what each group contains. With Stage View, you move your mouse pointer over the group and up pop little boxes for each window. At a glance, you know exactly what’s in each group.

Better yet, you can click a window in the preview pane and its group will be opened with your chosen window in focus, even if it was originally in the background. Stage View also lets you close or maximize windows right from the preview pane using the familiar traffic light buttons (although the minimize button didn’t work at all in my testing). These features can save you clicks that add up over time.

There are also a few helpful customization options. You can change the window preview size and appearance, adjust the interval between hovering over a group and its preview appearing, configure the app so that previews only show when you hold the Command key, and more. I found that using one of the latter two options was a good way to avoid cluttering my desktop with previews when I accidentally moused over a sidebar group.

Stage View: What I don’t love

Unfortunately, Stage View has its glitches. You need to ensure Stage Manager is enabled in macOS’s settings before you open Stage View, otherwise the app gets stuck and won’t load. Sometimes, you get a gray box with a loading icon that sits on top of all other windows and can’t be closed, requiring you to close Stage View entirely.

The previews can also break. They’re meant to show a flat, front-on view of each window, but often one or more previews will show an angled window of the type you see in the vanilla Stage Manager sidebar. Clicking the window in question, switching to a different group, then previewing the broken group again seems to (temporarily) fix the issue.

Elsewhere, there are a few features I’d love to see in Stage View. Right now, you can’t drag windows from a preview into other Stage Manager groups. I’m not sure how feasible implementing that is, but it would be great if it could be done.

Stage View also only shows up to three window previews per group, even if you have more apps and windows active. Like Stage Manager, this can mean you end up “losing” windows that are hidden from view.

Its price also means it’s not an instant buy considering its problems. I do appreciate the lifetime purchase option, though.

Ultimately, Stage View hasn’t quite restored my faith in Stage Manager. It does a decent job of enhancing it in one specific way, and it’s better than just going it alone with Stage Manager. But it has a few glitches that need to be fixed and a couple of features I’d love to see realized. If it can do that, I’d be able to recommend it more fully.

Stage View: Competition

I’m not aware of other apps that work exactly like Stage View, but some others have degrees of similarity. BetterTouchTool is a superb all-round utility for macOS gestures, mouse button tweaks and more, and it has some Stage Manager features. It costs $10 (about £8) for a two-year license. Another option is window-management app Rectangle, which is more limited than BetterTouchTool but also works with Stage Manager. It’ll set you back $9.99 (about £8).

Stage View: Should you buy it?

You should buy this if…

• You want to see previews of your Stage Manager groups’ contents
• You’re keen to give Stage Manager another chance
• You’d like to close or maximize windows from the Stage Manager sidebar

You shouldn’t buy this if…

• You get easily peeved by app glitches
• You’ve already long since given up on Stage Manager
• You want a more wide-ranging Stage Manager enhancement app

Stage View: Verdict

Stage view is a handy utility that attempts to fix up Stage Manager’s sidebar. It works well enough, but needs a little more love to make it a must-have app.

CleanMyMac X, the popular Mac management and clean-up app from MacPaw, has become the target for scammers who want to use it to try and steal users' personal information including passwords. The fake apps are being distributed online and via stolen YouTube accounts, according to the company.

The warning comes via Moonlock, the cybersecurity division of developer MacPaw, which notes that it spotted an app claiming to be CleanMyMac but was clearly " a malicious impersonation." Upon investigation it was found that there were multiple different versions of the fake CleanMyMac app in circulation, using different malware payloads including Atomic Stealer, PSW Stealer, and AdLoad Adware. Moonlock warns that these malware-filled versions of the fake CleanMyMac app could potentially "steal users' passwords and personal data and display unwanted ads on their Macs."

Moonlock set about working out where the fake versions of MacPaw's apps were being distributed, discovering that there were macpaw[.]us, cleanmymac[.]pro, mac-clean[.]org webpages offering them for download. The pages looked similar to the MacPaw website, including the use of its logos, although there were some differences. However, whether those differences would be enough for most people to notice something was awry is another matter entirely.

Check that download

MacPaw and Moonlock detailed the investigation in a blog post, noting that the fake websites were not the only distribution channel being used to peddle the counterfeit apps. It seems stolen YouTube channels were also employed.

"Phishing URLs are not enough to spread malware, so the attackers also use different channels to promote their software. For example, YouTube channels," Moonlock explains. "When we searched for 'cleanmymac x free download full version' on YouTube, we uncovered dozens of videos from a hijacked YouTube channel called COVISAR TV."

That channel mainly consisted of music videos from Portuguese bands, but the most recent videos were instead about CleanMyMac and how to mine bitcoins. Those videos then had links to the fake CleanMyMac downloads in their descriptions with MacPaw's security team confirming that there was no legitimate promotion in place that could explain the links away.

As for how users can make sure that they don't fall foul of these kinds of scams, Moonlock says that users should always download software from a developer's official website or the App Store rather than trust links from unknown third parties. They should also check the URLs that they are clicking for misspellings that could give the game away.

The post also suggests that people should "use a reliable antivirus or Mac cleaner software, such as CleanMyMac X with the Moonlock Engine, to scan your Mac regularly and remove any threats." It's also important to make sure that you keep your software updated, including installing the latest macOS updates, to ensure you have access to the latest protections, too.

As much as the App Store has its problems across both the Mac and iPhone/iPad, there is no denying that this is the kind of thing that it would normally be able to prevent. It isn't perfect — fake apps have been known to sneak into the App Store on occasion — but the App Store is undoubtedly safer than downloading apps from websites on the internet.

More from iMore

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• CleanMyMac X adds 'Space Lens' to help you see and clear out unwanted files
• Popular Mac app CleanMyMac X picks up a Red Dot Award

The savviest online shoppers know that it's not just about finding the right product these days — you also need to hunt down the best possible deal. If that sounds exhausting to you, you're not alone. 

This is why many people swear by the PayPal Honey for Safari app (sometimes known simply as Honey), a powerful browser extension owned by PayPal that acts like your personal smart shopping assistant. 

Honey can automate the search and application of all sorts of digital coupons and promo codes at checkout, making sure you always get the lowest price possible on whatever you're buying.

How does PayPal Honey for Safari work? 

Once you've downloaded the PayPal Honey for Safari app for your Mac, it will scan thousands of online retailers to find and apply the best eligible coupons automatically. So not only is Honey great for saving you money, just think of all the time and effort you'll also be saving by not having to search endlessly for discounts and codes manually. 

There are a bunch of other features available for online shoppers, too, like Honey's Droplist, which tracks the prices of specific items and alerts you when it's the best time to buy them. Honey also offers a unique Amazon tool that compares prices across Amazon-sold items, third-party sellers, and other online retailers, ensuring you always get the best deal. 

Beyond savings, Honey also offers the opportunity to earn PayPal Rewards in certain regions, which you can then redeem for cash, gift cards, or shopping credits. 

If you're really into online shopping, like to know you're getting the best deals or need to stick to a tight budget, Honey is a great option. We think it works well on Safari, but you can also add it to other browsers and use the Honey for iOS app on your iPhone, too.

If you’ve missed the skeuomorphic design that went away in 2013 with macOS Yosemite, this app brings some of that back to the Menu Bar, and more.

Called Lickable Menu Bar, you can download the app for free from the Mac App Store, which gives you the option to transform the Menu Bar into how it looked in three previous macOS versions. Furthermore, you can have the app launch once you log in, so the look of the MenuBar will stay that way without having to prompt it.

Mavericks gives it a shadow, Catalina enables a flat style, and Glossy transforms the Menu Bar into a skeuomorphic look from 2004, much like Mac OS X Tiger. For those unfamiliar with Skeuomorphic, this design mimics real-world objects with depth and colors in a digital interface and was used heavily by Apple before 2013.

Lickable performs a simple task, but it does it well — however, it does make us wonder if the design tropes from macOS Tiger, such as skeuomorphism, should come back in some way.

Something old, something new — iMore’s Take

Trying out Lickable on my MacBook Pro, it took 30 seconds to change the look of my MenuBar to one that looks like 10.4 Tiger from 2004. Incidentally, that was the first version of Mac OS X that I ever used with my Intel Core Duo iMac, back in 2006 — so I was hit with a wave of nostalgia once Lickable did its thing.

I’ve always had a soft spot for skeuomorphism — mainly due to how good the design looked on my iPhone 4 in 2010. Granted, the flat design that came in iOS 7 and macOS Yosemite was needed, but it felt like some of the charm went away. That real-world look, especially when it came to the Calendar and Notes apps, really popped out on a Retina display — more so when the Retina MacBook Pro arrived in 2012, and all those textures looked crystal-clear on its 16-inch display.

Yet having an app like Lickable can help to bring some of that back to my Mac, as Apple is likely never bring that iconic look back. It does what it says on the tin — so if you’re curious to bring some shade to the MenuBar, try it out and see what you think.

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Just a few days after the Epic Games Store sale brought us some Epic titles for macOS, you can now scoop even more cheap games in the Steam Winter sale. 

Running from December 21 to Jan 4th, 10 am PT, there are a ton of great games that macOS users can buy and enjoy in this year's sale. With the advent of Apple silicon, the M3 chip, and devices like Apple's best MacBook, the M3 Max MacBook Pro, gaming on a Mac has never been more fun or more viable. Some people say there aren't good games to play on Mac, but this sale proves otherwise. 

If you head to either the Steam app on your Mac or Steam's online store, you can head to the categories banner and filter by macOS. Steam is promoting the sale so it will show a vast array of discounted titles to begin with. Here are some of my favorites.

macOS games you should buy in the Steam Winter Sale 

• Baldur's Gate III - GOTY BG3 is just 10% off but if you've been waiting for a discount, now's the time to grab it
• Lies of P - Another recent 2023 title with rave reviews and a 20% discount, now just $47.99
• Dave the Diver - this iconic RPG is just $15.99, now 20% off
• Total War: Warhammer III - the third installment from the acclaimed strategy series needs beefier hardware, but is half price, now just $29.99
• Stardew Valley - if you don't have Apple Arcade, this is a steal at just $10
• Sid Meier's Civilization VI Anthology - this anthology is normally $209, but is now just $25
• Disco Elysium - PC Gamer's number one PC game is 75% off right now, just $9.99. 

The Steam Winter Sale is honestly pretty overwhelming, but that means there's a game and a bargain for everyone. So whether you've got an M1 MacBook Air or an all-powerful Mac Studio, take a look and treat yourself. 

I’ve played every Total War game since time immemorial, almost. I’m too young to have played the really old games like the original Shogun, but Rome: Total War was the first video game I ever bought, my favorite game of all time to this day, and the reason I think about the Roman Empire on a (more than) daily basis. 

With that in mind, you can imagine how excited I was to get my hands on the latest game in the Total War saga, Pharaoh, and play it on a Mac as part of my job. Creative Assembly’s games have suffered in the doldrums every other Mac game has, but now thanks to the good people of Feral Interactive, the latest in the series has a fully-fledged macOS version that’s been optimized for Apple silicon. The triple-A title launched in October, and Pharaoh currently costs $60 on Steam or the Feral Store. But is your hard-earned cash worth it? Can you actually play this game on a Mac and enjoy it?

To find out, we’ve put Pharaoh through its paces to see how well it works. Bear in mind that we’ve used a pretty decent setup, Apple’s 16-inch M2 Pro MacBook Pro with 16GB of Unified Memory. We’re also running macOS Sonoma and its exciting new Game Mode, which prioritizes access to the CPU and GPU for gaming. 

Installation and setup

You can get Total War: PHARAOH directly from Feral, but we’ve chosen Steam as our vehicle of choice. If you’re a PC gamer or already own a library, chances are you’ll want to do this too. Installing is as simple as buying the game and clicking install. Requirements state you need 50GB, but the actual download is 40.21 GB. 

The initial settings window presents you with some options, notably resolution, a key setting that can make (or break) your frame rate. Out of the box, the resolution is set to 1920 x 1200, which Feral tells us is the optimal setting for an M2 Pro machine. With that, you can expect more than 60FPS on Ultra across the board, which held true in our tests.

But with my fancy $2,500 Mac in hand, I hoped Apple would be able to deliver more. Wanting to push the high-end MacBook to its limits, I kicked off at the max setting (3456 x 2234) and cracked on, with macOS Sonoma’s Game Mode immediately kicking into life, confirmed by a notification popup. 

Total War games are known for their epic intro videos, and PHARAOH is no different. A couple of clicks later I was loading into the campaign, choosing Ramesses for my first outing to keep things simple. 

Built-in benchmarks & graphics settings 

Pharaoh comes with a very handy built-in benchmarking tool, which can display scenarios set in Total War’s three main gameplay modes, the campaign map, battles, and sieges. This is a very handy way to quickly gauge the performance you can expect. 

I started my tests running on battery power alone, not plugged in. This shouldn’t necessarily cause issues, as Apple claims its M2 Pro and Max MBP “maintain performance whether users are plugged in or on battery.” From our experience here, that claim doesn’t hold up. Note that this isn't how Feral recommends playing the game, stating that optimal performance comes when plugged in at the wall.  It was a shame to see then that Apple's claims about maintaining performance don't actually hold up at all — we’ve reached out to Apple for comment on this, but have yet to hear back, and will be testing the battery-only performance of titles in any future benchmarking we conduct against this claim. Plugged in, the M2 Pro yielded much better results.  

Running the same battle benchmark (from which all the upcoming results are taken), both the Ultra and High graphics settings yielded 25-26 FPS. Likewise, when we clicked the “recommended” button in the graphics settings, it sat around 25 FPS and still struggled during unit clashes. It was on the medium settings at 3456 x 2234, that we got our first breakthrough. 50 FPS! Medium retains quite a lot of the fidelity of the units on the battlefield, but the terrain itself didn’t look at all appealing. However, it was the first progress we’d made. The benchmark did fall to 40 FPS in close-up shots of units, but that’s still a lot better than without power. Feral confirmed to us that Apple’s native resolution is simply not the “optimal” solution for getting good performance out of the game and that a lower resolution is the way to go. So I moved on down through the list of resolutions.

At 2560 x 1700, Ultra settings delivered a respectable average of around 40 FPS, although it did dip below 30 FPS during intense fighting. However, the fidelity of the terrain and the units was so much better than the lower graphics settings, that it seems dropping the resolution is the best way to eke out performance without compromising the visual experience. High settings got us up to around 50 FPS, and medium delivered buttery smooth frames of around 80 or even 90FPS, never dropping below 75. Any lower and you can definitely hit the 120Hz limit of the ProMotion display, but a strategy game doesn’t really need to be played at this high a framerate level to be enjoyable. 

For me, the sweet spot was around the 45-50 FPS mark at the 2560 x 1700 resolution setting on high, which I think is actually better than Feral's recommended 1920 x 1200.

Overall, Pharaoh Total War runs very well on the M2 Pro, but I was really surprised by how much Apple’s MacBook Pro struggled when it wasn’t connected to power.

Before testing plugged in, I’d set graphics to recommended and ran benchmarks at the aforementioned native resolution. The campaign benchmark held fast at a steady 26 FPS. It was quite smooth because there aren’t really any dynamic elements on the maps. Battles were a different story, and the framerate fluctuated pretty wildly from around 25-26 to as low as 19 FPS, averaging 24 over the course of two minutes. Collisions between units noticeably impacted performance. A siege, which combines unit movements and fights with a highly-detailed city rendering (including some nice hippos) saw similar performance to the battle sequence, with the frame rate picking up to 25-26 when we left the inner reaches of the city. Even beyond the walls, however, unit clashes notably impacted performance. Overall it averaged 23.9 FPS. 

I was hoping for a decent boost by switching to “low” graphics settings, but while the textures of the battle map and units were noticeably worse, the framerate barely changed at all. The battle sequence opened at 26-27 FPS. The main difference is that unit collisions didn’t cause a drop in frames, averaging 26.9 the whole way through. Inexplicably, the medium graphics setting yielded identical results, and it wasn’t until I switched to high that I noticed a slight drop in frames, dipping to 20 on some occasions and averaging 24.

Ultra was the only graphics setting to have a noticeable impact on the frame rate, which saw the battle sequence drop to around 20 FPS, falling to as low as 16 during intense battle scenes. 

Graphics settings having yielded so similar results, I assumed that resolution would be a surefire way to eke out some performance. In one sense I was right — down at 1920 x 1200 battle gameplay is solid, but again it never rises above 26 FPS, at either Low or Ultra. 

I then decided that V-Sync was the issue, but it wasn’t. Bizarrely, in all my testing, not a single setting I changed got the game over the 26 FPS mark while running on battery power.

When your MacBook isn’t plugged in, Pharaoh on macOS is drastically limited to never more than 28 or 29 FPS, and there isn’t a single graphics setting that will change this, so you might as well run it in Ultra. The game is playable, but it’s not necessarily enjoyable. If you want the graphics performance to respond to settings tweaks and a frame rate higher than 30FPS, you need to plug it in. 

Key settings 

I wanted to see if there were any individual settings that impacted graphics performance, so went back up to the full-bore 3456 x 2234 Ultra setting. Yet nothing I tweaked by itself changed the performance, even Total War’s old faithful, unit size. The only setting that will get you meaningful results by itself is resolution. 

Total War games have always been notoriously hard on processors and GPUs, but as I’ve said this game was definitely playable on our setup. We're yet to test Pharaoh on any of Apple's older and less powerful Apple silicon chips, but Feral says Apple's base-model M1 chip is good for more than 45 FPS at 1080p and medium settings, and even manages 30 FPS on Apple's fanless M1 MacBook models with VSync enabled. We’ll be expanding our testing to these older models shortly, so check back soon for our findings.

Verdict

Total War: Pharaoh runs on the MacBook Pro with M2 Pro pretty well, but has raised some big questions about Apple's claims of battery-powered Apple silicon performance we're keen to investigate further. If you’re on the go, you can expect no more than 26 FPS on average, and your battery isn’t going to last very long, either. As our testing reflects, Feral's recommendation that you play plugged in is a much better bet, although, of course, this won't impact desktop users.

Plugged in, there’s no performance impact on the High or Ultra settings at full resolution, but below that things start to improve. PC gamers might expect to find a recommendation for 1440p here, but because of the resolution of the MacBook Pro’s display, 2560 x 1700 is the nearest to QHD that doesn’t look wonky and out of proportion. I’d definitely recommend sacrificing a bit of resolution over the graphics fidelity settings. If you do, you should have a gaming experience that’s not only playable but enjoyable.

As mentioned, we were much more surprised by Apple’s claims about performance on battery power not holding up, but Feral has confirmed this is what they would expect to see. For overall performance, they reiterated that resolution is the key to a good experience.

They say the best-looking experience is found at 1920 x 1200, which nets more than 60 FPS on Ultra and 73 FPS on high. I was skeptical about a resolution that low, but honestly the game's visual fidelity is really tied up in the texture quality, and something like the campaign map still looks tremendous. 

Overall, I had tremendous fun testing the game, and Apple's wonky claims about battery performance aside, Feral has done a great job of squeezing the juice out of Apple silicon. So don't let old Mac gaming cliches stop you from buying and enjoying this title. 

Pixelmator Pro is already one of the best Mac image editing apps, but it's now so much more than that. The latest update, Pixelmator Pro 3.4, takes things to a whole new level.

Editing PDF files is something that a ton of people do on their Macs daily and now Pixelmator Pro offers more advanced editing options than ever before. No longer will you have to import an entire PDF just to edit a single page, for example. And editing multi-layer PDFs is now a thing, too.

The new version of Pixelmator Pro is of course a free update for existing users — and it's one well worth downloading. 

New layers to PDF editing

Pixelmator announced the new update via a blog post, noting that users can look forward to a revamped PDF engine that changes the way people will work with those files.

At the top of the list of changes is the ability to import a single page within a multi-page PDF, making it easier to edit specific portions without all the cruft that isn't needed. A new import dialog also includes additional options. "You can also set the page resolution, and adjust its width and height to the size you need," the blog post notes. And there's more, too.

"Thanks to the major PDF engine redesign, Pixelmator Pro now lets you import PDF files with layers," the Pixelmator team explains. "This means that if a PDF you’re opening includes images or shapes, you can now import these elements as separate layers and edit them individually. Or, if you prefer editing PDFs as flat images, you can import them with all layers merged."

The new update also includes support for vector PDFs created by Safari, Keynote, Pages, and other Apple apps. The result is the ability to import entire web pages from Safari, safe in the knowledge that the vector-based PDF will preserve all of the formatting you see online.

Finally, Pixelmator Pro 3.4 now supports additional shortcuts that make it " easy to convert multiple Pixelmator Pro documents, Adobe Photoshop files, and other files to PDF."

All of this is available right now and existing Pixelmator Pro owners who have automatic updates enabled might already have it. And for everyone else, the Mac App Store download is currently on sale for 30% off, too.

Microsoft has announced that it will be ending support for the app on August 31, 2024.

For those unaware, the app debuted on the Mac in 2016, and allows developers to create apps for both Mac and Windows. The latest update, 17.6, brought full support for Apple silicon Macs, but it looks like this will now be the last major update.

In a blog post, the company recommends using a virtual machine to use Windows within macOS once support ends. Using apps like Parallels Desktop and VMWare will be able to let you do this.

It’s a sudden move by Microsoft, especially as Visual Studio was recently updated, and developers on forums are already expressing their shock and frustration with this decision. But it could be part of a bigger plan by Microsoft which is yet to be confirmed. It’s been bringing out new services in the cloud recently, such as Windows 365. So it’s made some wonder if developing Windows apps in the cloud could be in Visual Studio’s future on a Mac, as well as Windows.

Laying the groundwork for developing apps in the cloud? - iMore’s Take

Windows 365 could be a hint towards the future of Visual Studio on the Mac. It’s an interesting product from the company, as you can use a web browser to sign in and use your apps and files just like you would with a local PC.

While it’s currently available for business customers, it could easily be made available to regular users, or perhaps as a big tentpole feature for its next rumored update, Windows 12.

The same could apply to Microsoft’s other apps that have yet to be made available in the cloud. Microsoft 365 has long supported accessing Office apps like Word and Excel from a browser. Using Visual Studio from Safari would only be a natural progression.

Apple announced something slightly similar back in 2020 called Xcode Cloud. It lets developers use parts of Apple’s coding platform in the cloud and allows others to share the progress of an app with others. But Windows 365 goes further, using other services in the cloud, something that Apple should perhaps look into for macOS in the coming years.

Granted, it’s a shame for some that Visual Studio on a Mac will be no more in 2024. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see a cloud-based version of Visual Studio be made available for Mac again, possibly alongside visionOS and Apple’s other platforms by the time 2025 arrives.

Meta has released a big update to WhatsApp on the Mac, which features a fresh look and allows you to make an audio or video call with a big group of family and friends.

As the company describes in a blog post, you can also join a group call after it’s begun, have a video call of up to eight people, or 32 on an audio call, alongside being able to keep track of messages while WhatsApp is closed.

A beta version has been available to use for the past few months with these features. But this official update, rolling out to everyone who has a previous version installed, feels snappier. There was also a long-standing bug where the app would slow down after a period of time. In our short time with it, this bug looks to have been fixed.

It’s another effort by Meta to bring one of its messaging apps to Mac with better features to line it up with WhatsApp on iOS. It might even tempt you to use this instead of Apple’s FaceTime calling app. But the question now is whether we’re about to see the same effort for Meta’s newest app — Threads.

Let’s see Threads come to the Mac - iMore’s Take

You can already download Facebook Messenger on macOS, which has a similar layout to the new update that WhatsApp brings. And while these apps are going to be useful for many who work on a Mac, me included, I’d love to see this same effort apply to a macOS version for Threads.

For those unaware, this is Meta’s alternative to X, formerly known as Twitter. After countless blunders by owner Elon Musk, Threads was released in July, and I’ve been enjoying my time there so far. You can post and follow whoever you want through Android, iOS, and the web, you just need an Instagram account to use it.

But many were used to having Twitter’s Mac app before it was abandoned earlier this year. To see the same effort from WhatsApp’s new update, apply to a Threads app on the Mac, would be great too.

Instead of using another tab for Threads in Safari, as I currently do, I could post and scroll within an app, while being able to receive notifications for any mentions, follows, or reposts.

With Threads bringing out new features every fortnight so far, it may only be a matter of time before we see this. But for the time being, I’m happy to use WhatsApp on my Mac without reaching for my iPhone as I’m checking emails and looking through our forums.

Playing PC games on a Mac just got a whole lot easier for people who didn't want to follow the somewhat cumbersome route of installing Apple's Game Porting Toolkit.

The Apple toolkit is designed to give developers a way to run their Windows games on a Mac via emulation in an attempt to see how well they might perform before putting the work into creating a proper Mac port. It's was big part of Apple's macOS 14 Sonoma showcase at WWDC 2023. But installation isn't straightforward. That's now changed thanks to an installer released on GitHub.

What's more, that installer now also makes it easier for gamers to take the Game Porting Toolkit for a spin themselves with the people behind it making a special ready-to-install version available.

Game on

The new installer is available for download for free and is meant to highlight the InstallAware Multi Platform automation system. The project's description notes that "this public repository showcases using the brand-new InstallAware Multi Platform to completely automate the installation of Apple's new Game Porting Toolkit, making the process as simple as point-and-click - even for non-developers!"

It goes further, too. Gamers who aren't developers can "download a ready-to-run app built from this sample [that's been] notarized by Apple." That download is available for free.

The GitHub project notes that the app will work on Intel and Apple silicon Macs and doesn't require an Apple developer account, nor will the Game Porting Toolkit be needed. Those who are developers can have the installer perform extra steps to use Apple's latest technology.

This of course isn't what the Game Porting Toolkit was designed for but it's increasingly becoming what people are actually using it for. We've already seen it used to make Diablo 4 run on a Mac, for example. The much-maligned Cyberpunk 2077 has also had the same treatment as well.

The latest version of Safari Technology Preview is now available, so you can try out features still in testing on your Mac right now.

For those unaware, this allows you to download the upcoming version of Safari before it launches with macOS Sonoma later this year.

Alongside bug fixes, Update 177 brings new features announced at WWDC 2023 to Safari 17 in macOS Ventura, such as better Live Text support, and Profiles. This allows you to switch between personal and work views for example, so some bookmarks will only show on one profile.

If you’d like to try out the preview, you can download it from Apple’s Developer site. If you already have Safari Preview installed and it hasn’t been updated on your Mac, go to System Settings > Software Update, and it should appear, ready to be downloaded and installed.

What’s new in Safari Technology Preview 177?

Safari runs on an engine called WebKit that renders every web page you browse while making sure your privacy during browsing is always protected.

For this update, there are a lot of bug fixes for the engine, from the way you view videos to the look and feel of the way websites are rendered.

You can run this preview side by side with the official release of Safari on your Mac, much like how Google has a bunch of versions available for its Chrome browser. This way, you don’t have to worry about any potential issues as you browse and use your bookmarks.

Safari 17 is another big update that looks to be very useful for a lot of workflows, especially with its Profiles feature. Previewing new software like Safari is a great way to get a first look at upcoming updates, but I wish Apple would release similar previews to its other apps, such as Mail. It could give users and developers an idea of what’s coming up, while helping it keep up with other Mail apps such as Canary Mail and Spark Mail.

Are you using Apple’s Safari Preview in macOS Ventura? Let us know how you’re getting on over at the iMore Forums.

Alludo, responsible for WinZip, Corel, and other utility apps, has brought out a new version of Parallels Desktop today, a virtualization app that allows you to run Windows and other operating systems on your Mac.

For those unaware, you can use this app to run Windows 11 virtually on your Mac, so you can play games and run apps that are exclusive to Windows. It’s available in Standard and Pro editions for $89.99 and $99.99 per year respectively, while there’s a 50% discount for students.

Parallels Desktop 18 was a very close runner-up in our ‘Best App for Apple Devices’ category for the iMore Readers' Choice Awards 2023, just losing out to Things 3. But this new version could already be setting itself up for next year’s prize.

To start with, it comes with full support for macOS Sonoma, Apple’s brand-new macOS operating system. Announced at WWDC 2023 and scheduled for a fall release, it brings desktop widgets, gaming features, and much more. 

A Parallel World - iMore’s Take

I’ve been using Parallels Desktop since University, virtualizing a bunch of different Linux operating systems for my assignments. After a long absence of not using it, I came back to the app to see how it could run games within Windows 11 on my Apple silicon MacBook Pro that I bought in 2021.

I’ve been amazed at how well it can run certain games at full speed, such as Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain. It’s a game that’s never come to the Mac, yet I’ve been able to play it as if I’ve bought it from the Mac App Store, thanks to Parallels.

The latest version of Parallels seems to be focusing on redesigning its small features, all the while supporting the next big update for macOS. Printing has been given a redesign for example, and better OpenGL support means that games that run on this framework will benefit from fixed graphics and a better framerate. That’s certainly something I’m keen to try out with a few titles.

Another major addition is support for Touch ID. If you’ve set a password up in Windows, you can now use the fingerprint scanner to sign in, as long as you have a compatible Mac or keyboard with the feature.

Overall, Parallels 19 is another big update that’s already set up for macOS Sonoma, while refining features that have made users like me come back to it time and time again. On a personal note, with graphic improvements in OpenGL, playing Metal Gear Solid V on my Mac promises to be better than ever.

Apple’s Time Machine utility made its debut with Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), and it’s been saving our collective bacon ever since - but many are still not taking full advantage of the backup options.

The powerful tool can bring whole drives back from the brink, but did you know it can restore individual files in a few clicks? Or that there’s a way to speed it up?

With this in mind, here are a few tips and tricks to make Time Machine more powerful for your Mac, and hopefully save you the hassle of recovering lost files.

What is Time Machine?

Time Machine is a macOS utility that periodically creates “snapshots” of specified drives. A snapshot is essentially a collection of all your files and data bundled into a disk image that’s compressed as small as it’ll go and stored in Time Machine.

This means that should the worst happen and your Mac stops working properly, you can restore it from a saved snapshot and, theoretically, lose none of your data.

You may not have used Time Machine actively because it runs in the background. Once set up, Time Machine will go about its business and keep moving through your data to ensure you have something to revert back to in a “worst-case scenario”.

Wondering where to find it? Time Machine’s settings are found in the System Preferences app, but it has its own application shortcut, too.

Starting out

To get started with Time Machine, you’ll need an external hard drive with around 150% of the storage of the main drive you’re backing up. Therefore, expect to need 750GB for your 512GB MacBook, or 1.5TB for a 1TB drive.

You’ll also need to pick between drive types. While HDD (Hard Disk Drives) were the de facto choice for years because of their price and high storage, their moving parts mean they don’t tend to last as long as faster, but pricier, SSDs.

We’d recommend the latter if you can stretch to it, however, although it may cost significantly more. You can also partition part of your internal drive if you have the space - you’ll find that option in Disk Utility.

Restoring folders

While Time Machine is ideal for restoring your Mac after a catastrophic error, it’s just as useful for restoring individual files within Finder.

To do so, open the Time Machine app from your Applications folder (or wherever you may keep it), and navigate to the folder you want to roll back.

Once there, use the timeline on the right-hand side of the screen to return to the right time, click the file, and then select Restore to bring them back from the aether - crisis averted.

Change backup frequency

macOS does a pretty good job of keeping backup snapshots from stacking up, but if you feel like the performance drops are mounting up while Time Machine does its thing, you can switch the frequency in the Time Machine settings within System Preferences.

Options include hourly, daily, or weekly backups, but there’s also the option for manual backups if you’ve got the presence of mind to trigger it when needed.

Just remember: the more regular the snapshots, the more chance Time Machine has of recovering your lost files and folders.

In the same menu as the section above, you’ll find the option to disable Time Machine backups while on battery.

As you can imagine, this is an ideal option for MacBook users, even with Apple Silicon’s improvements to battery life.

Exclude files

One way of speeding up your Time Machine backups is to remove the need to backup chunky files that you’re not desperate to keep, or those you have backed up elsewhere.

For example, in the screenshot above, our Time Machine backup will exclude the Documents folder, since this is already backed up in iCloud Drive.

If you’ve got files in Dropbox, Google Drive, or any other cloud backup service, you may want to do the same. Just click the “+” button in the settings to pick the file you want to exclude.

Speed up those backups

If you’ve got a big backup, you’ll know all too well how often it can take to collate everything for a snapshot - and the problem only gets exacerbated as you accrue more files.

Thankfully, there’s a nifty trick to speed up the backup process which involves removing the throttle on your CPU.

Doing so means your Mac can back itself up more quickly, but you’ll need to put the bottleneck back in place to save messing with your day-to-day performance.

Open the Terminal in Spotlight search, and enter the following:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

Hit Enter/Return, and enter your Mac’s password when prompted.

To reset things back to how it was, enter this command in the Terminal in the same way:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=1

Third-party alternatives

There are plenty of third-party options that you can use in lieu of Time Machine or in conjunction with it.

Backblaze, for example, costs a small monthly fee, but if your machine crashes and you aren’t able to restore from their servers, you can request a drive with your data be sent out instead.

Carbonite and Carbon Copy Cloner are easy-to-use alternatives, too. For more, be sure to check out our full list of backup tools for macOS.

We’d also like to mention CleanMyMacX. While it doesn’t back up your machine itself, it offers a handy tool for thinning out your Time Machine snapshots so they take up less room.

Opera is marking its 100th version of its web browser by replacing it with a brand new one called Opera One, bringing a modern redesign and a big AI feature to boot.

Available to download from today (June 20), Aria is built from OpenAI's ChatGPT, which you can access from the sidebar or by pressing cmd + / once you create an Opera Account, but you can still reach TikTok, WhatsApp, and Instagram there as well if needed.

Everything looks modern in One, with rounded corners abound alongside a bluish-gray color scheme that seemingly marks a new start for Opera since the original browser's debut in April 1995.

“As people who obsess over browser innovation, we saw fit to rethink the role of the browser in light of the recent developments in the AI space. As opposed to other browser companies, Opera didn’t simply add AI services to its browser," explains Joanna Czajka, product director at Opera. "We went back to the drawing board and redesigned our flagship browser. Opera One is built around Aria, our native browser AI, and is the culmination of our work so far.”

After trying out Opera One in macOS, it makes us wonder if Apple missed an opportunity with Safari at WWDC 2023.

Back to One

Opera brought out Opera One back in April as a web browser in testing, showcasing AI, and its new take on managing tabs called Tab Islands, where tabs appear and disappear based on what you were currently using the browser for.

While the company isn't revealing just yet if its other web browsers, Opera GX, and Opera Crypt,o will see a similar redesign soon, alongside an appearance on its iOS browser, it gives an excellent argument for switching from Apple's Safari browser or another that you've been using on Mac for some time.

In the tweet thread above, it also says that the 'Opera One' name will change every year that's relevant to the latest version number, but after looking at its previous interactions on social media, we're not sure whether that's a serious statement just yet.

At WWDC 2023, Apple announced a few updates to Safari, such as profiles where multiple users can log in, or you can create a work profile to better separate your tabs and bookmarks, alongside being able to put a website into a 'web app' on your Dock in macOS Sonoma.

And while these features will be useful to many, there was nothing about improvements to Safari Extensions or even customization options. But with Opera One, you get a great sidebar that lets you access your social platforms, Tab Islands and an interface that animates in the right places.

Hopefully Opera One inspires other web browsers in what a fresh start can be in this space, and how web browsing can be a fun experience again, much like it was in the late 90s.

If Apple's productivity suite of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers aren't quite cutting it for you, then Microsoft's Office suite is probably going to be more up your street. Usually, Office 2021 for Mac would be an expensive option, especially given that you get Apple's alternative for free on every Mac. This deal will make getting Office a whole lot cheaper, with a great deal that will net you Office Home for only $29.

It's at keysfan, a site that has loads of great deals on Microsoft software, including Windows activation keys and other apps and programs.

Microsoft Office for Mac – for less

Microsoft likes to make those that don't use its OS pay a lot for its software, but this deal makes it a whole lot more affordable. You will need to have a suitable Mac for this to work though, with these system requirements:

• Mac OS
• Minimum
• OS - MacOS version 11.0 or later
• Processor - 1.6 GHz, 2-core processor/recent macOS
• Memory - 4 GB RAM
• Hard disk space - 10 GB
• Display - 1280 x 800

Thankfully, those are fairly low system requirements and it's more than likely that your Mac will support them.

You can only use this key once, so make sure you're downloading it on the best Mac that you want to use it on – if you activate it accidentally on a different Mac, you won't be able to use the key again. Microsoft Office is a powerful productivity suite that is, in most cases, the standard at many different companies, so in some cases, having it on your Mac may make it easier to work with a wider range of people.

The best macOS utilities around are the kind of small system tweaks that drastically improve your experience on the platform, or they offer new ways to interact with your Mac, speeding up workflows.

For this list of the best macOS utilities, we’ve opted for apps we use personally. Some build off the existing macOS features, like improving AirPod functionality or adding more Dock options. Others are intended to replace macOS functionality, like replacing Spotlight search with Alfred, or the built-in screenshot utility with Cleanshot X.

Some of the options on this list are free, or at least offer a trial period, so you can check them out before spending a penny on them.

Here are our picks for the best macOS utilities in 2023.

Bartender

If you’ve got a recent MacBook Pro you’ll know all too well that menu bar space can be limited - especially with the “notch” that houses the camera.

Thankfully, Bartender has been an iMore favorite for years, letting you trim that menu bar down to whatever you want it to show. Available for $15.99 at Macbartender.com, you can hide items completely, add them onto a smaller “sub bar” then opens with a click or a cursor hover, and set up simple automations like hiding the battery when your MacBook is plugged in.

PurePaste

PurePaste is a handy macOS utility with a simple purpose - it strips formatting out of any copied text and pastes straight into plain text.

It’s not likely to be useful for everyone, but it's free on the Mac App Store, and if you find yourself using multiple web forms or content management systems it can save you precious seconds and they soon add up.

Keyboard Maestro

Speaking of precious seconds, Keyboard Maestro is a tool that lets users trigger automations from just about anywhere on their Mac.

Available for $36 at Fastspring.com, it includes Apple Shortcuts, AppleScript, or custom Keyboard Maestro combinations built within the app, and if you find yourself doing plenty of smaller, repetitive tasks, it’s worth looking into Keyboard Maestro as you could save yourself hours over a period of time.

We’ve been using Keyboard Maestro for a little while, but it feels like a tool we’ve barely scratched the surface of - it’s definitely one for the tinkerers.

Yoink/Dropzone

“Shelf” apps are the kind of macOS utility you don’t realize you need until you’ve tried it, and Yoink and Dropzone are two great options.

Available for $8.99 at Eternal Storms or for $1.99 on the Mac App Store, Yoink is simpler in nature and lets you put files, clipboard snippets, and more on the side of the screen for easy access. It's ideal when moving through complex folder structures, or dragging loads of types of files into the same app.

DropZone goes a step beyond, more focused on moving items to your most commonly-used locations or initiating actions with them such as emailing them, resizing images, or uploading to third-party services like Google Drive.

CleanMyMacX

CleanMyMac X is really multiple macOS utilities bundled together, but it’s so easy to use that it feels like one cohesive unit.

For $34.95 at MacPaw.com, it's ideal for scanning for any potential Malware on your machine, but it also offers a robust toolkit including a place to manage Safari extensions, an easy way to see the biggest files on your drive, a way to confidentially delete files, and a handy Maintenance task list that can keep your machine running quickly by freeing up RAM, repairing disk permissions, and more.

It’s all brought together in a great-looking interface, too, so you never feel as though the sheer volume of options is overwhelming.

CleanShot X

This is a replacement for the basic macOS screenshot tools that adds a new layer of features using the same keyboard shortcuts.

You can still grab the full-screen, window, or manually determined area captures on your Mac. But you can add a timer, remove backgrounds, hide desktop shortcuts, and even capture full web pages with scrolling capture.

You can record GIF or video capture, too, while also highlighting clicks and keystrokes - ideal for budding content creators looking to build tutorial videos.

It's available to buy at Cleanshot.com for $29, which is a great price for the power you get here from CleanShot X.

HiDock

HiDock is exceptionally useful if you use multiple displays with your Mac, and being a free download only makes it better. It allows you to tailor your Dock settings, including location, hidden status, and more, for each of your monitors.

In our use case, we have the Dock at the bottom of the screen while using a MacBook, but thanks to HiDock we can access it from either side when connected to another display or multiple displays - all without having to dive into the settings each time.

iStat Menus

If you’ve ever wondered about what your Mac is doing, iStat Menus is a great peek behind the curtain. The app, available for $9.99 on the Mac App Store, can give you a deep dive into your Mac’s memory, network, disk usage, and CPU/GPU stats.

It’s all glanceable, but you can find the application in your menu bar, too, allowing you to quickly check, say, your fan or WiFi speeds through a single click.

MonitorControl

We’ve added MonitorControl here for one very simple reason - and it’s nothing to do with the visual side of using a monitor at all, alongside being free to download.

While the app can adjust external monitor brightness using a Mac’s standard function keys (F1 & F2), the reason it’s here is that it can adjust the volume on an external display’s speakers using whatever keyboard option you like.

As an example, our Mac is connected to a monitor which is connected to speakers, but the volume can only be adjusted using physical buttons on the speakers themselves. With MonitorControl, we can use F11 & F12 to move volume up or down, or use the volume wheel on an external keyboard.

AirBuddy

We love our AirPods and Beats headphones, but managing them with macOS’ built-in options can feel a little on the inconsistent side. Sometimes they connect, other times they don’t, and it’s all a little basic.

Thankfully, AirBuddy is a sizeable improvement, letting you connect to devices more consistently, show their battery status (and get notifications when they need charging), and can even manage handing off devices like Magic Mouse or Magic Keyboard to other Macs, too.

Available for $9.99 over at Airbuddy.app, you get a lot of power and convenience at that price, especially if you're a big user of AirPods on your Mac.

Magnet

If there’s one thing Windows does better than Mac, it’s window management (the clue is in the name). Magnet brings things a little closer, with the application becoming a staple of our workflows thanks to quick snapping to corners, sides, or thirds, and the option to use keyboard shortcuts.

At $7.99 on the Mac App Store, it's impressively customizable and maintains the Windows process of dragging to the top for full-screen, too.

Gestimer

Gestimer is a simple utility that exists in your Mac’s menu bar. Simply click the icon and drag it downward to create a timer.

Available for $6.99 on the Mac App Store, it's a simple app with a bunch of powerful features, right on your menu bar.

It can sync with Apple Reminders, too, but in our experience, it’s handy for setting a timer for your current task, or even cooking times while working.

Latest

This app is nice and easy to explain, alongside being free to download - it’s an app that runs quickly when opened and prompts you to update the apps you have installed.

That includes apps downloaded from the Mac App Store and beyond, meaning you can ensure you’re running the latest versions of software in a tap or two.

Alfred

Alfred is a very easy, and free, macOS utility to recommend because it’s so powerful. It’s a smarter, more capable Spotlight replacement that can open your apps, files, web pages, and more in a split second.

Customizable web searches are a lifesaver if you visit a certain site often, but there’s plenty more Alfred allows. Clipboard history, text snippets, calculator functionality, and plenty more can be accessed with a few taps of the keyboard.

You can build Workflows, or import them from the community, too. This adds new automation options for your Mac.

BetterDisplay

BetterDisplay does what it says on the tin - it makes your display better, chiefly by adding a whole host of new options. 

For $15 over at GitHub, can increase display brightness way past the standard XDR limits, create picture-in-picture windows on the same display, and even tweak display overrides for those instances where your output resolution gets adjusted.

It’s all managed from a handy drop-down icon from the menu bar, too.

In the old days of Macs, you could install Windows on an Apple computer quite easily. This is because they used Intel processors just like the ones you’d find in the average Windows laptop. 

That all changed in 2020. This was the year Apple started making laptops and Macs with its in-house CPUs. They were, and are, absolutely brilliant. However, they complicate matters if you want to use software never designed to run on Apple hardware. 

It can be done, though, with a piece of software called Parallels. This was around long before  Apple’s M-series processors. It was first released in 1999. However, Parallels was always primarily designed for Mac users who wanted to be able to run Windows software on their MacBooks and iMacs. 

The best bit is how easy it all is. Using Boot Camp, Apple’s own tool that lets you install Windows onto Macs with Intel CPUs, you had to create a separate partition on your hard drive in which the other OS could live. That isn’t required with Parallels. 

You just install it like any other app, and, hey presto, you have a version of Windows running on your MacBook. We’ll explain how it works under the hood later and talk about some of the notable drawbacks involved. But for those not all that interested in the tech working under the surface, here’s how you get started with Parallels. For this guide, we used an M1 MacBook Air running macOS Ventura and Parallels 18.

How to install Windows 11 on a Mac with Parallels

As we are running Parallels to get Windows on a test MacBook, the process is almost comically easy.

1. Head to the Parallels website
2. Select Download Free Trial
3. Wait for the small DMG installer file to download and run it

4. During the early part of the installation process, you’ll be asked to green-light some app permissions for Parallels. Approve these

5. Wait for the app to download and install Windows 11. It takes a little while
6. As part of the actual Windows 11 installation, you’ll have to grant the app access to additional features, including, where available, the camera. Again, approve these requests

7. Once the installation process has finished, Windows 11 will load

8. Parallels will launch a web page to let you input your Windows 11 license. However, this is not actually mandatory. Some personalization features will be locked off with a non-activated version of Windows, though
9. To use Parallels beyond the 14-day trial, you will have to buy a Parallels license, though, and redeem it at the My Account section of the website, accessible through the top-right area of the home page

Still, have a Mac with an Intel processor? You can use Apple’s Boot Camp software instead and get something even closer to the classic Windows experience.

How Parallels works: Drawbacks

Parallels uses a technique called virtualisation, meaning it emulates the environment of a more traditional Windows PC on multiple levels. This results in diminished performance in apps, compared to what you might expect from a Mac running the same software natively. 

It can also bring up some compatibility issues rooted in the kind of Windows 11 version Parallels runs rather than Parallels itself. It uses the ARM CPU fork of Windows 11 rather than the x64 one you’d see in a laptop running an AMD Ryzen or Intel Core i-series laptop. 

You get far better performance than you likely would if Parallels were to try to directly emulate the x64 version of Windows used by PCs with Intel and AMD processors. Apple’s M1 and M2 processors are actually ARM-based, meaning the Parallels doesn’t have to do as much as you might expect to get Windows running on a MacBook.

Performance and customisation

One of the first things you’ll notice when running Windows on a base spec MacBook is it doesn’t always feel ultra-smooth. We tried a couple of benchmarks that can be run on both macOS and Windows, Geekbench 5 and Browserbench Jetstream 2.0, to see the actual performance disparity. 

In Geekbench 5, the MacBook Air with M1 CPU running Windows scores 4673 points, compared to 7131 in plain MacOS. You get 65% of the real performance of the laptop when emulating Windows. In the browser benchmark, the Windows test resulted in a score of 150, and the macOS one hit 227 points. This time the Windows version reached 66% of the macOS result — almost identical. 

A less than super-responsive feel in basic navigation is not helped by a lack of RAM either. We were testing with one of the most common specs of 2020 MacBook Air, one with 8GB RAM. And Parallels gives the Windows instance up to just 4GB RAM, a recipe for a compromised experience even if you run Windows natively with 4GB RAM. 

You can set this RAM figure manually, but it should only really go above 4GB if your Mac also has more than 8GB of RAM. macOS and Windows run concurrently when using Parallels, meaning they end up competing with each other for system resources. Here’s how to customize how much memory our virtual Windows PC has within Parallels:

1. While Parallels is running, shut the virtual PC down as you would a regular Windows PC
2. Not sure how? Select the Start menu icon at the bottom of the screen, then the Power icon, and hit Shut Down
3. Tap the cog icon at the top-right of the Parallels window

4. Select the Hardware pane
5. Select CPU and Memory
6. In the main window, select the Manual radio button
7. The two drop-downs below offer customization of the number of CPU cores and RAM the virtual PC is given access to. If you go overboard, you’ll see a warning

Is Parallels worth it?

Parallels is a software marvel, but it is not quite the same as running Windows natively with the same hardware. We’re impressed by the general level of compatibility, the ease of the installation, and how it doesn’t fundamentally impact your macOS install at all. 

However, if, like us, you are left using a fairly humble MacBook or Mac mini, you can’t help but notice the performance compromise. This hinges on the amount of RAM the virtual PC has when your Mac only has 8GB of the stuff to start off with. Your virtual Windows installation only gets to play with half of that amount as standard, and — as ever — running Windows with just 4GB RAM is less than ideal. 

Have more RAM on tap? You will have a better time, making Parallels suitable for more hardcore use cases. We can't wait to see what Parallels 19 brings to macOS Sonoma when the latest macOS releases later this year.

Apple has released its latest Safari Technology Preview, a version of its Mac Safari web browser that is used as a way to get experimental features into the hands of testers before making them available to a wider audience.

This latest release is Safari Technology Preview 171, and it can now be downloaded from Apple's servers for free should you want to take it for a spin.

However, most people should probably leave the testing to developers and those who build websites — Safari Technology Preview releases are rarely about adding fancy new features, instead tweaking the underlying browser technology.

What's new?

Apple's Safari Technology Preview release notes detail what's gone into this new release including changes to Web Inspector, CSS, CSS Counter Styles, Web Animations, Rendering, Javascript, Popover, Web API, Media, Accessibility, and SVG support.

Those who do install the macOS Safari Technology Preview can continue to use their normal Safari browser alongside it, with both versions functioning independently.

We can expect to see new things from Safari next week, during the WWDC 2023 opening keynote on June 5. The event will likely see the unveiling of macOS 14, complete with a new version of the Safari web browser among other things.

The same event is expected to see Apple announce iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, both also very likely to have their own Safari tweaks independent of those that are made on the Mac.

While initial beta versions of those software updates are expected to be made available to developers on June 5, the releases won't be ready for the public until much later in the year. If Apple follows its own release pattern we can likely expect the updates to land in or around September of October, depending on the development cycle.

Setapp is an app subscription that lets Mac and iOS users subscribe to the platform and access over 240 premium applications. Now, the service has launched Setapp Family to get even more value for your money by teaming up with your family members or even your friends.

"The best things in life are meant to be shared. With Family plan, you can share Setapp with any three people you know and get a bargain on powerful apps for daily workflow on Mac and iOS."

The new Family Plan gives four people access to 240+ Mac and iOS apps with a single subscription for $19.99/month. That's only $5 per user to access some incredibly awesome apps like Ulysses and CleanMyMac X.

It's very refreshing to see a subscription platform incite users to team up with friends and family to use the service. Setapp costs $12.50/month for a single-user account, so this Family Plan is insane value.

Not only is it great value, but Setapp is offering a 30-day free trial to get your friends and family involved. So if you're a subscriber of any of the 240+ apps on the platform, it makes sense to jump on this offer.

Setapp for $5 a month

Setapp adds more apps to its extensive library regularly, but some of our favorites at iMore include, SideNotes, which is a handy note-taking widget that sits on your desktop; CleanShot X, a significant improvement on taking screenshots; and Ulysses, which is one of the best writing apps on iOS and macOS.

With WWDC just around the corner, it's time to get excited about software, and Setapp gives many reasons to care about third-party applications. If you've never tried the subscription service, now is the perfect time. 

Do you use Setapp? What's your favorite app on the platform? Let us know by joining the iMore forum and leaving a comment below.

Users of the Mac version of the messaging app Telegram should double-check when they downloaded and installed it – as the version available from Apple's Mac App Store is vulnerable to malware attacks on your mic and camera.

In a tweet, Telegram admits that there is an issue for those that have certain other parameters filled – and while they are very specific requirements for the issues to crop up, it's a worry all the same.

You have to be in trouble already

The vulnerability was originally spotted by Matt Johansen in a Tweet, who said that the issue was discovered in February. He noted how the app can sidestep a security measure that gives root access to the microphone and camera on your Mac, something that most apps don't have access to.

Root access enables any app to access almost any part of your Mac without your permission, so this was something for Telegram to take notice of.

He goes into detail about the technical issues of the hack, and how it can affect users and their machines. In a particularly dry response, however, Telegram puts some of the concerns of many users to rest.

Telegram says that you have to be infected by Malware with root access to your Mac already, something that it calls in a following tweet, "..a game over scenario for apps."

It goes on to make an interesting comparison: "This issue is the same as saying: "If someone steals your wallet, they will also see the family photos you keep there"."

It has admitted that there's an issue, however, and has said that a new version of its Mac app has been sent to Apple to put back on the App Store so that the hack for the best Macs is no longer a problem.

The fact that you need to be already infected for the hack to be an issue highlights the need for the best antivirus Mac however, so that you can stop issues like this before they become a problem.

Apple's Safari web browser is now the second most popular app of its kind on desktops, according to a new report.

Safari took the second spot from Microsoft's Edge browser, although only by the smallest of margins. The gap between Safari and the top of the chart where Google's Chrome sits pretty is much, much bigger, however.

With Safari making up 11.87% of the desktop web browsing market Chrome decimates the competition with a whopping 66.13% of the market.

A long way to second place

The huge difference between Chrome in top spot and Safari in second shouldn't be all that surprising considering the fact that Chrome is available on Windows and macOS, whereas Safari is obviously only available on Apple's devices. The fact that Safari has taken second place from Edge — according to numbers shared by Statcounter — is much more interesting.

It's likely that Safari's surge comes on the back of strong 2022 Mac sales, putting Safari at the fingertips of more people. As for why Apple sold so many computers, that's likely down to 2022 still benefiting from the tail end of the COVID-19 work-from-home sales boom not to mention the fact that Apple is now making some of the best Macs it's ever produced — the MacBook Air and latest 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros for example, while the 15-inch MacBook Air rumors suggest Apple isn't done yet.

As for the rest of the web browsers available on desktop machines, it's worth noting that Safari only beat Edge out by the finest of margins. Safari's 11.87% was enough to just edge out Microsoft's browser and its 11% share, while Firefox accounts for 5.65% of desktop web browser share. Opera makes up 3.09% while Internet Explorer still holds on to 0.55%. We have to imagine that's businesses running older versions of Windows and refusing to upgrade.

Announced as a preview version for macOS, Linux, and Windows 11, Opera is showcasing a huge update of its main web browser, bringing a visual redesign and new ways of managing all those tabs.

Opera One is the company's vision for the future of Opera, a web browser that's been around since April 1995, and this looks to lay the foundation for another 30 years.

One of the big features here is being 'modular', where AI will be used to change the appearance of the browser to the users' needs, while also making space for other tabs. So if you're using Opera One for work one afternoon, for example, the layout will change to adapt to it.

It's an exciting prospect, and we've been trying it out. Of particular note is Tab Islands, a new way of grouping a bunch of web pages. It's all very impressive, to say the least.

To be continued?

The new look feels familiar but fresh. You can access the sidebar as before, with ChatGPT, WhatsApp, and more a click away, but the color scheme and the rounded buttons for toggles and options all feel more modern this time.

The modular approach also works well, with tabs being minimized when they're not in use, and everything is animated to give the impression that the web browser is almost sentient, but in a welcoming way.

Tab Islands are also a better way for how Safari handles Tab Groups already. These are color-coded, which can be shrunken down or expanded, depending on what you're currently using Opera One for. So if you're shopping, the tabs that relate to this will expand, and others will be a colored line.

Even at this early stage, it's an encouraging start for Opera's browser. The company refused to confirm to us whether this redesign will also apply to its other web browsers, Opera GX and Opera Crypto, alongside whether we'll see Opera One on iOS soon, this early version works great.

However, we don't recommend using this version for everyday use, as features will inevitably be refined, removed, and added that could hamper your experience. But if you're feeling daring, add it to your macOS dock and make sure to give them feedback on what you've liked so far, as we have.

Pixelmator Photo has today received a massive update, so big in fact that the Pixelmator team has seen fit to rename it Photomator.

Pixelmator Photo, a popular iPhone and iPad photo editing app, has today announced a rebrand to Photomator as it gets a complete makeover with version 2.3.

It features a fresh new design and "all-new and incredibly powerful selective adjustments feature that will completely change the way you edit photos," letting you easily select areas of a photo with different selections and masks, or even automatically through the power of everyone's favorite new kid on the block, AI. 

Photomator for Mac

The new selective adjustments let you pick specific areas of a photo you'd like to edit, and you can use the AI-powered selection algorithm to select common elements in photos, such as the sky. "With a simple tap, the AI algorithm intelligently scans the photo, finds where the subject, background, or sky is, and make a precise selection of that area for you, so you can jump into making edits right away. For example, in landscape photos where the sky is too bright, you can select just the sky and reduce its brightness without making the entire photo darker," the team states. 

There are also customizable gradient masks and a new Layers browser that lets you keep track of edits bit by bit. 

Perhaps more importantly, Photomator is also coming to Mac. It's "almost here" according to the team and is now available in TestFlight as a beta for Mac users. 

If that's too long to wait, you can always check out Photomator's big brother Pixelmator Pro, a highly-capable macOS photo editing suite with over five years of updates under its belt. Pixelmator Pro includes immense machine learning capabilities which harness the power of Apple silicon in Apple's best MacBooks such as the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. 

There is a long list of reasons why Apple’s jump to its own home-grown silicon for Mac was a good thing, from blistering performance improvements to battery efficiency just not seen elsewhere in mobile computing. From the early days of M1 through to the current wave of Mac Mini M2 Max and Pro machines, I’m consistently blown away by what Apple’s pulled off since waving goodbye to Intel chipsets.

But one of the more underrated effects of making that transition was unifying Apple’s disparate app offerings, allowing many iPhone apps and iPad apps to work universally alongside Mac apps on desktop and laptop devices, too. Where once you may have had to juggle multiple devices to get access to a specific iPhone or iPad app that didn’t have a Mac equivalent, Apple’s simple compatibility layer made a huge number of iOS and iPadOS apps work on Mac without the developers having to even lift a finger.

While it didn’t suddenly mean there were millions of additional must-have apps that flooded onto our Macs, it did unlock a few where a native Mac alternative wasn't available — or simply the iPad or iPhone version was superior. With the iPad's screen size better suited to Mac displays, it's iPad apps that have proved the most useful in this setting, and the area I've found most joy. So here are four iPad apps that I now fire up on my Mac every day.

NTS Radio

When I want to pretend I’m still cool (if I ever was) and feel like I’m still a young twenty-something (which is everyday) I listen to NTS Radio. It’s by far the most interesting internet radio service out there, pulling together an eclectic mix of DJs, curators and musical genres across its global streaming platform. Its hosts include musicians, artists and record collectors as well as 9-to-5 DJs, and it shows in the output of its wildly varied shows: from shoegaze to Italian poolside pop, you’re guaranteed to hear stuff you’ve never heard before, every single day. 

Why it hasn’t been bought up for a ridiculous sum by Apple Music or Spotify is beyond me — you can tune in to the two main NTS Radio stations from within Apple Music, but that doesn’t give access to NTS’s excellent back catalogue of shows and infinite mixtapes. But perhaps that’s for the best — it feels like a radio service from an imagined future where algorithms don’t exist, and is all the better for it, free from ‘Big Tech’ influence.

While NTS Radio has a decent-enough website to stream from, the iPad app translates so well onto the Mac as to feel natively built. It’s one of the first apps I open every day.

PressReader

Now this one’s a bit of a rule-breaker for this list — PressReader, a magazine and newspaper reading app, is ultimately at its best on an iPad. When reading on Apple’s tablet you’re going to get as close to the experience of holding a printed page as possible in the digital world — or at least when compared to a Mac or MacBook, anyway. 

But PressReader remains well optimised for Mac hardware, letting you browse mags, rags and broadsheets from right across the globe, right from your desktop. While it technically requires a subscription in order to access its library of content, it has an ace up its sleeve — providing you have a local library card, you can access all its content for free.

Sofa

There’s just too much…stuff out there to spend time on these days. Games to play, books to read, shows to stream, albums to listen to. It can get overwhelming, and keeping track of new releases and prioritising how best to spend the little free time you have can be a chore in and of itself. 

Sofa looks to help alleviate that stress, tapping into that universal human need to categorise and list everything. It’s a pretty simple app, letting you make custom lists of things you want to keep track of, which could ultimately be anything. But it’s really tuned to media consumption, tapping into a database of movies, music, games, apps and more for you to add to your lists, complete with accompanying artwork. And though there are in-app purchases here, they’re mostly just aesthetic ones that you can happily skip. It’s a good one to keep open in the background, adding fresh items as things pique your interest throughout the day. Again, it works just great on a Mac.

Headspace

After all that listening, reading and list-making, you might want to clear your head a bit and wind down. Though I don’t do it as religiously as I’d like to, I try to cap off the end of my working days at my Mac with a little downtime, and the best way to do that is with a meditation app like Headspace.

Everything that’s great about the Headspace iPad app is here, and (fittingly, given the fact that it’s about calming your head from distractions) that's its focus on guided meditations. It’s a clean interface with very little in the way of flashy furniture aside from some gentle animations, letting you soak in the accessible mindfulness its experts offer up. It feels like a mental sage cleaning for your Mac, and a great app to fire up before wrapping up for the day.

The Mac's forgotten apps

We all have our go-to Mac apps, those that live forever in our docks and get opened every day. The thing is, you probably have a similar number of apps on your iPhone and iPad too, so why not let them join forces?

Take my list as inspiration, maybe give a few of the above choices a try. But my advice? Fire up your iPad or iPhone, and make a mental note of the apps you most use on them, then give the Mac App Store a quick search to see if they're alive over there too — while not all of them will be a great fit for a keyboard-and-mouse based OS, you might be surprised just how many work great on your desktop devices, too.

Vivid, the brightness app that has helped my MacBook Pro go even brighter, is celebrating its one-year birthday with a great discount.

Until April 11, you can buy the app for $5, which allows MacBook Pro and Pro Display XDR users to enable the full 1,000 nits of brightness to their XDR display.

Developed by  Jordi Bruinand Ben Harraway, Vivid has been something I've been using non-stop since its debut in April 2022. Since then, it's come out with updates that have also enabled lower brightness settings, called 'Eclipse', for those times when you need to use your Mac when it's late at night.

There is also a version available for iOS, where you can browse the web on your iPhone with its full HDR brightness switched on - but the macOS app is the one I use the most, for good reason - but there's an elephant in the room to talk about.

No, higher brightness doesn't mean lower battery

There's an understandable fear with these types of apps that they could ruin your Mac's display as it goes beyond Apple's brightness settings, burning out the display beyond use and voiding the warranty. However, Bruin has reassured me in the past that there's no truth to this - your display will not burn out after excessive use.

I've used it for a bunch of apps and games, from Streets of Rage 4 to watching Mandalorian on Disney Plus through the Clicker app. Everything pops even more on my MacBook Pro, and if I need to switch it off, I can either use the brightness toggle on my keyboard or go to Vivid's settings in the Menubar.

It would be great to see an iPadOS version in the future that goes beyond the simple web browser that's available on iOS. However, Vivid on macOS is well-designed and feels like it's been part of the Mac all along.

However, a year on there are no new features I'm desperate to see from Vivid - it does the job and does it well - and for $5, you can't go wrong.

A great macOS app that uses ChatGPT has seen a huge update today (March 27), letting you access the AI in a menu that looks like Spotlight, Apple's feature to help you search for content on your Mac.

MacGPT is made by Jordi Bruin, who also developed MacWhisper, an AI transcription app. MacGPT version 3 brings the ability to enable ChatGPT-4, alongside being able to enable the chatbot in the Spotlight-like menu. The app has also seen some design tweaks to make it easier to return to previous queries.

We've spoken about MacGPT before - it's well-designed and feels like it's been a part of Mac for years, thanks to the global shortcuts it offers. However, version 3 looks like its best improvement yet, and could help make ChatGPT's information more accessible to those who use it.

To ChatGPT and beyond

There are two new features in MacGPT 3 that I love already. First, I can set CMD+O as a global shortcut to use the AI as a Spotlight-like view, so having that appear when I needed to see the Latin word for 'Avion' was very helpful.

But there's also an 'Inline' feature, which enables ChatGPT in many apps, like Notes. So, for example, I opened up a new Notes sheet and entered the '+GPT' prompt, followed by a request on how to make chocolate pancakes.

In an instant, the answer was being typed in this Notes sheet, formatted like a list, ready to go. It felt like magic like the future had arrived on my Mac - without Apple lifting a finger.

I see ChatGPT as the 2023 more intelligent cousin of Ask Jeeves - an assistant that can help you in some instances and streamline your errands without the fear of an AI completely taking over the task.

While ChatGPT is available on iPhone and iPad thanks to a Siri Shortcut, alongside Petey on Apple Watch, MacGPT feels like the winner out of these methods. It's powerful, has a great design, and takes advantage of what macOS offers.

If you have not tried out Bruin's app, version 3 could be the best introduction to ChatGPT. In no time, the chatbot could help you make a pancake or get through Resident Evil 4 Remake right from within macOS.

It’s no secret on the iMore team that I’m a Sonic fan. Thanks to PlayCover -- a community-developed app that lets you install iPhone and iPad games that haven’t been adapted to Apple's silicon -- I can finally replay one of the blue blur’s worst games ... is it still as bad as I remember?

While Catalyst allows you to use iOS apps on a Mac, Apple has a restriction in place where you can’t use every app you’ve purchased - only those that the developer has allowed.

This is where PlayCover and Sonic both come in. No Sonic games on the App Store can be played on a Mac, unlike Rockstar’s GTA Vice City, which is an iPad app that can be used on a Mac. With PlayCover I can replay Sonic 4 on my MacBook Pro, and the results surprised me – for better or worse.

Back to the Blur

Playing Sonic games on a Mac through official means has always been difficult. While the majority of the hedgehog's library is available on Steam, none of the games are playable on Apple software. Instead, you have to play some of them on the Mega Drive Classics Collection on Steam or run Boot Camp, an Apple app for Intel Macs that lets you boot Windows. For the latter, if you have an M-powered machine, you'll be completely out of luck.

Sonic 4 has a strange history, however: It’s been available for Steam, many consoles, iPhone, and iPad, but it’s never seen a Mac release.

For those unaware, Sonic 4 has two episodes. The first was announced back in 2009 and polarized fans, in part due to it being a poor remake of the original Sonic. It also featured floaty physics and a nails-on-a-chalkboard soundtrack, which accounts for the rest of the less-than-stellar mood on release.

The second episode from 2012 received a better reaction, but it was still nowhere close to being as good as what was released in 2017. Sonic Mania was a true return to form, pleasing fans more than most other modern Sonic releases.

Lately, curiosity's gotten the better of me. I wondered if it was possible to play Sonic 4 on my MacBook Pro, as you can still buy and download the much-maligned title for your iPad and iPhone.

Being disappointed all over again

PlayCover uses a ‘wrapper’, enabling you to play a game that’s not usually allowed on macOS. You can also change its resolution or the type of device it thinks it's on, such as an iPad Pro or an iPhone 14 Pro.

It can be a challenge to get it working to start with, as you find yourself constantly changing the display sizes and the graphic options to make sure everything works as intended. In time though, you'll find yourself able to play Sonic 4 on Mac with the keyboard, similar to playing a game that’s allowed on macOS, such as Max Payne or INKS. Press the space key to jump alongside the directional keys to move around, and you’re running through the zones as normal.

The only issue I came across was having to use the mouse to skip ads or move on to the next level. This required me to jump between apps in order to gain control of the mouse so that I could go back and press the right button to continue.

While Sonic 4 played well, I found compatibility with PlayCover to be hit-and-miss when trying other games. Some, such as Sonic CD, would crash, while others like Infinity Blade would be displayed in a small window, with the game itself rendered too large, only allowing you to see a quarter of the game.

Updating to a more recent version of PlayCover also resulted in a crash, leading me to download an older version from December 2022.

So while it’s possible to play games on your Mac with some success, it’s entirely dependent on PlayCover fully working when needed. Playing Sonic 4 brought back disappointing memories though, from its odd design decisions to the terrible music. Playing Sonic Mania, however, brought back more pleasant memories, thanks to a community port. The bad taste of Sonic 4 was soon washed away.

It would be great to see more games arrive on macOS this way in an official capacity, but for now, we’re dependent on apps like PlayCover to see if certain games can work on Mac. 

It would be great to see more of a push from Apple and developers and to have more games made available on both Mac and iOS. Thanks to Catalyst, you can map some touch controls to your Mac’s keyboard, while the trackpad can simulate swipes and drag gestures.

It’s all here, it just needs to be given more of what seems to be an afterthought.

In the meantime, I’ve played Sonic 4 again so you don’t have to – and while it works on my Mac, I still wouldn’t recommend you to download it for free, let alone paying $1.99 / £1.99 to remove its ads.

When I set up a new Mac, I download a few apps straight away - one of them being AirBuddy.

Developed by Gui Rambo and costing $11.99 / £15.59 as a one-time purchase, it essentially brings widgets from iOS and iPadOS to the Mac, with details such as battery levels and the status of other Apple devices connected to your Mac, alongside more powerful controls for your peripherals.

When you switch on your AirPods close to your Mac, a widget will appear to give you the option to connect to it, alongside its battery percentage. However, if the battery is running low and your AirPods need a charge, you also get a notification on the center of your Mac’s display.

Almost seven years since the AirPods debuted with the iPhone 7 line, it’s baffling that these features haven’t come to the Mac yet. If this were all AirBuddy did, it would be worth the download, but AirBuddy goes a few steps further than just an AirPods tool.

Pairing in style

Setting up AirBuddy is a simple affair - once you’ve installed it, the app will look for the devices registered to your Mac, and an icon will appear on your menu bar. You can then check the battery of all your devices, even non-Apple ones such as keyboards and headphones.

But the app goes even deeper than widgets and notifications. You can create keyboard shortcuts to switch between AirPod Pro's Transparency or ANC (Active Noise Cancelling) modes, or even ‘handoff’ your AirPods to another device. Handoff means you can switch from your Mac to an iPad with a keyboard shortcut without doing anything else.

Compared to what Apple offers on the Mac, this is a huge step forward in what you can do with all your connected devices. It’s already made my workflow easier when connecting my keyboard, mouse, and AirPods Pro to my MacBook Pro.

What can Apple learn from AirBuddy?

For years now, AirPods has been relegated to a simple drop-down menu on your menu bar. In many situations, that’s all that some users need as they listen to their favorite album, but there’s an opportunity to take advantage of what macOS offers.

AirBuddy is the finest example of this. From the battery widgets to the keyboard shortcuts, it gives you more options to control your connected peripherals.

In a future update to macOS, it would be great to see the concept taken even further. Your Mac could have greater control over your gaming controllers, settings for your mouse or keyboard, and much more. You'd never have to be surprised to discover that your accessories have run out of charge without a notification warning.

While Rambo hasn’t given any impression that a new version of AirBuddy is in the works, there’s really not much to improve upon. The app already does its job and does it well. Let’s hope that Apple can get inspired by this app, and bring similar useful features to macOS 14.

In a new update, Opera has enabled AI prompts powered by ChatGPT and ChatSonic to be used within its Opera and Opera GX web browsers on your Mac, so you can ask the AI questions, while ChatSonic can generate images for you.

The company has been looking into how AI can benefit its users, thanks to its Browser AI program, which is its way of developing AI features in its browser. These AI prompts mark the first stage of this process, with the second stage, a mysterious 'Browser AI engine', is currently in development.

Enabling these AI prompts is a simple affair - go to 'Easy Setup' in Opera and activate the Early Access option by toggling 'AI Prompts' to On, which will enable AI Prompts in the browser's sidebar. For OperaGX, it's a matter of enabling the 'Early Bird' option in their browser settings to access the AI.

In a few short months, we've seen AI be accessible from a web page to macOS apps, followed by apps you can access on your Apple Watch. A web browser only seems like the next logical step, and it makes sense when you look at the bigger picture.

AI is about to take over web browsers in a big way

The sidebar in Opera has become one of its most innovative features - already you can access TikTok and WhatsApp without switching between apps as you browse, but having the AI here feels like the next step for its web browsers.

Using these AI prompts with Opera GX on a MacBook Pro is already very intuitive. You can ask it to explain certain terms on a web page in a simpler way, or ask ChatSonic to generate a random image if you feel like procrastinating.

I use OperaGX on my Mac, as I enjoy using the design and the features it brings compared to Apple's Safari. It even lets me switch off from time to time, as there are no iCloud bookmarks or history synced up in the browser.

Using AI here works well already, and with its second stage already in development, it makes me wonder if Opera is already working on another web browser that has AI front and center. That could be to recommend websites you didn't consider before and perhaps create web pages from a few queries.

It's an exciting time for web browsers and AI, and already, Opera has fired its water pistol at its competitors with this new update, leading the charge before Safari, Firefox, and others have even considered AI as a feature.

Microsoft brought out a new update to Windows 11 today (February 28) that brings its Bing GPT AI chatbot to the Taskbar, so you don't need to solely use a web browser to access it anymore. But there's been a great Mac alternative that's been doing the same job since 2022, and in a better way.

Bing AI will only appear on a user's taskbar if they've been granted access to the preview program, which you can sign up for in a few steps.

While there are also other new features in this update, being able to access Bing's new feature directly on the Taskbar will be a big appeal to many, but macOS users have already been able to access this through another app called MacGPT.

Developed by Jordi Bruin who also developed MacWhisper, an AI transcription app, this app allows you to ask ChatGPT any questions you like, and this can be on the menubar in macOS, or within the app.

MacGPT has been available since December 2022 and I've been trying it out ever since. With this in mind, here's why it's already a great alternative to what Windows 11 is now offering.

Menubar vs Taskbar

Since Windows 11 debuted back in October 2021, its Taskbar was the biggest contention to users who wanted to update from Windows 10. Instead of a Start menu and icons to the left as before, everything was centered, making it easier for users with touch-enabled devices to access the Taskbar. But some users weren't happy with this, they wanted it to be how they were before.

Since its release, a bunch of updates has slowly rolled out, constantly refining this part of Windows 11, such as better customization options to move these icons to the left again, while speeding up search results. However, since Microsoft introduced ChatGPT into Bing searches in January, users had been wondering if this was ever moving over to Windows 11.

With this new update, called 'Moment 3', it's the same experience as you get on a web browser, but it's contained within a search bar, so you can access it whenever you like on the TaskBar - but MacGPT goes further on a Mac.

Using ChatGPT on a Mac is a better experience

Once you've logged into OpenAI, you've got free reign as to what you want to ask the AI. You can be in full-screen mode in Safari for example, and reach for the MenuBar, where there'll be a 'brain' icon, and you can start asking the app any query you wish.

These are also saved, so you can go back to these if needed, either to check back on the results or carry on the query with the AI for more context.

You can also launch MacGPT with a keyboard shortcut, which I've set as ⌘ + G, so pressing this combination will make it appear in any app I'm in, except when games are in full screen.

As Bing AI is being constantly updated by Microsoft due to some users tricking it into going into engineering mode, or crashing after long conversations, MacGPT avoids potential restrictions shown here. It directly uses ChatGPT without being moderated by another company, and as it's within its own app, you don't have to keep going back to the Taskbar, or a web browser, to follow up on any results you've asked it as you will in Windows 11.

You also have to sign up for Bing AI and wait for Microsoft to grant you access, but MacGPT is a click away, so just from this aspect, it has an advantage over Windows 11.

Overall, Bruin's app is well-designed and simple to use, and I've found myself reaching for the shortcut when looking for recipes or even helping me in games such as Metroid Prime Remastered in trying to find the Varia suit.

It's a great guide for me, and using the ⌘ + G shortcut has been very useful for the times when I quickly need to bring up MacGPT for a query.

AI can be used as a helpful companion for certain situations, just like mine, and I'm curious how this will evolve over time. Ironically, Windows 11's update will likely inspire developers on the Mac, in how other apps will take advantage of OpenAI in different ways, especially from how Bruin has approached it.

It's an exciting time for AI, but I'm more excited about what developers have planned for it on macOS in the coming months.

Transcribing could about to be a lot easier to do, thanks to an app in the form of MacWhisper, available on macOS.

Transcription services such as Otter and Transcribe enable you to convert audio files to text, so you can add it to a project or an interview to read back on.

Developed by Jordi Bruin, it's free to download, but there's also a Pro version available for $13 / £11 which enables faster transcribing. You can drop an MP3, MP4, WAV, or M4A file into the app, and by using OpenAI, you’re shown a window that displays the whole transcription, and you can edit parts of it if the app has spelled certain things wrong.

Bruin recently brought out version 2 which reduces the size of the app from 4GB to 8MB, and lets you drag and drop files directly from Apple’s Voice Memos app. So if you've used this on an iPhone to record an interview, for example, you can easily obtain a transcription on your Mac soon after.

I've been podcasting for years, and trying to transcribe episodes has always been time-consuming in making sure everything was correct. However, it's something that's always been important to me, as it can help someone with a hearing disability.

With this in mind, I used MacWhisper 2.0 for a recent episode of the iMore Show to see how well it transcribed what, Karen, Stephen, and I spoke about for an hour.  I also took some time to talk to Bruin about how AI could be used as a force for good, as MacWhisper has.

Transcribing with ease

The episode that aired on February 19 was 62 minutes long, but it took MacWhisper just 10 minutes to transcribe. I was able to edit certain parts to replace 'IMoar' with 'iMore', while my name had an additional 'r' which was easily fixable, and I could then export it as a subtitles file, or a document.

In the grand scope of this, it was impressive, and a far cry from me manually transcribing podcasts and interviews back in 2020. I was able to scroll down to the 42-minute mark to find where we were giving our impressions on the Tetris trailer that debuted earlier in the week, for example, so I could go to another topic we were chatting about directly without scrubbing the timeline to aimlessly find it.

Speaking to Bruin, he's hopeful that apps like MacWhisper showcase how AI can be used for good. "I don’t think most people realize that something such as Whisper is also based on similar technology that allows things such as GPT to work," Bruin explains. "While Whisper and Large Language Models are different, they both build on the advancements in AI over the last few years. To me, Whisper really shows that all these advancements can be used in a number of ways we’ve never even considered."

However, accessibility could be the big winner here. AI could allow someone with visual or hearing impairments to help them enjoy podcasts and videos on YouTube for example. We asked Bruin if he's hopeful too that other apps like MacWhisper could take advantage of AI for needs like these. "I hope that AI will make it easier for developers to come up with innovative ways to solve accessibility challenges. Transcriptions for video and audio content are a very obvious improvement, but I’m also looking forward to seeing how AI can make complex computer interactions simpler for people with limited motor skills," Bruin explains.

The next frontier for accessibility?

AI could reach a point where it can generate a person providing sign language for any video for example, or it could work with a Braille Embosser to convert text, podcasts, and video into creating tactile dots for users.

"Having an AI that is trained on the specific movements that a person can do comfortably, to then translate them to complex (sets of) interactions would have a huge impact for a lot of people," Bruin continues. "My main takeaway is that as these complex technologies become more accessible to more developers and users, more solutions can be thought up together with people who need it most."

Bruin has other apps that take advantage of AI, such as TextAssistant which lets you use the technology for certain prompts and requests. From language translation, and simple explainers, to converting code to other languages and more.

However, MacWhisper seems like it could benefit users in ways other apps and AI services can't, and Bruin's not done. "While my main focus is on adding small quality-of-life improvements and features over the next few weeks. MacWhisper 3.0 will probably focus heavily on speaker detection and improved export options that are more customizable," Bruin reveals. "I want to release an iOS app at a later point but I'm going to have to think about how people would use it in that context. I just added a roadmap to the app where users can vote on their favorite features, so that should help me narrow down what I’ll be adding next!"

While MacWhisper is relatively new, it opens up a bunch of opportunities - not just for accessibility, but for students when creating reports, or when you want to watch something with subtitles on. There’s so much potential for AI to be a tool for everyone, and it looks like developers like Bruin are just getting started.

Watching your favorite shows on streaming services with an iPad or iPhone is a great experience. There are dedicated apps for this category, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube and Disney Plus, so you don’t need to use a web browser to access these. However, if you’re on a Mac, your only choice to use these services is through a web browser, and there are no official apps to use here. This is where Clicker comes in.

Clicker for Disney+ is a free third-party app developed by dbk labs that allows anyone with a Mac to watch Disney Plus shows on their Mac without needing to dip into Safari or Chrome. It also lets you take advantage of features that you can't use when in a web browser, such as picture-in-picture support.

For example, say you’re playing a game on Apple Arcade. You’d also like to watch Andor at the same time, but you don’t want to leave fullscreen while playing your game. Click the little ‘PiP’ (or Picture in Picture) button and Andor leaps out of the app and into a floating video window that you can watch over your game. It can be resized, and you can place it anywhere you like on the screen.

Ever since I came across this app, it's been one that I've used almost daily on my MacBook Pro, and I especially like it for documentaries and a rewatch of the TV show LOST. 

While dbk labs offer other apps that work with other streaming services, it only makes me question - why aren't there official ports of these for use in macOS?

A click away from picture-in-picture viewing

I work in two ways. Mainly at a local coffee shop where the baristas are now at first-name terms with me, and at home in my office, where I hook my Mac up to a 28-inch external display, with a best wireless mouse and a Keychron K2 keyboard.

For both of these scenarios, I like to use my web browsers for work only, while having anything else contained in their own app. From Apple TV Plus to Spotify, it just works easier for me as I look at projects in Google Docs and Photoshop.

Clicker fits in well with this. I can rewatch a favorite episode of The Simpsons, such as 'Marge vs the Monorail', and have it in PiP as I work away in Google Chrome.

This isn't just a web app wrapped into something that can be used on macOS though. You can go full-screen on your 16-inch MacBook Pro if needed, alongside being able to resume exactly where you left off if you quickly needed to apply a macOS update. With these features, it makes it a lot easier to fit watching the Simpsons into my workflow.

Doing what Netflix, Hulu and YouTube aren't on macOS

But it's not just Disney Plus that you can download - dbk labs offer similar apps for Prime Video, YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix, all with unique features like picture-in-picture support. Some of these apps are free while others are available for a one-time fee of $7.99 / £6.89.

It's still baffling to me that, in an official capacity anyway, Apple and Amazon are the only ones who offer a dedicated macOS app. The TV app from Apple allows you to watch shows that you've either bought from the iTunes Store, or from an Apple TV Plus subscription. Amazon Prime Video is essentially a port of the iPad app, which allows you to watch shows from its streaming service. Due to its nature as a port, it's clunky to use, and can be slow at times.

So seeing Clicker's version of Prime Video, alongside everyone else's bar Apple, is refreshing. With Apple's take on virtual reality allegedly set to debut at WWDC in June, we may even see the appearance of its TV app in VR, which could spur others to finally make its streaming services available in an app for the headset as well.

Regardless, dbk labs' effort is an admirable one, and while there are no hints of updates or further support with its apps for now, every one of its efforts works well .t should be an example to Disney, YouTube, Netflix, and the rest to look at making its apps available on macOS, while taking advantage of what the Mac offers, such as PiP, HDR support, and more.

MacPaw founder Oleksandr Kosovan is not your typical tech CEO. Growing up in Ukraine, Kosovan's love affair with tech began early, spending his nights tinkering with refurbished computers. By his late teens he was already a MacHead, reprogramming the Windows-dominated software at his university to be Mac-compatible.

Those wilderness years of Mac-worship paid off with the launch of MacPaw in 2008, along with its flagship product, CleanMyMac.

CleanMyMac X went on to evolve even further from its original iteration as a digital vacuum cleaner. Three times faster than its predecessor, it provides 49 distinct tools in 12 languages and intelligently optimises your machine, removing malware and keeping drivers current, all under an innovative and shiny UI.

With over 25 million downloads across 185 countries, CleanMyMac has been around for 14 years. CleanMyMac X is notarized by Apple and was featured in the app on the Mac App Store.

Clean Out Your Computer Day

The Institute of Business Technology declared National Clean Out Your Computer Day in 2000. Since then, Mac and PC enthusiasts have celebrated this day on the second Monday of February.

Clean Out Your Computer Day is a fine opportunity to clear out dusty folders, outdated files and unwanted screenshots from your hard drive. Here are some cleaning routines and tips from the critically acclaimed team at MacPaw.

1/ How often should you clean your Mac?

Regular maintenance is the key to keeping your Mac in top shape. About 47% of MacPawians clean their machines once a week, with 35% doing so monthly and a whopping 75% claiming digital clutter kills their productivity. There's one thing everyone agrees on: CleanMyMac reminders are why most Macs stay neat and clean at MacPaw. 

2/ How can you tell if your Mac needs cleaning?

Chief Technology & Innovation Officer Vira Tkachenko: “Look for both visual (e.g: a cluttered desktop) and performance-related (e.g: apps freeze) signs that your Mac needs cleaning. If you get a notification that your Mac is almost full or low on memory, don’t put off a cleanup.”

Check for these signs to see if your Mac needs cleaning:

• Mac’s battery is draining fast
• Mac runs slowly or has performance issues
• Desktop and downloads are cluttered with files
• Mac’s overheating
• Mac takes longer to start up

3/ What are your top tips for digital spring cleaning?

While tidying up useless screenshots, blurry photos and tons of apps can be tiresome, some MacPawians love Mac cleaning during flights or train rides. What better time to organize your random downloads and too-many open tabs than when you’re stuck in a seat for more than three hours? 

MacPaw Engineering Manager, Dmytro Tretiakov, shared his step-by-step cleaning routine:

• Remove outdated files and declutter your desktop
• Check your apps and uninstall those you stopped using a while ago
• Scan for Large & Old Files in CleanMyMac X
• Run a System Junk scan to remove unneeded cache
• Empty Trash
• Restart your Mac 

4/ Which CleanMyMac X features do you use the most? 

While manual cleaning has its place, there are many things that only CleanMyMac X can handle. These are the top five tasks CleanMyMac X is extremely good at (according to the MacPawians): 

• Mac health monitoring
• Cache cleanup
• App uninstallation & update
• Disk space cleanup
• Malware scanning

As for the best CleanMyMac X module, three features were on everyone’s list: Smart Scan, Uninstaller, and Large & Old Files. Use these three for a quick junk clear-out. 

5/ What are the most common Mac cleaning mistakes?

• Cleaning up your Mac yourself. There’s a reason CleanMyMac X exists. A professional solution can spot files you may miss when going through your folders manually.
• Removing apps by moving them to trash. Sending an app to the Trash may leave lots of app-related and leftover data in your Mac’s system. Uninstaller in CleanMyMac X will help uninstall programs completely.
• Forgetting about your desktop. Your desktop is like your Mac’s junk drawer: it contains lots of items that seem important but are rarely opened more than once. 
• Moving/deleting system-related files and folders. If you don’t know what a specific file is for, it’s better to leave it. Use Mac cleaning software that doesn’t touch the essential items.

6/ What are the best ways to protect your Mac from malware?

Email Marketing Specialist, Tetiana Kudria, shares the four golden rules she follows to protect herself:

• Don’t download from unknown sources
• Use secure Wi-Fi networks 
• Change your passwords regularly
• Scan your Mac with Malware Removal in CleanMyMac X

Product Manager Pavlo Haidamak, also advises users to be extra vigilant with USB drives. Don’t plug unknown drives into your Mac, have anti-malware software installed. 

Head of Information Security, Mykola Srebniuk shared one simple tip: don’t download viruses. Although this may sound a bit basic, it’s not always easy to do. Double-checking apps you download, and links you click can help prevent threats from getting into your Mac in the first place.

7/ What do you do while CleanMyMac X is scanning your Mac?

Smart Scans are thorough but quick. Even so, some MacPawians like taking time out while CleanMyMac X works its magic. Some relax with a cup of coffee while admiring the app’s striking animations.

If you’re feeling productive it’s easy to carry on working while the scan is still running. And as long as you check your Mac for junk regularly, the average scan won’t take longer than 15 seconds. 

8/ What’s your best Mac cleaning tip?

Here are some of the best cleaning tips out there, courtesy of the MacPawians:

• Clearing junk is like performing routine car maintenance. You do it occasionally to ensure you won’t have problems for a long time
• Run cleanups daily. Make this habit stick, so it’s like brushing your teeth
• Move important documents from the Downloads folder instantly.
• Follow a clean desktop policy
• Smart Scan = Smart Mac

9/ What’s an effective way to clean cat hair out of keyboards?

Macpawians adore their cats, and cats love Macs. You can often find them relaxing on a Mac keyboard. If you have a Mac-loving cat or dog and your keyboard has seen better, less furry days, try these hacks:

• You don’t need a special device. A Dyson or any other vacuum cleaner will do the trick
• Work remotely to avoid office cats
• Don’t worry. One or two hairs won’t harm your keyboard

Make the most of Clean Out Your Computer Day’s tips and tricks with CleanMyMac X.

If you dislike YouTube Shorts as much as I have since they debuted back in September 2020, there's a new Safari Extension that can erase them when you're in Apple's web browser on a Mac.

I've never seen the point of YouTube Shorts. I go onto YouTube on my best Mac to watch certain channels in the early morning, or during my lunch break to catch up on Shark Tank and Dragons' Den videos - if I wanted to look at ten-second videos, I'd go on TikTok or look at Stories on Instagram for something similar.

Thankfully, Eat the Shorts is here. Created by Aaron Pearce, it's a Safari extension that will erase any mention of Shorts. You can grab it for a one-time purchase of $1.99 / £1.79 on the Mac App Store. Looks like I'm not alone in my distaste for YouTube Shorts.

Eat all of our shorts

Eat the Shorts is Mac only and solves a big issue for me. I'd love to see a way that Eat the Shorts can arrive on iOS and iPadOS when I'm in YouTube's app as well. At the moment, you can hide them for thirty days by pressing on the three dots above the section, but I'd like things to go even further.

Unfortunately, the Apple App store guidelines dictate how apps interact, and it means that extensions like this can be a lot more locked down on mobile platforms. That makes things like Eat the Shorts harder to get working on Safari on iOS and iPadOS. It's not impossible, but for a one-person team you can see why it might be out of reach for now.

Regardless, Eat the Shorts is already solving YouTube's biggest problem for me as I browse the site to look for background music as I work today, and for that one-time price, it's all I need.

If you've ever wanted different dock settings for different displays, then here the app for you. It's called HiDock, and it's a very simple little app that does an epic job at something that's been a bugbear for quite some time. In essence, it changes the properties of a Mac's app Dock depending on which display setup you have connected.

Say, for example, that when you're working on your best MacBook that you want the Dock to hide itself, but when you've connected a bigger external display you want the Dock nice and big and unhidden. You've got more spare screen, after all. 

Traditionally that would require a quick trip to the settings menu every time you want it changed (or the Terminal app for something more permanent), but with HiDock, it's all automatic.

HiDock runs in the background, and once you've finished the initial setup you can pretty much forget about it. It will let you dictate where you want the Dock, so on the left-hand side, right-hand side, or bottom, and whether you want it to hide. You can also choose how big you want the dock, from 'tiny' to 'huge'. These settings are then automatically deployed whenever you connect to a bigger display or to a multiple-display setup.

The best part of the whole app? A little nostalgia slider that changes all the Macs in the app to old models. It doesn't do anything to the Dock itself, but it's fun.

You can grab HiDock from App designer Rafa's website. It's free, although you can always donate some money to him if you absolutely love the app. Rafa has also made an app called 'Hand Mirror' that lets you summon a small camera window when you tap the icon in the menu bar. Hand Mirror is available on the App Store, and you can find out more on its website.

If you run multiple different display groups, however, HiDock app is extremely useful and surprisingly powerful. It's super easy to use, and only gets looked at once before it blends almost entirely into the background.