iOS 26 Hidden Gems, Gift Guide Favorites, and the Return of Your Old Nest Thermostat — Mac Geek Gab 1116

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You kick off with a blast of rapid-fire tips: instantly saving PDFs from Google Docs, digging photos out of Messages, moving your playlists into Apple Music with iOS 26, tightening up your Digital ID setup, wrangling mail right inside a message, and even retraining Siri when she goes off the rails. Then you dig into listener questions: how to avoid phishing traps, whether segmenting IoT gear actually improves security, and how to bypass that annoying shutdown confirmation. Sleep-tracking follow-ups, auto-opening Safari’s sidebar, and a perfectly absurd detour into fattening up backyard squirrels keep things moving. Through it all, you avoid the pitfalls and, of course, Don’t Get Caught.

From there, the next iteration of the Gift Guide rolls out, finding those products that are so embedded into our lives we forget about them: Hue bulbs for whole-home color, the Snap Grip for better shooting on the go, the Olight for serious flashlight needs, AirPods Pro with live translation tricks, single-ear noise canceling, and Comply tips for comfort. You wrap with Cool Stuff Found, including What Three Words for location smarts and the clever NoLongerEvil workaround to resurrect aging Nest thermostats. Punchy, practical, and full of the good bits you can use right now.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:21:33 — 57.1MB)

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Dave Hamilton

Dave Hamilton is a podcaster, a publisher, and a nerd who has spent the past three decades of his career educating thousands of computer users. In addition to Mac Geek Gab podcast (now in its 19th year!), Dave is co-host of Business Brain and Gig Gab, two other shows to check out! Dave is also the co-founder and CEO of BackBeat Media, a boutique network of podcasts and websites that represents fiercely-independent publishers, of which Dave considers himself one. He has been involved in online publishing since 1998, when he co-founded The Mac Observer, a popular Apple news site which was acquired in 2021. Technology isn't the only thing Dave's a nerd about: he's also a drummer, playing in Bitter Pill, Fling, and various other projects in and around the New Hampshire seacoast where he and his wife, Lisa, live and raised their two children. Dave's reachable for a limited amount of paid consulting at DaveTheNerd.com and you can find to him on Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, too!

2 Comments

MoeCoffee · November 19, 2025 at 9:47 am EST

How to shut down a Mac without a confirmation dialogue…
I’ve been a long-time user of the application Alfred (purchased the Powerpack), and it has the capability to shut down without any confirmation dialogues. All I need to do is use the keyboard shortcut to activate Alfred and type “shutdown,” and the computer does exactly that. There are also other system commands to do a variety of other things, such as start screensaver, empty trash, adjust volume, and even force quit an application, amongst other commands.
cheers, Don

Reply

    Dave Hamilton · November 19, 2025 at 9:53 am EST

    LOVE this, Don! Thanks for the comment. We’ll share on the show!

    Reply

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