Mac 911: How to delete Messages attachments from conversations, why you should use Google Photos, and more
Solutions to your most vexing Mac problems.
HOW TO DELETE PHOTOS, LINKS, AND ATTACHMENTS FROM CONVERSATIONS IN MESSAGES
Even as iphones and ipads have dramatically increased internal storage, you can still fill them with music, photos, and videos—and attachments sent along with messages. Apple lets you delete these attachments, although it’s a bit of a convoluted process. Remarkably, these deletions don’t sync across your devices with Messages enabled in Cloud—even though the messages themselves do sync.
Here’s how to manage attachments in Messages.
Delete attachments in IOS and ipados
Hold on, as there are a number of steps involved to get to the right view:
1. Launch Messages.
2. Find the conversation from which you want to delete attachments and tap it.
3. Tap the avatar of the person at the top of the Messages window.
4. From the set of icons that fade in to appear below the avatar, tap the Info (i) icon.
5. Swipe up until you see attachments at the bottom of the Details sheet. These are divided into Photos, Links, and Attachments.
Now you have a couple of options:
> Hold down on any item and a pop-up menu appears. You can tap Delete and confirm deletion to remove the item.
> If more than four items appear in a category, tap See All Category. Now you can either hold down as above or you can tap Select, tap individual items, then tap Delete and confirm.
There’s another way to reach just large attachments: go to Settings → General → iphone Storage → Review Large Attachments. IOS and ipados list attachments that can be deleted in order of size, from largest to smallest. You can swipe left and tap Delete to free up storage this way, too.
Delete attachments in macos
It’s a little easier to get to the deletion option in macos 10.15 Catalina, and it
works the same way in earlier versions, too:
1. Launch Messages.
2. Click the conversation that contains the items you want to delete.
3. Click Details in the upper-right corner.
4. In the popdown window that appears, you can select between Photos and Files.
5. Control-click on a single image or a selection of images (you can use Shift-click and Command-click to add to the selection), choose Delete from the pop-up menu, and the confirm the deletion.
WHY YOU’RE PROMPTED TO ERASE AN EXTERNAL DRIVE WHEN YOU USE IT WITH TIME MACHINE
When you attach an external drive to a Mac to use with Time Machine and confirm the prompt that appears asking if you want to use it for that purpose, you may then be prompted to erase the drive. Why does that happen?
As noted in previous columns, Apple supports backing up macos drives in both the older HFS+ (“Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” in Disk Utility) and newer APFS formats. But Time Machine backup drives must use HFS+ for now. It’s a weird requirement on Apple’s part after automatically migrating all Macs startup volumes to APFS during recent macos version updates (10.13 migrated SSDS; 10.14 migrated hard drives and Fusion drives).
When you see a prompt that asks you to erase the drive, that’s because it’s not formatted with HFS+. It might be perfectly Finder mountable, because it uses APFS, FAT32, or EXFAT. However, Time Machine can’t work with it, and thus macos gives you an option to erase.
If you are willing to switch the drive over, make sure you have all the data on it copied somewhere else. After erasing and reformatting as HFS+, you can store other
data on the same drive alongside Time Machine backups. But it’s preferable to create separate partitions for your own data and Time Machine backups to avoid conflicts and other problems.
WHY YOU SHOULD USE GOOGLE PHOTOS OVER ICLOUD PHOTOS: SHARING PHOTOS AND MOVIES
icloud Photos is a fantastic way to sync your images and videos across all the devices you own that use the same Apple ID for icloud, have access anywhere via a web browser to the same media at icloud.com, and let Apple effectively perform a backup (or extra backup, depending on your configuration) of all your media.
But icloud Photos is for devices, not people. When it comes to sharing pictures and movies with other people, it’s not a robust solution. You can use Shared Albums ( go. macworld.com/shab), which let you invite people or create a publicly accessible album that anyone with the
URL can access. This is great for an event or a pool of photos that families might share of each other’s kids and pets.
It’s not manageable beyond a relatively small number of images and videos, however. Many readers send us email asking for help sharing their entire Photos library. It’s simply not possible currently with Apple’s device- and account-centric approach. (Family Sharing increases the amount of services and features it encompasses with each new operating system release, but pooled photos are still not part of the option.)
The best bet for most people is Google Photos. Instead of being device-centric with a cloud-based sync part, Google Photos—like many Google products—is cloud focused, allowing you access, download, or sync data on devices or via Google’s web apps. With Google Drive for macos and Google Photos for IOS and ipados, you can automatically sync images you import to specified folders. (You’d need to export your Photos Library and then import it; Google doesn’t have an automated method.)
If you have an existing Google account that you want to share from, Google has an option that lets you share all photos with a single person ( go. macworld.com/shsn), who it calls a “partner.”
If one person isn’t enough, you could create a new, separate Google account that you and others all log into and use for
photo and video sharing. The limitation is that Google Drive in macos and in some Google apps, you can’t switch freely between accounts. If you or others already use Google features in macos, IOS, and ipados, this may not work for automatic synchronization. Instead, you could use a browser to upload media and view the contents of a Google Photos library, as you can switch among accounts in a browser.
Google has an interesting unlimited media option for Google Photos. If you’re willing to let very high-resolution photos and videos be downsampled ( go. macworld.com/dwsm), you can store as much media as you like. The limit is 16 megapixels for images (roughly 4920 by 3264 pixels for a standard-ratio camera) and 1080p for video. Above that, it’s resized to the limit.
To store all unaltered versions of your media, no matter how large it is, you can pay Google for additional storage. The company includes 15GB with a free account, which covers email, photos, and Google Drive files. Above that, the charge is $2 a month for 100GB, $3 a month for 200GB, and $10 a month for 2TB. Google offers discounts for paying for 200GB or 2TB a year at a time, too. (You can even get larger quantities, like 10TB.)
One bonus of using Google Photos? Its
web app is quite fast and full-featured compared to icloud.com. And it has a much larger set of items it can recognize automatically and let you search by.
THAT’S RIGHT: YOU CAN’T TURN OFF PERSONAL HOTSPOT IN IOS 13 AND IPADOS 13
If you’re a regular user of the Personal Hotspot feature for iphones and cellularequipped ipads, you might wondered where the “off” setting went in IOS 13.1 and ipados 13.1. The switch is gone, but it’s not a bug and you’re not just unable to find it.
Apple in that dot release—not in IOS 13.0, but the 13.1 update for both platforms—rethought how it expresses Personal Hotspot’s use philosophically. In previous releases, you had the on-demand Personal Hotspot that could be turned on, put on standby, or turned off. There was also an Instant Hotspot feature, which allowed any of your icloud-connected devices to select the Personal Hotspot even if it were set to Off or Off, But Discoverable.
That was rather confusing. If it’s off, how can it be available for use? Shouldn’t it need to be turned on?
So in 13.1, Apple resolved this logical paradox by redefining the state of
Personal Hotspot to reflect how it lets it be used. It also extended use to Family
Sharing groups as an option.
First, Personal Hotspot is always on for all devices logged in to the same icloud account, regardless of what the label in Settings says. It cannot be disabled among your devices. The only way to turn it off is to disable cellular networking or turn on Airplane Mode. The term Instant Hotspot appears to be banished. If you select your Personal Hotspot from another of your devices, the label now reads “On” in Settings next to the Personal Hotspot label.
Second, the feature’s on/off switch has been replaced with an Allow Others To Join switch. When this is off, only icloudconnected devices can connect and approved Family Sharing group members may use it, if any. When it’s on, the hotspot Wi-fi network can be joined by anyone who has the password, and the device can be used via Bluetooth or USB by anyone who can pair (for Bluetooth) or plug into it (via USB).
Because of the security feature added late in IOS 11 to prevent unwanted USB devices from having the potential to crack an iphone or ipad’s passcode, USB tethering remains subject to the choice made in Settings → Touch Id/face ID & Passcode → USB Accessories. When turned off, you must unlock the device within the previous hour before its Lightning port can be used for any USB data interactions. (I wouldn’t suggesting
setting it to on, as then anyone can access its port at any time.)
Third, if you’re in a Family Sharing group, a new option appears in Settings → Personal Hotspot: Family Sharing. Tap it and you can allow anyone in your family group to either automatically have access to the Personal Hotspot or to tap to join and require your permission each time to use.
The labeling in Settings for the toplevel Personal Hotspot shakes out like this:
Off: While the label read Off, it isn’t actually “off,” but usually means that Allow Others To Join is disabled. icloud and Family Sharing connections work. However, if Airplane Mode or Cellular is disabled, Off does mean Off!
On: Whenever any device has connected to the Personal Hotspot, it’s labeled On. The operating system turns the status bar blue, too, to remind you that it’s being used in this fashion.
And in the Control Center, two other labels appear. Hold down on the network card to reveal a set of six network buttons, including Personal Hotspot, all of which have text labels beneath them. Personal Hotspot will read either:
Not Discoverable: If Allow Others To Join is disabled in Settings → Personal Hotspot, this is what you’ll see.
On and Discoverable: This appears if that switch is turned on.
This may still seem like a confusing overlap of states, but it’s surprisingly somewhat better than in the previous release. ■