Tausi Insider

Image : Sattalat Phukkum ( Shutterstock ) Twitter is currently on fire. With Elon Musk as owner and CEO, the company has changed many rules and regulations users (and advertisers) had come to expect from the platform. The latest drama, however, concerns Twitter verification, and it’s throwing a wrench in the ability to tell which accounts are real and which are fake. The “blue checkmark” on Twitter was more than just a status symbol. Twitter’s verification process served as a means of identification: If you saw a blue check next to an account, say, for a politician, you knew that account was official, and not an impersonator. Accounts needed to be vetted to prove both their identity and noteworthiness before receiving a blue check, which is a good thing. Under the direction of Musk, though, anyone can buy a blue check by subscribing to Twitter Blue for $8 a month. Since the change, identifying legitimate users has been a challenge. In fact, Twitter Blue subscribers have taken adva...

Photo : nikkimeel ( Shutterstock ) Updating your iPhone is annoying. Yes, the updates are often full of new features and changes that make upgrading worthwhile , but it can be hard to find the time to install a brand new update on your iPhone. Taking your phone out of commission during the day isn’t always an option. Wouldn’t it be nice if Apple let you schedule these updates for when you actually had time? Well, ask and ye shall receive. As it turns out, Apple includes an option to schedule software updates on each and every iPhone. It’s just that f or some reason, the company hides it from us. I’m not sure why—i t’s certainly not due to a lack of screen space: Half of the Software Updates settings page is blank. The option also isn’t featured in the Automatic Updates settings menu either , so don’t go looking for it there. Speaking of which, when I refer to scheduling updates for later, I’m not talking about iOS’ Automatic Updates feature. Sure, this option will theoretical...

Photo : Tada Images ( Shutterstock ) Who remembers the games that shipped with classic iPods? You could have a pixel war in   Parachute , smash blocks in Brick , play cards in Solitaire , and test your knowledge of your own iPod’s library with Music Quiz . Of course, Apple has since discontinued the iPod, but they seem to have trouble letting go of the past.   Music Quiz lives on as a hidden iPhone game. The hidden music quiz hasn’t been around forever, but isn’t all that new either. Apple first added it to the iPhone not as a game but as a shortcut, back in 2020 with iOS 14 . The game w as part of a small series of “Starter Shortcuts”—the idea, I assume, was to offer users a quick look at what was possible with shortcuts (even though the app launch two years prior with iOS 12). Either way, it doesn’t seem to have been a wholly effective marketing campaign— I had no idea this music quiz existed. It’s just the kind of hidden feature that’s a pleasant surprise to discover ....

Photo : Emre Akkoyun ( Shutterstock ) If you’re thinking of deleting your Twitter , I wouldn’t blame you (I’d only ask what took you so long). Things are wild over there right now, and stability sure isn’t on the horizon. However, before you take the nuclear option and say goodbye to Elon Musk and his ilk, consider not deleting your account: Don’t stay, mind you—just leave in a safer way. Why deleting your Twitter is dangerous When you initiation the deactivation process for your Twitter account, it takes 30 days before your account is permanently deleted, tweets and all. However, once that 30 days is up, your username is fair game. After all, you deleted your account, and, therefore, relinquished your claim over the name. It now returns to the “people,” or at least the first person to notice its availability, where it can be used in a new account for as long as that user wants it. This is the nature of the internet: Abandon a username, and someone else will snatch it up. But it ...

Photo : Kicking Studio ( Shutterstock ) Spotlight, once an essential tool in your iPhone productivity arsenal, has become nearly unusable on iOS 16. It sometimes displays search results almost instantly, but more often than not it takes a few seconds (or more) to find things. The latency is particularly noticeable on older iPhones, and the inconsistency of a once-reliable tool is pretty sad to see. The same feature has been facing similar issues on Mac, but at least there are alternatives—such as Alfred and Raycast — that make up for it. On your iPhone, you can’t replace Spotlight with an alternative, but you can try a couple of workarounds. Use your iPhone’s App Library If you keep swiping left on your iPhone’s home screen, you will find the App Library at the very end . Once there, swipe down to open the search bar and type the name of the app you want to find. You’ll see that this search box instantly loads the results you’re looking for. We’ve tried this on a three-year-o...

Photo : Bonsales ( Shutterstock ) Anytime you have someone new over your house, one of the first questions they’ll ask is, “What’s the wifi?” Sure, you could tell them, but do you even know? To be honest, I don’t. If you’re like me, you have some convoluted wifi name and password combo on the bottom of your router you need to consult every time it’ s needed. Luckily, there’s an easy way to step up your wifi sharing game without needing to change passwords or commit anything to memory. Of course, the situation isn’t as bad as it used to be. If you and your guest both have iPhones, you can share your network credentials with a single tap. That said, to start that process, your friend first needs to choose your wifi network from the list, and they need to be a contact in your phone, adding extra steps to what could be a seamless setup. On the Android side of things, you can share your wifi password using a built-in QR code. Again, more convenient than the past, but there’s room for ...

Photo : Jake Peterson It’s true iOS isn’t as customizable as Android, but the gap is much narrower than it used to be. These days, your can personalize your iPhone’s Lock Screen , change your app icons to anything you like , and even add a digital pet to the Dynamic Island . If you’re in the market for yet another iPhone customization hack, here’s an odd one: You can add an emoji to your iPhone’s menu bar, right next to the clock. For this trick, we’re going to exploit a loophole in Apple’s “Focus” feature, as illustrated here by TikTok creator techhackguy . As you may already know, Focus allows you to create custom “Do Not Disturb” modes that block specific apps and notifications at different points in your day. For example, you can make a Work Focus that blocks incoming notifications from non-work apps or contacts and removes Home Screen pages containing any app you won’t need during business hours. One fun feature is the ability to assign an emoji to each Focus. You can use a b...

Photo : Ground Picture ( Shutterstock ) Black Friday brings some of the deepest discounts of the year for all sorts of tech products—and apps are no exception . If you’ve been holding off on buying any pricey paid, it’s worth taking another look this week. It might just be the perfect time to tap “Buy.” Below, we’ve highlighted a few of our favorite apps currently available at a discount. The list is accurate as of publication time , but things may have changed by the time you read this, so i f you see something you like, grab it before the deal expires. Many of these apps are good enough to be totally worth the full price, which makes these holiday bargains even sweeter. Affinity Suite: A great Photoshop alternative Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher are among the best alternatives to Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign apps, respectively. Affinity allows you to pay once and keeps these apps until the next major version update. Many people p...

Photo : nikkimeel ( Shutterstock ) If you have a great Apple Music playlist for holiday-themed parties but it includes a few tracks that aren’t appropriate for ears of all ages, you don’t have to worry about making your mixes family friendly anymore. Forget about painstaking recreating it yourself using “ clean” versions of explicit songs yourself—there’s a Siri Shortcut for that. This isn’t a functionality Apple has built into their streaming service, although they probably should. Instead, it comes from Reddit user AdTrue6877 . Their Siri Shortcut scans all the songs in any Apple Music playlist and creates a new playlist that replaces all explicit songs with their clean versions. It’s the fastest way to create family friendly playlists on Apple Music. To start, download the Make Clean Playlist s hortcut and run it on your phone. The s hortcut will automatically show you a pop-up that allows you to scroll and select any of your Apple Music playlists. From there , the shortc...

Photo : Piotr Piatrouski ( Shutterstock ) Spotify and Apple Music may be great for music discovery , but they don’t do a great job telling you more about who you’re listening to. You could know every lyric to “Don’t Stop Believin’,” but if you don’t know what year it came out, you’re going to let your trivia team down. (I t’s 1981, by the way.) NowPlaying is an app that wants to become the encyclopedia of music trivia. It gives you more information about the song, album, artist, or band you’re listening to, and goes into some pretty great details along the way— including where the song or album was recorded, and the names of all of the musicians who worked on any track. The app listens to songs playing around you, or links with your Apple Music account to pick up songs from your playing history, which makes it pretty convenient to look up trivia. It packages that information in a nice interface, as well. To give you a sample of what you can expect, we looked up Green Da...