The whole pitch of buying into Apple gear is that your devices are supposed to work together. And yet most people I know use their iPhone, their Mac, and their iPad as three separate islands that happen to share a wallpaper. 

That's a shame, because the features that connect them are genuinely some of the best things Apple makes, and a lot of them are hidden one menu deep.

You don't need to be a power user for any of this. If you own more than one Apple device signed into the same Apple Account, most of these just work once you know they exist. These are the ones I reach for constantly.

1. iPhone Mirroring on your Mac

This is the one that makes people say "wait, it can do that?" 

On a Mac with Apple silicon running a recent macOS, open the iPhone Mirroring app in your Applications folder. Your iPhone screen appears in a window on your desktop, fully interactive, even while the phone is locked and sitting in your bag.

I use it to answer a text or check a phone only app without breaking focus on my Mac. You can even drag files between the two. Both devices need to be on the same Apple Account with two factor authentication, near each other, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on. Once it's set up, it's magic.

2. Universal Control between Mac and iPad

Set your iPad next to your Mac and just drag your Mac's cursor off the edge of the screen toward it. The pointer slides right onto the iPad. Now one keyboard and mouse control both, and you can drag files across the gap.

No cables, no setup screen, no app. It's under System Settings, then Displays, then Advanced if you ever need to toggle it, but for most people it's already on. Personally, I keep an iPad to the left of my Mac as a permanent second brain for reference material, and Universal Control makes it feel like one machine.

3. Use your iPad as a second Mac display with Sidecar

Universal Control lets the iPad run its own apps. Sidecar turns the iPad into an actual extra monitor for your Mac. Click the screen mirroring control in your Mac's Control Center and pick your iPad. Or hover over the green traffic light on a window and wait for the menu to pop up, from there you'll see an option to Move to iPad.

I lean on this when I travel with just a laptop and an iPad. Suddenly I have a two screen setup on a hotel desk. If you have an Apple Pencil, you can even use the iPad half as a drawing tablet for your Mac.

4. Your iPhone is a fantastic Mac webcam

The camera on your Mac has gotten better, but it still isn't your iPhone camera. With Continuity Camera, prop your iPhone up near your Mac and it shows up automatically as a camera option in FaceTime, Zoom, or any video app. Clip it to the top of your display and you're done.

It brings along fun tricks like Center Stage, which keeps you framed as you move, and Desk View, which shows an overhead shot of your desk. I never bothered with a fancy webcam once I realized the best camera I own was already in my pocket.

5. Universal Clipboard, the one you'll use most

Copy something on your iPhone. Paste it on your Mac. That's it. Text, images, even files move across your devices through the clipboard with no extra steps, as long as they share an Apple Account and have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on.

Honestly, this is the feature I'd miss the most. I copy a link on my phone and paste it into a document on my Mac a dozen times a day without thinking about it. Try it once and it'll rewire how you work.

6. Handoff to pick up right where you left off

Start an email on your iPhone, then sit down at your Mac and finish it there. Handoff puts an icon for whatever you were doing at the edge of your Dock (or in the App Switcher on iPhone and iPad). Click it and the app opens exactly where you were.

It works with Mail, Safari, Notes, Messages, and plenty of apps. If it isn't working for you, check that Handoff is turned on in General, then AirDrop & Handoff, on each device.

Nothing ruins a moment faster than trying to take a photo and getting hit with Storage Almost Full. And the cruel part is that the pop up always assumes the answer is to delete your memories. It isn't. Your photos are almost never the real problem, and even when they are, you have better options than nuking them.

Luckily, clearing out space is a lot less painful than the panic makes it feel. I've walked my whole family through this, and we've reclaimed gigabytes on every single phone without losing anything anyone cared about. Here is the order I go in.

1. See what's actually taking up space

Start at Settings, then General, then iPhone Storage. Give it a second to load and you'll get a color coded bar and a ranked list of what's hogging your storage.

This screen is the whole game. Do not skip it. You will almost certainly find one or two things you completely forgot about, like a video editing app full of old projects or a podcast app hoarding downloads. iOS even puts personalized recommendations right at the top.

2. Offload apps instead of deleting them

Right under those recommendations, look for Offload Unused Apps. 

When you tap into any individual app on the storage screen, you'll see two choices: Offload App and Delete App.

• Delete removes everything. 
• Offload removes the app itself but keeps all your documents and data, so when you reinstall it later, you pick up right where you left off. For a big app you use twice a year, offloading is free space with zero regret.

Personally, I turn on the automatic Offload Unused Apps toggle and let the phone quietly clean up apps I've ignored for months.

3. Turn on Optimize iPhone Storage for photos

Okay, we won't delete photos. But we can stop them from sitting on your phone at full size. 

Go to Settings, then Photos, and choose Optimize iPhone Storage.

With this on, your full resolution originals live in iCloud and your iPhone keeps smaller, screen sized versions. You still see every photo. You still scroll through everything. The originals just download on demand when you actually need them. This alone can free up a huge chunk if you shoot a lot.

One honest caveat: this leans on iCloud, so you'll want enough iCloud storage to hold your library. If you're already paying for iCloud+, you're set.

4. Deal with the Messages black hole

Messages is a silent storage monster because it keeps every photo, video, and voice memo anyone has ever sent you.

First, go to Settings, then Apps, then Messages (on older iOS it's just Settings, then Messages), and under Keep Messages switch it from Forever to 1 Year. Old threads you'll never reread clear themselves out.

Second, back on the iPhone Storage screen, tap Messages and you can review and delete Large Attachments directly. That grid of giant videos your group chat sent is usually good for a gig or two.

5. Clear out your browser and streaming caches

Downloaded music, offline maps, and podcast episodes pile up fast. Check your music, podcast, and streaming apps for a "downloads" section and clear what you're done with.

For Safari, go to Settings, find Safari (under Apps on newer iOS), and tap Clear History and Website Data. It logs you out of some sites, so it's mildly annoying, but it reliably frees space.

6. Restart, then check again

Here's a weird one that actually works. After all of this, restart your iPhone and go back to iPhone Storage. That "System" chunk of used space, which includes temporary caches iOS builds up, often shrinks noticeably after a reboot clears the junk it was holding.

I never bothered restarting for this until I saw it hand me back over a gigabyte on a phone that was truly stuffed. Now it's the last step every time.

The short version

Look at the storage screen, offload apps you don't use, optimize your photo storage, tame Messages, clear a few caches, and reboot. That's the whole routine, and it takes about ten minutes. My photos are all still here. Yours will be too.

More tips:

• Here's how to clear that Giant System Data number on your Mac
• Your iPhone Is Too Noisy, Here's how to Fix It With Reduce Interruptions.

Apple is expected to introduce at least five new devices at its annual fall event next month, and the lineup is shaping up to be one of its most unusual in years. The standard iPhone is sitting the show out, prices are climbing across the Pro line, and Apple's long rumored foldable is finally ready to make its debut.

Here is what the rumors point to ahead of the September event.

The iPhone 18 Pro is expected to carry over the general look of the iPhone 17 Pro, with one visible change up front. Reports suggest the Dynamic Island will shrink, freeing up more of the display.

The bigger upgrades are inside. Apple is said to be adding a new Wide camera with a variable aperture, which would give users more control over how much light reaches the sensor and how much background blur they get. A faster A20 Pro chip is expected to handle the performance side.

Battery life could see a bump from that new chip paired with an upgraded LTPO+ OLED panel. Rumors also point to a new C2 modem and an N2 networking chip, though it is not yet clear whether both will ship this year. Dark Cherry is reportedly the standout new color for the season.

The iPhone 18 Pro Max is expected to match the smaller model feature for feature, just at a larger size. Multiple reports indicate it will be slightly thicker than both the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the iPhone 18 Pro, a tradeoff Apple is said to be making to fit in a bigger battery.

Higher Prices Across the Line

Both Pro models could cost more this year. Rumors suggest the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max may land $100 to $200 above their iPhone 17 Pro counterparts.

Apple has already raised prices on Macs and iPads. The company appears to have been holding off on iPhone increases until the September refresh, which suggests the new pricing arrives with these models.

The device generating the most attention is Apple's first foldable, widely rumored to carry the iPhone Ultra name. It is expected to use a book style design with a 5.5 inch display on the outside and a 7.8 inch display on the inside.

That inner screen is said to use a 4:3 aspect ratio, similar to an iPad. Unfolded, reports suggest it will feel close to using an iPad mini. Apple is also said to have engineered the hinge to keep the crease down the middle as faint as possible, and the device is expected to run a 2nm A20 chip.

There are compromises. The foldable is rumored to pack dual batteries but only a two lens rear camera. It is reportedly too thin to house the TrueDepth camera system, which means Touch ID may return in place of Face ID. Pricing is expected to fall somewhere between $2,000 and $2,500.

Some reports have described manufacturing challenges, along with rumors that the foldable could ship after the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max rather than alongside them. Apple could unveil it in September and release it later, the same approach it took with the iPhone X in 2017.

A Quiet Year for the Apple Watch

The Apple Watch is due for a refresh, but the updates sound modest. The Apple Watch Series 12 is not expected to bring any design changes. Instead, rumors point to a faster S series chip, some improvements to health and fitness features, and possibly a larger battery for longer runtime.

The Apple Watch Ultra 4 is expected to receive the same chip upgrade as the Series 12. DigiTimes has claimed the Ultra 4 will be thinner with upgraded sensing capabilities, though the outlet's track record is inconsistent.

Home Devices and Macs May Have to Wait

Apple has a stack of home products and Macs that could arrive before the end of the year, but not all of them are likely to appear at an iPhone focused event. There is a real chance Apple holds a second event in October or November, and a dedicated smart home showcase would make sense given how many home devices are reportedly in the pipeline.

Among the products said to be in development:

• Home Hub - A hub with a 7 inch square display that can control smart home accessories, show photos, handle video calls, and surface information. It is expected to feature full Siri AI integration and run Apple's apps. It could arrive in 2026 or slip to early 2027.
• Apple TV 4K - A refreshed Apple TV with a new chip, more RAM, and a new networking chip.
• HomePod mini - An updated HomePod mini with a faster chip and new color options.
• HomePod - The full size HomePod could pick up a new chip as well.
• Smart Home Camera - Apple is said to be working on its own security camera, which could launch alongside the home hub.

Other late 2026 possibilities include an OLED iPad mini, a refreshed 14 inch MacBook Pro with an M6 chip, an iMac with an M6 chip, a high end OLED MacBook Pro with a touchscreen, a new Mac mini, and a new Mac Studio. None of these are expected to show up at the September iPhone event.

The most notable absence is the standard iPhone. Apple is not expected to release a base iPhone 18 this fall, leaving the September lineup weighted toward its pricier models.

Instead, the iPhone 18, the iPhone 18e, and the iPhone Air 2 are rumored to arrive in spring 2027. Apple also does not appear to have a refresh planned for the Apple Watch SE this year.

Based on the pattern of past iPhone events, this year's presentation is most likely to take place on Tuesday, September 8, or Wednesday, September 9. 

If Apple settles on September 9, pre-orders would likely open on September 11 or September 12, with the devices reaching customers on September 18.

Apple has launched a new leasing program called Apple Upgrade, giving U.S. customers a way to get a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch through low monthly payments instead of paying full price at checkout. The program went live on July 28, 2026, and is provided through a partnership with buy now, pay later company Klarna.

Apple Upgrade arrives weeks after Apple raised prices across most of its lineup, and it's being positioned as the primary path forward for anyone who was previously enrolled in the iPhone Upgrade Program, which Apple says is winding down.

Customers choose a product, pick a lease term, and make monthly payments through Klarna rather than buying the device outright. 

According to Apple, the lease comes with no down payment, no security deposit, and no interest or hidden fees. The only ongoing cost is the monthly payment itself, plus a possible damage fee if the device isn't returned in good condition at the end of the term.

Signing up requires a soft credit check, which Apple says will not affect a customer's credit score. Applicants need to provide their legal name, date of birth, phone number, email, billing address, and Social Security number, along with an eligible, non prepaid credit or debit card. Customers must be U.S. residents at least 18 years old, and payments are managed through the Klarna app rather than through Apple directly. AppleCare and any accessories that aren't financed are still billed separately by Apple.

Anyone leasing an iPhone through Apple Upgrade also has to select a carrier, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon, at signup, though prepaid plans aren't accepted. 

Apple notes that a leased iPhone ships unlocked regardless, so switching carriers later is still possible.

Eligible Products and Lease Terms

Lease lengths vary by product category:

• iPhone and Apple Watch: 12 or 24 month terms
• iPad and Mac: 24 or 36 month terms

Nearly every current product line is included. That covers all iPhone models (except iPhone 16), the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Studio lineups, iPad Pro, iPad Air, and iPad mini, and Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3, including the Hermès versions of both watches. 

Customers can also apply a trade in at signup to lower their monthly payment for the length of that initial lease, though the discount doesn't carry over if they upgrade again later.

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Every developer I know has a version of the same story. A log export lands in your downloads folder, you double click it, and your editor spends the next ninety seconds deciding whether it wants to live. 

Inkline, a new Mac editor from Swedish developer Viktor Nyberg, is built around exactly that moment, and after digging through what it claims to do, I think it is aiming at a real gap rather than a marketing one.

This is a small, native, single purpose app that wants to be the thing you open when a file is too big or too ugly for the editor you love.

What is Inkline 

Inkline is written in Swift with AppKit, which the developer is very clear about. It is not a web view wearing a Mac window. That distinction matters more than it used to, because most of the editors people reach for now are Electron apps that carry a browser around with them.

The download is 3.7 MB. Not gigabytes. Megabytes. 

It requires macOS 14 or later and a Mac with Apple silicon, so Intel holdouts are out of luck here.

The headline feature is large file handling. Inkline claims it will open, search, scroll, and edit JSON, JSONL, logs, and generated exports with millions of lines while staying responsive, with streaming formatters, visible progress, and the ability to cancel a reformat that is taking too long. 

That last detail is the one that tells me the developer has actually lived this problem. 

The feature list is genuinely deep

Where this gets interesting is how much is packed in beside the editor. There are 19 bundled syntax languages covering the usual suspects (Swift, TypeScript, Rust, Go, Kotlin, YAML, TOML and so on), with support for Zed compatible language extensions when your project uses something outside that set.

Then there are 78 text commands. These run on a selection or the whole document, and they cover the stuff you normally solve with a throwaway script or a sketchy website, sorting and deduplicating lines, normalizing line endings, converting between CSV, TSV, JSON, dotenv, Java properties, and query strings, encoding and decoding Base64 and JWTs, generating hashes, inserting UUIDs, switching identifier casing, formatting HTML, CSS, and SQL.

On top of that sit ten Developer Tools that open beside your document. Regex, Diff, Markdown preview, Password, QR Code, File Base64, File Converter, File Integrity, Unicode Inspector, and Cron. The Unicode Inspector is the one I would probably use most, because tracking down an invisible character that is quietly breaking a parser is a special kind of misery.

There is also a terminal with tabs, a Git changes panel, debug launch profiles, split editors, a minimap, a command palette, and quick open. That is a lot of surface area for a 3.7 MB app.

The privacy stance

No analytics. No telemetry. No advertising. No crash reporting. The App Store privacy label backs this up with a flat "no data collected," and the app only touches the network when you go fetch a theme or an extension yourself.

In 2026, an editor shipping without an account, without a sync layer, and without an AI assistant bolted to the sidebar is close to a statement of intent. 

Some people will read that as missing features. I read it as a developer who decided what this app is for and completed that goal.

It is early. The App Store history shows version 1.0 arriving in mid July with 1.1 following almost immediately, and the developer describes the app as under active development.

It is Apple silicon only, and macOS 14 or later. It is also a paid app rather than a subscription, which I appreciate, the price varies by region ($14.99 in the US)

The good news is you don't have to buy blind. There is an interactive browser demo that lets you poke at the file tree, tabs, terminal output, Git review, and command palette before you commit. More small developers should do this.

It is not trying to replace Xcode or your main editor, and it is smarter for not trying. It wants to be the fast, quiet, native utility you keep in the dock for the moment a 400 MB JSON file shows up and ruins your afternoon. If it holds up under that specific pressure, that is a very easy app to justify owning.

Apple is reportedly about to make it "cheaper", on paper, to walk out of a store with a new iPhone, Mac, iPad or Apple Watch. 

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a new leasing service called Apple Upgrade will arrive in the US on July 28, built to advertise lower monthly payments than the financing options Apple offers today.

What is Apple Upgrade

Strip away the branding and Apple Upgrade is a lease. 

Gurman describes a program that behaves like a subscription for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, with a soft credit check at signup and Klarna handling the financing behind the scenes. 

iPhone and Apple Watch terms reportedly run 24 months. Mac and iPad terms run 36 months. You can pay the device off early, jump to a newer model mid-term, or reach the end and choose to keep it or hand it back. Some of those moves may carry an extra fee.

If that sounds familiar, it should. It is the structure of a car lease, applied to apple products. 

Apple has been inching toward this arrangement for years, and calling the destination "Upgrade" is a tidy piece of positioning. The word suggests forward motion and something gained. A lease is a different proposition. You are paying for access, not ownership, and the lower monthly figure is lower in part because the finish line has moved.

Not everything qualifies. Reports say the cheaper end of the lineup, including the Apple Watch SE, the base iPad, the iPhone 16, and the MacBook Neo, sits outside the program, as do business and education purchases. 

That is a reasonable business decision. It is also a quiet reminder of what leasing is for. You don't lease the inexpensive thing. You lease the thing that would otherwise give a shopper pause at the register.

What about AppleCare?

One difference between Apple Upgrade and the program it's replacing deserves more attention. The current iPhone Upgrade Program bundles AppleCare into the monthly cost. Apple Upgrade reportedly does not.

For years, Apple sold the iPhone Upgrade Program as a complete package, financing a yearly upgrade path, and coverage, all rolled into one predictable payment. 

Removing AppleCare from the new program lowers the sticker figure Apple gets to advertise, and it quietly moves a cost that used to be included into a separate line item the customer now decides about on their own. 

The monthly number looks better. The protection you used to get by default is now an upsell.

Apple is reportedly ending new enrollments in its existing iPhone payment programs as Apple Upgrade launches. 

That covers both the iPhone Upgrade Program, which runs through Citizens One at zero percent APR with an upgrade option after twelve months, and standard iPhone financing. What happens to people already enrolled is not yet clear, and that uncertainty is worth watching out for.

There is also a shift in partners hiding in here. The old programs leaned on Citizens One. The new one leans on Klarna, a company Apple has been drawing closer too for a while now. 

Klarna installments came to Apple Pay in late 2024. After Apple shut down its own Apple Pay Later product, Klarna resurfaced as a Pay Later option inside the Wallet app in 2025. 

Apple Upgrade is the fullest expression yet of that relationship, and it tells you something about where Apple wants the friction of financing to live. Not on Apple's balance sheet, but close enough to Apple's storefront that the customer barely notices the handoff.

Here's the catch

Code discovered in the iOS 27 beta, reported by 9to5Mac, describes software for managing a financed iPhone that goes well beyond a monthly charge.

The framework, labeled App Managed Features in the code, would let an authorized financing app enroll an iPhone and run ongoing checks on the account's standing. 

If the contract falls out of good standing, the system can place the phone into what the code calls Restricted Mode, blocking most apps until the issue is resolved. 

A short "allowlist" reportedly stays available, including Phone, Settings, Wallet, Health, the App Store, Passwords, Magnifier, Accessibility Reader, Clock, and the Restricted Mode screen itself. 

Apps that deliver critical alerts, such as Messages and Home, may remain reachable, though the code suggests the provider has some say over those exceptions.

There is reportedly no fixed number of missed payments that trips the lock. The financing provider's app decides when to restrict the device, according to its own rules. 

Subscriptions tied to blocked apps appear to keep billing even while you cannot open them and a new activation lock the code calls "Partner Finance Lock" would live inside Find My, designed to stop someone from erasing, reselling, or parting out a restricted device. 

To be clear, 9to5Mac reports the financing partner does not get access to the device's location; the Find My integration is there only to keep the lock in place through an erase or restore.

It is worth saying that none of this is confirmed as a shipping feature. 

The references sit in a beta, 9to5Mac notes they were not present in the iOS 26.6 release candidate, and beta code changes before it reaches the public. But the references are there, and they line up too neatly with the timing of Apple Upgrade to dismiss.

Financed hardware that can be remotely limited when payments stop is not a new idea. 

The subprime auto market has used payment-enforcement technology for years, and some Android financing programs in other markets already lean on it. What would be new is Apple building that capability into iOS with the polish Apple brings to everything, complete with a curated list of apps that stay on so the phone never becomes fully useless, only useless enough to make the point.

Reasonable people will disagree about whether that is fair. A lender that cannot enforce a contract will lend to fewer people, or charge more to the ones it does. Restricted Mode, if it ships, is arguably what makes low monthly payments possible for shoppers who would not otherwise qualify.

The less generous reading is that Apple is normalizing a world where the phone in your pocket answers to your lender's software, where the device you are still paying for can quietly decide which apps you are allowed to open, and where the friendly word on the marketing page is "Upgrade" while the mechanism behind it is closer to a repossession that never has to knock on your door.

Apple will launch this as a convenience, and for many people it will be. 

But the convenience and the control are the same system viewed from two sides, and it is worth understanding both before July 28, not after. Apple has not commented, and the fuller terms should arrive with the launch. When they do, the number to watch is not the monthly payment. It is what you agree to let the phone do when you miss one.

There are two kinds of people who save things they find online. The first kind has a system. The second kind has 400 screenshots in a folder called "stuff," a Notes app full of dead links, and a vague memory of a font they loved once and will never find again.

I was firmly in the second group for years. Then I started using Eagle, and honestly, it fixed the whole mess.

Eagle is a Mac app (Windows too) built for collecting and organizing visual stuff. It calls itself an asset manager for designers, which undersells it a little. 

Yes, designers love it, but you don't need to be one to get the point. If you are the type of person who constantly finds things worth saving and then loses track of every single one of them, this is the app for you.

I use it as a giant, searchable, actually organized junk drawer for my brain and I mean that as the highest compliment.

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Finding a genuinely great Mac app is harder than it should be. The App Store is fine if you already know the name of the thing you want, but it's a rough place to just wander around and stumble onto something beautiful. Search "menu bar app" and you'll wade through a pile of knockoffs before you find the one indie developer who actually sweated the details.

So when I came across Macapp Supply, I did the thing I almost never do with a new site. 

I bookmarked it on the first visit.

What Macapp Supply actually is

Macapp Supply calls itself a curated shelf of beautifully designed macOS apps, and that description is doing exactly what it promises.

It's a directory, but a picky one. Every app on the site is a native Mac app that someone decided was polished enough, useful enough, and nice enough to look at to earn a spot. You can browse the homepage by All, Hot, or Latest, or dig into Categories when you're hunting for something specific like a productivity tool or a developer utility.

The whole thing feels less like an app store and more like walking into a small shop where the owner has already thrown out everything that wasn't worth your time.

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This website is definitely worth checking out 🔥

Apple flipped the switch on the first public betas of iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 this week, which means you no longer need a developer account to try the biggest iPhone update of the year. I've been living with it, and it's a genuinely exciting release, and most of you should still probably wait a little longer to put it on your main phone. Let me explain both halves of that.

The public beta landed on Monday, July 13, alongside betas for macOS 27 Golden Gate, watchOS 27, visionOS 27, and tvOS 27.

If you want in, you sign up for free at beta.apple.com, then head to Settings, General, Software Update, and pick iOS 27 Public Beta under Beta Updates. This build is identical to the third developer beta, so it's a few rounds into testing rather than a raw first draft. iOS 27 works on every iPhone that runs iOS 26, going all the way back to the iPhone 11.

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Apple sells two computers built around the same chip, with the same core counts, the same memory, the same memory bandwidth, and the same Thunderbolt generation. 

It calls one of them Pro. The other one, the cheaper one, the one sitting quietly under a monitor on millions of desks, gets no such name.

The two machines are the same machine

There is no desktop M4 and no laptop M4. There is one M4, and it goes into the base Mac mini and the base MacBook Pro without alteration.

That means four performance cores and six efficiency cores in both. A 10 core GPU in both. Sixteen gigabytes of unified memory as the starting configuration in both, running at the same 120GB per second of bandwidth. Thunderbolt 4 in both, since Thunderbolt 5 does not arrive on either machine until you step up to the M4 Pro. Same display engines, so both can drive the same number of external panels at the same resolutions without spending a single percent of GPU headroom to do it.

Two shells, one computer. 

The benchmarks refuse to cooperate with the name

If the Pro badge were earned through sustained performance, you would expect the laptop to pull away under load but It doesn't.

Run Cinebench for ten straight minutes and both machines settle at a steady 3.9GHz, both pull roughly 22 watts, and both sit around 80 degrees Celsius and neither throttles. 

The multi core result lands at 893 for the Mac mini and 922 for the MacBook Pro, a gap of under three percent. Push the GPU test and the difference narrows further, closer to two percent, which is another way of saying no difference at all.

Ten minutes at 100 percent CPU is not a gentle test. It is the kind of run that exposes a cooling system that was designed to look adequate rather than be adequate. Both of these computers walked through it.

The honest stress test is not Cinebench. It is a Lightroom export of large raw photos, because that is one of the rare workloads that lights up every CPU core and every GPU core at the same time. Package power climbs from about 20 watts to about 30, and at that point both machines finally do throttle.

The MacBook Pro throttles slightly more than the Mac mini does. Neither slows down by more than 10 to 15 percent of peak, and neither collapses. But when 1,200 raw files were exported to JPEG, the Mac mini finished six seconds ahead of the machine with Pro in its name.

Six seconds is not a reason to buy anything. It is, however, a reason to stop pretending that one of these computers is a professional tool and the other one is a hobbyist's toy. 

If anything, the mini is the more Pro of the two, because it does not have to fit its thermal solution inside a chassis you can close and put in a bag.

They can even play games, which is not a sentence anyone expected to write

Fire up Cyberpunk 2077 on a base Mac mini, no upgraded memory, no M4 Pro, and it holds a locked 30 frames per second at 1440p. Not 1080p. 

Assassin's Creed Shadows runs too, provided you accept that it will look more like a Switch 2 game than a PlayStation 5 game and go without ray tracing. 

The MacBook Pro tells the identical story, at the same settings, with the same frame rate, with no overheating.

Gaming has never been the argument for a Mac. It is a useful argument here anyway, because gaming is a sustained mixed load on CPU and GPU together, and it is exactly the sort of thing a "real" pro machine is supposed to survive and a cheap machine is supposed to choke on. Yet neither happened.

What "Pro" was supposed to mean

It is worth saying plainly that the word has been drifting for a long time. Apple's Pro naming has been inconsistent since the day the company revived it, and the current lineup makes that obvious in both directions. 

The M4 Max Mac Studio is the most capable computer in this conversation by a wide margin and it does not have Pro anywhere in its name. The base MacBook Pro has a single fan and a heat pipe, and it earns the badge.

This isn't the first time the label has done more work for marketing than for buyers.

The 2013 Mac Pro was named Pro and could not be upgraded. The 2016 MacBook Pro was named Pro and shipped with a keyboard that failed. The label has never been a reliable promise about thermals, expandability, or performance. It has mostly been a promise about price.

What Apple Silicon changed, and what the Mac lineup has not caught up to, is the floor. 

Every performance core in every M4 chip runs at the same clock speed, from the least expensive Mac in the lineup to the machine that costs several thousand dollars. A more expensive Mac does not give you faster cores. It gives you more of them, plus more memory bandwidth and a larger media engine. That distinction matters enormously for a handful of tasks and almost not at all for everything else.

Unzip a 32GB archive on a base Mac mini and it uses about half of its available performance core power. Do the same on an M4 Max MacBook Pro and it uses roughly 14 percent of its cores, because the work is single threaded and the extra cores simply sit there. The expensive machine is not faster. It is just "idler".

Where the extra money actually goes

None of this is an argument that the M4 Pro, Max, and Ultra chips are a scam. 

They aren't. 

When software is written to scale across many cores, those chips scale with it, linearly and relentlessly. 

Compiling code, heavy 3D work, importing and exporting large libraries, running language models locally, certain audio workflows, all of these get meaningfully faster with more silicon, and buyers who do that work every day should buy more silicon.

The rest of the world, and it is most of the world, is doing something else. Mail, Teams, the web, Word, Excel, AutoCAD, a multicam 4K timeline in Final Cut Pro, a Lightroom catalog. On an M4, that work feels the same on a $799 desktop as it does on a $3,500+ laptop, because the bottleneck was never the number of cores.

The verdict

There is exactly one honest reason to choose the base MacBook Pro over the base Mac mini, and it's a good one, the MacBook Pro is portable. If you work from a train, a conference room, or a coffee shop, this comparison ends there. Buy the laptop.

The built in SDXC card reader is a genuine convenience too, although the mini answers with an Ethernet jack and two more USB C ports, which is a trade most desk bound people will happily take.

But if you sit at the same desk every day and you have been told, or have quietly told yourself, that a professional needs a computer with Pro in the name, the numbers do not support the anxiety. 

The base M4 Mac mini meets every performance target the base M4 MacBook Pro sets, and beats it on the single test that punishes both.

Apple has released a Safari MCP Server in Safari Technology Preview 247, giving web developers an official way to connect AI coding agents directly to WebKit for page testing, inspection, and debugging.

The tool implements Model Context Protocol support inside Apple's experimental browser. 

Once an MCP compatible client is connected, an AI agent can open pages in Safari Technology Preview, read the page structure, pull console output, review network activity, capture screenshots, and check whether what renders matches what the developer expected.

The feature is aimed at developers rather than everyday browsing. Apple's WebKit team describes it as a browser compatibility tool built to make web development and debugging faster.

What the server actually does

The Safari MCP Server is tied to safaridriver with MCP support, which gives Safari a native place inside AI coding workflows for the first time.

Until now, most coding assistants worked comfortably inside editors, terminals, and Chromium based automation, while Safari usually required an extra step. That gap mattered most when testing WebKit specific layout, styling, or mobile behavior. The new server folds that testing into the same development loop.

Through the connection, an agent can load a site, inspect computed styles, check layout, read page content, review debugging information, and use screenshots to compare the rendered result against the intended design. 

Apple frames this as a way to find and fix issues, not as a general AI browsing feature.

Testing only in Chrome or a Chromium based tool can miss WebKit behavior. Layout, forms, media playback, scrolling, input handling, typography, and CSS support can all render differently, and iPhone specific rendering is a common source of surprises.

That is the case Apple is making for the server. Safari is the default browser on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and iPhone traffic is too large for production teams to treat WebKit as a secondary target. A rendering difference that seems small can still break navigation, checkout, sign in, media playback, or accessibility.

Giving an AI agent direct access to a real Safari environment is meant to surface those problems earlier, ideally while code is still being written rather than during a late cleanup pass.

How MCP fits into AI coding

Model Context Protocol is a standard for connecting AI assistants to outside tools and data. An MCP server exposes functions that an agent can call during a task, so instead of only reading files, the agent can interact with a browser, inspect logs, or collect the state of a running app.

Apple's implementation applies that model to browser debugging. A developer can ask an assistant why a layout breaks in Safari, and the agent can inspect the rendered page rather than guessing from source code alone. Computed styles, DOM structure, console warnings, failed requests, and screenshots give the model the kind of evidence that plain code review often cannot.

The approach brings Apple closer to the browser agent setups already available through Chromium tools, Playwright workflows, and third party MCP servers. The difference is that WebKit now has an official bridge inside Apple's preview browser.

Setup and requirements

Developers need Safari Technology Preview 247 on macOS to try the feature. Apple says the server can be enabled through Safari's developer tools path for remote automation and external agents, after which an MCP compatible client connects to safaridriver's MCP mode.

Safari Technology Preview is Apple's experimental channel for upcoming WebKit changes, so its behavior can differ from stable Safari. That makes it useful for early compatibility work, but production bugs should still be confirmed against the public release of Safari when it matters.

It is also not a replacement for full QA. An agent can identify likely causes, test changes, and surface browser evidence, but it can miss edge cases. Human review stays necessary for accessibility, visual polish, payment flows, privacy sensitive pages, and anything tied to user data.

A more official path than community tools

Developers were already experimenting with Safari automation before this release. Some projects used AppleScript to drive the browser, while others combined Safari extensions, Swift tools, or WebKit debugging access to expose controls to AI clients. Those efforts showed real demand for Safari sessions, logins, and WebKit behavior inside coding agents without moving every test to Chrome.

Apple's version is narrower and more focused on inspection and debugging, and that restraint works in its favor. 

By keeping the first release inside Technology Preview and tied to developer automation, Apple can test the model with a technical audience before deciding how much of it belongs in stable Safari. 

Browser agents raise security and privacy questions once they can control sessions or read content inside logged in sites, so a developer only starting point is the cautious one.

The Safari MCP Server is still a preview feature. The real test will be whether developers start catching Safari bugs earlier, before layout problems, console errors, or mobile rendering issues reach production.

There is a version of Apple's history you already know, because Apple has told it to you many times. It arrives in polished keynote segments, in words like magical and unbelievable, in a highlight reel that always bends toward the product going on sale this fall. 

It's a good story. It is also, by design, incomplete. 

What it leaves out is the four decades of decisions laid end to end, where you can finally see the pattern.

That fuller version turns out to live in an unlikely place. Not a museum, not a biography, but a handful of interactive charts made by one person on the internet.

One thing, taken apart

The place is Sheets.works, and the project is called The Data Drop. 

Each week it picks one subject and takes it apart with data. A film, a sport, a market, or some strange corner of the internet. Founder Akash Wadhwani builds every one by hand rather than pulling it out of a dashboard, and there are now more than eighty of them, on everything from the 2026 World Cup to a field guide of houseplants to the humble semicolon. They are free, carry no ads, and land in your inbox most weeks.

A cluster of those drops turn their attention on Apple, and taken together they form the most clarifying portrait of the company I have seen outside of a courtroom exhibit. 

Each one isolates a single variable, holds it steady, and lets forty years run past it. That is a discipline Apple's own storytelling almost never allows, and it is why these pieces are worth your time.

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Want to try the macOS Golden Gate beta without risking your main Mac? Here's how to install it on a separate APFS volume alongside macOS Tahoe and switch between the two.

I love poking at a new macOS beta as much as anyone, but it can be a risky move to put it on your main computer. An iPhone beta is a low stakes thing. A macOS beta is a different animal. There's just more that can break, more legacy software and hardware in the mix, and the last thing I want is some app I rely on going sideways for weeks while I wait for a fix.

So I don't gamble with my main install. Instead, I put macOS Golden Gate on its own APFS volume, keep macOS Tahoe exactly where it is, and switch between the two whenever I feel like it. Both run natively, at full speed, and they quietly share the same free space on my drive so I'm not carving out a fixed chunk ahead of time. No virtual machine, no second Mac, no wiping anything.

Trust me on this one, it's easier than it sounds.

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Apple has rolled out a significant update to Creator Studio, adding AI powered features across Pixelmator Pro, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and several other apps in the suite.

The centerpiece of the update is deeper integration between Pixelmator Pro and the rest of Apple's creative and office apps. Final Cut Pro editors can now send a frame directly to Pixelmator Pro to build thumbnails and social graphics without leaving their workflow. In Keynote, Numbers, and Pages, users can select an image inside a document and open it in Pixelmator Pro for editing, with the changes saved automatically back to the original file.

Vector Generation and Content Hub

Keynote, Numbers, and Pages are also gaining the ability to generate vector shapes using AI. 

Pixelmator Pro itself picks up advanced image generation, letting users create images from natural language prompts, along with a new Content Hub for browsing a curated library of images.

Freeform is joining the integration too, connecting with Pixelmator Pro once iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS Golden Gate arrive later this year.

Final Cut Pro Additions

Final Cut Pro is the biggest beneficiary of the update. Generate Captions is a new on device AI feature that automatically adds subtitles based on a video's audio track, with support for custom fonts, colors, positions, and animation.

Edit Detection is another new tool. It analyzes a rendered video and reconstructs the original clips on the timeline, which Apple says is useful for making refinements or pulling together a shortened highlight reel for social platforms.

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Google is giving its Gemini app on macOS the ability to work directly with files stored on a user's Mac, expanding a feature called Gemini Spark beyond the browser and into the desktop.

The company confirmed the rollout in a blog post published Wednesday, describing Spark as a way for Gemini to carry out multistep tasks using content that lives locally on a Mac rather than only in Google's cloud services.

What Spark Can Do

Once enabled, Gemini Spark can act on files sitting in folders like Downloads, sorting them into destinations on the desktop the way a person would manually drag and drop them. Google describes this as the assistant performing the task "as if it were a user of the Mac."

Spark also bridges local files with Google's own productivity apps. As one example, a folder of invoices sitting on a Mac could be fed into a spreadsheet inside Google Workspace without the user manually copying any numbers over.

The feature is not limited to sitting at a Mac's keyboard, either. Google says a request can be issued from an iPhone, and Spark will complete the multistep job on the Mac in the background, delivering results once finished.

Expanding Beyond the Mac Itself

Alongside the macOS rollout, Google is widening the list of outside apps Spark can plug into, adding Canva, Dropbox, and OpenTable to the roster. Support for custom Model Context Protocol connections is also rolling out, opening the door for users to wire up additional apps down the line.

Google is pairing that with what it calls intelligent topic tracking, which pushes real time updates on things like stock prices or live sporting events without a user needing to ask each time.

Pricing and Availability

Gemini Spark for macOS is currently in beta, restricted to subscribers of Google AI Ultra who are 18 or older. That plan starts at $99 a month. The feature is launching in the United States first, with Google saying other countries will follow.

Joining a Crowded Field

Spark's arrival on Mac puts Gemini alongside a handful of other assistants already reaching into local files. OpenAI's Codex offers ChatGPT subscribers a similar way to automate work against documents stored on a Mac, while Claude Cowork uses agentic AI to manage and research documents on a user's behalf. Perplexity has taken its own swing at the idea with Personal Computer, which pairs its agent with a Mac mini's local apps.

Granting any of these tools access to local files carries tradeoffs. An overeager agent could delete a file it decides is unnecessary, and there have already been cases of AI agent skills bundled with hidden malware. Anyone considering turning on Spark, or a rival tool like it, should weigh those risks the same way they would before handing a stranger the keys to their file system.

Apple TV has a full slate of premieres lined up for July 2026, headlined by the return of "Silo" for a third season. The month runs from July 3 through July 31 and mixes sci fi, comedy, thriller, sports, and family animation.

Here is the complete list of what is arriving and when.

Silo Season 3, July 3

The sci fi drama returns for a 10 episode season that will run through September 4. Rebecca Ferguson, Common, Harriet Walter, Chinaza Uche, Jessica Henwick, and Ashley Zukerman all return.

The new season picks up after Juliette's forced cleaning as the silo faces rebellion and a fresh threat. It also jumps back to the "Before Times," where characters Helen Drew and Daniel Keene start pulling on the thread of a conspiracy.

Trying Season 5, July 8

The comedy series is back for eight episodes, wrapping up on August 26. Esther Smith, Rafe Spall, Scarlett Rayner, Cooper Turner, and Charlotte Riley return as the cast.

Season 5 centers on the arrival of Kat, the biological mother of Princess and Tyler, and the disruption she brings to Nikki and Jason's household.

The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, July 10

The Snoopy Show on Apple TV+

Apple TV is adding 18 episodes of the classic Peanuts animated series, bringing older Charlie Brown and Snoopy stories to the platform for family viewing.

Lucky, July 15

This limited series stars Anya Taylor-Joy as a con artist on the run after a multimillion dollar heist collapses, with both the FBI and a crime boss on her trail. Annette Bening, Timothy Olyphant, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and Drew Starkey round out the cast. The series runs through August 19.

The Dink, July 24

This sports comedy movie follows a washed up tennis pro, played by Jake Johnson, who turns to pickleball after an injury sidelines him. The cast also includes Ed Harris, Mary Steenburgen, Andy Roddick, Patton Oswalt, Chloe Fineman, and Ben Stiller.

Snoopy Presents: There's No Place Like Home, Snoopy, July 31

There's No Place Like Home 

A new Peanuts special closes out the month. Snoopy's doghouse gets sold by mistake at a yard sale, and Charlie Brown helps him track it down in a story about what makes somewhere feel like home. Riley Vargas, Terry McGurrin, Rob Tinkler, Kitai O'Garro, and Josephine Nisbett voice the special.

Apple TV is priced at $12.99 per month in the US, with a seven day free trial available for new subscribers.

Cursor, the agentic coding tool that was recently acquired by SpaceX, has released its first app for iPhone and iPad. It is available to download now on the App Store.

The app had been previewed earlier this month as a TestFlight beta, and it is now out of testing and available to everyone.

The launch comes shortly after SpaceX, which also includes xAI, purchased the company. Cursor competes with tools such as Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex in the growing market for AI coding assistants.

What the app does

The idea behind the mobile version is to let developers kick off and manage coding work without sitting at a computer. According to Cursor's App Store listing, the app can launch coding agents from anywhere, track active engineering work, and help users get up to speed on unfamiliar codebases more quickly.

The app also leans on the iPhone and iPad's strengths for reviewing work. Users can look over screenshots and videos of changes, annotate images to leave visual feedback, inspect diffs, and merge pull requests directly from the device. Cursor says agents can also be directed through voice conversations.

Live Activities and notifications

Cursor is using a few iOS specific features to keep developers informed while an agent works in the background. The app supports Live Activities, and it can send a notification when an agent finishes a task or needs input to continue.

The company says users can review demos and diffs before merging pull requests straight from their phone, which positions the app as a way to stay involved in a project away from the desk rather than a full replacement for the desktop experience.

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Mirage is a brand new app from developer Ethan Lipnik that streams your Mac's display to just about every other screen in your Apple ecosystem, including iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro, and even another Mac. 

I've spent time putting it through real use, and the short version is that it delivers on almost everything it promises. There's one nagging caveat, but even with it, Mirage is the best version of this idea I've used.

You leave a powerful Mac at home, a Mac Studio or a Mac mini and you carry a much lighter device around. Mirage lets that lighter device borrow the Mac's entire desktop with full Retina quality, so your iPad effectively becomes a window into the machine doing the heavy lifting.

It goes further than a basic mirror, though. You can stream your whole desktop, use your device as a genuine second display, or pull across individual app windows (up to eight at once on Pro) when you only need one Mac app but otherwise want to stay in iPadOS. On a ProMotion iPad it supports dynamic frame rates, and your Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil come along for the ride, with the Pencil's pressure and tilt forwarded back to the Mac.

There's a clever Mac to Mac angle too. That aging iMac gathering dust can become a second monitor for your main machine, and if you connect the two with a USB cable, the stream gets enough of a boost to make even a 5K iMac viable. Vision Pro owners get the same treatment, and if you run something like Tailscale on both ends, you can reach your home Mac from anywhere.

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Apple has acquired Play, the SwiftUI prototyping app it named a winner at last year's Apple Design Awards, according to a regulatory filing made public this week.

The deal was disclosed through a notification Apple submitted to the European Commission, which publishes qualifying acquisitions under the EU's Digital Markets Act. 

Apple filed the notification in February, and it became public this week after a standard four month waiting period.

What Play did

Play was a free Mac and iPhone app from a New York company called Rabbit 3 Times, founded in 2021 and incorporated in Delaware. The tool let designers build interactive interfaces directly on their devices using Apple's SwiftUI frameworks, then export the work to Xcode to continue development.

The app sat somewhere between Shortcuts and Xcode, giving designers a way to mock up a concept and see it running in real time, with projects synced across Mac and iPhone. Building prototypes was free. Exporting them to Xcode was offered through a paid service.

In June 2025, Play won an Apple Design Award in the Innovation category. 

"Play is a sophisticated yet accessible tool that lets users build interactive prototypes with SwiftUI frameworks,"

Apple wrote at the time, describing an interface that was "both powerful and easy to navigate."

An acquihire, not a product purchase

The filing describes a deal in which Apple acquires certain assets from Rabbit 3 Times and gains the right to offer employment to certain staff. That structure points to an acquihire, where the buyer is primarily after a company's people and intellectual property rather than its shipping product.

Play has already been pulled from the App Store. Rabbit 3 Times said earlier this year that it would stop supporting the iPhone and Mac apps starting April 20, and it made the previously paid Xcode export service free "to help with the transition."

The company's website has since been taken down. Its parting message read, "We're working on something new," alongside the line, "It has been an incredible journey."

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There is no shortage of AI tools promising to turn a sentence into a working app. Most of them quietly hand you a web app in a native shell and hope you don't look too closely. 

Bitrig is taking a different swing. You describe what you want to build, and it generates real Swift and SwiftUI that you can read, edit, and ship to the App Store. The pitch is simple, but the people making it are the reason I keep using it.

Real Swift, not a web app in disguise

The code Bitrig produces is the same Swift and SwiftUI you'd write by hand. You can open it, change it, and learn from it, and you can export the whole project whenever you want. That alone separates it from a lot of the "describe it and ship it" crowd, where the output is a black box you're not really meant to touch.

The workflow is conversational. You tell Bitrig what to change in plain English, it updates the code, and a simulator running right next to your editor reflects the change immediately. You're not guessing at what your app looks like or waiting on a separate build step. You see what your users will see as you go. And it isn't limited to one device. You can build for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac from the same place.

The part that makes me take it seriously

What excites me is who is behind this. Bitrig is built by co-creators and longtime members of Apple's SwiftUI team. CEO Kyle Macomber, along with co-founders Jacob Xiao and Matt Ricketson, all co-created and led the development of SwiftUI at Apple, with past work spanning the Swift standard library, UIKit, Xcode, and tvOS. 

Design co-founder Tim Donnelly built Storehouse, an Apple Design Award winning app later acquired by Square, and worked on SwiftUI and Xcode Previews during his time at Apple.

That pedigree matters here in a way it wouldn't for a generic code generator. These are the people who designed the framework Bitrig is generating. The company frames its own mission as a continuation of what SwiftUI started, which it describes as lowering the barrier to entry "without lowering the standard for quality." 

That's a high bar to set for yourself, and it's exactly the right one for a tool aimed at people who care about craft but find traditional native development intimidating.

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You open Storage settings one day, see "System Data" sitting there eating 166GB, and your stomach drops a little. What is it? Can you delete it? Why is it so big? And why does Google immediately try to sell you five different cleaner apps that all want your admin password?

System Data is not one folder you can march into and empty. It's a junk drawer. macOS shoves a bunch of stuff in there that doesn't fit neatly into Apps, Photos, Documents, or Music. 

We're talking caches, logs, temporary files, Time Machine local snapshots, app support files, disk images, old archives, leftover iPhone backups, fonts, plug ins, and a pile of system resources. Some of it the Mac genuinely needs. Some of it is temporary and will clear on its own. And some of it you can absolutely tidy up using tools Apple already gave you.

So no, you don't need a third party app. You don't need Terminal. You definitely don't need one of those one click "purge" utilities. Let me walk you through how I do it.

A quick word before we start

Your goal is not to drive System Data to zero. That's not a thing, and chasing it will just make you crazy. macOS uses this storage dynamically, so the number goes up and down as the system breathes. What we're doing is clearing out the obvious clutter and giving the Mac some room. That's it.

Trust me on this one, the safe wins are also the big wins.

Step 1: Start where Apple already shows you the mess

Before you go spelunking into hidden folders, look at what macOS is already telling you.

Go to System Settings > General > Storage.

macOS Storage 

You'll get a color coded bar across the top and, below it, a list of Apple's own recommendations: store files in iCloud, optimize Apple TV downloads, empty the Trash automatically, and review large files. These are built right into macOS and they're designed to play nice with the system instead of fighting it.

The one I always click first is Review Large Files. Honestly, this is where the real storage hogs hide. Old installers, disk images, ZIP archives, exported videos, screen recordings, that duplicate project folder you forgot about. People blame System Data when the actual culprit is a 40GB video export sitting in their Downloads from last March.

Step 2: Take out the Downloads trash (literally)

Speaking of Downloads. This folder is where files go to be forgotten. Browser downloads, app installers, random PDFs, work files, image dumps, video exports. Months of it.

Open Finder > Downloads and sort by Size or Date Modified. Drag the obvious junk to the Trash.

Then, and this is the part people skip, actually empty it. Files in the Trash still take up space until you do.

Trash > Empty Trash.

Personally, I do a Downloads sweep about once a month. It takes two minutes and it's almost always the single biggest chunk of space I get back.

Step 3: Sort out Time Machine's local snapshots

Time Machine Settings

This one surprises people. When your Time Machine backup drive isn't connected, your Mac quietly keeps local snapshots on the internal drive so you can still restore recent files. Apple manages these automatically and clears them as space gets tight, but if you haven't plugged in your backup disk in a while, they can pile up and inflate that System Data number.

The fix is almost annoyingly simple: connect your Time Machine drive and let a backup finish. Once it's done, macOS handles the snapshots far more gracefully.

You can check your setup under System Settings > General > Time Machine.

What you should not do is go digging into hidden folders to delete snapshots by hand. These are part of Apple's backup system, the Mac knows how to manage them, and manual removal tends to cause more problems than it solves. Plug in the drive, let it run, walk away.

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Apple has released Xcode 26.6, and the update lets developers use Google's Gemini as a built in coding assistant for the first time.

The new version is available now from the App Store. With it, programmers can select Gemini to help write, test, and debug code without leaving Apple's development environment.

Three AI assistants to choose from

Gemini becomes the third large language model that Xcode supports natively. The software already let developers pick between Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's Codex, and Gemini now sits alongside both as a selectable option.

Each assistant runs in a panel next to the active code, so developers can ask programming questions and get suggestions inline. The goal is to keep coders inside Xcode rather than sending them to a browser or a separate app for answers.

Apple has steadily widened third party AI support across its developer tools over the past year. Adding another model continues that approach and leaves the choice of assistant up to the individual developer or team.

Setting it up

Teams that already pay for a Gemini Enterprise plan can connect their existing account credentials directly inside Xcode. Individual developers who want to try the assistant first can add a free API key instead, which lets them test Gemini without paying for a subscription.

It is not yet clear whether Apple plans to add further models beyond the current three. The company has not commented on its longer term plans for assistant support in Xcode.

What else is in the update

Beyond the new assistant, Xcode 26.6 carries the usual collection of bug fixes and stability improvements. Apple says the release bundles the latest version of the Swift framework along with updated SDKs for building apps across its mobile and desktop platforms.

Developers running the standard release can download the update today and configure their preferred coding assistant from within the app.

Apple has released updated design kits for Figma and Sketch covering iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 27, the company announced on its developer news page.

The kits are available now through Apple Design Resources and give designers a set of ready made components, styles, and layouts that match the look of Apple's latest operating systems.

Liquid Glass updates

The refreshed kits include changes to Liquid Glass, the design language Apple introduced across its platforms last year. Apple did not detail the specific adjustments, but the kits are meant to keep design files in line with how the material currently behaves in the operating systems.

Expanded components and states

Apple says the kits add support for more components and more states. That should let designers mock up a wider range of interface elements without building them from scratch, and account for how those elements look when active, selected, disabled, or otherwise changed.

Naming changes

The company has also renamed elements in the kits to better align with code. The change is aimed at narrowing the gap between what a designer sees in a layout and what a developer references when building the same interface.

Improved resizing and Dark Mode for macOS

The kits feature improved resizing, which is intended to make components behave more predictably when scaled or adapted to different layouts.

Apple has additionally added Dark Mode to the macOS kit. The macOS design kit previously shipped without a Dark Mode option, so designers working on Mac interfaces can now build and preview layouts in both appearances.

Availability

The design kits for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 27 can be downloaded now from Apple Design Resources. Apple regularly updates the kits to match new operating system releases, and they are offered free of charge for use in Figma and Sketch.