Apple’s Notes app is one of the most powerful note-taking tools in the mobile world. It’s clutch for shopping lists, on-the-fly reminders and even the occasional celebrity apology letter.
There are an abundance of ways to use the Notes app to track everything in your life. But if you’ve had an iPhone for a long time, there’s a good chance you’ve built up a large collection of notes, which can make it tricky to track down the notes you actually need on a regular basis.
One of the handiest solutions came in the form of tags, which were added to iOS 15 in 2021.
Tags, which are similar to the hashtags used on social media sites such as Instagram or TikTok, can be added anywhere on a note, including the title. You can add them at any time, even retroactively. You can also organize your notes into regular folders, but that requires a bit of forward planning and thought work.
To add a tag to a note, type # then enter a new tag name, or choose an existing tag from the suggestions menu.
Three tags I regularly use are the #recipe, #grocerylist and #receipt tags. When I tap on the #recipe tag, Notes will pull up a collection of recipes I’ve tagged irrespective of the folder they’re stored in. I’ll hit up my #grocerylist tag, which will serve up all my previous grocery lists, when it’s time for me to restock. And I’ll refer to my #receipt tag, which brings up tagged receipts, when I’m reconciling expenses against my credit card statement.
Tags don’t need to be one continuous word, but they can’t contain spaces. You can use hyphens, numbers and underscores — for example #receipts-feb2023 or #grocerylist-vegan. You can also add multiple tags to a single note or use tags to create smart folders, which is essentially a collection of notes assembled by tag regardless of which folder they’re stored in.
Using tags, like the travel one in this image, is a great way to organize your iPhone notes and avoid losing them.
Apple/Screenshot by Sareena Dayaram
Don’t worry if you’ve never used tags before, and want to start organizing your notes. You can tag multiple notes retroactively — here’s how.
1. Go to the folder with the list of notes 2. Tap the More button (three dots), then select Notes 3. Select the notes you want tagged, then tap Tags at the bottom of the screen. If you already have a collection of tags, the iPhone will pull up the ones you already have for you to choose from. (So when selecting notes, its more efficient to choose the ones that have similar topics if possible so you can tag them in one fell swoop.) If you don’t have any pre-existing tags, the iPhone will serve up tag suggestions for you to choose from. 4. Select the tags you want to add to the notes, then tap Done.
The smart folder act like a filter and collects all notes with specific hashtags.
Apple/Screenshot by Sareena Dayaram
If you want to collect your tagged notes into a folder, use the Smart Folder feature (introduced alongside tags in iOS 15) like so:
1. Tap the New Folder button 2. Enter a name and tap Make Into Smart Folder 3. Choose which filters you want — certain tags, when notes were created, when they were last edited and more — those notes will automatically be included in the folder 4. Tap Done, and your Smart Folder is created
You can also convert a regular folder into a Smart Folder by tapping the More button and choosing the “convert” option.
Cocaine Bear, the horror comedy about a drugged-up bear that goes on a killing spree in a Georgia forest, only hit theaters in late February. But the mammal’s murdery exploits are already coming to Peacock.
The film is directed by Elizabeth Banks and stars a large cast that includes Keri Russell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Margo Martindale and Ray Liotta. It’s “inspired by true events.” (A black bear, a drug smuggler and cocaine are involved, but the bear isn’t known to have laid a hand on any humans.)
Cocaine Bear is the latest film from Universal’s film studios to stream on Peacock shortly after debuting in theaters. Read on for the release date, and why you might want to use a virtual private network while you stream.
When to watch Cocaine Bear on Peacock
Ready to face the bear? The film starts streaming on Peacock on Friday at 6 a.m. ET. People in the Pacific time zone can start watching at 3 a.m., while those in the Central time zone can do so beginning at 5 a.m.
Someone picked a bad time to go hiking.
Universal
Don’t already have access to the streaming service? Peacock offers an ad-supported Premium plan and ad-free Premium Plus plan. There’s also a free tier available to existing Peacock customers.
If you don’t want to subscribe, you can watch Cocaine Bear in theaters or rent it for $20.
Peacock’s ad-supported Premium plan costs $5 per month or $50 annually. Its ad-free Premium Plus plan costs $10 per month or $100 annually. If you’re a Spectrum or Xfinity customer, you may have free access to the platform right now (the deal expires for Xfinity customers in June). Read our Peacock review.
How to watch Cocaine Bear from anywhere with a VPN
Perhaps you’re traveling abroad and want to stream Peacock while away from home. With a VPN, you’re able to virtually change your location on your phone, tablet or laptop to get access to the movie from anywhere in the world. There are other good reasons to use a VPN for streaming, too.
A VPN is the best way to stop your ISP from throttling your speeds by encrypting your traffic. Using a VPN is also a great idea if you’re traveling and find yourself connected to a Wi-Fi network, and you want to add an extra layer of privacy for your devices and logins. Streaming TV can be a bit smoother with a reliable, quality VPN that’s passed our tests and security standards.
You can use a VPN to stream content legally as long as VPNs are allowed in your country and you have a valid subscription to the streaming service you’re using. The US and Canada are among the countries where VPNs are legal, but we advise against streaming or downloading content on illegal torrent sites. We recommend ExpressVPN, but you may opt for another provider from our best list such as Surfshark or NordVPN.
If you’re looking for a secure and dependable VPN, our Editors’ Choice is ExpressVPN. It’s fast, works on multiple devices, and provides stable streams. It’s normally $13 per month, but you can sign up for ExpressVPN and save 35% — the equivalent of $8.32 per month — if you get an annual subscription.
Follow the VPN provider’s instructions for installation, and choose the United States, where Cocaine Bear will be streaming on Peacock. Before you open the streaming app, make sure you are connected to your VPN using your selected region. If you want to stream Cocaine Bear on more than one device, it’s possible you’ll need to configure each one to ensure you are signed in. Go to settings and check your network connections to verify you’re logged in and connected to your VPN account. Now you’re ready to open Peacock to stream.
If you run into issues with streaming, first make sure your VPN is up and running on its encrypted IP address. Double-check that you’ve followed installation instructions correctly and you’ve picked the right geographical area for viewing. If you still encounter connection problems, you may need to reboot your device. Close all apps and windows, restart your device and connect to your VPN first. Note that some streaming services have restrictions on VPN access.
I always need a reliable, high-speed internet connection on my iPhone, whether it’s for work or pleasure. It’s why I always seek out Wi-Fi when my cellular connection is weak. Besides my home network, I connect to Wi-Fi at friends’ houses, coffee shops, restaurants, airports and libraries, but with so many networks, it’s impossible to remember all these passwords.
For the most part, I don’t need to remember any Wi-Fi passwords — once I connect to a network, my iPhone automatically reconnects to it when it’s nearby.
But there are times when I do need to know the actual password, if, for example, a friend or family member wants to connect to that same network and there’s no other way to share the password with them.
Helpfully, iPhones store the passwords of all the Wi-Fi networks you connect to — you just need to know where to find them.
The Lisen phone stand is ergonomically designed to provide you with a more comfortable viewing angle to help reduce strain on your neck and back. Simply adjust the height, set down your phone (vertically or horizontally) and read the news or watch videos on your phone while you multitask.
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View password for Wi-Fi network you’re currently connected to
This first method allows you to view the password of the Wi-Fi network you’re either currently connected to or have connected to in the past and are near enough to the router for the network to appear in your settings.
If you meet these requirements, go to Settings>Wi-Fi, find the Wi-Fi network you want the password for and tap the information icon. Next, tap Password and use Face ID, Touch ID or enter your passcode to view the Wi-Fi network password. Finally, hit Copy to save the password to your clipboard.
You can view passwords for any Wi-Fi networks you’ve ever connected to, as long as you’re currently connected to it or near enough that it appears under My Networks.
Screenshots by Nelson Aguilar/CNET
However, as mentioned, this only works for Wi-Fi networks you’re currently connected to or near to, but there is a way to find the passwords to all the other Wi-Fi networks you’ve connected to in the past.
Find the rest of your saved Wi-Fi passwords
If you want to view every single stored Wi-Fi password on your iPhone, go to Settings>Wi-Fi andtap the Edit button on the top right. A list of your known networks, or every single Wi-Fi network you’ve ever connected to, will appear in alphabetical and numerical order.
To view a password, tap the information icon and then hit Password.
You can copy the password to your clipboard or have the password spoken out loud to you.
If you’re looking to install Windows 11 Pro on a custom PC that you’ve just built or want to dual-boot another computer you have, here’s an affordable way to do just that. This is the cheapest that’s currently available and beats Microsoft’s price by quite a bit.
Building a new PC is a lot of fun, but one expense you may not be thinking of is the cost of Windows — the operating system — itself. It generally costs between $160 and $200 to add Windows to a new computer, but we have a way to help you reduce that expense. Windows 11 is Microsoft’s latest and greatest, and in many cases Microsoft is still offering the free upgrade for Windows 10 users as long as you meet certain requirements. Not everyone will meet those, and if you’re one who doesn’t, you’ll want this offer from StackSocial.
Right now, you can save $140 on the license cost, making Windows 11 Pro just $60 for a limited time. This is best-of-web pricing right now, and very close to a one-off deal we saw at Woot earlier this year. However, not every single computer out there is able to run Windows 11, so before making the purchase you’re going to want to ensure that your computer will meet the requirements that Microsoft has set out for the OS. Additionally, the listing says that if you have a PC that’s already running Windows 10 and Windows Update does not let you install the free Windows 11 upgrade, your computer will not be compatible with this version either.
The activation key that is provided following your purchase can be used to install and activate Windows 11 Pro on three computers. To be clear, purchases like this are generally intended for advanced users — those who are building a new computer or who want to dual-boot an existing computer with a second OS. To that end, you will need a secondary PC to access and download the files following your purchase, so be sure you can access everything from another computer in your home or you have a friend’s machine that you can use temporarily. (You’ll also want to have a USB thumb drive on hand to transfer the file.) Microsoft provides three ways to access Windows 11 Pro following your purchase, so you can pick the one that will work best for your situation.
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3D printing is more popular than ever, which means it’s never been easier to dive in and try out this technology for yourself. You may think you’ll have to drop $1,000 or more on a printer and materials to get started, but there’s a big market out there with plenty of entry level models that you can pick up for around $200 or less. And there are tons of deals you can take advantage of right now to start your setup for less.
If you’re a first-time buyer or looking to buy a 3D printer as a gift for a beginner, getting a good deal is even more important. All the best 3D printers have advanced features that make your life easier, so if you can snag one for less than the normal price, that’s a big plus.
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If you have a creative person in your life, then they should really own a 3D printer. The joy that comes with seeing your creations brought to life in the 3D can’t be overstated. Currently on sale for a little under $200, the Elegoo Neptune 2 is a great starting point for a hobby that produces excellent results with little effort.
This is perfect for a high schooler interested in engineering or an adult looking to start 3D printing for the first time.
We recently reviewed this new entry-level printer, which offers fancy features like a self-leveling bed at a reasonable price. This printer is normally priced at around $200, but some sales do drop it lower than that. It’s a simple kit, that is easy to assemble and works surprisingly well for such a budget price.
The Mono X is the perfect mid-size resin printer for making those larger pieces of jewelry or an entire army of miniatures. The build plate is almost twice as big as the standard resin printer, and it gives you a lot more scope on what projects you can do. This deal is nearly half price, so it’s well worth picking one up today.
I’ve recently been working with the Finder 3 and I’m impressed with the quality it was able to produce straight from the box. It’s easy to set up and comes with a flexible build plate that you can replace the glass bed with. It makes it far easier to remove builds.
This is the perfect printer for a teacher, as the enclosure makes it stable, and the slicer can control multiple printers at once via Wi-Fi.
This is easily my favorite small resin 3D printer. It’s super-fast and prints beautiful models every time. Elegoo are old hats at resin printing, so every part you’ll ever need to replace is easily acquired at a reasonable price. The details that can be captured with the Mars 3 are stunning, and some of my favorite models have come from this little machine.
Any time you can get the Mars 3 on a discount is a good day, so snag one now.
The Kobra Plus is in that sweet spot between a printer that is overly large, and one that is too small to be useful. You can make full-size helmets and big cosplay items without needing an entire workbench dedicated to it. With $120 off the price, it’s a bargain.
The Elegoo Saturn 2 is my favorite resin printer right now. It prints incredibly detailed models at a speed that is often astonishing. The bed size is much larger than the printers in the smaller category, while its footprint is much easier to deal with than other, larger printers. You can print finely detailed cosplay pieces or multiple tabletop miniatures with equal ease with the Saturn 2, making it perfect for a small business. Plus, this deal comes with a free $25 Newegg gift card.
The CR-30 is one of the first commercially available conveyor belt 3D printers, and it is fascinating to use. It isn’t for the beginner hobbyist as it takes a little bit of tweaking to get right, but once you do you can print long models like swords or lots of small models on a production line.
If you make the same model over and again for your Etsy store, this is a great printer to try.
The Photon 4K is being replaced with the new M3 series, but it could still be worth your time. With a 4K monochrome screen, the printer is very fast without sacrificing any detail. In fact, the details on this machine are superb, especially on small models like miniatures.
At $189, the Photon 4K offers an amazing entry into resin 3D printing, even if Anycubic is selling off the stock.
It’s not just the 3D printers themselves that are on sale. It’s often the accessories and materials too. While the savings aren’t as drastic — $5 to $10 savings, maybe — these add up over time when you have to buy a lot of materials for your projects.
Quantum PLA takes the standard filament we all know and adds a new twist. The dual tones create a shimmering effect on your printed model and make it change color as you turn it. It’s gorgeous and you should get as many different colors as you can.
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Two former Comixology heads unveiled a new creator-owned comics and collectibles publisher Thursday called Dstlry. David Steinberger, co-founder and former CEO of Comixology, and Chip Mosher, former Comixology head of content, hope the new publisher shifts the industry around creator-owned comics and collectibles.
Dstlry will offer a limited number of physical and digital items for sale online and in brick-and-mortar stores. Owners of digital items will then be able to sell their items in the Dstlry marketplace, and the original creators will get a percentage of what the item sells for.
DSTLRY’s logo.
Dstlry
Steinberger and Mosher told me in an interview they hope Dstlry can help alleviate pains some creators have felt in the comics industry when it comes to compensation. While some comic characters and stories make millions of dollars as a result of films, some creators have felt left out in the cold.
Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting, for example, transformed Bucky Barnes into the Winter Soldier in 2005. However, Brubaker wrote in his newsletter in 2021 that he feels he and Epting haven’t been adequately compensated for their work given the character’s success in multiple Marvel Cinematic Universe films and shows.
“For the most part all Steve Epting and I have gotten for creating the Winter Soldier and his storyline is a ‘thanks’ here or there,” Brubaker wrote. “I’ve even seen higher-ups on the publishing side try to take credit for my work a few times, which was pretty galling.”
Steinberger and Mosher saw these issues and wanted to be part of the solution by making sure creators are treated well so they can produce their best work for readers.
“We looked at all these problems creators had and we tried to fix that,” Mosher said. “We knew if we fix stuff for creators across the board, on a lot of different levels, then we’d be delivering the best thing for the customers.”
Ed Brubaker (pictured) and Steve Epting brought Bucky Barnes back to life as the Winter Soldier in 2005.
Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images
“Without [creators] there’s nothing, and they don’t always get treated that way when their material that they create becomes $100 million movies or billion dollar movies,” Steinberger said. Dstlry is about “honoring their contribution … there’s a joy in trying to correct what is currently out there.”
Steinberger and Mosher also said they hope Dstlry will bring the fun of collecting print issues to the digital space. They said when new issues of a comic are released, digital copies of the comic will be sold online at dstlry.co for one week until the next issue comes out.
“However many digital copies get sold between Wednesday and Tuesday, that’s it, never any more again,” Mosher said.
But people will still be able to get their hands on digital issues through the Dstlry marketplace, and mass market digital trade collections will be available more broadly. Physical copies will be available in local comic shops, too. Some creators will also be given complimentary digital copies of comics they can give out to fans.
Steinberger and Mosher said they hope this will help readers feel closer to all the creators that are publishing through Dstlry.
The list of Dstlry founding creators includes well-known writers and artists like Eisner Award winners Scott Snyder, Becky Cloonan and James Tynion IV. Dstlry’s advisory board consists of film producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, video game industry veteran John Schappert and tech strategist Mike Vorhaus.
Eisner Award winner Scott Snyder is one of the founding creators of Dstlry.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
“Artistic growth is spurred when its creators are nurtured and properly compensated for their achievements,” Bonaventura said in a news release. “This new system and its shared equity model will provide an invigorating environment which will foster great storytelling.”
And understanding how to build that kind of environment is something Steinberger and Mosher said they developed in their tenures at Comixology.
“Learning how to work with creators at a high level and do the best for them, which led to the best products, was one of the big things I learned,” Mosher said, referring to individual issues.
“You want to have empathy for [creators],” Steinberger said. “You want to understand what they need, and try to deliver that every time.”
More details about Dstlry’s plans will be revealed later this year.
Readers will still be able to get Dstlry comics at comic shops if they want physical copies.
Getty Images
How Dstlry could affect the comic industry
The type of commodities market Dstlry is launching has a few advantages over other commodities markets.
Namely, other commodities depreciate in value after they’re used. Sneakers, for example, depreciate in value the second you put them on your feet. Cars also depreciate in value by as much as 9% to 11% as soon as you drive one off the lot, according to financial counseling firm Ramsey Solutions.
A copy of Detective Comics No. 27 sold at auction in 2022 for $1.74 million.
Spencer Weiner/Getty Images
With Dstlry’s model, people should be able to read a digital comic as many times as they want, then sell that comic on Dstlry’s digital marketplace for the price they bought the comic for, or higher. Looking to physical comics as an example, Detective Comics No. 27, which introduced Batman in 1939, sold at auction in May 2022 for $1.74 million. Granted, that’s an extreme example that most new comics won’t replicate anytime soon. But Dstlry wants to create a system where creators still make money from the sale — and resale — of their comics at any time.
That also means if you get into a digital series a few months after it launches, you’ll likely have to pay a higher price for an early comic in that digital series. You’ll probably have to pay more for a physical copy of that comic, too, since those are also sold in limited quantities, but that’s also often true of traditional publishers.
Admittedly, this could create a predatory resale market. That could happen if people buy as many digital copies of a comic as they can, then once the comic goes out of print, they ask for an absurd amount of money for the digital comics on the Dstlry marketplace. However, this kind of speculation led to a comics industry crash in the ’90s. People who hope to get rich from the resale of these digital comics will have to invest wisely and understand that some of the largest payoffs come after years of waiting.
The resale of digital comics on Dstlry’s marketplace should have a benefit over physical copies of comics, though.
With physical copies of comics you need plastic covers and storage space to help keep comics secure and safe, and you’ll have to be vigilant about how they’re stored if you plan on selling them after a certain amount of time.
Digital copies of comics are limited only by the amount of space on your device. And if Dstlry offers cloud storage, people won’t even have to worry about that.
Maintaining and transporting your digital comics is easier than their physical counterparts.
Getty Images
Besides those advatages for readers, Dstlry’s benefits for creators seem obvious, and it addresses an issue some people in the sneaker community have pointed out.
Nike made over $46 billion in revenue in 2022. Footwear made up about two-thirds of that revenue, at $29 billion. The sneaker resale market alone was estimated to be worth about $10 billion in 2021, according to Axios. It isn’t known how much estimated value Nike sneakers have on the resale market, but you can see there are huge profits in the resale market that companies like Nike are cut out of.
With Dstlry’s model, each time a digital item is resold, a percentage of that sale goes back to the creators. That means creators will benefit from their work weeks, months or even years after their digital series ends. Though the percentage of an item’s resale value that creators will receive hasn’t been disclosed at this time, any percentage is better than none.
I’m not expecting Dstlry to fix issues in the comics industry overnight, or even by the end of the year. Systemic changes take time and a lot of buy-in from others, like creators and readers.
However, I believe creators should get the full benefit from their work. It’s ridiculous that someone can get rich off something a creator made while that creator gets little or nothing in return.
I’m hopeful for Dstlry, and I plan on supporting the publisher and its creators in the future.
