(music)
- [Don] Hi, this is Don McAllister
and welcome to another weekly tip video.
Two tips for you this week, one for iOS and one for the Mac.
First off, if you've not yet invested in a HomePod
and would still like to access news briefings via Siri,
you can do.
With a recent iOS update, Siri is now capable
of reading the news highlights to you, but only on devices
that support hands-free Hey Siri commands.
Now just bear in mind this may not be rolled out
in all countries yet, but I'll demonstrate
how it's been rolled out, here in the UK.
So, I'm out of earshot of the HomePod
because the HomePod will negotiate with other devices
around it when it hears a Hey Siri command
and if I was to ask the news, the HomePod would reply.
But as I say, the HomePod is out of earshot,
so I'm going to issue the command
and the iPhone 8 Plus should pick it up.
Hey Siri, tell me the latest news.
- [Siri] (beeping) Here's the latest news from the BBC.
- [Announcer] Dozens of other universities have joined
the walkout due to take place over the course of a month.
Universities UK says pension changes are essential
'cause there's a huge deficit.
Some students are demanding refunds...
- [Don] If I just tap open podcasts.
- [Announcer] The number of EU citizens leaving the UK
is at it's highest level
for a decade. - Okay, got it.
- [Announcer] The Office for National Statistics...
- [Don] Let me just pause this.
Okay, it started partway through because I tested it before.
So it's carried on from where it last started playing.
But let me just pop that down, out of the way,
and we'll come back out to the home screen.
Now, we also have access to Sky News and LBC,
so I could say, Hey Siri, (beeps) switch to Sky News.
- [Siri] Okay, from now on, I'll play the news
from Sky News.
- [Announcer] From the Sky News Centre at 3, Stormzy
has been praised in the House of Commons
with the SNP saying, it's great that artists are
reminding the government... - I'll stop that as well.
And back out to the home screen.
Now this won't work on all devices.
It won't work on devices specifically that require
you to press a key to invoke Siri.
If you do have to press a key to invoke Siri,
then ask for news, it will give you a list
of news items.
But it won't speak the news back to you.
That only seems to work on those devices that respond
to Hey Siri in hands-free mode.
So that's our quick tip on IOS.
Let's have a look at our tip on macOS.
Now this is a very simple tip.
As well as the files that you can see when
exploring your folders in the finder, there are also
hidden files and folders made invisible by
the operating system.
Now this is usually for a good reason, but sometimes
it is useful to see what files and folders are hidden.
Now previously, you would have had to use a terminal command
to make them visible, but on the most recent versions
of macOS, Sierra and High Sierra, you can
display these hidden files and folders
with a simple keyboard shortcut.
And that shortcut is Shift, Command, period.
So in this data partition, if I do Shift, Command, period,
you'll see there's a whole host of hidden files
that are greyed out, but you can see them quite clearly.
Most of them, in fact, all of them begin with a dot,
which usually indicates a hidden file.
One word of warning though, you probably don't want to
play around with these too much.
I certainly wouldn't go ahead and delete any of these,
but if you just want to expose them to see what's there,
you can do.
Where it might be useful, and this is a toggle, by the way.
If I go to my home folder, if I go to seodemo,
you'll see it's still switched on.
I can make them invisible again by pressing
Shift, Command, period, and they disappear.
One way this might be useful to you; I've got iCloud
Data and Documents switched on, so my Documents folder
appears down here, and also my Desktop appears down here.
With the home folder selected, if I do Shift, Command,
full stop, as well as all these cloud station options,
et cetera, et cetera, I can see here, my Desktop folder,
currently empty, but I can also see my Documents folder
as well, directly from within my home folder,
which is as it used to be before we had
iCloud Data and Documents.
So, just to prove it's the same folder, you can see here
BusyCal Backups, BusyContacts Backups, et cetera.
I go down to here, again BusyCal Backups, BusyContacts
Backups, ChronoSync Documents, et cetera.
So that's just a way of, if you did want to see
your Documents folder within your home folder, you can
switch those on.
But again, be warned, you really don't want to mess
about with hidden files, or move them about,
or change them in any way.
They're there really just for information.
So Shift, Command, period, and we're back to
as we should be.