Hot iOS & iPhone Posts
How To: Save YouTube Videos Directly to Your iPhone's Camera Roll
Downloading YouTube videos for offline use to watch later has always been a problematic endeavor. Dedicated third-party apps don't last long in the App Store, web-based converters aren't very functional on mobile, and rogue apps outside the App Store are tricky to sideload and open up the possibility of vulnerabilities. But that doesn't mean you still don't have a few good options.
How To: Change the Default Snooze Time on Your iPhone's Alarm
While hitting snooze won't help you much if you fall back asleep, it can help you wake up more gently. However, the default 9-minute snooze that the iPhone provides may be too long or too short for your preferences. If you tend to fall back asleep quickly, you might be better with a two-minute snooze.
How To: Trigger iMessage Effects with Just a Keyword
One of the coolest aesthetic features of iMessage is its animated message effects. If you're like many users, you might even have discovered them by accident; wishing your friend a "Happy Birthday!" or congratulating them on a promotion suddenly floods your screen with balloons or confetti.
Apple Maps 101: How to Add Multiple Destinations to Your Directions
Unscheduled pit stops go hand in hand with road trips, no matter how well-planned they are. In the past, making a stop due to low fuel or an emergency bathroom break may have snowballed into massive delays when you went off course on your own, but thanks to a feature in Apple Maps, you can do this in the most efficient manner possible.
How To: How Thieves Unlock Passcodes on Stolen iPhones (And How to Protect Yourself Against It)
Back in 2010, iOS developer Daniel Amitay developed a camera security app for iPhones that used an unlock screen almost identical to that of the iPhone.
How To: Record Phone Calls on Your iPhone
Unruly customers. Crazy exes. Horrible bosses. When you need proof of insanity or just want it for your records, recording a phone call is a must. Problem is, it's not the easiest thing to do on an iPhone — but it's completely possible.
How To: The Ultimate Guide to Customizing Your iPhone
Cases and stickers are always great, but they aren't the only way to customize an iPhone. The software on your device is full of customization options, from a better-looking home screen and cooler lock screen wallpapers to app icon changes and a system-wide dark mode. There's literally over 100 ways to make iOS on your iPhone genuinely unique, some of which are hiding in plain sight.
How To: Unjailbreak Your iPhone & Restore It Back to Factory Settings
Jailbreaking gives you root access to the iOS file system, allowing you to install third-party apps and tweaks on your iPhone that aren't available in the App Store. It opens up a whole new realm for what your device can do, but it can also cause instability across the system and can dissuade you from getting future updates from Apple that have important features, bug fixes, and security enhancements.
How To: Eject Water from Your Apple Watch's Speaker After Getting It Wet
Whether you like to go swimming or jump in a hot shower with your Apple Watch on, the chance is pretty high that you'll get water inside its speaker. If you're a big runner, even sweat can get inside there. While there is no way to prevent water from getting inside your Apple Watch's speaker, there is an easy way to get it out so that your muffled speaker sounds brand new again.
How To: Permanently Delete Text Messages on Your iPhone
Deleting text messages on your iPhone may seem like a pretty simple task, but it's those really simple tasks that usually end up causing headaches later on. Data can stick around, even if you asked it not to, so there's always a slight chance that embarrassing and incriminating texts you supposedly deleted may end up in the wrong hands one day.
News: 22 New Features in iOS 13's Mail App to Help You Master the Art of the Email
To be honest, the Mail app for iPhone had always been somewhat forgettable. It lacked many of the features that made third-party clients like Spark and Edison better, but with iOS 13, the gap between Mail and its competitors is much smaller. Apple updated the layout and added many new features to its native emailing app, and that may be just enough to get you to switch back.
News: New iOS 13 Features — The 200+ Best, Hidden & Most Exciting New Changes for iPhone
Apple's iOS 13 has been available for beta testing since June, and the stable release pushed out to everyone on Thursday, Sept. 19. To help you make the most out of iOS 13 for iPhone, we've rounded up everything you'll want to know, whether a colossal feature, small settings change, interface update, or hidden improvement.
How To: Annoy Your Friends on iMessage with a Barrage of Automated Texts
Back in its infancy, the App Store was filled with text bomb apps that allowed users to send a barrage of text messages to friends, family, and foes. It was a fun way to annoy people, but Apple quickly scrubbed the apps because of technical issues. Although text bombs are still banished, you can now use a Siri Shortcut to send text bombs through iMessage on your iPhone.
How To: The Best Video Recording Apps for Your iPhone
If you have a modern iPhone, you have an excellent video recorder at your disposal. Every iPhone since the 6S has the ability to shoot in 4K resolution, and each new iteration has brought new capabilities to the table. But even the best mobile shooter can use a little extra help. That's where these video recording apps come into play, to ensure the footage you capture is as good as can be.
How To: Change Your App Store Country to Download Region-Locked Apps & Games on Your iPhone
Before many games make it to the US-based iOS App Store, they get "soft launched" in a smaller country to get real-world testing for bugs. It's a pilot program, so to speak, as countries like Vietnam or the Philippines have far fewer iPhone users than the US, thus offer a more controlled environment for developers to get feedback and zero-in on issues that may occur in a game's early development phases.
How To: Cheat Your Apple Watch Rings
Apple Watch owners know the struggle — it's the end of the day, and those rings aren't met. Whether you forgot your watch before hitting the gym, let the battery run out, or just didn't move enough, you could feel the sting of fitness failure. But it doesn't have to be this way. You can actually close your Activity rings yourself; it just takes a little know-how.
How To: Get Water Out of Your iPhone's Speaker with a Simple App
Look, this article is a judgment-free zone. Whether you dropped your iPhone into a toilet or shower with it on a regular basis (guilty), some water will likely become nestled inside its speaker grilles. This causes audio to soften and/or sound muffled, and getting that water out is no easy task. Luckily, there's an app for that.
How To: Make Custom Text Tones for Your iPhone Using iTunes
Your iPhone comes packed with a long list of excellent text tones to choose from. Bamboo anyone? Of course, for some of us, stock sounds from 2013 don't cut it anymore. We want customizability, something that's found more on Android than iOS. However, you can add your very own text tones to your iPhone right now, so long as you have a sound file in mind and a computer running iTunes.
How To: Open Links in Chrome Instead of Safari on Your iPhone Using the Shortcuts App
When you tap on a URL link in a text, email, or wherever, your iPhone's default reaction will be to open it up in Safari, and there's no way to change this in the settings. However, there is a way you can work around this to open up links in Chrome instead. Even if you accidentally open a link in Safari, there's a quick way to jump the tab right into Chrome.
How To: Instantly Unlock Your iPhone with Face ID — No Swipe Needed
Face ID does an excellent job with keeping your iPhone safe, boasting a million-to-one odds against unauthorized access when compared to Touch ID, which is 20 times less secure. However, it's far from being truly hands-free, as you still need to swipe up the lock screen once it detects your face to access apps. But if you have a jailbroken iPhone X, this issue can easily be remedied.
How To: Add Unsupported Cards & Passes to Apple Wallet for Quick & Easy Access on Your iPhone
Apple's Wallet app lets you store your boarding passes, concert tickets, gym memberships, movie stubs, and rewards cards in one place on your iPhone, which you can access with a quick double-click of the Home or Side button. Unfortunately, a decent amount of passes are not officially supported — but that doesn't mean you can't add them anyway.
How To: There's Finally a Way to Disable Those Annoying Memoji Stickers in Messages on iPhone
There's a lot to love about iOS 13. Permanent Memoji stickers though? Not so much. Whether you love or hate these personalized icons, most of us can probably agree it's super annoying Apple doesn't let you disable them in the "Frequently Used" section of the Emoji keyboard. Every time you go to use an emoji, you have to see the stickers, whether you want to or not. That is, until now.
How To: View the Battery Percentage Indicator on Your iPhone X, XS, XS Max, or XR
On all other iPhone models, you go to "Battery" in the Settings app and toggle on "Battery Percentage" in order to see the exact amount of power left in the status bar. On the iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR, however, that option no longer exists since there's not enough room up there to show the percentage indicator because of the notch for the TrueDepth camera system. But that doesn't mean it's gone entirely.
How To: Clear Your Frequently Used & Recent Emojis from Your iPhone's Keyboard
The Frequently Used section in the iPhone's Emoji keyboard is a weird place, to say the least. Despite its name, the section features both frequently and recently used emojis, and it may contain emojis you've never even touched. And let's not even talk about its strange way of organizing emojis. If you're sick of seeing weird emojis in there, there is a way to reset what appears in there.
News: The Best External Storage Options for iPhone That Work with iOS 13's Files App
The Files app received a big update in iOS 13. Before, it was limited to local and cloud-based files, but now you can access data from external storage devices, including SD cards and USB drives. But before you try to connect your favorite card or drive to your iPhone, there are a few things you need to know.
News: Always-Updated List of iOS App URL Scheme Names
If you've ever customized your app icons or played around with Shortcuts (previously called Workflow), you probably know how important URL scheme names are. Nearly all iOS apps assign themselves one of these names, and you need to know them if you want to add custom icons to your home screen or create a Shortcuts workflow that opens an app on your iPhone up.
How To: All the Ways to Get Water Out of Your iPhone's Speaker
Apple Watch owners know there's a built-in way to remove water from the device's speaker. However, even though modern iPhones are IP67 and IP68 water resistant, there's no official way to deal with water-clogged speakers that can muffle audio and cause prolonged damage if not ejected. Older iPhone models have it even worse, but there are some easy things you can do to get that water out.
How To: Force Your iPhone to Switch Cell Towers for a Stronger Signal
Having a dropped call can be incredibly frustrating, especially when you look down and see that your iPhone has full reception. While there's any number of issues that can cause this, one common and often overlooked issue is your iPhone failing to switch cell towers as appropriately needed.
Siri 101: How to Completely Turn Off Siri on Your iPhone
Not everyone digs Siri. Some of you probably can't live without the personal assistant on your iPhone, and some of you probably never even use it — and likely never will. If you fall into the latter category of iPhone users, you can simply disable the feature altogether, which will prevent accidentally triggering her or him anymore and will keep your iPhone nice and secure overall.
How To: Everything You Need to Know About 'Find My' — iOS 13's New App for Find My iPhone & Find My Friends
If you've ever used the Find My iPhone and Find My Friends apps in iOS 12 and below, you may be surprised to hear that those apps have joined forces in iOS 13. Now, instead of two separate apps, they're combined into one convenient package. But what does that mean for you and your privacy and security?
How To: Split the Screen on Your iPhone for Side-by-Side Browsing & Faster Multitasking
The iPhone has come a long way in its ten-year lifespan, but one thing still missing from the core user experience is native split-screen support. Sure, the displays on iPhones aren't nearly as large as an iPad's screen — which does offer "Split View" mode out of the box — but the iPhone 6 Plus, 6s Plus, and 7 Plus are definitely big enough to use two apps at the same time.
How To: Use the Shortcuts App on Your iPhone in iOS 12 for Custom Siri Actions & More
One of the most exciting additions to iOS 12 for iPhones is called Shortcuts, a tool integrated with Siri to help you get things done faster. While there are a few recommended shortcuts available to you in Siri's settings in iOS 12, the Shortcuts app brings the functionality of Workflow to Siri so you can build your own custom actions or select from the gallery of available shortcuts.
How To: Make Siri Run Google Assistant Commands on Your iPhone
Using Siri to perform tasks on your Google Home device was never possible until Apple released Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12. Actually, it wasn't possible until Google added support for Siri Shortcuts for Google Assistant in Nov. 2018. No matter the timing, the important thing here is that you can use Siri to command Google Assistant which, in turn, can command Google Home.
How To: Use a Wireless or USB Mouse on Your iPhone in iOS 13
For the first time, you can officially use a computer mouse with your iPhone, thanks to Apple's new Accessibility settings in iOS 13. It works for all types of Bluetooth mice, so if you have one, it'll already work. Plus, those with wireless receivers and even wired mice are supported by using a USB to Lightning adapter.
How To: Turn GIFs into Live Photos on Your iPhone
If you've ever wanted to turn your favorite GIF into a live wallpaper for your iPhone or even just make it a 3D Touch-friendly Live Photo that you can share, there's a super simple way to do so.
How To: Use Google Maps or Waze with Siri Instead of Apple Maps
When driving, you can get directions hands-free by asking Siri. You can also make general map searches, show a location's details, call a query's phone number, and view traffic details. However, Siri defaults to Apple Maps for all those. If you prefer Google Maps, Waze, or another third-party navigation app, the map-based Siri commands won't work. But that doesn't mean you can't still use Siri.
How To: Keep Your iPhone's Screen from Randomly Turning On
In addition to the standard "Raise to Wake" option that's been around since iOS 10, the iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR have a unique capability that lets you "Tap to Wake" the screen. But these features can get annoying real fast when your screen keeps turning on accidentally, which could even lead to some unnecessary battery drain.
How To: Add, Remove, & Reorder the Share Sheet Options on Your iPhone
On iPhones, the share sheet is a powerful yet largely underestimated tool. For the uninitiated, the share sheet is the menu that opens whenever you tap the share button (the box with the up-arrow). This menu features sharing options to first and third-party apps, as well as extra functions like saving, copying, duplicating, and more. Best of all? It's surprisingly customizable.
How To: Get Haptic Feedback in Your iPhone Keyboard to Feel Everything You Type
For years, iPhones have had haptic feedback. Rather than full-force buzzing, the Tactic Engine provides a tiny vibration under your finger when performing certain actions on the screen. While Apple itself was able to take advantage of this tech before app developers, for some reason it was never included in the stock iOS keyboard — but there's still a way to get haptic feedback when typing.
How To: iOS 13 Makes Bulk-Deleting Emails in Apple Mail Easier & Faster on Your iPhone
One of my biggest gripes with the Mail app on iOS is that it makes it super hard to select multiple emails quickly in a search. For instance, if you want to delete all emails from one sender, it could take a seriously long time to do it the usual way. A bug in iOS 12 and older helped make the process faster, but it's no longer around in iOS 13, but Apple did include a faster way to select multiple emails.