Add a Volume Slider to your iPhone Lock Screen

Your iPhone’s Lock Screen has built-in media playback controls that appear whenever music, a podcast, or other audio is playing. What you might not realize is that those controls can also include a volume slider that lets you adjust the volume without you having to unlock your iPhone or fumble for the physical buttons.

Originally, Apple included a volume slider in the Lock Screen media player by default, but it quietly removed the function in iOS 16. It eventually returned as an option in iOS 18.2, but Apple decided to bury it in Accessibility settings, where it’s easy to overlook. The setting is still available in iOS 26, and it’s super-simple to enable.

Here’s how to turn it on:

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Stop Chrome browser from downloading a Hidden 4GB AI File

If your Mac’s storage has been mysteriously shrinking recently and you use Google Chrome, you may have already identified the culprit. The browser has been downloading a 4GB AI model file onto computers without explicit user consent.

The file in question is called “weights.bin,” which powers Google’s on-device Gemini Nano AI model – the engine behind Chrome features like scam detection, autofill suggestions, and the “Help Me Write” tool. Local models tend to be pretty big storage-wise, and this one is no different. The problem is that Google hasn’t clearly signposted the fact that it’s eating 4GB of your drive with training data.

The issue only recently came to light thanks to security researcher Alexander Hanff, who noticed that Chrome installs the model on any device meeting the minimum hardware requirements, only without prompting you whether you’d like it there in the first place.

How to Check if the File Is on Your Mac
The first thing to do is confirm that the model is actually taking up space on your machine. While there’s no clear answer in Google’s release notes, recent reports suggest that the file started appearing after updating to Chrome version 148.0.7778.97. Here’s how you can find out if your computer was affected:

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Check who’s using your iPhone Hotspot Data

If you regularly share your iPhone’s data connection with your laptop or iPad, or let family members piggyback on your device’s data, you’ll be glad to learn that Apple recently made it a lot easier to keep tabs on who’s burning through your monthly allowance.

In a welcome change with the release of iOS 26.4, Apple has moved Personal Hotspot data usage info out of its previous hiding spot and put it in a much more convenient location.

Before the latest update, Personal Hotspot’s per-device breakdown was secreted away inside cellular settings, where it was easy to miss. Now it sits right inside the Personal Hotspot menu, making it way more practical for anyone on a capped data plan who’s keen to keep an eye on usage.

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Make your MacBook battery last longer with this setting

If you own a MacBook and work from home, it’s easy to have your laptop plugged in for hours on end without thinking about the long-term battery life implications. Fortunately, Apple recently added a setting that lets you cap how high your Mac’s battery charges, and if you own an iPhone that was released in the last few years, you may already be familiar with it.

Lithium-ion batteries generally degrade fastest when held at a high state of charge, which means keeping your iPhone or your Mac’s battery at 100 percent accelerates the chemical wear that permanently reduces its actual capacity over time.

To mitigate this on iPhone 15 and newer models, Apple lets you set a Charge Limit that prevents your device from charging beyond 80, 85, 90, 95, or 100 percent. And in macOS Tahoe 26.4, Apple has brought over the same Charge Limit feature to Macs for the first time.

This option differs from Optimized Battery Charging, which learns your daily routine and delays charging past 80 percent until you’re likely to need a full battery. Depending on your usage, however, your Mac may still regularly reach 100 percent.

Setting a charge limit prevents that. Obviously a lower charge cap means less time you’ll be able to work away from a power outlet. But if you mostly sit at a desk with your MacBook plugged in, the trade-off is worth the long-term battery gains. That said, if you regularly rely on your Mac away from power, then you may want to opt for a higher cap, which should hopefully still curb battery wear without leaving you completely stranded. Either way, here’s how to set the feature:

Set a MacBook Battery Charge Limit in macOS

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This music selection tweak in iOS 26.4 will save you bags of time

If you often find yourself adding a track to an Apple Music playlist, going back, and then adding it to other playlists, iOS 26.4 includes an option that could save you bags of time: You can now select multiple playlists when adding a song.

Previously, tapping Add to Playlist would take you to a list of your playlists, and you could only pick one at a time. In iOS 26.4, there’s a new multi-select option that lets you check off as many playlists as you like in one go.

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Stop your iPhone suppressing background audio in Videos

In iOS, Apple’s Audio Zoom feature automatically focuses your iPhone’s microphones on whatever you’ve zoomed in on while recording video. It’s great for isolating a subject in a noisy environment, but it can also strip away the ambient sound that can give your footage a broader context. Fortunately, iOS 26.4 adds a dedicated toggle for Audio Zoom so you can decide for yourself when it’s truly required.

Audio Zoom is likely to be most useful if you’re recording at a concert, sporting event, or any scenario where you want to isolate a specific sound source from a noisy environment. But what if you want to capture the full acoustic experience rather than just the subject you’ve zoomed in on? In those situations, the audio narrowing effect could risk making your video sound flat and unnatural.

In iOS 26.4, Audio Zoom is on by default, but now you can also turn it off. If you haven’t updated yet, head to Settings ➝ General ➝ Software Update on your iPhone to download the latest version. Once you’re up and running, here’s how to find the setting:

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How to fix there was a problem with the NVIDIA App

The NVIDIA app is a handy way to keep your system up to date with the latest drivers and to optimize the games you’re currently playing. If you’re encountering an error on startup that reads “There was a problem with the NVIDIA app,” then you’ll be looking for some ways to fix it. We’ve got some troubleshooters in this article to help.

Fixing “There Was a Problem With the NVIDIA App”
This error shows up when the NVIDIA app fails to open correctly. There can be a few causes for this, ranging from outdated software to backend conflicts. It’s also important to note that the NVIDIA app only supports graphics cards from the GeForce GTX 900 series and onwards. Regardless of the cause of your error, we’re here to help you get it sorted.

Restart the App
The first and most obvious troubleshooter is to restart the app and then your PC. Long-running programs and machines can become more erratic over time due to memory leaks and related issues.

Stop and Restart Services
Multiple NVIDIA services are running on your PC beyond the app. If one isn’t working properly, it might affect your app. Stopping and restarting these can fix the issue:

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How to combine multiple storage drives in Windows

I have built up a rather large collection of movies and TV shows that I’ve ripped from Blu-ray discs. Every few years, I find I need a bigger hard drive to hold them all, and with the introduction of 4K Blu-ray, even my multi-terabyte drive is bursting at the seams. If only there was a better way to organize and consolidate all these files. It just so happens that Windows has the perfect solution in a feature called Storage Spaces.

If you use multiple drives to organize all your files, Storage Spaces can combine them into a pool that Windows sees as one unified volume—with one drive letter. This is a helpful alternative to having all your data spread across multiple internal and external storage locations in a disorganized fashion.

Storage Spaces also allows you to add redundancy: If one drive fails, you can pop in a new one and rebuild your storage space without losing any data.

If you’ve heard of RAID, Storage Spaces is similar, only it’s performed entirely in software—no need for an extra RAID controller card. The performance of your storage space won’t be as fast as it would be with a RAID card, but it’s significantly cheaper and easier to implement when you’re just getting started with these types of pooling technologies.

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iOS 26.1: Bring back the Tap-to-Stop alarm button

Apple has changed how you dismiss iPhone alarms in iOS 26.1, and your morning muscle memory may have needed tweaking as a result. By default, the Clock app now requires a slide gesture to stop an alarm from the Lock Screen, replacing the previous tap-to-stop button that was redesigned in iOS 26. Snoozing still works with a simple tap, but turning off an alarm entirely demands the extra swipe motion.

The change appears designed to prevent accidental dismissals when you’re reaching for your phone in the morning. By requiring a more deliberate action, you’re less likely to silence your alarm when you meant to hit snooze. If you don’t like the change, you can revert the alarm interface back to the previous Stop button by following these steps.

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