Karen Smith
Chris Upton
Thanks to the AirTag (see “Apple’s AirTag Promises to Help You Find Your Keys,” 20 April 2021), those of us who tend to leave our car keys in random locations no longer have to ransack the house to find them. Now their whereabouts are instantly revealed courtesy of an AirTag on a keychain. You can even see the AirTag on a map, if you leave it at the park or in a taxi, thanks to the Find My network that leverages more than a billion in-use Apple devices to relay an AirTag’s location wherever in the world it might be.
But why hasn’t Apple built Find My capability into a range of accessories, such as a card that slips into a wallet—where the bulbous AirTag wouldn’t fit well—or a Find My-enabled version of its magnetically adhering MagSafe Wallet?
Apple passed up an opportunity to introduce a new accessory last month when it unveiled the second-generation AirTag (see “New AirTag Offers Expanded Range, Louder Speaker,” 26 January 2026). While the new AirTag provides incremental improvements, it retains the original, slightly awkward shape. Pricing remains unchanged at $29 for one or $99 for a four-pack. But where’s the Find My luggage lock? The Find My-enabled charger? A Find My keychain in a different form factor?
It turns out all of these gadgets are available from third-party manufacturers. This is another familiar pattern. Apple unveils a new technology, such as MagSafe, and makes a variety of accessories to build excitement. But over time, it withdraws from the field (goodbye, MagSafe Duo; see “Seven Third-Party Accessories Show MagSafe’s Potential,” 4 June 2021), leaving it to third-party makers to hoist their own banners.
So it has been with Find My devices.
In 2021, Apple released an updated version of its MagSafe Wallet. Originally inert, Apple advertised the updated wallet as having Find My support, but that was true in only the most minimal sense: “The MagSafe Wallet now supports Find My, so you can be notified of your wallet’s last known location if it gets separated from your phone.” Translation: “The wallet lacks the Bluetooth or UWB hardware of an AirTag and instead relies on the iPhone to record the wallet’s location the moment it is detached.” The MagSafe Wallet retained that minimal Find My capability in 2023, when it evolved into the iPhone FineWoven Wallet (see “Five Unexpected Announcements from Apple’s Wonderlust Event,” 12 September 2023). But Apple made no Find My improvements, so it still couldn’t be tracked in real time.
Enter Nomad’s Leather Mag Wallet. This $85 MagSafe wallet is all but indistinguishable from Apple’s original leather model, but it incorporates full Find My tracking. Leave it on the bus by mistake—in town or in Timbuktu—and you can track its whereabouts on your iPhone until you’re happily reunited.
Pairing the Leather Mag Wallet with an iPhone is simple. Find the small circle etched into the back/bottom of the wallet. In the iPhone’s Find My app, tap Items > + > Other Item. Then, press and hold the circular button on the wallet until you hear a beep. That’s your cue to pair the phone and wallet; you’ll be prompted to name the wallet and assign it an emoji.
From then on, tapping Play Sound in the Find My app will make the wallet beep so you can find it wherever you left it. If it’s too far away to be heard, look for it on the map in the Find My app.
Charging is easy, too. Just place the wallet on a MagSafe or Qi charger. The wallet’s built-in battery lasts for 5 months before needing a recharge.
Credit card-shaped Find My trackers that slip into wallet slots make so much sense that it’s a wonder Apple hasn’t released its own version. Instead, an avalanche of companies have tried their hands at solving this tech problem, with varying degrees of success.
Nomad and KeySmart have finally nailed this niche. Their products are about the thickness of a couple of credit cards, are easy to pair, and avoid the mistakes other vendors have committed, such as using oddball proprietary charging cords that are easy to lose.
Nomad’s Tracking Card pairs using the same approach as the Leather Mag Wallet—squeeze a tiny button to pair the gadget with the iPhone’s Find My app. I’ve had the Tracking Card in my wallet for months, alongside all my credit and ID cards, and it has revealed where I absentmindedly left my wallet on multiple occasions.
The company recently began offering two price tiers: the Tracking Card Air with a 5-month battery life for $29, and the Tracking Card Pro with 16 months of battery life for $39. The Air is roughly equivalent to two credit cards at 1.7 mm thick and 12 grams, whereas the beefier Pro is 2.5 mm thick and weighs 15 grams—about the same as three credit cards. Recharge them on any MagSafe or Qi charging pad.
KeySmart’s SmartCard (Gen 3) works just like Nomad’s, but sells a bit differently. A single card costs $39.99, but you can buy a three-pack for $119.97 and a five-pack for $199.95. The battery holds a charge for 11 months before it needs a session on a MagSafe or Qi pad.
The SmartCard (Gen 3) boasts an Atlas Gen 3 chipset that, the maker claims, delivers 50% faster signal processing, resulting in 30% more connectivity. (The previous SmartCard (Gen 2) remains available for slightly less money, as does the SmartCard Gen 2 Lite that must be disposed of after its battery dies in 2 years. Stick with the latest model.)
Another advantage of the SmartCard is its dual-network nature. This means you can set it up with either Apple’s Find My ecosystem or Google’s Find My Device network—the Android equivalent. This capability is potentially useful for multi-platform households that want to buy a three- or five-pack, but you have to choose which network to support at setup; on-the-fly network switching isn’t available. And once set up for Find My, for instance, it can’t be located by Android devices. Regardless, like all Find My devices, it participates in unwanted tracking notifications.
Beyond the obvious addition of Find My capabilities to wallets, third-party manufacturers have come up with other innovative places where tracking technology would be welcome.
Twelve South has built Find My into its PlugBug with Find My mobile charger, which makes sense since it’s all too easy to forget to unplug a charger in an airport or hotel room. Since you probably know where you left it plugged in, the big win of Find My support in the PlugBug is being alerted when you walk away. It would be nice if those alerts arrived more quickly.
You can choose from four versions of the PlugBug, all of which share a shiny, red-and-white design that makes them more visible than your average Apple charger. The US models feature retracting wall prongs and either two USB-C ports (50W, for $59.99) or four USB-C ports (120W for $99.99). Travel-focused models come with interchangeable wall prongs for other countries’ outlets—they’re also available in 50W ($79.99) and 120W ($129.99) versions.
The GaN-powered PlugBug can charge everything from an Apple Watch to a MacBook Pro, though you’ll want the 120W version for the more power-hungry MacBook Pro models.
Activating the PlugBug involves opening the rear battery door and yanking the tab behind the user-replaceable CR2032 lithium coin cell. Then press the nearby button as instructed to pair the PlugBug with your phone.
KeySmart makes a series of ingenious key organizers that mimic Swiss Army knives, with each key you add turning into a faux blade that rotates out. Several of them can hold an AirTag, but the $49.99 KeySmart iProintegrates Find My directly and can hold up to 14 keys. Use a ballpoint pen or Phillips-head screwdriver tip to initiate Find My pairing. The iPro charges via a standard USB-C cord, with 30 days of battery life between top-ups.
KeySmart didn’t stop there. Its SmartLock Tracking Device is a standard-issue, TSA-approved luggage lock. Three metal rollers lock with a user-specified numeric combination, but the smarts come from its Find My compatibility. At $29.99, it’s essentially the same price as an AirTag and ensures that no one can rummage through your suitcase. You can even make it play a sound to help find it on an airport conveyor belt. It features a large button for initiating pairing, along with a user-swappable CR1632 battery that provides roughly 4 months of use.
ADAM ENGST 29 January 2026
Thanks to John Gruber of Daring Fireball for alerting me to an option in the Finder that I’d never previously encountered: the ability to have column view adjust the width of columns to fit the longest visible filename. I’ve been using it only for a few days, but I’m already a big fan. (Blogosphere assists in uncovering this feature come from Jeff Johnson, Michael Tsai, and DifferentDan.)
Although Apple exposed this option in macOS 26 Tahoe for the first time, it has been available in previous versions of macOS for some time via a defaults write command or Marcel Bresink’s free TinkerTool utility, which provides a graphical interface to numerous hidden preference settings in macOS. (That link points to the current TinkerTool 11.4, which is for Tahoe. If you’re running macOS 13 Ventura, macOS 14 Sonoma, or macOS 15 Sequoia, make sure to get TinkerTool 10 instead.)
Before I dive into this feature in the context of Tahoe, here’s how those running earlier versions of macOS can enable it from the command line in Terminal. To reverse the setting, change the YES to NO. I don’t know how far back it goes.
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXEnableColumnAutoSizing -bool YES; killall Finder
Alternatively, in TinkerTool, select “Automatically adapt to file name widths in column mode.”
In macOS 26.1 Tahoe, Apple added this column view option as a checkbox in the View Options window, accessible in the Finder via View > Show View Options. This window can be a bit confusing because it reflects and (to an extent) operates on the frontmost window open in the Finder, so it changes radically depending on whether the window uses icon, list, column, or gallery view (shown in order below). Plus, some options, such as Show Library Folder, appear only when the window is displaying a particular folder (the Home folder, in this case).
As shown above, when you open View Options for a window in column view, a new checkbox labeled “Resize columns to fit filenames” appears. Select it, and every window in column view automatically resizes its columns to fit (almost) the longest filename. In the screenshot below, you can see the difference between a window where each column is the same default width (top) and the same window after selecting the “Resize columns” checkbox (bottom).
You may have noticed my waffling “almost” parenthetical above. As you can see in the lower screenshot, I have a file whose extremely long name is still truncated after I selected “Resize columns.” (In fact, there are two files in that folder with truncated names.) Apparently, Apple’s engineers couldn’t bring themselves to expand columns beyond a certain point. That’s not entirely unreasonable—macOS filenames can be up to 256 characters long, and expanding a window to accommodate such a filename would render column view much less usable.
There’s another caveat, as Gruber notes:
Also, it’s an obvious shortcoming that the feature only adjusts columns to the size of the longest currently visible filename. If you scroll down in a column and get to a filename that is too long to fit, nothing happens. It just doesn’t fit.
It’s not quite “currently visible,” since the column will resize appropriately for long-named items that are one or two items outside the current view, but I think I understand why the feature works this way.
You have long been able to drag a column divider manually to expand it enough to read a heavily truncated filename, and if you Control-click a column divider, you can choose from Right Size This Column, Right Size All Columns Individually, and Right Size All Columns Equally. Even better, double-clicking a column divider right-sizes that column, and Option-double-clicking any column divider is the same as choosing Right Size All Columns Individually. That command has no limit on column width, and it too expands columns only enough to display the currently visible items without truncation. This approach makes perfect sense, since the user is invoking the command to adjust what they’re looking at.
However, when “Resize columns” is working globally on all column-view windows, limiting column expansion to the visible items makes less sense. As you click through folders, each new column shows the items that sort to the top of the list first, so the column width adjusts based on those top-sorted items—not what you might scroll down to see. Although it’s not unreasonable for Apple to reuse the Right Size All Columns Individually code, browsing users are as likely to scroll down as not, at which point they may encounter truncated filenames.
I think Apple is trying to thread the needle between a global feature that works automatically and one that users can trigger on demand. When applied globally, it makes some sense to tread carefully around unknown extremes; when invoked manually, it should just do what the user expects. In addition, perhaps most folders contain few enough items that expanding beyond the currently visible names would be an edge case.
Gruber also bemoans the fact that the column-resizing feature both expands and shrinks columns, saying that it “looks a bit higgledy-piggledy that every column is a different width.” I prefer the narrow columns because they let me see more of the hierarchy in a single horizontal view—“higgledy-piggledy” is unavoidable when columns resize in any way.
If all this has seemed like a lot, here’s what you can do with resizing Finder window columns:
Charles Martin
3
Thu May 30 2024, 11:04 PM EDT · 3 minute read
User accounts listed on the login screen of the author's Mac
On occasion, you may want to allow other people in your home to access your Mac, but not your personal account. We'll show you how to set up and manage temporary guest users.
If you are routinely sharing your Mac with someone else, it might be best to set up a second administrator or just a Standard user account for them. For short-term access, for visitors as an example, you can create a Guest User account.
Doing so allows limited use of your computer without a password needed, or any access to your other accounts. It is important to note that nothing is retained in the Guest User account once the guest logs out.
In order to create a Guest User account, you must have an Administrator account. If you are usually the sole user of the Mac, your account is already an Administrator account.
In your own account, go to the Apple menu, and select System Settings, then choose the Users & Groups option. You will see every existing account on your Mac, with your own listed as Admin.
The Guest User option will typically be listed as "Off." Click on the "Info" button to the right of the Guest User account to see the available options for a Guest User account.
Creating a Guest User account
Here, you can rename the Guest User account if desired. Next, turn on the Allow guests to log into this computer switch.
You can also choose also turn on options, such as Limit adult websites, which will require your administrator password to change. Once activated, it will block access to known adult sites.
You can also choose to Allow guest users to connect to shared folders by activating the accompanying switch.
Once you log out of your own account, you may still see a login page with only your account. If this happens, click on the icon for your own account, and the others should appear.
Guest Users can't install software, can't make system changes, and can't remotely log into that account from another device. Any files created in a Guest User account are stored in a temporary folder, which is deleted when the guest logs out.
If a guest user has created something on your Mac that they'd like to save, there are some options. They can store it in their own cloud storage solution, copy it onto a portable storage device, or email it to their home or other email address — but they must do this before they log out.
They can also store files in a shared folder from another computer on your network, if you've allowed that option. The Find My service is also available to guest users to help locate lost devices if they had that option set up on those devices.
It's important to note that if you have FileVault turned on for your machine, guest users can only access Safari. They cannot create files on the computer at all, or access anything on the drive.
Guest User accounts are intended for short-term, temporary access to very limited parts of a Mac. Once the need for a Guest User account has passed, you can deactivate the account.
To do so, use your own Admin account to return to System Settings, then Users & Groups, and turn off the switch that allows guests to log in to your computer.
If someone will be needing frequent access to your Mac, the Guest User option may be too limited for their needs. You also have the option of setting up a Standard account, which has some limits, but is not as restrictive as the Guest User account.
Standard users can install applications and change their own settings. They cannot add or delete other accounts, or change any other users' settings.
If you have family members or others who will regularly be using your Mac, consider giving them a Standard account. Only the owner(s) of a Mac should have an Administrator account, and for security reasons it should have a unique, strong password that non-admins don't have access to.
Creating a Standard user account on a Mac.
You create additional users in the Users & Groups section of System Settings. Click on Add User to begin the process, and add the user's name, the account name, the password for that account, and a password hint.
Then, click on the blue Create User button to create the account.
Once you have more than one account on your Mac, you can choose which one to log into from the startup screen. If you only see one user on the startup screen, click on that icon to reveal other accounts.
To change between accounts, click on the "person" icon on the right side of the menubar, usually located between the Wi-Fi indicator and the Spotlight search icon.
Wed Feb 05 2025, 11:02 PM EST · 3 minute read
The four pre-set categories in Mail starting with iOS 18.2.
As of iOS 18.2, Apple's Mail app features categories to help users sort through their mail. Here's what it does, how to fine-tune it, and how to turn it off if you prefer.
After updating to iOS 18.2 or later, the Mail app now categorizes incoming email into four broad categories. These are Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions.
The idea to automatically categorize incoming emails has been kicking around Apple for years. The feature was originally intended to debut in iOS 13, but awaited further development of Apple's machine learning and Apple Intelligence features in order to ensure the work was all done on-device.
In our experience, the Primary category works very well. Email from people in our contacts, time-sensitive notifications, and email from other individuals rather than companies tend to be seen here.
Traditionally, Mail also shows the first line or two of a received email. If your iPhone supports Apple Intelligence, time-sensitive emails will be at the top, and some emails in the Primary category will now show short summaries of the content.
As before, you can tap on a given email to open it, or do a half-swipe to the left to choose options including deleting, flagging, or additional tools like forwarding and replying. You can also half-swipe to the right to set a reminder for a given email, or mark it unread.
In addition to Primary, the other categories are Transactions, Updates, and Promotions. In our experience, these categories need a bit of user training in order to reach their peak usefulness.
If your iPhone model supports Apple Intelligence, those other categories — apart from Primary — will group all email from a given sender by default. When you tap on a given email summary, the most recent message is shown.
You can also view all messages from a particular sender, if their emails are in any but the Primary category. Tap on the top or newest one and you get a digest page with the sender's details at the top.
That top section also includes an ellipses icon, which provides tools including Delete All.
This is once place where you can re-categorize an email, but you can also do that directly from the inbox. Do a half-swipe to the left on an email, tap the three buttons icon, and tap Categorize Sender.
Once you've moved an email to a specific category done this, all messages from that particular sender will be put into the new category instead.
Showing off the new categorization features of Apple Mail in iOS 18.2.
The Updates category is intended for messages from companies you've allowed to email you with their news updates, or from social sites like FaceBook, Bluesky, and X. At first, you may find yourself moving some messages that arrive here to other categories, but once that's done it works well.
The Promotions category is where mass emails go. Depending on how much of this type of mail you get, you may need to spend a few minutes marking mass emails from your community groups and clubs to go to other categories, but again Mail remembers your choices and files future emails correctly.
Though it can be very useful — after a bit of training — some users will prefer to not have the categorization feature on at all, preferring to weed through their incoming email themselves.
Apple has made it very simple to turn off the categorization feature. At the top of the iOS Mail app, there is a three-dots menu on the right. Tap it, and change from Categories to List View" and you're back to the way Mail worked previously.
In that menu, you can also opt to turn off Show Priority if your iPhone supports Apple Intelligence. When this is unchecked, urgent or time-sensitive emails will not rise to the top unless they happen to be the most recent messages.
Alternatively, you can quickly switch to the all mail category. Either tap on the currently-selected category, or swipe across the categories. This is best used when you want to keep the categorization, but temporarily need to see all your mail in the list view.
If you choose to leave the new Mail categorization feature on, you can fine-tune how it works via a section in Mail's preferences. To get there, openSettings, scroll down to Apps, tap on Mail, tap on Apple Intelligence & Siri, and turn on or off any options there.
You can also choose to turn off Apple Intelligence altogether if you want, assuming your iPhone model supports it. Apple Intelligence features only show up on the iPhone 15 Proand iPhone 15 Pro Max, or the iPhone 16 models or later.
To do so, open the Settings app, scroll down until you see an Apple Intelligence & Siricategory, tap it, and turn off Apple Intelligence. You won't see this category at all if your iPhone does not support Apple Intelligence features.
ADAM ENGST 13 February 2026
I am not a naturally thirsty person. Left to my own devices, I probably wouldn’t think to drink beyond meals or after exercising, and since I don’t regularly consume coffee, tea, juice, soda, or beer, I don’t get the liquid many people take in merely by existing. However, as much as this means I don’t have to think about lugging one of those massive water bottles around with me wherever I go, I’ve learned that increasing hydration does have its benefits, such as needing little or no lip balm or hand lotion in the winter and a much reduced chance of muscle cramps while running.
What drove me over the edge, however, was what turned out to be a random fainting spell in August 2022 while doing via ferrata (an easier and safer version of mountain climbing) at Whistler in British Columbia. After I woke up from my 90-second faint, getting to the top of the climbing course in near-freezing temperatures, being ferried down in a maintenance truck on highly interpretive “roads,” and spending two hours in the ER with a pulse of 38 wasn’t enjoyable. (OK, the drive down would have been fun if I’d been feeling better.) Happily, in the inevitable cardiologist appointments and testing afterward, all the doctor could come up with was, “Lots of people faint sometimes.” Nevertheless, he told me to try to increase my low blood pressure by eating more salt (yay!) and drinking more water (boo!), with a recommended amount of 100 ounces per day.
Despite the cardiologist’s recommendations and my best efforts, I have never organically managed to drink 100 ounces of fluid in a day—almost 3 liters. I could probably physically do it on a dare—I have twice managed to down the entire jug of colonoscopy prep drink—but it would be uncomfortable and require even more frequent visits to the restroom. The saving grace is that food usually provides about 20% of the water we need each day, so that brings me down to 80 ounces. I may have hit that once or twice.
I decided I’d do better if I had an app I could use to track my fluid intake and that would nag me periodically to make sure I was drinking. I can’t remember how I settled on indie developer Gong Zhang’s HiWater back then, but overall, it has been a help, if sometimes an annoying one, which is sort of the point. It didn’t help that HiWater’s built-in calculator suggested that, as an active 50-something guy, I should be drinking 115 ounces a day. Inconceivable.
At a basic level, using HiWater requires setting a goal and logging every drink you have. The app tallies all those drinks to show a running total, along with a body hydration score. The utility of the hydration score is that it accounts for how much you’ve drunk and how recently, and it declines gradually as your body processes fluids. HiWater prompts you to drink not by time, but when your hydration drops below a certain level. Time-based notifications are also available if you prefer them.
What makes HiWater a relative pleasure to use is its attention to detail. It provides a comprehensive catalog of drinks, categorized by the six levels of the water pyramid, which ranks common beverages by how healthy they are for you. Water is best, of course, followed by coffee and tea. After that, the pyramid suggests limiting your daily fluid intake from low-fat/soy milk, diet drinks, caloric drinks, and sweetened drinks.
It would be tedious to wade through all the options in the catalog whenever you have a drink, so HiWater lets you create shortcuts to log a specific beverage and amount with a single tap. For me, that’s usually a small cup of water or a big glass, though I also always have most of a bottle of homemade kombucha at dinner and occasionally a glass of wine.
In reality, however, I mostly rely on HiWater’s well-designed Apple Watch app, which makes it easy to log drinks from the Quick Menu on my wrist. HiWater also supports logging drinks via Siri Shortcuts, but this approach is slow, requires interaction on the watch, and is unreliable on the HomePod. I blame Siri, not HiWater.
HiWater does a good job of presenting monthly, annual, and total stats when you tap the Stats panel on the Today screen. The History screen provides even more historical data, should you wish to look back farther. I’ve never paid any attention to the stats because I use HiWater only to chivvy me into drinking more regularly.
Even though that’s why I use it, HiWater’s nagging can be bothersome. I periodically become irritated by its notifications, especially when I’m traveling or at an event and can’t easily drink. (Again, I’m not one of those cameloids who is surgically attached to a water bottle.) Being told you should drink when you can’t, or when you’re otherwise engaged, is much like being told by Activity to stand up while you’re in a movie theater.
More than once during a trip or event, I’ve silenced HiWater in Settings > Notifications > HiWater, then forgotten to turn it back on. To be fair, HiWater has extremely flexible notification settings, allowing you to limit notifications to certain days of the week, set the hydration level that triggers them, and restrict the times of day they alert you. I’d appreciate an option that would silence its notifications for a specified number of hours or days. But this is a quibble, and mostly my issue with rebelling against anything that tells me what to do, even when I’ve asked for it.
Overall, HiWater is an elegant, capable app. If you’re interested in tracking your fluid intake, or perhaps want to log what you drink as a way of reducing your intake of unhealthy beverages, give it a try. (Gong Zhang also makes HiCoffee for those who want to manage their caffeine intake.) Most of what you want to accomplish with HiWater can be done for free, but a Pro membership gives you more Apple Watch faces and complications, lets you set custom water pyramid goals, add notification rules, change app icons, access additional widgets, and share with the Health app. It costs $0.99 per month, $5.99 per year, or $9.99 for a permanent license—the one-time purchase option is welcome.
