Dear Lifehacker, Three or four years ago, my Macbook died, and because I was an avid user of Time Machine, I was able to retrieve virtually everything I cared about from my external hard drive, except my photos. Because this tragedy happened to coincide with a software update, the updated photos couldn’t access the old photo library that was stored on the other drive.

We're turning the lens around for this week's Ask Lifehacker. Our Managing Editor Virginia Smith posed a question in our internal Slack channel that cuts wide and deep: "It's safe to delete photos from my iPhone, right?"

Apple recently (and finally) brought Messages to iCloud, which we've written about a bit over the past month because it's just that useful and necessary of a feature. However, with all new, great things comes confusion; setting it up can be a bit of a head-scratcher and apparently, figuring out just what it's doing is equally question-inducing.

With the public launch of iOS 11.4 earlier this week, Messages in iCloud is finally ready for prime time — and not a moment too soon. If you ever linked your phone number to Messages on multiple devices at once, you'd have to delete the same texts on each device over and over. Now, when your devices' Messages apps are all linked through iCloud, what you do on one synchronises to the others. Time saved; frustration reduced.

When Apple released AirPlay back in 2010 it was a revolutionary technology. The idea that you could send audio from one device to another was new and changed things significantly. But it was always a little limited as it's ability to send different audio to different speakers was non existent. Systems such as Sonos took the lead in offering affordable multi-room systems. But AirPlay 2 is here. Apple is pitching its benefits to the HomePod but I think it's going to be more useful for those using other speaker systems.

Even though Apple is never going to offer more than 5GB of free storage, it seems, the company is throwing the slightest bone to users frustrated by its 2012-era storage limits: a free month.

Using iCloud to monitor the location of your Apple devices is an easy way to keep track of your stuff, and lock it down when it's in the wrong hands. Just remember to say goodbye to iCloud before you sell that ageing iMac. Designer Brenden Mulligan signed into his iCloud account and found an old friend waiting for him among his list of devices: the iMac he had sold nearly three years prior.

Apple keeps giving us reasons to say goodbye. iOS 11 is buggy as hell, with the most recent error making iPhones almost unusable and the latest version of macOS briefly exposed Mac owners to a major vulnerability. As for the iPhone X, it may be pretty sleek for an iPhone, but Apple's still playing catch-up to its Android competition.

Hackers are using Apple's "Find My" service to remotely hold devices for ransom, reports MacRumors. Multiple people have tweeted about stolen accounts in the past week. Two-factor authentication does not prevent the hack.

At WWDC 2017 Apple announced iOS 11, and with it a slew of space-saving features for smaller devices. Good on Apple for making 32GB the smallest storage in its iOS lineup, but it still isn't enough. A ton of people already spend time trying to reduce the size of their photos, apps, and other bits of data in order to save space and not meet the dreaded "Cannot take photo" alert when it's clutch time.

iOS: Every once in a while, Apple will push out a minor update that fixes some random little problem with its operating systems. This time around, it's the Apple ID page in 10.3, which finally has a more cohesive settings page with access to everything from two-factor authentication to serial numbers on your other devices.

Apple's iCloud has a long and troubled past, but the company keeps pushing it for iPhone and Mac users with every new operating system update. Don't be fooled. The service is an inconsistent mess and more trouble than it's worth.

Mac: If you just upgraded to macOS Sierra and your Dropbox app is acting up, you're not alone. Even with the latest version of the app, some users are experiencing strange behaviour -- error messages, confusing syncing icons and so on. Here's what you can do to mitigate the annoyances.

Apple has had a busy morning trying to restore the availability of a handful of its online services to customers. Among the services that went down was the Apple App Store and some iCloud features are still offline. Here's what you need to know.

Mac: Having trouble getting your Safari history and settings to sync over iCloud? OS X Daily points to a little setting in the Mac App that will force the sync process.

iOS: When you get an email attachment in iOS, chances are it's something you need to deal with in another app. To make things a little easier on yourself, OS X Daily points out that saving that attachment to iCloud Drive makes the process a little smoother.

iTunes and Apple Music work together in harmony, which is great for some people, but can make it pretty confusing to tell where songs are actually located. Macworld shows off a few easy ways to sort albums using smart playlists.

iOS 9 brought along a new version of the Notes app with a bunch of new features. However, oddly, if you start using it, you can't sync your notes that use those new features with OS X unless you're on the El Capitan beta. For now, you can use iCloud.com though.

Backing up your iPhone or iPad to iCloud is a good idea, but when you upgrade phones, you might end up with multiple backups, including ones you don't need anymore. OS X Daily shows you how to delete them.