Thanks to iCloud, syncing an iPhone with a Mac is a piece of cake. But Mac users who don’t buy into the whole “one vendor to rule them all” thing will find that syncing an Android phone with OS X isn’t quite as easy. That said, it isn’t terribly difficult, either, thanks to Google’s own cloud services.

Contacts

First, you must set up your phone to sync with your Google account. To make sure that this syncing is enabled, go to Settings > Accounts > Google, and tap your email address (it will be at the top of the screen, under the Accounts heading). Then confirm that the Sync Contacts box is checked.

Next, open the Address Book app on your Mac, go to Address Book > Preferences > Accounts, and choose On My Mac. You’ll see two boxes: one that says ‘Synchronize to Yahoo’ and another that says ‘Synchronize to Google’. Check the Synchronize to Google box, press Accept in the pop-up box, and enter your Gmail address and password when prompted. You should now see a small sync symbol in your Mac’s menubar. Click this symbol, and choose Sync Now from the dropdown menu.

Calendar

To sync your Android/Google calendar with iCal, open the iCal app on your Mac and navigate to iCal > Preferences > Accounts. Click the plus (+) symbol in the lower left corner to add a calendar to iCal. Leave ‘Account Type’ set to Automatic, fill in your Gmail address and password, and click Create.

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Snap and share: It’s one of the most common things we do with our mobile devices these days. But sometimes you don’t want to broadcast a picture for the whole world to see. Here’s a quick overview of how Shared Photo Streams can help you with that.

Transcript

This is Macworld senior editor Dan Moren. Unlike Twitter or Instagram, iOS 6’s Shared Photo Streams make it easy to share photos with only a select group of friends or family, no matter what kind of computer, smartphone, or tablet they use.

To create a Shared Photo Stream, open the Photos app and tap the Photo Stream tab. By default, you’ll see your own personal photo stream, which syncs pictures shot with your iOS devices to all of your Macs and other iOS devices. (If you don’t, you may need to enable both your Photo Stream and Shared Photo Streams under Settings -> iCloud -> Photo Stream.)

Tap the Plus (+) button to create a new stream. You’ll be prompted to give the stream a name and invite some friends via email—but don’t worry, if you forget somebody; you can always add them later. You’ll also see an option to create a Public Website—more on that in a bit.

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Your iPhone and iPad can speak aloud any text you can select. In this video, I’ll show you how to enable that feature, and how to type emoji symbols in your text, too.

Transcript

I’m going to show you a few quick fun things your iPhone or iPad can do to make text more interesting.

First, I’ll show you how you can make your iOS device read aloud any text you select. Fire up the Settings app, tap on General, scroll down to Accessibility, and then tap on Speak Selection. Turn it on, and then, if you’d like, you can play with different accents and speech speed. A good Australian accent always makes me say “crikey,” so I can’t resist.

Now, go into any app where you can type or select text. I’ll use the Notes app here. Select the text you’re interested in hearing by tapping and holding, and then tap the new Speak button that appears. Instantly, your iPhone begins reading the text you selected—in your chosen accent, if applicable.

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When writing up bug reports for this column, I prefer to have guaranteed solutions to offer. However, a few problems are so frustrating and mysterious that I’ll cover them even without a known reliable fix. That’s the situation today.

A few weeks ago, I sent several SMS text messages to a friend via the Messages app on my iPhone 5. They went unanswered. I eventually learned that he had never received the messages. Not only that, he had sent me a couple of messages during the same time period that I never received. When we finally sat down together to figure out what was going on, we confirmed the obvious: we could neither send nor receive text messages between our two smartphones.

Here’s where things gets weirder. My friend is the only person I cannot text. Ditto in reverse for my friend. Not only that, we have been exchanging texts for years without any difficulty. It’s only in the past few weeks that we’ve had this difficulty. He is using the same smartphone (not an iPhone) and same carrier he’s had for the past two years. The only apparent change that might be linked to when the symptom first popped up was on my end: I upgraded to an iPhone 5 and iOS 6 around the time the texts started to fail (although I can’t confirm that the failures began immediately after the upgrade).

I tried a couple of obvious potential fixes. First, I restarted my iPhone. Second, I deleted the entire conversation with my friend and began a new one. Neither had any effect.

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When you hit the road, it’s easy to get paranoid—especially if you’re carrying thousands of dollars’ worth of technology with you. You can alleviate some of your worries by taking security measures to protect yourself against someone running off with your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook.

Use common sense 

If you’re not used to toting a machine outside your usual rounds, don’t forget these precautions.

Don’t leave devices lying around: Don’t leave your laptop or other device on a table or counter at a coffee shop or other establishment and walk away or turn your back. Hardware is too easily snatched and too portable.

Don’t leave bags untended: Don’t walk away from a bag that holds your phone, tablet, or laptop. It’s simple for a thief to poke around without attracting notice, especially during the holidays when shops are busy.

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A visit to your local Apple Store during the holiday season can be maddening. The stores are overrun with other shoppers, there’s a mob around each gadget table, and waiting for your turn to be helped by an Apple Store employee takes eons. The walk-in line to purchase an iPhone 5 alone can take upwards of an hour, depending on how many people are in front of you. While we generally like the Apple Store’s “no register” system, it can be a real headache during busy periods.

This year, there are a few ways to avoid waiting in a long line. It just takes a little planning ahead.

Check yourself out

Bring your iOS device to the Apple Store, because the Apple Store app is a handy guide for holiday shopping. The app shows you where the nearest Apple Store is, lets you search for product availability at specific stores, and allows you to purchase items yourself.

The Apple Store app also has a feature called Express Checkout that lets you directly purchase items from the online Apple Store by quickly entering your Apple ID and password. Designate whether you’d like to pick the item up in a store or have it shipped. The app bills the card on file that’s linked to your Apple ID and will ship to the address on file as well; you can adjust these settings by selecting Edit in the app itself at checkout.

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Admit it: Your carry-on bag is stuffed with digital gear that you can’t bear to leave at home.  Your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook will keep you entertained while en route, and it’ll make a great navigation, research, and photo tool when you reach your destination. But keeping these devices charged when you’re constantly on the go or stuck in the air can be a challenge. Luckily, you can do a few things  to extend battery life and conserve power.

Invest in a battery case

A battery case for your iPhone extends the phone's battery life and keeps it safe from occasional drops and bumps. Most battery cases come with dock-connector plugs designed to pair up with the iPhone’s 30-pin (iPhone 4S and older) or Lightning (iPhone 5) connector port, which they use to deliver the juice to your iPhone. The only downside is that you can't use any dock-cradle accessories without removing the iPhone from the case.

One of our favorite battery charging cases is the Mophie Juice Pack Plus for the iPhone 4/4S ($100). It significantly boosts your iPhone’s battery life without adding too much weight (the company claims that the battery pack can actually add up to 125 percent more power), and you can still sync your iPhone using the included USB-to-Micro-USB cable. The Juice Pack Plus also has an on/off switch, so you can control when the case sends electricity to your phone.

Although the company promises one soon, Mophie has yet to release a battery case for the iPhone 5. uNu’s Ecopack for the iPhone 5 ($80), however, is a good option to use now with the latest iPhone. This battery case snaps onto your iPhone and doubles its battery life. The Ecopack comes in a variety of colors, and it purports to be eco-friendly because you can swap the battery portion of the device between cases, enabling the battery to last through several phone upgrades.

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I live in New Jersey, in an area hard-hit by Hurricane Sandy. Before the storm hit, my family took the traditional preparatory steps: We bought non-perishable foods, stocked up on water, took in our lawn furniture, and so on. But we also prepped our electronics for the coming storm—chiefly, by charging up our iPads, iPhones, and laptops.

We lost power on Monday, October 29, and it wasn’t restored until the evening of Sunday, November 4. Seven days without power is a long time. Of course, the biggest problems were the cold and the food spoilage. But with the Internet out, we also lost our home phone service (which uses VoIP). Nearby cellphone towers took a beating, as well; early on, our iPhones lost service completely. Eventually, AT&T and T-Mobile started pooling their resources to let customers get online, so phones linked to one provider would occasionally show carrier logos for the other.

Our phones eventually went from mostly useless to occasionally able to send SMS text messages and place heavily-distorted phone calls. But that came with a cost: Our iPhones struggled so mightily to make even those basic connections that they gobbled up battery power far faster than usual, while accomplishing far less. With limited options for recharging our iPhones, we had to do what we could to maximize battery life.

Preparing for the long haul

The first few steps were easy: We turned off Wi-Fi, so that the phones wouldn’t waste energy scanning for wireless networks that weren’t there. We turned off Bluetooth, too. (Both are top-level options in Settings under iOS 6.) We dialed down our Brightness settings as low as possible—though that option was slightly harder to stick with: Our iPhones worked far better outside, and in sunlight the darkest screens were hard to read. Very dark iPhones are also subpar makeshift flashlights, which we needed with the power out.

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Gaming has become an increasingly popular part of what we do with our Macs and iOS devices, and Apple finally realized that. In iOS 5, the company introduced Game Center, a social network service and set of frameworks that developers could use to handle common gaming-related tasks, such as tracking friends, accruing achievements, and playing multiplayer games.

Chances are you’ve encountered Game Center’s green felt background on one of your many Apple devices. Maybe it popped up when you were trying to start a game of Letterpress, perhaps you got a notification letting you know it was your turn, or maybe you were just wondering about that multicolored icon Apple dropped on your home screen. If it had your confused, don’t worry: Let us walk you through how to get the most out of Apple’s online gaming service.

What’s your handle, good buddy?

The first thing to do is to create a Game Center account by launching the service on either your Mac or your iOS device. Regardless of where you choose to create the account, it will be accessible on both iOS or OS X, and the options you’re presented with will be the same.

Among the most crucial decisions you make when creating a Game Center account is picking a nickname. This is the name you’ll be known by online, and it will show up in leaderboards and in multiplayer games. You’ll want to pick carefully—once you've created it, you can’t change your nickname without making an entirely new account, in which case you’ll have to go through this whole procedure again.

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Apple recently released GarageBand 1.3 for iOS. Among its new features are the ability to import songs from your Music library and—on the iPhone 4S, iPad 2, and models newer than those two—to play or record with GarageBand while using other apps. But one of those new feature definitely requires iOS 6: the ability to create and save custom ringtones for your iPhone or iPad on those devices. Here’s how it works.

First, create your jingle in GarageBand. You’ll want your tune to be no longer than 30 seconds; otherwise, GarageBand will automatically truncate your tune at the 30-second mark anyway. If your song is shorter, your ringtone will play it as a loop.

Once you’re happy with your new song, tap to go back into your My Songs list of recordings. (On the iPhone, tap the disclosure triangle at the upper left to find My Songs; on the iPad, just tap the My Songs button.) From the My Songs list, tap and hold on your recording, or tap the Edit button at the upper right; your songs will start jiggling like homescreen icons you’re rearranging. Tap to select your song if necessary, and then tap the Share icon at the upper left.

Scroll down in the subsequent screen and choose Ringtone (the only option under Share Song As). On the Export Ringtone screen, provide a name for your jingle.

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The rapid adoption of Apple’s iOS 6 has been impressive. Initial estimates claim that as many as 25 to 35-percent of all iPhones were running iOS 6 within 48 hours of its release.

With all those users hammering away at the new OS, you can be sure that any bugs that survived Apple’s beta testing would soon be uncovered and publicized on the web. And that’s exactly what’s happened.

An excellent first stop to check for bug reports is the iOS section of Apple Support Communities. Two hardware-related items there especially caught my attention: short battery life and loss of Wi-Fi connectivity. Other iOS 6 problems, beginning with iTunes Match, extend beyond what I found at Apple’s forums.

Short battery life

A significant contingent of iPhone users report that their iPhone’s battery depletes unusually fast under iOS 6. While the majority of postings are from people moving up from an older iPhone to an iPhone 5, the symptom also appears to affect those upgrading to iOS 6 on an iPhone 4 or 4S. It’s still not clear what percentage of iPhone users have this problem; it’s certainly not a majority or we would be hearing a lot more about it.

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Congratulations, you’ve snagged yourself a brand-new iPhone 5. But before you get to playing with your new device, you’ll probably want to get to know it and set it up. Thanks to iOS 6’s step-by-step activation process, Apple’s made it pretty simple to get started; but just in case you need some extra help, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide for activating your new iPhone, transferring data from your old phone, and some suggestions for exploring its new features.

Meet your iPhone 5

Get acquainted with the iPhone 5’s hardware features: every button, switch, slot, port, and plug. Designed with a minimalist aesthetic, the aluminum-and-glass iPhone 5 eschews a button-heavy design in favor of simple controls and a slim figure: It’s a mere 7.6mm thick and weighs only 112 grams. Here’s a quick rundown of all the features on the device’s exterior.

A) On/Off Button

Press the On/Off button to turn the device’s screen on or off. You can still take calls, play music, and receive notifications with it off, but the screen stays blank until you wake it by pressing this button or the Home button. To turn the device off, hold the On/Off button down until the screen dims and the red Slide To Power Off slider appears. Slide your finger across the switch, and the iPhone powers down. (To turn your device back on, press and hold this button again until the Apple logo appears.)

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Following in the footsteps of Google and other services, Dropbox this weekend enabled two-factor authentication to bring enhanced security to its users.

While Dropbox was not among the services compromised in the well-publicized attack on Wired’s Mat Honan earlier this month, the service has suffered from at least one security breach in recent months. Adding two-factor authentication is one way to make your connection to the service—which for many users is an increasingly important part of their workflow—more secure.

As with Google’s implementation, Dropbox’s two-factor authentication relies on two separate elements: something you know (a password) and something you have (in this case, a separately generated code). While the combination of these two elements doesn’t guarantee your security, it does make it much harder for a potential hacker to gain access to your account.

The setup

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

I get lots of questions about some of the basics of iTunes. These are things that may not be that obvious, but are practical to know and can make your use of iTunes more efficient. Here’s a selection of some iTunes tips.

Q: I can’t seem to figure out which of the many playlists is actually playing. They are all listed on the left but I see no indication of which one is playing. How can I find out?

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

While it’s possible to live with just one type of music file—AAC or MP3, for example—there are a number of different file formats used for music that you’re likely to encounter these days. Lossless formats—such as Apple Lossless and FLAC—and high-resolution files can be a challenge for iTunes users. Here are some questions that we’ve received about converting between different file formats.

Q: I often purchase high resolution files (88.2 kHz/24 bit, say), and while I can play these files through iTunes and my home stereo system without a problem, I cannot sync them to my iPod or iPhone because these portable devices do not recognize them. How can I create a separate standard resolution (44.1 kHz/16 bit) copy of these files for use in my portable devices within the same iTunes library?

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Wired writer Mat Honan fell victim to a brutal hack over the weekend. Through misplaced ingenuity and a smidgen of social engineering, hackers gained access to his iCloud account and wiped his iPhone, iPad, and Mac drives clean. The actual attack involved breaking into Honan’s Amazon account, and then using information found there to break into his iCloud account. Things only got worse from there.

Amazon and Apple clearly need to institute security policy changes to better protect their users. And Honan made mistakes of his own, most notably not backing up his Mac regularly. But the hackers’ initial entry point into Honan’s digital life was through, of all things, the “forgot password” functionality offered by Gmail. When they first plunked Honan’s email address into that form, Gmail displayed a redacted version of Honan’s MobileMe account: m••••n@me.com. Honan has plenty of “if only's” on his mind, but one biggie—to quote Honan’s story for Wired, is this: If he “had used two-factor authentication for Gmail, everything would have stopped here.”

(Note: Google calls it two-step authentication, but “two-factor authentication” is just as common a name. We’ll use them interchangeably.)

Understand two-step authentication

First, let’s clarify what two-step authentication actually means. In Google’s case, it works this way: If you enable two-factor authentication, when you next log in to your Gmail account, you’ll first proceed as you always do—by providing your username and password. But before you get to your inbox, Google will next demand a separate code.

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Editor’s note: Mat Honan has posted a full account of how hackers gained access to his accounts and wiped out the data on his devices. Apple spokesperson Natalie Kerris told Macworld: “Apple takes customer privacy seriously and requires multiple forms of verification before resetting an Apple ID password. In this particular case, the customer’s data was compromised by a person who had acquired personal information about the customer. In addition, we found that our own internal policies were not followed completely. We are reviewing all of our processes for resetting account passwords to ensure our customers' data is protected.”

The future is now. Our devices are interconnected, and that linking where everything can access everything is wonderful. But it turns out there’s a dark side, too: All that connectivity makes it much easier for an attacker to compromise all our data, no matter where it is. Wired’s Mathew Honan learned this the hard way over the weekend, as a hacker not only gained access to his devices, but also wiped all the data from them causing a fair bit of mayhem along the way.

As Honan reported on his blog, he was hacked hard. And the attacker didn’t use complicated algorithms to brute force his way into Honan’s accounts. Instead, the hacker reportedly called up Apple’s technical support line, pretended to be Honan, and successfully provided answers to Honan’s self-selected security questions—the very ones Apple asks of all iCloud customers, to ensure that their accounts are secure. (We contacted Apple to confirm that account of events, but the company hasn’t responded.) [Update: Honan has said via Twitter that the hacker did not provide security question answers, but rather compromised the account in a different way.]

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

In this installment, I answer a number of questions on various topics: Podcasts, smart playlists, streaming audio, and what happens to your iTunes Store content when you’re gone.

Q: I would like to sync my entire iTunes Library to iTunes Match, but this doesn’t seem to be possible at this time. Unless I am mistaken, iTunes Match only syncs music, not podcasts, videos or iTunes U content. Is this true?

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

Among the many questions we’ve received about iTunes, a large number of them are about the iTunes Store. There are questions about iTunes Store accounts, Apple IDs, and using content from more than one account. Here’s a serving of questions and answers about working with the iTunes Store.

Q: My wife and I both have iPads, and both have separate iTunes accounts. It seems that there should be some way for one of us to download a book from the iBookstore to our iPad and then give the other access to that same book without having to pay twice. Is there?

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

Most of the Ask the iTunes Guy columns so far have covered music, and especially the confusing (and somewhat half-baked) iTunes Match. But iTunes handles more than just music: it manages ebooks, audiobooks, apps, and various types of videos. It’s time to dedicate a column to some of the many questions we’ve received about videos: movies, TV shows, and music videos.

Q: When I look at some TV series in the iTunes Store, I see that some shows say “HD: Includes 720p, 1080p.” How do I choose which version to download?

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

While you can play music in iTunes, or on an iOS device, by choosing an artist or album—or even totally at random—playlists are what let you customize your library and your listening experience. We’ve gotten lots of questions about smart playlists, and here are some of the most interesting ones (plus a common question about displaying playlists in iTunes).

Q: How can I make a random smart playlist that limits the number of tracks by a specific artist?

Start by making a new smart playlist. Choose File -> New Smart Playlist, or press and hold the Option key and click the gear icon (the plus icon turns into that when you press Option) at the bottom-left of the iTunes window.

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

This installment is a bit of a grab bag. I look at a number of questions that have come up frequently dealing with metadata, sorting, and sharing.

Q: I ripped many CDs into iTunes and changed the genre to categorize my music in different ways. I now would like to be able to select a given album in iTunes and somehow reset the genre to the default information from Gracenote. Is there an easy to do this?

You can manually change the genre of any album. Select all the tracks, press Command-I, then type a new genre in the Genre field at the bottom of the window.

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There are plenty of ways to transfer photos from an iOS device to a Mac—I generally email them to myself or use Messages—but it can still be a hassle. A tip recently published on The Iconmaster could be my new solution to the problem.

First, make sure you have Photo Stream turned on in each of your iOS devices, as well as on your Mac. Next, go to your ~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub folder. There, you'll see a bunch of subfolders with names like 013184d3f181aa175db7e48b08817861eff8cac25a. (If you aren't sure how to get to the Library folder inside your home folder, here are 18 ways to do so.) Perform a search for image files in this sub folder by typing kind:image in the search field and selecting Sub as the focus of the search. (If you take a lot of photos or screenshots, and only want to find one or the other, you could instead search for png for screenshots or jpg for photos.)

Now save this search as a Smart Folder by clicking on the Save button just below the search field. You can save it wherever you want: by default, it will go in the Saved Searches folder, but you can check the box that says Add to Sidebar if you want quick access from the Finder sidebar. You can also choose a different location for the Smart Folder, such as your Desktop. If you want this folder in the Dock, add it to the Dock by dragging the folder there.

That done, whenever you need to get quick access to a photo or screenshot that you took on an iOS device, just open this folder and find it. If you have a lot of files, you might want to add the Date Created column (right-click on the sort headers and choose Date Created from the list), then sort by this date (click on that header so the most recent date is at the top).

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

There’s a joke making the rounds and it goes like this: I named my iPod “Titanic” so when I sync it, iTunes tells me “The Titanic is syncing.” While it actually says “Syncing ‘Titanic’,” this joke hints at the fact that syncing your library to an iOS device isn’t always simple (even if it doesn’t rise to the level of disastrous). In today’s column, I look at some common questions about syncing all or part of an iTunes library to iOS devices.

Q: I don’t like having to micro-manage the storage on my iPad and iPhone to ensure that they are not filled up with music so I have enough room for apps and their storage. Is there some way to designate an amount of storage that is used for music?

There’s no specific setting for this, but there is one way you can accomplish it. You can create a smart playlist that contains a specific amount of music. You could include any number of conditions—choosing from specific genres, artists or even other playlists—but below the conditions, choose to limit its size to a certain number.

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

We’ve gotten more questions about iTunes Match than any other aspect of iTunes. This new service is not as polished as it could be, and users are perplexed by some of what they’re seeing. This installment of Ask the iTunes Guy looks at some of the issues plaguing iTunes Match.

Q: I’ve uploaded my iTunes library to the cloud via iTunes Match. Everything seems to come across on iOS devices except lyrics. Does iTunes Match not handle lyrics?

iTunes Match does retain lyrics you’ve added to your music (to add lyrics, select a track, press Command-I, then click the Lyrics tab and paste the lyrics in). When you download a track from the cloud to iTunes, the lyrics are there. One exception: in my tests, lyrics added to purchased tracks are lost when re-downloaded.

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

There are many tips and tricks that can make working with iTunes a bit faster or easier, and we’ve gotten a number of questions about such techniques. In this installment, I answer questions about some of the little things in iTunes, tips and tricks that every iTunes user should know.

Q: What is the checkbox to the left of each song for? Why isn’t there any “check/uncheck all” command?

Those checkboxes tell iTunes to use checked tracks in certain situations. For example:

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

The idea of file compression—and what file types iTunes works with—can be confusing. In this installment, I answer your questions about lossless audio compression and file formats.

Sorry to be such a dummy, but could you define ‘lossless’ for me?

Lossless file compression is a technique that reduces the space of a file without changing any of its contents. For example, if you have a Word file with the text of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, this file takes up 582KB. If you compress it using OS X’s Zip compression feature, the resulting file is 233KB. But when you expand this archive later, you’ll end up with every single character from the original file—no data is lost.

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

Tagging files in your iTunes library—entering the correct information regarding artists, albums, song names, genres and more—helps you find the music you want to listen to, and create smart playlists. And album art gives you a visual reminder of what you listen to. In this installment, I’ll address questions about tagging basics, removing artwork, adding large descriptions in tags, and more.

I know it’s pretty basic to a lot of iTunes users, but I don’t totally understand the concept of tagging. Can you enlighten me?

Tags are what makes each track or video different from others, at least when you view your iTunes library on your computer or iPhone, say. There’s no voodoo involved; tags include such things as the name of a song, an artist, or an album; track number; and genre. There are a number of other tags that tell iTunes to do certain things, such as skip files when playing in shuffle mode, for example.

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

Playlists let you organize music in many ways. Rather than listening to an album, you can choose your favorite tracks by one artist, or set up a mix of dozens of artists, all with a few clicks. In this installment, I’ll address questions about gaps between songs, copying playlists on a USB stick, combining multiple playlists into one, and more.

I use several playlists as background for meditation and find the short break between songs to be distracting. How can I have songs play sequentially without a break between them?

The tiny gap between tracks in iTunes can be really frustrating. If all the tracks are part of the same album, you can use the Gapless Album option (select the tracks, choose Get Info, click the Options tag, and select Gapless Album).

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