Unknown (19:21)

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Micah Sargent (19:53)

Here, our next question comes in from Jed and we're going to break this up into two parts because Jed mentions something that's a question and then goes on to mention something that's great advice or sort of a PSA for people who have screen time features turned on. So Jed writes this I have Apple Two Factor Authentication set up on my iPhone. I have lots of Apple products. I have a MacBook and an iPad. My two children have iPads. The Apple two factor authentication has added my children's iPads as two factor points. So I never know where the two factor is going to pop up if I need it. Do you have any suggestions to be able to remove the children's iPads being used as two Factor Authentication points but still being able to keep their iPads locked down through screen time so I can control them from my phone? So Jed, this is a great question and it's a simple way that I'm going to help you solve this issue. Apple's Two Factor Authentication, it's Multi Factor Authentication, uses a special trusted device system that's actually I shouldn't even call it special because it's pretty common across different services. And essentially what it says is if your Apple ID Apple account, they've just changed the name of that. If your Apple account is logged in on a device and at that point you authenticate it using this Multi Factor Authentication, then that device becomes a trusted device. I know it's you who's logged in on this device. So when you add a new device to your Apple account, then I can look to that trusted device where I know you're you and pop up the prompt that then says here's the number that you need to type in to prove that this is now a trusted device. And unfortunately, Apple doesn't give you the ability to go in somewhere and check some boxes and uncheck some boxes to say I don't want these to be Considered trusted devices. I do want these to be considered trusted devices. Annoyingly, you can do it with phone numbers. You can say, these are my trusted phone numbers, but you can't do it with devices signed in with your Apple account. If they're signed in with your Apple account, they're signed in with your Apple account, they count as trusted devices. So again, if you're logged in on your Apple account on a device, it is a trusted device. That means, Jed, that the iPads that you've passed along to your children are logged in with your Apple account. So I'm going to suggest that, I know it can be annoying to go through the process, but sign out of your Apple account on those iPads and create an Apple account for each of the two kids. He says your two children have iPads. Create an Apple account for the one child and Apple account for the other child. Child. Make sure you set them up with a proper date, their actual birth date, so that Apple automatically makes them into children accounts. And at that point they have to be linked to an adult, which is going to be you. Those accounts will be linked to your Apple id, your Apple account, and will remain that way until they turn the age at which those accounts will roll into adult accounts. So you're already getting that done, you're getting that out of the way. But on top of that, it means that those aren't going to serve as trusted devices because they won't be logged in with your Apple account. So the two factor pop ups aren't going to show up on those iPads, which is great. And it also means that you aren't going to have them, you know, potentially accessing aspects that you may not want. What's great about it though is you're probably going, well, okay, but they've bought apps, they've, you know, bought games. I've got an Apple Arcade subscription. Whatever it happens to be, when you use a family account, all of that stuff can be shared. Your purchases are shared, your Apple Arcade subscription is shared, your Apple TV subscription is shared, your Apple news, all that stuff is shared. So they'll be able to access that stuff. But then you get extra parental protections built in as well. So at that point they will have to. If you set this up, it's your choice. If you set this up, they have to ask you, you for permission to buy certain apps. They have to ask you for permission to do in app purchases. They have to ask you for permission and it will prompt you on your device with a yes, no. But then if you go logging in to a new device, it's not going to show up on the kid's iPad because they are on their own little Apple accounts that are there specifically. So that is the way to solve it, other than just logging out of your Apple ID your Apple account again on those devices. But at that point they won't be able to get games and things from the App Store and do anything else that involves having an Apple account. So that is your, that is my suggestion to you on how to solve this. It's really nice using the Apple family stuff sharing, but also those parental controls that come into play with that are all very robust and worth taking the time to set that up to follow up with that. You shared some comments on screen time that may be helpful for other guardians who are using screen time to help manage their children or you know, the people they're like, the kids are looking after managing their interactions with their devices. So you say, I was watching my 9 year old immediately whenever you said the next, when I read the next part of this sentence, I went, oh no. He said, I was watching my 9 year old and he was deleting his YouTube app and reinstalling it. I asked him why he was doing that and he said that by doing that it would reset the time limit that I had set and give him more time on YouTube. The screen time app limits also only let you turn the time. So, so first and foremost, let's just dig into that a little bit. By deleting and reinstalling the YouTube app, it was resetting the time limit for the YouTube app because it was treating it as if it was just a new app. Very clever 9 year old to skirt around that and goes on to say the screen time app limits also only let you turn the time limit down to a single minute. So excuse me, you can't shut the time limit down to zero. The only workaround I found was uninstalling the app and changing the settings to where they can't reinstall it or delete apps. So yes, if you have time limits set on apps on your screen time and you're doing this specifically for kids that you're trying to set a time limit, you may want to check to make sure that in those screen time settings you also have it set such that they are not able to reinstall or delete apps because that is a workaround for them to be able to go past that time limit. So there's something to bear in mind and we thank you, Jed, for that little public service announcement. All right, this next one comes in from Ben. It's a little involved and it's got a lot of parts. So we're going to discuss everything. I think I'll read through everything and then we'll kind of discuss it piece by piece. Ben writes several related questions about icloud shared albums. What's driving me to look at this is that I have 200 gigabytes of iCloud storage to back up my several Apple devices. I'm still well under that, but I can see the end. I am at about 168 of 200. The primary driver of storage is photos on my wife's iPhone. I realized that I could delete the oldest ones, but that may not be the correct thing to do when I Google quote does icloud shared photos use storage? I get seemingly contradictory information even from Apple, and I'm going I'm going to not editorialize as I read through this and then we'll go back and talk about it. Ben quotes from the research that Ben did Shared albums don't count against your icloud storage, but there are limits to the number of photos, albums and invites that you can share. All participants have equal permission to add, edit and delete content in the shared library. While the person who set up the shared library, the library creator, provides icloud storage for all of the content, everyone else gets access to the shared library content without it counting toward their icloud storage. Ben says, can you clarify this situation? Then Ben goes on to say the related question Are the images stored in icloud storage of full resolution? I found this on apple.com and Ben quotes Shared albums also support special formats that you capture with your iPhone, like slow mo, time lapse, live photos and memory videos. When shared photos are reduced to 2048 pixels on the long edge, except for panoramic photos which can be up to 5,400 pixels wide. You can share GIFs that are 100 megabytes or smaller. Shared albums do not support spatial photo or spatial video. And then Ben goes on to quote from Reddit. In addition, some of the photos metadata may be stripped out depending on the settings of the user posting the photo. If you care about sharing original quality photos and videos with your friends and family, use a different method to share media with them. I just learned this lesson the hard way. Ben then goes on to say after those quotes, reduced resolution will might help relieve the storage issue. Might is because the older photos that I would upload to icloud shared albums would be older photos I think I can tolerate reduced resolution on older photos, but I'm concerned over the loss of metadata. How can I determine what metadata will be lost? This seems to be conditional depending on the settings of the user posting the photo. I've looked at deleting individual videos and messages, but that's very labor intensive and hasn't really made a noticeable decrease and storage usage. I guess my best choice is to upgrade to 2 terabytes for 999 when I hit 200 gigabytes. But that's a tenfold increase in storage for more than three times the cost. I don't really want to complicate my wife's experience with Google Photos or OneDrive, both of which I use. Okay, so here's the problem that Ben is running into. First and foremost, Ben seems to be thinking that shared albums, shared icloud albums are the same thing as having photos in icloud. And that's not the same thing. So that is where it seems like where you're, you're, you're talking about seemingly contradictory information, even from Apple. Apple. It's not the case that the, these are. That there's some sort of contradiction between these two. Because what Apple is saying is if I. So I'm the person who's making a shared album. A shared album is this album that I want other people to have access to. It is separate from my icloud photo library. Shared albums are not the same thing as your icloud photo library. Your icloud photo library is a copy or in some cases the original version of all of your photos stored in Apple's cloud. And many people make use of this because it saves them storage space on their local device where they can offload it to the cloud and only have kind of lower resolution versions on their phone itself or their Mac or whatever it happens to be. And then if they edit it, then it brings the full version down. That's icloud photo library. Shared albums is a wholly separate feature where if I want to send and share photos with other people, I can create an album that other people can access. So if I'm in a group chat, let's say, and I recently went to a, I don't know, a textile fair and I took a bunch of photos of textiles. And so I go into my group chat where all of us who do fiber art talk and I pick three photos that I know the people in this chat are going to love and one video. Video. If I select those three photos in that one video and I send it in the group chat, it's going to just send those three photos in that one video because all of that can kind of fit and get sent with no problem across the imessage platform. However, if I were to take all 300 photos I took at the fair and 10 videos and I wanted to share all of those with the people in the chat, it's going to create a shared album because those photos are mine and videos are mine, and I have them in my icloud photo library. When Apple says shared albums don't count against your icloud storage, what they're saying is it's not as if when I make this shared album, I'm now having to double up on the storage that it's taking up. These are my photos already, so I have them already in icloud. It only counts against me once, even though I'm technically kind of making another version of them available via the shared album. So that's where it seems like there's a contradiction there. But there's not. A shared album doesn't count against your icloud storage because you're just referencing photos that are already existing in icloud in your icloud photo library. And then in the second part of it, you say all participants have equal permissions to add, edit and delete content in the shared library, while the person who sets up the shared library, the library creator, provides icloud storage for all the content. Everyone else gets access to the shared library content without it counting towards their icloud storage. So again, it is individual for shared albums. That second part that you're quoting from is shared library. So I know it's confusing, but there, there are different aspects of this. A shared album is for you sharing a few photos, well, more than a few photos with some friends or family members. And what's great about shared albums is that you can have people like leave comments on photos. They're able to then download them to their device if they want to. A shared library is a relatively new feature that Apple added added, where they realize that sometimes family members are essentially trying to sync photos between their individual icloud accounts. And so instead of messing with all of that, you just create one library that everyone shares and you can regularly put photos into it. It's like a shared album, but it doesn't have the limits that a shared album does. It works as a secondary library. So this is the problem is it's the different terminology, Ben, that you're kind of getting, getting confused in. And that totally makes sense. By the way, no blame there at all. Absolutely makes sense that this is confusing. So icloud photo library is your own personal place where you can upload photos to the cloud. A shared album is kind of a, a small little grouping of, of of photos and videos that you are sharing with a select group of people. A shared library is like your icloud photo library, but other people have access to it that you give permission to, so you treat it more like that photo dump area versus a specifically curated little scrapbook that's the shared album. And then we go on to talk about resolution. So again, we've got to go back to terms. Shared albums support special formats, but their, their information is reduced. Okay, so in a shared album, in order for, in order for these photos and videos to be able to be shared among different people, who might have different Internet connections, who might have phones that don't process things as well because they're older phones and also because Apple does is is very money hungry when it comes to storage. A little cheap, I would say on giving more stor that's also the reason why the photos are reduced. All of that means that if you create your little scrapbook that you're sharing with a few other people, that's where those reductions come into place. It does not apply to the icloud photo library. That's its own thing. It only applies to that shared album that those photos get reduced to 2048 pixels, that GIFs are 100 megabytes or smaller, and that spatial photo and video can't be shared, and that panoramic photos can be only up to 5,400 pixels wide. Now, with all of that in mind, we're still talking about shared albums. You quoted from Reddit and in it you read some of the photos metadata may be stripped out depending on the settings of the user posting the photo. What this is talking about is a separate privacy feature that individual users have when they share photos to shared albums and to a shared library. It again does not apply to icloud photo library, which is your own trove of photos. So we're going your individual trove is icloud photo library, your scrapbook that you share with a few other people. A shared album and shared library is your shared trove that you only share with your closest confidants right in the shared album if somebody were to. Because that's the cool thing about an album, a shared album, a scrapbook, is that you're kind of passing it around and other people can add photos into it as well, and you're all able to see them. If a person has privacy settings that say, don't share my location when I share a photo. Don't share the location that's attached to this photo when I share a photo, then that photo kind of gets stripped of that information as it gets uploaded. So that's what they're talking about when they say some of the metadata may be stripped of out. If we're talking about icloud photo library, that data does not get stripped out, it stays with it. Unless you specifically go in with an app and say, no, I don't want that in there. And then you go on to talk about or you quote from Reddit. Again, if you care about sharing original quality photos and videos with your friends and family, use a different method to share media with them. I just learned this lesson the hard way. And so again, we're talking about shared albums, the scrapbook feature. Yes. If you want to have the original quality of these photos shared with your family and friends, you're going to need to use something else because a shared album does not allow for that. In that case, I recommend either sending them piecemeal over messages, using something like Dropbox to share a folder that has the photos in it at the highest quality that they can be using Airdrop if they're around to share those photos and videos over, over a local wifi connection or basically any other thing outside of shared albums, because shared albums is going to drop it down to that 2048 on the longest side. All right, so you, Ben, are essentially talking about storage issues on your device. And so this is where I have the bad news. Shared albums aren't going to help you in this situation because your original photos are still taking up just as much space in your icloud storage. It's not as if your wife would be able to take all of the photos that she has and post them into different shared albums and then magically the icloud storage would clear up. Because that's not how it works. Her library is still serving that content in its original form to the shared album. It's just not going to double it up. So the thing about resolution. No, that don't. You don't even need to worry about that. This isn't going to do what you're hoping it will because it's different between your icloud photo library, your personal trove, the shared album, the scrapbook between friends, and the. The icloud shared library, your trove with your closest confidants. So going on you say you can tolerate the reduced storage. Again, doesn't matter. How can I determine what metadata will be lost? You don't need to worry about this, unless you're specifically working in shared albums, in which case it's only dependent on what the person's settings are. And you've looked at deleting individual videos and messages, but that's very labor intensive and hasn't really made a noticeable decrease in storage usually usage. I recommend checking out an app called Gemini, although did that name just change? Let me double check. Gemini Photo Gemini photo duplicates. Yeah, look up Gemini 2 because there is an app from the folks at Macpaw that can help you. It's less labor intensive. Find duplicate photos and then you can also run it on your wife's iPhone and help her find duplicate photos. The great thing about it is it also finds like blurry photos. It finds screenshots that may not be important anymore. It can help you delete a lot all at once. And so that can maybe help you clear up some space where going in and doing it individually is not making a difference difference. And then also it's always worth going into your settings and checking out both storage pace storage places, both in icloud where you tap on your Apple account at the top you tap on icloud and then you tap on saved to icloud and do an audit here to see what might be taking up a lot of space. And you can get suggestions for how you can save save some space. And in fact I can see on mine so I've tapped on my I've launched the settings app, I tapped on my face at the top to get to my Apple account. I tapped on icloud and I see in this area something that says recommended for you ways to free up space and it suggests deleting inactive backups. In fact it says I can free up to 37.1 gigs of space by deleting old device backups that I don't need anymore. So maybe I've got an old iPhone that still is being backed up here that I don't need anymore. I can kick that to the curb. And then there's also some other things. Checking if there's photos that might be or rather files that might be taking up space after you do it via icloud, then go into general, go into iPhone storage and check for recommendations there. Because depending on the changes that you make from these recommendations, like reviewing large attachments in messages, for example, you may be able to free up storage space on iCloud even though it's about your local device. Because it all depends on what actually gets backed up to icloud from your local device. So those two areas can help you save space, whereas your attempt to kind of dig through shared albums and shared libraries and shared this and shared that, it's not going to make a difference. Ultimately, I agree with you. Apple's pricing for icloud storage is ridiculous. And I wish that it didn't cost as much as it does, but it does. And there's always my suggestion, which is that if you have trouble kind of stomaching that cost, consider looking around to family members who could maybe help bear some of the costs of that. So for example, maybe you've got a sibling or, you know, a mother or whomever who you could say, I will add you to my, my family. So you gain access to all this extra storage space that we have and maybe you don't back up as much as I do and we'll all be able to share the storage space. Mind you, everything's still kept private so you don't have to worry about like your storage space being merged with theirs in terms of seeing each other's. But then now it's only five bucks a month because you're paying, well, 4.99 and the other person's paying 4.99. Right. And that can help kind of free up some of that, that annoyance that you have with that huge increase in cost. So yeah, I think that upgrading to 2 TB might be the way you end up having to go anyway. But in the meantime, heading to those areas and looking at storage saving recommendations is what I recommend. Ben, if you have any follow up, any other questions, any more clarification that you're looking for? Hotwit tv. And we'll round things out today with some follow up from Vernon. Vernon, who in Hot Episode 194 wrote in about Gmail. Vernon said, I have more than 83,000 Google Mail messages that need to be deleted. Is there a fast way to do this? And I ended up recommending actually using Gmail online because it is the fastest way to go about it. And using special search operators to find files or rather to find email that is larger than a certain amount, but also maybe email that is before a certain date and using those search operators to be able to select mail that you don't need anymore if you decide you don't need it, selecting them and then selecting multiple pages just by clicking a nice little blue link at the top of the page. Delete. Vernon wrote in before the episode today to send. I was able to delete the bulk of my emails. Awesome Vernon. That is awesome. I'm so glad that that worked out for you. Love to hear from folks who say hey, you know this this worked or hey this didn't work or hey this partially worked. Do you have some more advice? Always love that. So thank you again for your questions. Hot TV we will not be back next week, but we'll be back the week following for our next episode of Hands On Tech. So catch us again on January 5th. If you're not tired of me, do stick around. I will be joining Leo Laporte and the crew later today on this Week in Tech. But that is all from me for this episode of Hands On Tech. Thanks so much for tuning in and we'll see you again in the new year. Hope you have a great rest of your year and a wonderful start as we kick off 2025. Bye bye. Always on the go, but still itching to play, Chumba Casino has your back back. It's totally free to play, no strings attached. Dive into hundreds of thrilling casino style games like bingo, slots and Solitaire anytime and anywhere you like. With fresh new game releases dropping every week and exciting free daily login bonuses, there's always something new and fun to play. Ready to take your shot and see what you can score? Become the MVP of your own game with Chumba Casino today. No purchase necessary. 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