Continuity Setup

For many people, all of this just works. For many others, there’s a certain degree of setting up and troubleshooting. These are the primary rules:

• You need a Mac running OS X Yosemite or later.

• The Mac and the phone have to be signed into the same iCloud account. (That’s a security thing—it proves that you’re the owner of both machines and therefore unlikely to pose a risk to yourself.) On the Mac, you do that in System Preferences→iCloud. On the phone, you do that in Settings→[your name]→iCloud. But you should also make sure you’ve entered the same iCloud address in Settings→Messages and Settings→FaceTime.

• For some of these features, Bluetooth must be turned on. On the Mac, you can do that in System Preferences→Bluetooth. On the phone, it’s Settings→Bluetooth.

  Modern Bluetooth doesn’t drain your battery the way Bluetooth once did, so it’s fine to leave it on. But older Macs don’t have Bluetooth LE, so most Continuity features work only on 2012 and later Macs.

All right. Setup ready? Time to experience some integration!

Mac as Speakerphone

You can make and take phone calls on your Mac. The iPhone, sitting anywhere in your house, can be the cellular module for your Mac—even if that iPhone is asleep and locked. As usual, the Mac and the phone must be signed into the same iCloud account. And they must be on the same network.

Ready? Here’s the setup.

• On the phone, turn on Settings→ Phone→ Calls on Other Devices→ Allow Calls on Other Devices.

• On the Mac, open the FaceTime program, weird as that sounds. Turn on FaceTime→ Preferences→ Settings→ Calls from iPhone.

Once you’ve set things up as described, it just works. When a call comes in to your iPhone’s number, your Mac plays whatever ringtone your phone is playing. A notice appears on your Mac screen, as shown on the facing page. You can click Accept to answer it (or Decline it); your Mac’s microphone and speaker become your speakerphone.

You can place a call the same way. Just click any phone number you find on the Mac: in Contacts, in Safari, in an email message, and so on.

Even call-waiting works—if a second call comes in, your Mac notifies you and offers you the chance to put the first one on hold. And on the Mac, the Contacts app offers Ringtone and Texttone menus, so you can assign custom sounds that play when your Mac rings.

Crazy.

Texting from the Mac

You can send and receive text messages (as well as picture, audio, and video messages) on your Mac, too.

We’re not talking about sending texts to other Apple people (with iCloud accounts). Those are called iMessages, and they’re a special, Apple-only kind of message (“Standard Texting (SMS)”). We’re talking about something much better: You can type any cellphone number and send a regular SMS text message to anyone. Or receive them at your iPhone number.

Or you can initiate the text conversation by clicking a phone number in Contacts, Calendar, or Safari to send an SMS message. Once again, your iPhone acts as a relay station between the cellular world and your Mac.

Here’s how to set it up. First, as usual, the Mac and the phone must be on the same Wi-Fi network and signed into the same iCloud account.

• On the phone, open Settings→ Messages→ Send & Receive; make sure that both your phone number and email address are turned on.

  Next, still on the iPhone, open Settings→Messages. Tap Text Message Forwarding. Your Mac’s name appears. Turn on the switch. (If you’re using two-factor authentication—see “Privacy”—you’ll have to type in a six-digit code now.)

• On the Mac, open Messages; choose Messages→ Preferences→ Accounts. Confirm that the Apple ID shown here matches what you saw on the phone in the previous step.

All of this is to prove that you’re the owner of both devices. You wouldn’t want some bad guy reading your text messages, would you?

That’s it—your gadgets are paired. You can now use Messages to send standard text messages to any cellphone. You can also click and hold on a phone number wherever it appears—in Contacts, in a search result, in Safari, in Mail—and choose Send Message from there. And when a text message comes in, a standard Mac notification bubble appears at top right.

The beauty of this is that your back-and-forths are kept in sync between the Mac and the phone. You can jump between them and continue the text­ing conversation. (You’ll note that, as usual, the bubbles containing your utterances are green. Blue is reserved for iMessages—that is, messages to other people with iCloud accounts.)

Instant Hotspot

As you know from “Personal Hotspot (Tethering)”, paying your cell carrier another $20 or so every month entitles you to use the iPhone’s Personal Hotspot feature. That’s where the phone itself acts as a portable Wi-Fi hotspot, so that your laptop (or any other gadgets) can get online almost anywhere.

As you also know from “Personal Hotspot (Tethering)”, it’s kind of a pain to get going. Each time you want your laptop to get online, you have to wake your iPhone, unlock it, open Settings, and turn on Personal Hotspot. Then you wait about 20 seconds, until the phone’s name shows up in your menu.

Not with Continuity.

Now, the phone can stay in your pocket. Its name appears in your menu, ready for choosing at any time—even if the phone is asleep and locked, and even if Personal Hotspot is turned off! Handily enough, the menu also shows the phone’s battery and signal status.

Once your Mac is online through your iPhone’s cellular connection, it tries to save you money by suspending data-intensive jobs like full backups and software updates. And it closes down the connection when you no longer need it, to save your iPhone’s battery.

As usual, this works only if the iPhone and Mac both have Bluetooth turned on and are signed into the same iCloud account.

Handoff

Handoff passes half-finished documents between the phone and the Mac, wirelessly and automatically.

For example, suppose you’ve been writing an email message on your iPhone (below, left). When you arrive home and sit down at the Mac, a new icon appears at the left end of the Mac’s Dock (top right). When you click it, the Mac’s Mail program opens, and the half-finished message is there for you to complete (lower right).

It doesn’t have to be an email message, either. If you were reading a web page or a Map on your phone, then that icon on the Mac opens the same web page or map. If you were working on a Reminder; a Calendar entry; a Contacts entry; a note in Notes; or a document in Keynote, Numbers, or Pages; you can open the same in-progress item on the Mac.

And all of it works in the other direction, too. If you’re working on something on the Mac, but you’re called away, an icon appears on the lower-left corner of your iPhone’s Lock screen that opens the same item (facing page, left).

Here’s the setup: Once again, both gadgets must be signed into your iCloud account. Both must have Bluetooth turned on, and the Mac and phone have to be within Bluetooth range of each other (about 30 feet).

On the Mac, open System Preferences→General; turn on Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices.

On the iPhone, the on/off switch is in Settings→General→Handoff.

Now try it out. Start an email message on your iPhone. Have a look at the Dock on your Mac: There, at the left end, pops up the little icon of whatever program can finish the job.

AirDrop

AirDrop is pretty great. As described in “AirDrop”, it lets you shoot photos, videos, maps, Contacts cards, PDF files, Word documents, and other stuff between iPhones. Wirelessly. Without names, passwords, permissions, or even an Internet connection. What “AirDrop” doesn’t cover, though, is how you can use AirDrop between a phone and a Mac.

From iPhone to Mac

Open whatever it is you want to send to the Mac: a photo, map, website, contact…anything with a button.

When you tap , you see the AirDrop panel—and, after a moment, the icons of any nearby Macs show up, too. Including yours.

If the Mac’s icon doesn’t show up, it’s probably because its owner hasn’t made the Mac discoverable by AirDrop.

Instruct him to open the AirDrop window on his Mac. (Click AirDrop in the sidebar of any Finder window.) See the small blue control at the bottom? It governs who can “see” this Mac for AirDrop purposes: No One, Contacts Only (that is, people in the Mac’s address book), or Everyone.

Once that’s set up right, that Mac shows up in the iPhone’s AirDrop panel (“David” here at left). Send away.

The receiving Mac displays a notification. Click Accept to download the incoming item to your Mac’s Downloads folder (or Decline to reject it).

TIP

If the phone and the Mac are both signed into the same iCloud account, then you don’t encounter that Accept/Decline thing. The file goes directly into your Downloads folder without asking. You do get a notification on the Mac that lets you know how many files arrived, and it offers an Open button (above, right).

Apple figures that, since you own both the phone and the Mac, the usual permission routine isn’t necessary. You’re probably not trying to send yourself some evil virus of death.

Universal Clipboard

Now, this is magic—and useful magic, at that. You can copy some text, a picture, or a video on your phone—and then, without any further steps, turn to your Mac and paste it. Or go the other way. Somehow, the contents of the Clipboard transfer themselves wirelessly between the two machines.

In this example, you copy something on the iPhone, in Safari (below, top)—and then paste it instantly in Mail on the Mac.

There’s no on/off switch, no extra steps, no visible sign of this feature in Settings or System Preferences. It just works. (Provided, of course, that you’ve obeyed the Three Laws of Continuity Setup: The Mac and phone have to be on the same Wi-Fi network, both have to have Bluetooth turned on, and both have to be signed into the same iCloud account.)

If you don’t paste within two minutes of copying, then whatever was already on the Clipboard gets restored, so you don’t get confused later.