Halide is a fully featured iPhone ($899 at Amazon) camera app that gives you all kinds of control that you can’t get with the stock iOS Camera app. For times when you aren’t snapping a quick shot, Halide lets you manually set the focus, shutter speed, ISO and white balance. And you can shoot in …

In addition to the dozen iOS 12 Shortcuts suggestions from my colleague Jason Cipriani, I have a trio of YouTube-related additions for your Shortcuts Library. One lets you download YouTube videos on your iPhone ($899 at Amazon) — no computer or iTunes required. Another lets you listen to YouTube in the background. And the last lets you look up YouTube …

With laptop battery life, I’ll take any help I can get. The clearest sign that my MacBook Pro ($575 at Amazon) is aging is the unavoidable fact that its running time continues to evaporate, if not day after day then month after month. It just doesn’t hold a charge like it used to.  Powering the display is the biggest drain …

It’s something you stare at each time you sit down in front of your PC, but I doubt you even see it as you quickly type in your password and unlock windows. The Windows 10 ($144 at Amazon) lock screen can be more than just a password-entry screen. It can be set up to show app notifications, calendar events and …

If your kid will unwrap an iPhone ($899 at Amazon) this holiday season, then you will need to find a time to pry it out of his or her hand and set up an Apple ID along with some restrictions in iOS against the wilds of the Internet as well as the App Store. And unless your child is preternaturally …

If you are like me and most Mac users, then you own and operate a 12- or 13-inch MacBook. Such a laptop offers an ideal compromise between portability and productivity, but at certain points of the day, my 13-inch MacBook Pro ($575 at Amazon) can start to feel a bit cramped as I attempt to juggle too many open windows. …

As the calendar turns to December, my kids maintain they still believe in Santa — but only, I suspect, in an effort to keep the gravy train rolling. They are certainly more dubious in the summer months of the magical fat man and his challenging delivery schedule, flying reindeer or no. Would an admission of disbelief, however, result in no …

After you have taken the necessary steps to shop on Amazon without spoiling holiday surprises, the next step is to lock down shipping notifications from Google. My kids borrow my iPhone all the time to play music, watch YouTube videos and Google stuff. I’ve already had a few close calls where a shipping notification from the Google search app nearly …

Last year, Windows 10 ($144 at Amazon) added the space-saving ability to send local files to OneDrive with the Files On-Demand feature. With it, you can right-click on a file you have stored on your PC and move it to OneDrive. The file gets uploaded but leaves behind a placeholder in File Explorer, which you can click to download and …

One of the big selling points of the iPhone XS, XS Max and iPhone XR is the ability to edit the depth effect in portrait mode photos. These new iPhone models let you edit portrait mode photos to increase or decrease the background blur effect — aka bokeh — to your liking. It’s certainly a handy feature and gives you …