Sometimes a life hack works when I wish it didn't. I, for example, am vulnerable to depression and anxiety. I also passionately hate running. I have, unfortunately, discovered that running regularly helps my mental health a great deal. I'm thankful (because I feel better) and resentful (because I have to run).

This is how I feel about Brain.fm, a music service I discovered a couple weeks ago when the company got in touch with me. I started using the service, mostly for the purposes of writing this article, and something unexpected happened: I noticed it's a great deal easier to get started on my work in the morning. I like this (because I'm getting more done) but am also annoyed (because I'd rather be listening to the music I love).

Credit: Justin Pot

It's a conundrum. Brain.fm is a subscription service that costs $14.99 per month, more than Spotify (which costs $12.99 per month). The product sells itself as having a collection of music backed by scientific research to increase your ability to focus, meditate, and sleep. There's also a free trial, meaning you can get a feel for whether it works for you.

After a few weeks of testing, I feel it might be onto something. I don't always trust my intuition, though, so I wanted to dig deeper. Is this for real? Or am I falling for snake oil? More importantly: can I go back to listening to KEXP in the morning?

Is the science behind Brain.fm legit?

After a few days of using the application, I couldn't help but wonder. Is my increased focus real? Or is it a placebo?

So I wrote to Daniel J. Levitin, professor emeritus of neurology at McGill University, and author of This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. He replied quickly, and concisely: "It's all placebo," he said.

It was a very concise email from an academic about a complex topic, which as a journalist is always nice. But Levitin didn't stop there—he told me to get in touch with another neuroscientist, one who had published research on this type of modulated music. I'll say more below about that research, but first, let's take a look at what's actually in those Brain.fm tracks.

What using Brain.fm is like

You can't use this service to search for a specific artist—you instead let the application know what you're trying to do (Focus, Relax, Meditate, or Sleep). In the Focus section, there are a few sub-options: Deep Work, Motivation, Creativity, Learning, and Light Work. Choose what you want to do and a track will start playing.

Credit: Justin Pot

The genres, such as they are, range from the kind of "chill beats" you can find on YouTube to post-rock and symphonic—though it's all instrumental.

"The basic problem is that most music is made to grab your attention," Kevin Woods, a neuroscience PhD who works for Brain.fm, told me. "If you talk to a music producer, they'll tell you that their job is to make things punchy and bright, and to make somebody sit up and turn their head and favorite the song on Spotify."

That attention seeking can make playing music during the work day distracting in a subtle way, according to Woods. "The problem is that a lot of the distraction is not overt in the sense of, 'I can feel my attention breaking and I have to turn this off or turn down the volume'—it's more like, 'I'm working at 70, 80% capacity, and I'm not really sure why.'"

So the music at Brain.fm is written and performed by in-house composers who are intentionally trying not to keep your attention. But that alone doesn't really set Brain.fm apart from using ambient music or video game soundtracks to focus, let alone the various "chill beats" playlists and live streams that are out there. And that's where Brain.fm's scientific claims come in.

Brain.fm says the key is "amplitude modulation"

Brain.fm points to several scientific studies on its homepage, also mentioning that its research was in part funded by that National Science Foundation. A lot of the claims are based on "amplitude modulation," which Woods told me is what sets Brain.fm's music apart.

But what is amplitude modulation? They're "fast modulations added that do not usually occur in music," according to Woods. If you listen to the music for a bit, you'll hear an almost fluttering kind of sound. These sounds, which are added to compositions in post-production using AI, are available at three different levels for each track. The "ADHD Mode," which is the highest of the three settings, is what I mostly used while testing.

I find this effect a little bit disorienting, so I sometimes needed to turn the setting down. It's hard to deny the effect is a musical signature of Brain.fm. But does it work?

Research on amplitude modulation is limited, but promising

I became a bit less skeptical of the science after getting in touch with the expert that Levitin recommended: Psyche Loui, a neuroscientist, musician, and Associate Dean of Research at Northeastern University. Loui told me that "it's not all placebo", pointing to a paper she published alongside Woods and other neurologists in Communications Biology.

Now, to be clear, it's not unusual for scientists to disagree about how things work—that's part of the process. And the claims made by the paper are narrow—the conclusion is that music with amplitude modulation can help people focus on tasks when compared to both pink noise and music without amplitude modulation. The control music, according to Woods, were the same tracks—the only difference was whether amplitude modulation was added. The results of testing, and brain scans, suggest the effect is real.

"We did something which is rarely done in music research, which is a very well-controlled study that only changes one factor in the music," Woods told me. As with all scientific research, there's always more to learn. But to me, a study making these claims published in a Nature-affiliated publication suggests there might be something to this.

At the very least, Brain.fm helped me reflect on my relationship with music at work

Brain.fm, if nothing else, has been an opportunity to reflect on my relationship with music. I really enjoy discovering new music during the workday, but after using Brain.fm for a few weeks I wonder if that might have been the reason I have trouble focusing in the morning.

Maybe it's best to listen to music that fades into the background when it's time to focus, and save music discovery for when I only need part of my brain. And maybe I should save the music I really love for when I'm not working at all. Brain.fm, if nothing else, taught me that.

But I also find that the music really does work when I need to focus. I still am not fully sure if the effect is real, or if any music that blends into the background would do the job. I sometimes play the entire Boards of Canada discography when I need to focus, and find that works about as well.

All that having been said, I really think anyone who has read this much about Brain.fm should probably go ahead and see for themselves.

I'm just a humble immigrant, but as a mere (legal!) guest in the U.S., I can't help but notice that the country is rather, shall we say, politically divided these days (sorry if pointing that out seems rude). It seems international scammers have also noticed—and are taking advantage in subtle ways.

Recently, investor Fred Benenson blogged about a sophisticated phishing campaign targeting SendGrid users. Phishers sent emails claiming the company was going to add a large "Support ICE" button at the bottom of every outgoing email unless users opted out. The emails also featured a large blue button promising to help you disable the message, which, when clicked, naturally led to a fake version of SendGrid that would allow the scammers to steal login information.

As scams go, it's not a bad play: Phishing emails work best when they induce a sense of panic—that way you're less likely to think critically about them, and just act. It's not hard to imagine this particular email being effective, given the political climate right now. Say you're running a fair trade coffee company—you wouldn't want a giant "Support ICE" button below your signature at this moment in history.

But the trick didn't just target left-wing organizations: Variations on the theme claimed the company was going to add pro-LGBT+ and Black Lives Matter banners as well. The differing political messages aren't really the point of the scam, you see—the point is to get business owners to panic about projecting the "wrong" values so that they will click the link and give away their login information. Scammers rely on psychological tricks to rope in their victims, all of them designed to get you to stop thinking rationally. Exploiting America's political divide seems to be an excellent way to do that.

Political phishing schemes are nothing new

This is just the latest example of a scam that uses politics as a tool. Back in 2020, a fake Black Lives Matter voting campaign spread malware by pretending to be from a county official looking for feedback on the then-exploding political movement. People on both side of the partisan divide ended up clicking through and getting infected.

And then there are the campaigns where people pretend to be politicians and beg for donations: Back in 2024 Lifehacker reported on a rash of political donation scams that popped up during the presidential election cycle. That trend is still growing, according to Stacey Wood, a fraud expert writing for Psychology Today. "What is especially challenging for consumers and voters is that legitimate campaign operatives use many of the same common persuasion techniques employed by scammers," she writes.

All of which is to say that international scammers have equal access to American media outlets, are aware of our political divides, and are effective at using them to exploit your emotions in order to steal your money.

How to spot a political phishing scam

What can you do to protect yourself? First, be aware of the tricks that scammers use, and always approach your email inbox with skepticism. Before you click any link from an unfamiliar sender or in an unsolicited email, hover over it to see if it's going to a website that looks legit. Even better: Avoid clicking links altogether, and head to the website for a given service directly by typing it into your browser.

Remember, it's easier to fall for a scam than you think, so it pays to be skeptical, especially when you encounter a call to action designed to get you to react in a panic.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

If you're like most people in 2026, you don't have cable and only miss it occasionally—mostly when there's a specific live sporting event taking place and you need a way to catch it. What if you could get cable for a single day, then ditch it? That's the basic idea behind Sling's 1 Day Pass. For $5, you can get a day's access to ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, and a few more channels besides. That array will cover quite a few nationally broadcast sporting events.

Unfortunately, like most everything related to watching live television in the age of streaming, this is more complicated than I'd like. A 1 Day Pass is only available for Sling Orange, which includes just a subset of Sling's overall offers. On top of that, Sling has always been a little bit confusing—an attribute it shares with the legacy cable companies still standing. But if you need one of the channels offered on Sling Orange, it's theoretically a good deal.

Credit: Sling

Given it's February, and you might be wondering whether you can use a 1 Day Pass to watch the Super Bowl without cable. Sadly, the answer is no: The big game is on NBC this year, and while Sling does offer NBC in a few markets, local channels aren't covered by Sling Orange The same goes for the winter Olympics, which will air on NBC and USA; you'll have to make a different plan to watch the Winter Games.

But March Madness is coming up too, and quite a few of those games are going to be available via a 1 Day Pass, so keep this service in mind if there's a single sporting event you want to watch, especially if you notice it's on ESPN, TBS, or TNT.

Now, could one argue that it's easier to install an ad blocker and search the internet for a pirated stream than it is to figure out how to legally watch something? Yes. Yes one could. But a Sling 1 Day Pass can save you from that temptation (not to mention accidentally downloading malware) for just $5.

If you bought a Windows computer in the past couple years, there's a good chance that it a "Copilot" key where the right ctrl key used to be. But what if you actually used the right ctrl key? Or what if you prefer Claude or ChatGPT to Copilot? Whatever your reason for not loving the Copilot key, don't worry—you can change it. Here's how to do so in the Windows settings or, if necessary, using Microsoft Powertoys.

How to change the Copilot key in settings

Open the Settings application and head to the Personalization section. You should find a Customize Copilot key option here, assuming you're using a recent-ish version of Windows 11. Click the drop-down menu and you'll have three options: Copilot, Search, and Custom. You can change the button to Search if you'd rather use the key to bring up the Windows search tool instead of Copilot.

Alternatively, you can use the Custom option to launch any application on your computer instead of Copilot. This could be a useful way to open the Claude or ChatGPT desktop apps instead of Copilot. Or, if you're not a big AI fan, you could just have it open your browser.

This is a limited number of options, granted, but it's easy and doesn't require any sort of tools. It's your simplest option.

How to change the Copilot key using Microsoft Powertoys

You may have noticed that the options in Settings don't let you remap the Copilot key to the ctrl key, or any other key—all you can do is launch an application. For that, you're going to need to install Powertoys, the secret Microsoft app that improves Windows.

After installing, go to the Keyboard Manager section. The simplest thing to do, which may or may not work on your computer, is to click Remap keys. You should be able to press your Copilot key to remap it (it will show up as F23, which we'll get to). Now you can choose what you want the key to serve as. This could be ctrl, if you like, or it could be any other key. Click OK, and you should be done.

Credit: Justin Pot

There's a chance this won't work for you. Why? Because the Copilot key works a little differently depending on what kind of laptop you have. Buckle up: This gets complicated in a very Microsoft-y way.

On many computers, the Copilot key functions as an F23 key. This is a workaround, of sorts, allowing Microsoft to add a key without changing the operating system very much. Most modern keyboards only have one row of function keys—around 12 in total. Keyboards in the 80's and 90's sometimes had two rows of keys—around 24 in total. Windows, to this day, still supports all 24 keys, even though basically no one has that many function keys. Microsoft took advantage of this—on many laptops the Copilot key functions as an F23 key.

But this is Windows, so of course it's more complicated than that. On some laptops, pressing the Copilot key triggers a keyboard shortcut: Windows-Shift-F23. This means you can't use the Remap keys function in Powertoys to remap the Copilot key, because the Copilot key already triggers a keyboard shortcut.

What you can do is use the Remap a shortcut option. Use this, then press the Copilot key as your selection. You should see the keyboard shortcut Windows-Shift-F23 show up. Now choose what you want to remap your Copilot key to.

This works, with a caveat: You really can't use it to bring back your ctrl key, as users have noted on Github. The issue is that you can't remap a keyboard shortcut to a modifier key, just to a single keypress. It's not clear what could fix this, and I suspect users of such laptops are just stuck. Which is all to say that you might not be able to get your control key back, but least you can remap the key to do something else.

Most people haven't actively managed a firewall in at least a decade, assuming they ever have. But keeping track of which applications are using the internet—and how much data they're using—is still useful at times, as is blocking apps from accessing the net entirely.

While you're traveling, for example, internet access might be limited, so it's a good idea to cut off applications that constantly churn through data. But even while at home, it's a good security practice to review which applications are connecting to the internet. And while macOS comes with a firewall, it's not really a useful tool for that.

Which is why I like FireWally. This totally free application, offered by the Ukraine-based indie Mac developers Nektony, isn't a tool for power users—it's streamlined and user friendly. Click the menu bar icon and you'll see a list of applications using the internet. You can see a summary of all traffic today, in the past hour, or monitor incoming traffic in real time.

Beside every application is its data usage. You can see a breakdown of inbound and outbound traffic for any application by hovering the mouse over it. You can block any application from accessing the internet by toggling the switch.

Credit: Justin Pot

What if you don't recognize an application? I, traditionally, ended up copying the name of the application and pasting it into a search engine. FireWally tries to save you some time by providing AI-generated summaries of each application using Apple Intelligence (assuming your Mac supports that feature). It's a useful way to quickly remind yourself what a particular application is, or to identify one you don't recognize.

It's a very streamlined application, but perfect for anyone hoping to understand a bit more about how much data their various Mac applications are using. Give it a spin if you're looking for a simple firewall application.

Some people love AI. If you're not one of them (or if you have a favorite AI tool that isn't baked into it), using Windows 11 can feel increasingly hostile. It seems like every part of it now exists to push you into using Copilot—even notepad.exe has a prominent AI button in the user interface at this point.

If you'd like your operating system to go back to being an operating system, check out
RemoveWindowsAI. This free script changes various registry keys to disable AI features including Copilot, Recall, and the Copilot integrations in applications including Edge, Paint, and Notepad. Using various workarounds , it then configures Windows Update to not install those updates again (the documentation breaks the process down, if you're interested).

How to run RemoveWindowsAI on your machine

To get started you need to open Microsoft PowerShell on your computer. Make sure you're using Windows PowerShell 5.1, and not the updated PowerShell 7 (this only really applies if you've intentionally installed PowerShell 7, so don't worry about this step if you didn't actively do that).

To start the script you will need to copy a command from the Github page for RemoveWindowsAI and paste it into your PowerShell window (I'm not including the command directly here in case it changes in the future). Once you do, the user interface will show up, allowing you to choose which AI features you want to disable. Make your choices and watch the changes take place in the PowerShell window.

Credit: Justin Pot

I tried this out, removing everything. I then opened Notepad—no Copilot icon in sight. The Copilot application was also gone, along with all reference to AI in the Settings application. It would be nice if Microsoft offered a way to do this without resorting to this sort of unofficial workaround, but that isn't the world we live in.

There are a lot of apps on the market that claim to "clean up" your Mac—for a price. Some offer subscriptions, some cost a lot up front, but for the most part, they offer the same few features—wiping things like caches and logs, completely uninstalling apps, and monitoring system health. These apps all tend to be a little on the bloated side, with a lot of animations and graphics.

The free, open source, Terminal-based Mole is the opposite of those applications. Running entirely from the command line, Mole couldn't possibly look less flashy, but it combines a number of different tools that can free up hard drive space on your Mac while also keeping things running smoothly.

To get started, you'll need to install Mole. The simplest way to do this is by using Homebrew, which any Mac user interested in a Terminal-based application should probably do anyway. There is, alternatively, a script you can use to install Mole on the download page.

To use the application, just type "mole" in the Terminal and hit enter—you'll be presented with the five main tools offered: Clean, Uninstall, Optimize, Analyze, and Status. (You can, alternatively, type "mole" followed by the tool you want to use—more on that later.)

Credit: Justin Pot

The first, Clean, scans your hard drive for caches and temporary files, then deletes them. The application explains what it's doing every step of the way, and you can always do a dry run using the command mole clean --dry-run if you'd like to see an overview before affecting any system files.

Credit: Justin Pot

The second tool, Uninstall, presents you with a list of applications installed on your computer and lets you know how much storage space they're using. You can select as many applications as you want with the spacebar, then hit enter in order to completely remove them. This doesn't just uninstall the application itself—it also removes all associated files, including settings.

The third tool, Optimize, performs a number of routine maintenance tasks such as flushing the DNS cache, optimizing databases, and refreshing the Finder. I find this useful when my Mac is hanging for seemingly no reason.

Credit: Justin Pot

The fourth tool, Analyze, lets you see which folders are taking up the most space on your hard drive—useful if you're trying to free up disk space on your Mac. You'll see a list of folders alongside how much space they're taking up. Open a folder to see a breakdown of the folders and files inside it. I was able to find a number of large files using this tool, some of which I didn't need anymore.

Credit: Justin Pot

The final tool, Status, is a simple dashboard with stats including CPU, memory, and hard drive usage alongside an animated ascii-art cat. It's simple.

It's all very straight forward to use, and there are generally instructions on the screen telling you what to do next. One thing I do want to point out is that you can run most of these tools directly from the Terminal, without the initial menu. You can, for example, type mole clean to run the cleaner or mole status to open the dashboard. You can read more on the project's Github page.

Sometimes you need just a little bit more light during a video call, especially if you're in a dimly lit room. The latest macOS update (26.2) has a trick for this: you can use the edge of your screen as a ring light.

The feature, which adds a rounded white rectangle to your screen, is called Edge Light. The rectangle takes up part of your screen but will become partially transparent if you move your mouse pointer into it, meaning you'll mostly be able to use your computer normally.

You can use the feature by clicking the camera icon on the menu bar during a call and toggling on the Edge Light option. You can also adjust the brightness and the color of the edge light from here.

Credit: Justin Pot

I tried this in a well-lit room and didn't notice much of a difference, which makes sense. In a totally dark room, though, it proved extremely helpful. Here's how I looked without Edge Light:

Credit: Justin Pot

As you can see, I'm just barely lit by the laptop itself. Here's how I look with the feature turned on:

Credit: Justin Pot

It's a lot easier to make out my face, but whether that's a pro or a con is a matter of opinion. Try the feature out if you find yourself on a video call with the lights off. Note that it's only offered on devices with Apple Silicon.

Whether you're a teacher, a parent, or just someone with a big family, you know how difficult it can be to keep a room full of kids quiet for any amount of time.

One trick I've used is offering to time how long kids can stay quiet. For reasons I don't understand, kids love it when something is being timed. But that only work a few times at the most, so it's good to have as many other tricks on hand as possible. That's why I was fascinated to learn there are multiple websites that use the microphone on your laptop to motivate kids to be quiet. Some put children's curiosity to work, having animated characters show up if the group is quiet for long enough. Others combine animation with good old-fashioned timers.

Here are a few you can check out—all of them are completely free and don't require anything more than your browser.

Silent Forest: Animals emerge if the room is quiet

Credit: Justin Pot

Silent Forest shows a simple animated forest with a volume indicator. Stay silent for a bit and a cat shows up. A bit longer and a bear shows up. Who else might join? There's only one way to find out. Make too much noise, though, and you'll scare the animals, meaning you have to start over if you ever want to see everyone. The idea is that the kids will be curious to see which animals will show up next and keep quiet—and, ideally, pressure each other into staying quiet.

Bouncy Balls: Noise will disrupt the balls

Credit: Justin Pot

Bouncy Balls fills your screen with balls—options include colored balls, emojis, numbered balls, eyeballs, and even bubbles. The balls are constantly vibrating, threatening to explode with a bit of noise—which they do. There's a risk of this backfiring—it's sincerely very fun to see the balls bounce—which you can mitigate by enabling a shushing or beeping sound after any violation.

Classroom Zen: Don't interrupt Ruby or Milo

Credit: Justin Pot

Classroom Zen offers a few different tools for keeping the room quiet. Two feature Ruby, a cartoon who is meditating in either the mountains or the desert. If the room gets too loud, her eyes will start opening—keep going and she'll ask the room to be quiet. Another features Milo, a three-eyed monster who is trying to sleep.

The secret sauce here, though, is the timer at the top of the screen. This means you can tell the kids they need to be quiet for a certain amount of time and have a timer to enforce that.

I get really carsick if I try to read in a moving vehicle. And there's a reason for that: my eyes and my sense of movement are out of sync.

At least, that's according to the CDC, which states that motion sickness, "happens when the movement you see is different from what your inner ear senses." Your inner ear is a sack of fluid that moves when you do, giving you an innate sense of movement. If you're in a car and watching the horizon, your senses are aligned. But if you're looking at your phone, your senses are confusing each other. It's similar to the reason VR games make some people feel sick.

The free Android app KineStop aims to help. The application overlays a transparent horizon, and a number of transparent dots, across your entire screen. The accelerometer on your phone is used to move these reference points as your phone moves, helping to reduce the conflict between your eyes and your inner ear. You can turn the feature on manually in the application or, if you prefer, you can set it up to turn on automatically when you're in a moving car.

I tried it out, wondering if it would help with my carsickness, and it did—surprisingly well. Normally I can't read for more than a few minutes without feeling sick, but the KineStop app helped me do so for longer, without discomfort. I'm still not going to be able to read novels during a long road trip, mind you, but I can look up the next restaurant on a road trip without vomiting, and I call that a win.

Credit: Justin Pot

KineStop is totally free, though there's a $3.50 pro version that adds themed overlays, including one that makes it look like your phone is a half-empty beer. It's great to support a developer, but I also think the free version will work fine for most everyone.

Want to block ads on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad? wBlock is quickly becoming my favorite solution: it's free, open source, fast, and customizable.

Ad blocking is in a weird place. Google, the company that makes more money from advertising than any other on Earth, is actively working to make ad blockers worse on Chrome while it also makes it harder to block ads on YouTube. Basically, it's a good time to not use Chrome.

So it's nice that Apple users have another choice: Safari. And, as luck would have it, Safari has an extremely efficient API for ad blocking built right in. The ad blocker wBlock uses this, and the result is ads are blocked in a way that doesn't slow down your browsing.

I wrote a few months ago about uBlock Origin for Safari, which doesn't use Apple's native blocking feature. I enjoyed how effective that application was at blocking ads, but over time I've found it does impact the performance of my browser a little. After setting up wBlock, everything feels snappy.

You can install wBlock from the App Store on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. After doing so, you can choose which filter lists you want to use. Several are offered, or you can just stick with the defaults.

Credit: Justin Pot

You will also be asked if you want to enable any userscripts. The ones offered bring back YouTube's old interface and bypass paywalls. You can also install custom userscripts, if you want, meaning you won't need a separate application for that functionality.

After that, you'll need to open Safari, head to the settings, and turn on all the wBlock entries you see on the extensions page. Do that and you should be able to browse the web without any ads.

If you're curious about how this extension works and how it compares to other Safari ad blockers, I recommend checking out the documentation on Github—it goes over how this tool works and how it differs from other applications. I also encourage you to think about the pros and cons of blocking ads overall.

Back in the Windows XP days, when the only search functionality was a cartoon dog in the sidebar of Windows Explorer (not a joke), Google released Google Desktop. If you installed the application, you could search the files on your computer the same way you could search the web. The application made finding your own documents quick—as a small town reporter in northern Alberta, I constantly used this service to dig through my old notes and previous articles.

The service was shut down in 2011, announced via a blog post, which stated that the feature was no longer necessary in the cloud storage era. And that was the end of Google offering to search files on your computer—until now. Back in September, Google announced an experimental Windows-only application named "Google App for Windows" that, among other things, searches the files on your computer.

Nostalgic person that I am, I couldn't help but wonder: was this going to be similar to the retro offering? So I gave it a shot. The installation requires opting in to an "experiment" using your Google account, then downloading and installing an application. After that, you can bring up a search by using the keyboard shortcut Alt+Space, which brings up a search bar. You can use this to search for files on your computer, your Google Drive, and information on the web.

The actual file search doesn't seem particularly sophisticated. While the retro Google Desktop could search the contents of files, the Google App for Windows seems to mostly only be aware of file names. That's disappointing—I liked being able to figure out which files I mentioned particular names, or try to find the source of a sentence I remember writing. This local search functionality honestly isn't much better than the search that comes with Windows.

What this new app can do, though, is search your Google Drive. I was able to quickly find and open files I'd created in Google Docs, then open them in one click. The ability to search these cloud docs alongside my local ones in one place is a decent reason to give this application a chance.

Credit: Justin Pot

And there are also a few web-based features. If there are no files that match your search, you'll see Google search results—select any of those and you'll see an AI-generated blurb answering your question. If you'd prefer traditional Google search results, you can get those instead—just turn off "AI mode" by clicking your profile picture and turning off the AI Mode toggle.

Finally, this application can be used to take a screenshot of your computer and answer questions related to it. For example, I took a snap of my desktop wallpaper—a photo my wife took in New Zealand—and got an accurate description of the location.

Credit: Justin Pot

The feature is similar to those offered by the desktop application of ChatGPT and Claude, just powered by Google's AI instead of those tools. I'm not sure I'd find myself using this regularly, but it's an interesting idea.

The Google App for Windows, sadly, isn't a resurrection of the long-dead Google Desktop, but it is an interesting tool that combines a simple local file search with results from your Google Drive and the web. It's worth playing around with if you're a dedicated Google user who still stores a lot of files on their computer.

Imagine an incredibly embarrassing text popping up on your screen while you're giving an online presentation. Now imagine you never have to worry about this ever happening again. On Air Mode is a free Mac application that does one thing: It sets your Mac to Do Not Disturb mode whenever your microphone is active.

The idea is that your microphone being active means that you're either talking to someone or recording something—two situations during which you'd rather not see notifications and get distracted. If you're sharing your screen during a meeting, there's no chance of anything unprofessional showing up on the screen. Sure, you could remember to enable Do Not Disturb mode on your Mac before starting a call, but let's be honest: Sometimes, you're going to forget.

To get started, simply install the application from the App Store and run it. The first time you run it you will be asked to install a Shortcut called "On Air Mode Shortcut"—On Air Mode requires this shortcut to work.

Do that and the application will run from the menu bar. You can test it by opening the Voice Memos app and recording something—you'll see Do Not Disturb mode activate the second you start recording. Stop recording and Do Not Disturb mode turns off again.

It's interesting to see an app developer using a Shortcut as part of their workflow. We've talked about Shortcuts that can automate tasks on your Mac and this is another example of that.

The application, by developer Nikita Varentsov, is free—and it's private. "On Air Mode uses system hardware APIs to detect device activity without accessing any audio content," the app's description reads, "No recordings, no data collection, no cloud services—everything happens locally on your device."

If you regularly find yourself distracted (or embarrassed) by notifications during meetings, give this app a try. No one wants a private text showing up on screen during a presentation.

The best ad blocker out there now works on Safari. You can download uBlock Origin Lite from the App Store on Mac, iPhone, and iPad right now.

The new ad blocker, from uBlock Origin developer Raymond Hill, blocks ads on YouTube without any difficulty, something that many Safari ad blockers have struggled with lately. It also runs efficiently in my testing, which I did on my iPhone SE from 2022—browsing was noticeably snappier.

To get started, simply download the application from the App Store and open it. Then you will need to enable the extension in Safari.

On the Mac, this means opening Safari, clicking Safari > Settings in the menu bar, then heading to the Extensions tab and making sure uBlock Origin Lite is enabled. I also recommend enabling it in Private Browsing.

On an iPhone or iPad, this means opening the Settings app, going to Apps > Safari > Extensions, then making sure uBlock Origin Lite is turned on. Then go back to Safari, scroll down to and tap Content Blockers, and ensure that the Other Websites option is checked on.

After doing this, you can just browse the web with fewer ads. You can click the extension icon on the Mac toolbar to configure how strictly the blocking should apply on the current website. You can also access the settings from here, allowing you to choose a default filtering mode, decide whether pages should reload after changing the filtering mode, and whether the number of blocked requests should show up in the toolbar.

Credit: Justin Pot

You can also choose which filter lists should be applied to your web browsing. Some of the best known lists for blocking ads are enabled by default—you can optionally turn on lists for things like cookie pop-ups and social media widgets.

For the most part, though, you can just install this extension and never think about it again, which is how any good ad blocker should work—giving you the power to block ads without much thought while also making it possible for power users to tweak things. If you're a dedicated Safari user, but want the best ad blockers out there, uBlock Origin Lite is a strong choice.

Sometimes you need to quickly remove a few pages from a PDF, or merge it with another document—jobs that aren't worth forking out for an Adobe Acrobat subscription for. PDF Barber is a free website with tools for simple PDF edits like splitting files, re-ordering pages, and adding signatures.

I like this website for a couple reasons. First, it's free, and doesn't even have any ads cluttering everything up. Second, it works entirely offline, meaning you're not uploading your PDF files to the internet in order to use it. "Every split, every conversion, every operation happens entirely within your browser," the website says. You can test this for yourself by turning off your wifi after loading a tool—everything works.

To get started, go to the website and choose which tool you want to use. The main options are for splitting one PDF into two, merging two PDFs into one, rotating the pages in a PDF, re-organizing the pages in a PDF, and extracting pages from a PDF. More advanced tools allow you to add your signature, add a QR code, remove interactive elements, add a watermark, and compress the images.

Credit: Justin Pot

After choosing a tool, you can drag any PDF off your computer into the tool—note that the file must be 50MB or smaller. Because there is no upload to wait for, you'll see your PDF's pages right in front of you, allowing you to make your changes. For example, if you're using the split tool, you can use the checkboxes to decide which pages you want in which PDF, or split using the odd and even pages.

When you're done, you can save the completed documents to your computer. It's all very intuitive and quick, and it's well worth bookmarking if you're the sort of person who only occasionally needs to edit a PDF.

I'm a big fan of apps that give you the information you want at a glance while staying out of your way. Transit is a great example of this.

This free app is perfect if you ever find yourself waiting for a bus, train, or any other form of transportation. Just open the app and you'll see the next departure times for all lines near where you're standing. You can tap any line to see a more detailed schedule. You can usually also see where the next train or bus is, right now, thanks to real-time data.

All of this removes the anxiety from using public transit. Instead of wondering when the next bus will get there—or if the next bus is coming—I can glance at my phone and know exactly how long I need to wait. I live near Portland, Oregon and use this feature basically any time I go into the city—it's just nice to know when the next train is coming.

But the application has also saved me while traveling. Once, while biking north of Victoria, British Columbia, one of my tires went flat. Walking back to the city would have taken hours and I didn't have any cell signal. The Transit app, miraculously, had a cached version of the bus schedule and pointed me to a nearby stop. I caught a bus 15 minutes later and made it back downtown quickly.

Credit: Justin Pot

Even outside emergencies, Transit makes navigating new cities via public transit a lot less intimidating. In addition to real-time departures, there's also a way to ask for directions, the same way you can Google or Apple Maps. And while those applications both offer transit directions, the Transit app does a better job at offering multiple routes.

This app also makes it easy to tweak for the way you ride. I, for example, am happy to walk a couple miles if it means avoiding a long connection spent sitting at a bus stop. Transit lets you configure how long you're willing to walk and how fast you walk. There's also really great support for combining bike and transit, something that Google and Apple Maps don't really offer. The result is that you can generally get around faster using Transit's directions once you configure it to match your preferences.

Transit works in 951 cities around the world, mostly in North America and Europe. There's a paid version, called Royale, that provides access to things like more complete schedules and customization options. These features are offered free of charge in certain cities, a fact I learned during a recent visit to Grand Rapids, Michigan. If you're a regular user of public transit, or even just someone who likes to use public transit when you're visiting a new city, I highly recommend you give this application a try.

Referencing notes on your laptop while you're using it to give a presentation is always awkward. If you mirror your displays, there's no way to see your notes without showing them to your audience, which isn't ideal. But using multiple displays is also kind of clumsy—you need to move your mouse from one display to the other every time you want to advance slides, which can throw you off.

There's no perfect solution to this problem, but a Mac app called Beeno comes close. This free, open source application by developer Uli Kaufmann places your entire second display in a window on your primary display. The basic idea is that you'll be able to see the presentation on your laptop without having to turn around and look at the display behind you. This means you can see the slides in front of you, instead of having to turn around to look at the presentation screen. It also means you can see and scroll through your notes and take control of the presentation, all on one screen.

Using the application is simple: You just need to run it when you have two displays connected. You will need to provide the appropriate permissions before everything starts working, and a window on your primary display will automatically pop up, showing you everything on the secondary display. The window is scalable, meaning you can resize it to fit alongside your notes or anything else you need to reference during the presentation. If you need to switch which display is in the window, you can right-click the menu bar and choose a different one.

I've been playing around with Beeno for a few weeks, and it works quite well—certainly I don't think I'll be awkwardly looking behind me during a presentation ever again.

I like to use my computer's desktop the way I use my physical desktop—somewhere to place documents and photos related to what I'm currently working on. The problem is that I'm usually working on multiple projects, meaning my computer desktop is a mess of unrelated things.

Say I'm selling my old Macbook but also organizing important cat pictures for my newsletter—that all takes up a lot of space, and I don't need to see all of those photos all the time. Wouldn't it be better if I could switch which things show up on my desktop depending on my current project?

That's idea behind Infinidesk, an indie Mac app from developer Ben Shirt-Ediss that lets you create as many virtual desktops as you like and switch between them from the menu bar.

Credit: Justin Pot

The idea behind Infinidesk is that you'll make different desktops for different projects, allowing you to use your desktop as a workspace for each of them. This isn't at all like your Mac's native Mission Control—it doesn't affect the windows you have open. The focus, instead, is simply on the icons visible on your desktop. You can create as many different desktops as you need to. When you create a new desktop, all of your current icons will disappear, allowing you to add new ones. When you switch between desktops, all of your icons will disappear and reappear accordingly.

It's a simple concept, and it won't be useful for everyone—only some of us even still use our desktops to store files at this point, and you might already have your own system for keeping things organized. But if your desktop is spiraling out of control, Infinidesk might help you keep things tidy without making the desktop useless in the process—especially if you have one computer for both work and personal use.

Infinidesk offers a free version, with a catch: you can only switch desktops 50 times. That should be enough for you to get a feel for whether this application is useful for you, though. The full version costs $12.99, as a one-time payment.

It's been almost two weeks since WWDC and most of the major features of macOS 26 Tahoe, from the new liquid glass design to the much-improved Spotlight, have been discussed to death. There are a few pretty big improvements that haven't been talked about much, though, and some of them will be a pretty big improvement.

So, in the spirit of our story on barely mentioned iOS 26 features, here are a few of the best macOS 26 Tahoe features I've barely seen mentioned. Go ahead and install Tahoe in a virtual machine if you want to try them out.

Block menu bar icons you don't want

Credit: Justin Pot

Apple users might not want to hear it but there really are some things that Windows is objectively better about than macOS. The Windows tray, for example, makes it easy to decide which icons you want to hide and which you want to see. Many Mac users turn to Bartender or any of the numerous alternatives for this exact reason: There are applications they don't want to see that, for some reason, don't offer any ability to turn off their notification icon.

You might not need an application for that with macOS 26. There's an option in Settings > Menu Bar that allows you to turn off any menu bar icon. Just scroll to the button section, titled Allow in the Menu Bar, and turn off anything you'd rather not see. It works perfectly. Sure, it doesn't give you a handy secondary tray the way Bartender does, but this option at least makes it possible to tidy thing up a bit without installing any third party software.

Better control of the control center

Credit: Justin Pot

The Control Center on Mac has, until now, been underdeveloped compared to the iPhone and iPad equivalent. Not anymore.

Configure the Control Center on macOS 26 and you can organize the various controls however you want and even add widgets from your applications. There are all kinds of potentially useful tools here, so take the time to customize things. If you've neglected the Control Center on macOS, this change might finally make it useful.

An actual phone app

Credit: Justin Pot

Mac users with an iPhone have long been able to pick up phone calls on their Mac, and it's even been possible to make phone calls from the FaceTime app. This was all kind of clunky, though, especially when it came to making outgoing calls. Tahoe brings a proper Phone application to the Mac, allowing you to review your incoming calls, listen to voicemails, and even make a phone call by dialing a number. It's an overdue feature, and one that makes it possible to leave your phone in your pocket when you're working at your desk.

Live Activities

Credit: Apple

Live Activities is one of the better iPhone features, adding real-time information to the lock screen and dynamic island. MacOS 26 brings any live activities currently on your phone to the Mac menu bar. This includes native Apple activities and activities from the best iPhone apps that use Live Activities.

A new virtual disk format

This is extremely nerdy, granted, but it's also pretty important for anyone who uses disk images or virtual machines. There's a new virtual disk format, called ASIF, offered with macOS 26. According to Eclectic Light Company, an fantastic blog for anyone who likes diving deep on macOS features, the new format achieves speeds close to native, meaning copying files from a disk image will be about the same speed as copying them from a directory.

These virtual disks will also scale as you add files, meaning you can set the file for the virtual image to 100GB but it will only actually take that amount of space if there's files inside. This alone is a big change. It won't affect everyone, granted, but it's nice to see.