Corinne Timmermann
Shannon Davis
Toni Graeme
Patrick Wesley
JULIO OJEDA-ZAPATA 7 April 2025
My family members have a comforting, foolproof routine when needing to charge their iPhones at our house. They seek out the circular pads I have scattered throughout and hover their handsets over them until a magnetic force pulls the devices precisely into place.
That’s MagSafe, an Apple technology I assumed no modern iPhone would ever be without. That’s why I turned my home into a MagSafe paradise and trained my loved ones to rely on MagSafe charging pads in favor of messy cables. TidBITS publisher Adam Engst recently underwent a similar exercise (see “Going All in on MagSafe for the iPhone in the Office, Bedroom, and Car, 6 May 2024).”
Then, in late February, Apple shook my world a bit with the release of the iPhone 16e, the replacement for the iPhone SE and a budget-friendly addition to the iPhone 16 lineup (see “Apple Replaces iPhone SE with Larger, More Expensive iPhone 16e,” 20 February 2025). The iPhone 16e discards the Home button and adopts the look, feel, and proportions of the other iPhone 16 models, all for $200 less than the iPhone 16.
Except… the iPhone 16e doesn’t support MagSafe.
It is one of several ways Apple’s entry-level phone cuts corners and is perhaps the most confounding. The iPhone 16e does support wireless charging via the Qi standard (see “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Wireless Charging,” 10 June 2019), but not the current Qi2 standard that offers 15-watt charging and the Magnetic Power Profile inspired by MagSafe to ensure precise alignment using a ring of magnets. Instead, the iPhone 16e supports only 7.5-watt Qi charging and lacks the magnetic alignment that enhances the user experience and improves charging speed and efficiency.
The good news is that you can restore most—but not all—MagSafe functionality to the iPhone 16e by using third-party accessories.
The key to bringing back some of the MagSafe user experience is a case that provides magnetic but not electrical compatibility with other MagSafe accessories. Apple’s own iPhone 16e cases do not snap onto MagSafe charging pads because they, like the iPhone 16e itself, lack the magnetic ring necessary to interact with the magnets in MagSafe charging pads.
Apple’s assumption here is that most iPhone 16e users will charge their phones using a USB-C cable or slum it with an old Qi charging pad. Data appears to bear this out, per John Gruber of Daring Fireball:
According to Apple representatives, most people in the 16e’s target audience exclusively charge their phones by plugging them into a charging cable. They tend not to use (wireless) charging at all, and when they do, they might not care that the 16e is stuck with a pokey 7.5W Qi charging speed, when recent more expensive iPhones charge via MagSafe at 15W or even 25W.
This hasn’t stopped a herd of case makers from releasing magnetic models for the iPhone 16e. After all, there isn’t much to it. Urban Armor Gear notes that the magnetic ring in its iPhone 16e cases is exactly the same as that found in its other iPhone cases.
The iPhone 16e still won’t benefit from MagSafe’s faster wireless charging speeds. When it launched, MagSafe supported up to 15-watt charging (see “ MagSafe Is Cool, but Is It Worth the Trade-Offs?” 6 November 2020), and Apple has recently increased that to 25 watts for the other iPhone 16 models when paired with a new version of Apple’s MagSafe Charger and a 30-watt or higher power adapter. Even with a MagSafe case that locks it onto a wireless charger—including Apple’s MagSafe Charger—the iPhone 16e remains limited to slow 7.5-watt charging. Will you care?
Reviewing a magnetic case for the iPhone 16e is a challenge because there isn’t much to say: put the phone in the case, put the case on a MagSafe pad, and verify that the phone has adhered and is charging. It was boring, and the cases didn’t even look different, but I got a nice tour of prominent case makers. Brands that showed consistently high quality included Urban Armor Gear, Smartish, RokForm, ESR, and Ohsnap.
The magnetic strength on the cases varied. Those who like it extra strong should investigate ESR’s HaloLock Classic Hybrid Case or RokForm’s Rugged iPhone 16e Case. The latter builds in magnets from top to bottom so you can affix it to any metal surface as well as a MagSafe pad.
What if your preferred iPhone 16e case lacks magnets? Apple’s cases fall into this category, as do some third-party cases. Add-on magnets such as ESR’s Universal Ring 360 are the answer. I installed one of the stick-on rings on my Apple Silicone Case with the help of physical guides. It still ended up a bit crooked, but it provided a pleasingly powerful connection. Its stick-on adhesive is weak, though, making it a bit too easy to pry off.
Magnetic cases not only restore MagSafe-like charging (if only at 7.5W) but enable the use of accessories such as stands, wallets, and grips that have their own magnets. I especially like Ohsnap’s Snap Grip Wallet, a metal wallet that holds 8 cards, incorporates a pop-out grip for holding the phone with the index and middle fingers, and features all-over magnetism for slapping the phone onto a metal surface without removing the wallet.
Ultimately, the lesson is that a MagSafe case or add-on magnet can make an iPhone 16e feel like a MagSafe-equipped iPhone 16. It won’t charge as fast, and you won’t get quite the same range of choices, but the lack of MagSafe shouldn’t cause you to pass over the iPhone 16e if it otherwise meets your needs.
William Gallagher | Mar 27, 2025
You can save a lot of storage space by turning off Apple Intelligence
It's not exactly surprising that Apple wants you to use its latest features, but if you don't use them, you should be able to switch off Apple Intelligence entirely. Perhaps that won't even be possible later as Apple Intelligence becomes more entwined with iOS, but for now, there is an off switch, and if you've used it, Apple should respect that.
Since it doesn't, though, and instead turns Apple Intelligence back on every time you update iOS, here's how to turn it off. You just might want to bookmark this as one thing to do right after any update.
This isn't intended to criticize Apple Intelligence. It's just intended to criticize Apple ignoring your setting and turning the feature back on.
It seems fair enough to turn off any feature you're not using, and that can be turned off. In this case, Apple Intelligence is a set of features that will doubtlessly get ever better, so it might ultimately be more useful to leave it turned on.
Except if you do that, it isn't just a case of your getting the option for Writing Tools that you will never use. Or of having the Image Playground app, which you never open.
The space that Apple Intelligence's Large Language Models take up varies by device
It's a case of also having Apple Intelligence's Large Language Model (LLM) on your device. The amount of space that takes up seems to vary between devices, but the word "large" is a serious clue.
In both cases, you will see how much space Apple Intelligence is taking up. On the iPhone and iPad, the figure will be just listed on screen, whereas with the Mac it will appear as a pop-up notification.
And it will appear huge. In one test, AppleInsider found that Apple Intelligence was taking up 6.22GB on an iPhone. It was taking 10.73GB on a MacBook Pro.
There's nothing wrong with LLMs living up to their name of being large, and this size is needed for what Apple Intelligence does. It's just that if you are short on space, or if Apple Intelligence is not yet useful enough to you, it's taking up a lot of storage space.
It can also take up a lot of Unified Memory, which is one reason why the maxed-out Mac Studio is considered a strong AI and LLM machine.
Apple Intelligence is coming to Apple Vision Pro in visionOS 2.4. We'll update this piece if Apple turning Apple Intelligence on by default persists.
Charles Martin | Mar 26, 2025
Pressing and holding Volume Up and Power buttons on either side of the iPhone will bring up the shutdown screen
There's a significant difference between just putting an iPhone to sleep versus turning it off completely. The former is simple to do — you just tap the side or sleep/wake button on the right-hand side of the iPhone to put it to sleep.
Powering down the iPhone, by contrast, involves a short procedure to confirm that you want to switch off the device down completely. Beyond the different ways you can first initiate the shutdown, you must then always confirm it by swiping an on-screen slider from left to right.
Many of the methods described below have worked since at least iOS 11, if not earlier. A few, however, are much more recent, and they've been added because they can be more convenient.
They're just not so convenient that Apple actually tells you about them.
You can initiate shutdown on previous and also on current iPhone models by holding down the Volume Up on the left side together with the Side button on the right of the chassis. This brings up the shutdown confirmation screen, where you can release the buttons and swipe to confirm.
This method should also work in situations where you need to force-restart your iPhone. This hardware method should also work if the screen is frozen and not responding to touch controls.
Pressing the Volume Up and Power buttons on the iPhone to get the option to shut it down
In other situations, you can also opt to use Siri to help you power off your device. If you have turned on Siri's voice control, you can simply press and hold the Side button and say "Siri, power off." Siri will respond by asking you to tap an onscreen dialog box to confirm that you do want to power off the device, and once you've tapped that, your iPhone will turn itself off.
You may well, though, be in a situation where it's not appropriate for you to speak aloud to Siri — or for Siri to reply to you, either. However, there is a way to shut down your iPhone using Siri and neither talking to it, nor having it even bleep in response.
To do this, you take advantage of the fact that Siri can be summoned by pressing and holding the side button. But instead of just doing that, do this:
You will see the shutdown confirmation slider appear at the top of the screen. Swipe to the right to confirm, and the iPhone will shut down.
If you have an iPhone that can't run iOS 18, all of these hardware methods will shut down your phone. In addition, though, all iPhone have yet another option. You can:
All of these still work with iOS 18, but this latest version of iOS gives you an additional option that is surely the most convenient. It's arguably the easiest to find, too, once you know where it is.
It's in Control Center. That feature has been radically redesigned in iOS 18 such that you can now have several pages of controls.
But still at the top right of Control Center, regardless of what page you're on, you can now find a power off icon. It's the regular power off symbol of a circle with line coming up out of the top.
So swipe down on your iPhone screen to get Control Center. Then press and hold on that icon until you're shown the control saying "slide to power off".
You can turn off the iPhone right from the Control Center's power button.
If you're counting, that makes a total of five different ways to shut down your iPhone — and Apple doesn't tell you about any of them.
The new Control Center option is the closest to being discoverable without you being told. But if you have been using Apple devices for long enough, this will all remind you of how Steve Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that a morbid fear of death was why he disliked putting off switches on products. Seriously.
Charles Martin | Nov 19, 2024
RCS messaging brings more features to cross-platform messaging.
The RCS protocol, which stands for Rich Communication Services, brings some of the abilities of Messages to users who aren't on iPhones. It has also been adopted by other messaging apps, such as WhatsApp.
As of iOS 18, RCS is supported — meaning some features you previously only saw when reading or sending messages to other iPhone users also now work when conversing with Android owners.
This includes better security for messages sent from some Android messaging apps, and support for read receipts, as well as sending and receiving high-resolution photos, audio, and video across platforms. Typing indicators, which appear prior to the message being sent on iPhones, are now visible on both platforms.
Tapbacks and reactions are also supported across platforms. Group chats across platforms will also work better due to the improved compatibility.
Because RCS support has only arrived with the iOS 18 and later updates, you can check to ensure it is turned on — as it should be by default. Open the Settings app, and from there, scroll to the bottom, tap Apps, find Messages, and if you see an RCS Messaging menu, it should already be turned on.
To check whether your carrier automatically supports RCS, you should open Settings, then General, and then About. If you scroll down to the SIM/Network section, you will see an option called Carrier.
Tapping on that switches the caption to IMS Status. If RCS is supported by your carrier, you should see Voice, SMS & RCS. Otherwise, you'll just see Voice and SMS.
If your carrier does not support RCS, that extra layer of features and security will only appear if you and the person you're messaging are using messaging apps that support RCS, such as iMessage, WhatsApp or Google Messages, and are on devices that support it.
Apple maintains a list of carriers in regions around the world that support RCS. All the big major carriers in the US support RCS, of course, but some regional or smaller carriers — such as Boost Mobile — do not, at least at present.
Users of the Messages app will still always know if they are receiving a message from someone on an iPhone — the message will be in a blue bubble rather than green. Growing RCS adoption and future encryption standards on Android won't change that.
If you receive a green message sent using RCS, the message will have a caption that says "Text Message RCS," and if it was sent by SMS, it will have the same message saying "SMS" instead.
Ways to tell how your text message was sent: RCS, iMessage, or SMS.
All this compatibility is mainly due to pressure from the European Union to make messaging systems between platforms work with each other. Some other apps that feature messaging, such as Facebook Messenger, have also now adopted RCS features.
That said, it's still not 100 percent cross-platform standardized, and there are two areas in particular that Messages users should be aware of. Text effects available between iMessage users, such as loud, boom, slam, invisible ink and so on do not appear when sent to an Android user.
Instead, the Android recipient receives a text saying the message was sent with a named effect, but can't show the effect. Likewise, inline replies to a specific message in Messages aren't supported when messaging an Android user, at least at present.
However, the big stumbling block of RCS is that it still doesn't support encryption as a cross-platform standard. If an Android user is using Google Messages as well as Google's own RCS servers, or WhatsApp, the messages are encrypted.
Outside of those apps, only Apple-to-Apple messages are fully encrypted. This is something to bear in mind if Android users in your group chat aren't using WhatsApp or Google Messages on their end.
Both Apple and Google have said they will work with the GSM Association to include standard encryption and better feature compatibility in a future version of RCS. Doing so will make security and feature compatibility supported by default, without having to depend on individual carriers or app developers.
Chip Loder | Apr 18, 2025
Enable or disable Spotlight extensions in macOS's System Settings app.
Spotlight is Apple's search indexing technology, which speeds up searches of data on your Mac or iOSdevice by storing metadata about files and their contents.
From time to time, macOS runs a process in the background to catalog the files and data on your storage devices. This data is stored in an index that Spotlight can use to look up data when you do a search in the future.
Keeping indices on your data speeds up searches and allows Spotlight to locate the data you're looking for more quickly.
You can also stop Spotlight from searching specific storage volumes or folders. You can do this by adding them to the System Settings app under the Spotlight->Search Privacy sheet.
Some third-party macOS apps include the ability to provide their custom data to Spotlight by means of Extensions. These are small chunks of code that the app developer provides, which Spotlight can use to include custom data in its index.
Extensions make Spotlight searches even faster because they tell Spotlight what data each app uses and how it is structured. By providing Spotlight Extensions, third-party apps in effect tell Spotlight how to quickly and efficiently search and index the data files those apps create.
When you add a new app to your Mac, Spotlight Extensions are automatically added if the app includes them. These are usually included inside each app's bundle (folder) in the /Contants/Library/Spotlight folder as .mdimporter files (which themselves are bundles).
In macOS Sequoia, you can decide which apps' Spotlight Extensions you want enabled or disabled. Turning off a Spotlight Extension in System Settings removes the app-specific info for that app from Spotlight.
You might want to do this, for example, if you don't want Spotlight to have additional info about how certain apps' data or metadata is structured.
Note that disabling a Spotlight Extension doesn't stop Spotlight from indexing those kinds of files. All it does is stop Spotlight from having knowledge of the internal workings of the app's data structure and metadata.
To enable or disable a Spotlight Extension for a specific app, go to System Settings->General->Login Items & Extensions->Spotlight and then click the small Info button on the right. This opens the Spotlight Extensions sheet:
Spotlight Extensions sheet in macOS's System Settings app.
For each app listed, flip the switch on the right to enable or disable Spotlight's ability to have access to that app's data.
There are also several command-line Spotlight utilities you can use in the macOS Terminal, such as mdutil and mdfind. For more info on how to use macOS's command-line Spotlight utilities, see our previous articles How to use Spotlight's metadata file utilities in macOS and How to get more from Spotlight on the Mac.
If you're a developer, be sure to read the main Spotlight Foundation API Apple documentation and the File Metadata section of the Core Services documentation.
The two main classes you'll be working with are NSMetadataQuery and NSMetadataItem.
Be aware that writing Spotlight Extensions and using the Spotlight search APIs in your app are two different things.
Next, read the fairly dated Spotlight Importer Programming Guide and File Metadata Search Programming Guide.
If you're using Core Data, see Core Data Spotlight Integration Programming Guide.
GLENN FLEISHMAN 11 April 2025
Americans lost $12 billion to fraud in 2024, with a significant portion coming from phishing, smishing (SMS phishing), and social media trickery. Individuals have been tricked into handing over financial information, sending cryptocurrency, and even handing over bags of cash in a parking lot.
In his Web Informant newsletter, David Strom recently highlighted something we’d never considered: “personal cyber insurance,” which offers repayment of some losses and reimbursement or coverage for certain recovery services. Many homeowner policies allow cyber insurance to be added as a low-cost endorsement (extra coverage), and policies can also be purchased a la carte for renters or if your insurer isn’t price competitive. Prices range from about $25 to $300 a year, depending on the insurer and level of coverage you choose.
David pointed out that a friend of his recovered $25,000 from their insurer out of $30,000 stolen in a “pig-butchering” scheme, in which people are duped through online friendships or romantic enticements into making what they think are recommended investments. In reality, no investment exists, and the money is just stolen.
These policies often cover some or all of the costs associated with various types of attacks, such as data destruction or “cyber extortion,” including ransomware. An insurer might reimburse you for data recovery or hire a professional to negotiate with a data blackmailer.
For fraud, consider whether the policy provides reimbursement for direct theft of assets, such as when someone obtains your credentials and steals money from your accounts, but your financial institution doesn’t recompense you. In addition, look for coverage of pig butchering and similar scams, in which you are deceived into transferring money, like David’s friend.
David points to Nerdwallet’s roundup, which lists some insurers that provide endorsements on existing policies and standalone insurance options. If you own a home or have renter’s insurance and are satisfied with the company you use, I recommend contacting your agent or the company to inquire about an upgrade. Otherwise, you need to purchase a standalone policy. Chubb may be a good choice, given what it includes in coverage. The company offers policies directly and through its Blinksubsidiary.
I had never thought about insuring myself against cyber fraud despite having fallen victim to several cyber attacks against my systems over the years, including an incident where someone installed Bitcoin mining software on one of my servers. Fortunately, my restoration costs were merely my time. My spouse and I use State Farm Insurance, which offers a $25-per-year add-on policy with a total annual payout of up to $50,000 across various categories. I’ve asked our agent to upgrade our policy. It feels like a small hedge against a lot of possible worries.
We all hope we are clever enough to recognize malicious interactions, but criminals are becoming ever better at exploiting our worst fears, triggering our panic responses, and reeling us in. As I discussed in “How To Avoid AI Voice Impersonation and Similar Scams” (25 January 2024), even the savviest among us could be fooled long enough if we believed a loved one was calling because of dire circumstances. Notably, some phishing attacks are becoming harder to identify—Troy Hunt, the creator of the Have I Been Pwned data breach tracker website, recently fell prey to a highly sophisticated phishing attack partly due to being jet-lagged. If it can happen to a security expert like Hunt, it can happen to anyone.
