Alongside their multitude of new features, Apple’s latest operating systems change how to tackle many of our everyday problems. Here’s your up-to-date toolkit

Fixing problems in our Macs, iPhones and iPads can be tricky as the devices continue to evolve. You can’t employ the same tools and techniques when the chips keep changing, and each year brings a full suite of new operating systems. Tricks we once relied on, like repairing permissions, are now long gone. With its signed and sealed System volume, that once-popular fallback of clean re-installing macOS is seldom of any use today. Fortunately, if you want to check whether Monterey is in mint condition, all you need do is restart, and macOS checks every file on its System volume against Apple’s blueprint.

Some well-proven tools have simply vanished, like installing a combo update as a way of fixing all sorts of system misbehaviour, as Apple no longer provides separate updaters for macOS. New M1-series Macs are also different from their predecessors in doing away with startup key combinations in favour of an integrated recovery system.

Although devices might seem more limited to turning features off and back on, there are often better focused and faster ways to do this, depending on what’s wrong. Our iPhones and iPads have also gained new features like Shared with You with their own controls.

In many ways Monterey, iOS and iPadOS 15 simplify fixes, but they also bring new challenges. So set your old remedies aside, ready for when you next go retro-computing. These are the latest fixes to sort out your Mac and devices today, to restore productivity and fun to your Mac, iPhone and iPad.