Tekee Tim's Tips

Taking a screenshot of your device

If you want to capture some information that’s displayed on your screen, such as a receipt, it can often be helpful to take a screenshot.

Luckily this is easy on all devices, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.

How to change your default web browser and email apps

With such a wide choice of apps available for PCs, Macs and mobile devices, you'll often want to use a different default application for your web browsing, email, photo editing, playing music etc and this is easy to change on all your devices.

In this tip we'll go through how to set the default apps on your different devices.

Where did my application go?

If you have a lot of applications running on your computer, it can sometimes be difficult to find the one that you’re looking for.

Fortunately both Mac and Windows have an easy to use shortcut for switching between your applications.

Changing your DNS servers

If you find yourself having intermittent problems with websites loading slowly, email not working and seeing out of date websites, you could be having problems with your DNS servers.

All Internet Providers provide DNS as part of the connection and these convert a website name such as bbc.co.uk into the actual address of the website which is something like 63.194.125.69. Unfortunately the DNS Servers that you get with your Internet connection are usually pretty bad. They can be slow and out of date and we always recommend using better ones.

In this tip, we'll show you have to switch over to using faster and safer DNS on your Mac, Windows PC and your home router.

Switching back to jpeg photos on iPhone and iPad

If you have a modern iPhone or iPad, it will take photos in a newer, more efficient format called HEIF and videos in a new format called HEVC.

If you're using all Apple devices, this shouldn't cause you any problems as they fully support these formats but if you use Windows, this might cause you some compatibility problems so in this tip, we'll show you how to switch back to the more standard formats.

Making notes with Apple Pencil

If you prefer writing your notes by hand, but still like the convenience of having them stored and searchable on your iPad, you can use the Notes app and an Apple Pencil to do just that.

How can I start using Apple Pay?

If you have an iPhone 6 or 6+ or newer and have a debit or credit card with a participating bank, then you can sign up to use Apple Pay almost everywhere that you would use an existing contactless card.

The set up process is very easy and we'll run through it here so that you can get started.

Syncing your Office documents across your devices

If you use Microsoft Office (Word, Excel & PowerPoint) then you can use OneDrive to keep your documents in sync between your devices and allow you to work wherever you are. If you have an Office365 subscription then you already have 1TB of OneDrive space or you can sign up for a free account and get 5GB of space.

Removing unwanted software from your Windows PC

Every PC comes with a lot of handy software installed, such as Adobe Reader and iTunes but after a while you often find that other software has been installed on your PC either as a trial that you never got round to removing or something that got downloaded as part of something else but isn't actually required. Occasionally cleaning up this unwanted software can help keep your PC running fast and stop it getting cluttered.

Using Hot Corners to save time on macOS

There's a small but very useful feature called Hot Corners in Mac OS X and it can be a very easy way to clear all the windows off your desktop or start your screen saver or put your display(s) to sleep if you're leaving your computer and don't want people to see what's on the screen.

We'll show you here how to set it up and how easy it is to use.

Using a trackpad on your iPad

One of the most useful new features in the recent iPadOS 13.4 was the ability to use a trackpad or mouse with your iPad. This makes the iPad much easier to use if you already have an external keyboard connected and have the iPad propped up where it's not easy to tap the screen.

In this tip, we'll show you how to get started with a trackpad or mouse on your iPad.

Setting Attended Transfer on PulseHD

If you prefer speaking to the recipient on the PulseHD app before transferring a call, you can now make this the default behaviour. The first step is to update your PulseHD app to version 4.2 or later and then follow the steps in our guide here.