As streaming devices go, Roku and Fire TV Stick both seem similar from the outside. They’ll both cost you around $20 to $40 depending on the device (and if there’s a sale going on). They both do a good job of turning your regular TV into a smart TV where you can stream your favorite shows, as well as watch live TV online, and you can install apps to further enhance your TV experience.

But that’s kind of where the similarities end. Both Roku and Fire TV Stick have their own ways of doing things when it comes to hardware, software, and how their own services work.

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Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite

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Portable Roku Streaming Device 4K/HDR/Dolby Vision, Roku Voice Remote, Free & Live TV

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What both Roku and Fire TV Stick get right

As I mentioned above, there are things that both devices do well right out of the gate. 

• Budget-friendly: You can get either streaming device for around $30, and they're often on sale for even cheaper. 

• Robust app support: Both devices feature thousands of TV apps and are popular enough that you’ll find apps for even obscure channels and utilities. 

• Fast and responsive: If you’re buying the 4K versions, then both Roku and Fire TV Stick are pretty quick to use, and as long as you have a good internet connection, you won’t face any issues. 

• One remote control: Except for the cheapest Rokus, both devices offer a TV remote with HMDI CEC support, which lets you control the TV volume and turn the TV on or off. This means you can stream anything using a single remote, enhancing the TV experience even further. 

• Voice control: Both devices feature remotes with voice control built in. 

Best for UX, menus, and ease of use: Roku

Credit: Roku

Roku’s overall interface, especially the menus, is far better designed than Amazon Fire TV Stick. Roku has a simple app-based navigation system that you can customize however you like. Getting to Netflix or Prime Video can happen in just a couple of clicks. 

Fire TV Stick’s Home Screen, by comparison, is a mess. Amazon focuses more on TV shows and movies in addition to the apps, which are given just a thin strip between all the other content. Right on top, you’ll find an autoplaying trailer (thankfully you can turn off autoplay) for a new TV show from Amazon. 

Credit: Amazon

In day-to-day use, this becomes quite annoying. A couple of apps in the top bar fall short, and opening the full App Library takes extra clicks. 

Overall, Roku’s experience is faster, seamless, and far less annoying. Fire TV Stick’s interface is also not slow, especially when you get the 4K Max model, but it takes longer to wade through all the unnecessary promotions and tiles.

Best for voice assistance and home theater: Fire TV Stick

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If you like using your voice to control your TV— especially if you already have Amazon’s Alexa devices in your house—you’ll get more out of the Fire TV Stick 4K (originally $49.99) or Fire TV Stick 4K Max (originally $59.99) as your streaming device. 

Fire TV Stick has Alexa built in, and is much better at launching apps and looking for content than Roku is. That said, Roku’s search feature overall is faster. But when it comes to voice assistance and integration, the Fire TV Stick is superior. 

If you have an Alexa speaker, you can use the entire Fire TV interface without even picking up the remote. You can just ask Alexa to launch Netflix or to watch a show, and Fire TV Stick will turn on the TV, and launch the show. This is also a neat way to sidestep the entire issue of Fire TV Stick's home screen interface.

Roku can integrate with Alexa and Google Nest speakers, but you have to add “on Roku” to the end of each query, and it doesn’t support TV control options.

And if you have a home theater setup with an AV receiver or a sound bar, you might be better off using a Fire TV Stick. Fire TV Stick will let you control your audio devices using the same remote, so you can truly use one remote for your TV and your sound system. Roku doesn’t have this feature. 

If you want to go for a Fire TV Stick, I would suggest spending a bit more for the $59.99 Fire TV Stick 4K Max. It comes with a new 2.0 GHz quad-core processor, Dolby Vision support, DHR10+ support, 16GB storage, and more. One of the advantages of using a Fire Stick is that you can install Kodi into it, which essentially gives you free access to virtually anything you can stream.

Best overall pick: Roku Streaming Stick 4K

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When all is said and done, the Roku Streaming Stick 4K is my overall best pick. It’s small, fast to use, and fast to boot up. Plus, it supports 4K, HDR10/10+, and Dolby Vision content. It comes with a feature specific to Rokus: You can listen to audio via your smartphone using the Roku app. 

If you don’t want to spend the $49 for the Roku Streaming Stick, Roku Express 4K+ is also a great option. It’s currently $20 less, and you miss out on a sleek form factor, and HDR, but you get the same fast interface, and all the great Roku features. 

Best budget option: Fire TV Stick Lite

Sometimes, a $29.99 streaming stick is just too hard to beat. If you’re on a budget, or if you want to buy a streaming stick to keep in your travel bag, you can’t go wrong with the Fire TV Stick Lite (sometimes it drops to $19.99). It can’t do 4K, but it will run Full HD content just fine. It also doesn’t have a remote with volume or TV controls, but it will run all your apps and channels. Just don’t expect a super-fast experience like with the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, or Roku Express. 

Apple's Calendar and Reminders apps are so closely related, it's baffling that the company never tried to bridge the gap. On any given day, you might have your meetings and events scheduled in the Calendar app, while the actual tasks you need to get done for those events live in the Reminders app.

But after upgrading to iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia updates (which you can currently try out in Developer beta), you won't need to jump between two apps anymore—your reminders will automatically show up in the Calendar app. Here's how it works.

How to see your reminders in the Calendar app

Apple's implementation of this feature is quite simple. Any reminder or event that you create in the Reminders app that has a due date and time will automatically show up in the Calendar app. You don't have to do anything else, and the feature is even enabled by default, provided you're running iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia. This works for all your reminders—the Calendar app will even show the relevant color of your list in the checkbox icon.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

The integration is well done: The reminder shows up with a checkbox, so you can mak it complete from the Calendar app itself! You can see your reminders in the day view, and even the new Month view, if you use the new pinch-to-zoom feature to zoom into a particular week.

Once a reminder shows up in Calendar, you can move it around to change the time (just like you can with an event), and the change will be instantly reflected in the Reminders app.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Conversely, you can also create a reminder from inside the Calendar app, thought the interface is a bit clunky. Click the Plus button from the top, and switch to the Reminder tab to create a reminder instead of an event. Here, you can give it a name, set a date and time, and add it to your overall Reminders list.

Third-party tools are still an option

There are already a couple of interesting third-party options that can help integrate reminders with the Calendar app, but they can't integrate a checkbox for reminders in the Calendar app, like Apple can. However, they do offer customization options.

The ReminderCal app serves as a way to automatically share reminders to the Calendar, but the reminders show up as events, not tasks. Still, the app gives you more control over which reminders show up in Calendar (something Apple doesn't offer yet). On the other hand, being a third-party app, it suffers from sync and connectivity issues that aren't an issue for Apple's feature.

Another thoroughly different option is to use a day planner app like Structured that can combine both tasks and the calendar events into one app, helping you check off events and related tasks in a single pane. This is something that Apple still doesn't do, as despite finally working together in iOS 18, the Reminders and Calendar apps remain separate apps. If you want to create and control reminders and subtasks right from the Calendar app, the Structured app is still your best bet.

Back in 2017, Apple introduced a new default photo format for the iPhone, HEIC. Nothing against this highly efficient format (it literally stands for High Efficiency Image Container)—it powers Live Photos and Apple’s excellent image post-processing, and it still manages to take up less space than JPG—but it can be a headache at times.

While HEIC works fine if you’re sharing a photo among other Apple devices, but you'll often run into a problem when you need to upload a photo to an online form or open it on Windows: It’s often not compatible, and won’t open.

There are a couple of ways to handle this. You can use a workaround to convert HEIC images to JPG (or JPEG) on your iPhone, or you can adjust your settings and switch back to shooting photos in JPG. If the photo is already on your Mac or Windows PC, you have some options there as well, including opening the photo natively on your PC.

Here are your options.

Change your iPhone's default photo format

If you don’t like the HEIC format, the first thing you should do is switch the default format for the Camera app to JPG. Go to Settings > Photos > Formats and switch to the “Most Compatible” option. Now, any new photos that you take will be saved in JPG, making it much easier to share everywhere.

There’s also a special mode in Settings that automatically converts the photos to JPG when sharing to Windows or Mac, but keeps them as HEIC on iPhone (helping save some storage space). To enable this feature, go to Settings > Photos > Transfer to Mac or PC and choose the “Automatic” option.

Use the Finder feature in Mac to convert HEIC to JPG

If you’re using a Mac running macOS Monterey or higher, there’s a quick image conversion tool built into the Finder app that supports multiple images at once. Select the HEIC photos, right-click, and go to Quick Actions > Convert Image. Here, choose the “JPEG” format, and click the “Convert to JPEG” option.

On an older Mac, you can use the Preview app. Open the image in the Preview app, and go to File > Export. In the File drop-down, choose the “JPG” option, hit the “Save” button, and Preview will save the JPG version of the image in your chosen destination.

Quickly convert an HEIC image to JPG on your phone using the Files app

A quick way to convert HEIC photos to JPG right on your iPhone is to use the Files app. All it takes is a simple copy and paste: Open the Photos app on your iPhone and select the photos that you want to convert. Then, tap the Share icon, and choose the “Copy Photos” option.

Go to the Files app, choose the On My iPhone location, then create a new folder. Tap and hold on an empty space, then tap the “Paste” button. The HEIC photos will now show up in JPG, and you can share them in any app you want. If you want to put them back in the Photos app as JPG files, tap the Share button, and choose “Save Image.”

It’s best to reserve this method for only a couple of photos at a time, as it gets exhausting for a large batch.

Use the Documents app to share JPGs without converting

You’ll find a plethora of HEIC to JPG convertor apps on the App Store, but they might haggle you for a subscription, and it might not be safe to hand over your entire photo library to a random app.

If you want to use an app to do this, we would suggest you use the Documents by Readdle app, which comes from a trusted company. It has a built-in Photo library itself, and converts HEIC images to JPG by default, so you don’t even need to wait to manually convert and duplicate the images. Open the app, go to “Photo Albums”, choose an image, tap the Share button, and send it along using AirDrop, email, or via chat message, with confidence the image is now in JPG.

Open HEIC images in the Photos app on Windows

Windows does let you open HEIC images in Photos, but only if you’re set up for it. You’ll need to download both HEIF Image Extensions (free) and HEVC Video Extensions ($0.99) from the Microsoft Store—but once you do, you’ll be able to open HEIC files in your Photos app, as well as convert them to JPG.

With these extensions installed, open a photo on your PC, choosing “Photos” as the app to open it in.

Convert HEIC to JPG on Windows using CopyTrans

You can also use the popular CopyTrans for Windows app to convert HEIC to JPGs on a Windows computer. This app is free for personal use, and it has a direct integration in the File Explorer. All you have to do is select the HEIC file, right-click, and choose the “Convert to JPEG with CopyTrans” option to automatically create the JPG version of the same image, in the same folder.

Use online websites to convert HEIC photos

Want to quickly convert a couple of HEIC photos, and don’t want to bother with apps? Use a free image converter website like Cloud Convert. Just drag in HEIC photos, hit the “Convert” button, and download the resulting JPG files.

Until now, Windows has always offered better split-screen multitasking and window management features than Mac. Sure, it's right there in the name, but Window's Snap assistant offered perhaps the most intuitive way to split and manage multiple windows on the same screen. Mac tried with Stage Manager, but it's not the same thing.

Now, with macOS Sequoia (currently available as a Developer beta), Apple is finally offering its own take on window snapping, and it's quite similar to what Windows offers, albeit lighter. Let's get into it.

Installing the macOS Sequoia Beta

Before we start, let's install the macOS Sequoia beta. I recommend using a backup device for this if possible, as using a beta risks instability. Start by backing up your Mac. Then open System Settings, navigate to General > Software Update and click Beta updates. Select the latest macOS Sequoia developer beta, then follow the instructions to install it.

Tiling windows on macOS using mouse gestures

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

macOS Sequoia supports tiling windows using a mouse gesture. When you drag a window to any edge of your screen, you'll notice a white outline. Release the cursor and the window will snap to fill out the outline. You can speed up this process by holding the Option key when you're moving the window, which will highlight the screen's left or right panel without you needing to move your mouse to the edge of your desktop.

Once you've snapped a window, you'll notice that macOS puts a little border around it, even if a window is covering the whole screen. This is one of those weird Apple design touches, but it can be disabled. Go to System Settings > Desktop and Dock > Windows and disable the Tiled windows have margin feature.

Automatically arrange windows on macOS

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

If you don't like dragging your mouse cursor all over the screen, macOS Sequoia also has an option to automatically arrange all open windows (or at least the most recent ones), using a layout of your choice. Hover over the green stoplight icon in the top left of any window to see new arrangement options. You can either move the current window to a specific section of the screen, or you can choose one of the four Fill & Arrange options to automate the process.

Click one of the options and macOS will automatically take your foreground windows and arrange them in that pattern. This, sadly, is all it can do. Unlike Windows, the grid stops at four apps on screen, and there are no layout options for 6 apps. Plus, the process is automatic. Windows will show you all other apps that are available to place on the grid, and you can choose which window can go where. This feature isn't available on macOS, and I hope it gets added in a future update.

If you find these features limiting, check out third-party options like Loop, which give you a lot more freedom over how exactly windows can be tiled and arranged on screen.

The old method of split-screen multitasking, which opens both windows full screen and in a new Desktop, also still exists. It now lives in the Full Screen section in the green stoplight menu.

Snapping windows using keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts offer a great option for arranging windows in neat halves and sections. Most of the time, you're going to be splitting the screen into two anyway. With macOS Sequoia, you can use the keyboard shortcuts Globe + Control + Left to dock the window to the left, or Globe + Control + Right to put it over to the right.

You can also use keyboard shortcuts to automatically arrange two windows. Use Globe + Control + Shift + Left to dock the current window to the left, and the next available window to the right. You can flip the order by using the Right key in the same keyboard shortcut. This also works with the Up and Down keyboard combination. To see all available keyboard shortcuts, go to Window > Move & Resize from the menu bar.

With the launch of the Passwords app in macOS Sequoia and iOS 18 (currently in Developer beta), Apple has made it easy to find and access all your passwords, Passkeys, and even two-factor authentication codes with ease. What used to take a trip through various Settings app menus is now just a click away.

But as good as the Passwords app is, it's little more than an app wrapper for the iCloud Keychain. While that itself is a huge improvement, we can make your Mac's Passwords app even better by enabling a menu bar list that's hidden by default.

How to enable the hidden Passwords menu bar list on macOS Sequoia

Before we start, you'll need to install the macOS Sequoia beta. I recommend doing this on a backup device if possible, as it could introduce instability to your main device. First, back up your Mac. Then open System Settings, navigate to General > Software Update and click Beta updates. Select the latest macOS Sequoia developer beta.

Now, open the Passwords app and authenticate with your Mac password or Touch ID. From the menu bar, go to Passwords > Settings. Here, enable the Show Passwords in Menu Bar option.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

You will see a key icon in the menu bar. That's your Passwords app. Click the icon to see a drop-down menu. Authenticate using Touch ID or your Mac password, and you will see a list of all your passwords.

The really neat thing about this menu bar app is that it's context aware. So it will automatically find a login that corresponds to the app that you have open. This works for desktop apps, and also for websites in third-party browsers like Chrome, Arc, and more.

If you're trying to log in to Discord, for example, your Discord login will be at the top of the list, where you'll be easily able to copy your password to your clipboard.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

It's no secret that I'm a fan of menu bar utilities. And seeing a useful little utility from Apple itself is quite refreshing. The Passwords utility will definitely be helpful for people who use third-party browsers, but don't want to save passwords in Chrome or provide access to third-party browser extensions.  

The biggest downside, though, is that the menu bar list doesn't yet support autofill. If you're used to just authenticating passwords using Touch ID in Safari, you'll find this an odd adjustment.