Hot iOS & iPhone How-Tos

How To: Disable This Wi-Fi Option on Your iPhone to Increase Security & Prevent Unresponsive Apps & Webpages

You're out and about, and nothing on your iPhone will load. A glance at the settings shows a saved Wi-Fi network with full bars that your iPhone had connected to automatically, but you're not getting any internet. If you've experienced this, you're not alone, and there's something you can do about it. You'll even increase privacy and security on your iPhone in the process.

How To: 11 Unique Effects to Make Your iPhone Photos & Videos Less Boring on Social Media

Social media apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok have plenty of editing tools that go beyond the basics, but there are still a lot of things they can't do. So if you want to apply interesting, unique effects to your photos and videos for social media, you'll need to add some other apps to your iPhone's arsenal of tools.

How To: Do This to Start Your Day with a Favorite Song, Not an Obnoxious iPhone Alarm Sound

Why are you still waking up to an annoying alarm clock sound on your iPhone? It's 2020, not 2011. That's almost a decade since you were limited to a strict set of default tones. Yes, your iPhone has a ton of tones by now to choose from, but you could be waking up gently to your favorite slow song, or jolting awake by the harsh sounds of metal ringing in your ears to get pumped for the rest of the day.

How To: This Trick Makes It Easier to Type on Your iPhone with One Hand

We're beyond the days where iPhones fit perfectly in most hands. The iPhone 11 Pro is still a bit big for many people, and the 11 Pro Max is truly massive. If you're having trouble typing out your thoughts without using two hands, know that there's a quick way to make one-handed typing possible on any iPhone.

How To: Apps & Services May Have Access to Your Apple Music & Media Library — Here's How to Check & Revoke Their Permissions

Third-party apps on your iPhone must ask for your permission to access your library in the Music app. Some will even want to get access to your Apple Music account. If you no longer use the apps, you shouldn't be letting them have access anymore. It's easy to hunt them down, and doing so might even show some apps you can't even remember giving any permissions to.

How To: Add Captions to Photos & Videos in iOS 14 to Make Searching by Metadata Easier

If you've been an iPhone user for quite some time, you probably have quite a bit of photos and videos in iCloud or on your device. Unless you know the date, location, or event, it can be pretty hard to find a specific memory. Even with intelligent search suggestions, AI-created categories, and multi-keyword filters, you still may not be able to find what you want. The new iOS 14 update changes that.

How To: 16 New Apple Maps Features for iPhone in iOS 14, Including Cycling Routes, New Widgets & City Guides

Once the laughing-stock of the navigation app market, Apple Maps is now a powerful, reliable travel companion. Apple rebuilt the platform from the ground up, placing the app in league with Google Maps. That said, there's always room for improvement, as demonstrated by its impressive new features set in iOS 14.

How To: iOS 14's Revamped Home Screen Search Can Help You Open Hidden Apps Faster

The ability to hide entire pages on your iPhone's home screen is an excellent privacy upgrade packed into iOS 14. That said, it can be a bit of a pain to find and open the hidden apps on those pages in a timely fashion. Luckily, iOS 14 has a solution that makes opening those apps, as well as any others, faster and more convenient — and we're not talking about the new App Library.

How To: Use Siri to Send Audio Messages via iMessage or Texts in iOS 14

Siri has slimmed down in iOS 14. The assistant now appears as a compact icon at the bottom of the screen instead of hijacking your entire iPhone. It's a welcome change to a user interface that has always felt a bit clunky, but just because Siri's UI has simplified doesn't mean that its capabilities have too. On top of several new features, Siri now lets you record and send audio messages using only your voice.

How To: Hide the Picture-in-Picture Window on Your iPhone to Listen to Audio Only or Take a Video Break

Previously limited to apps like Facebook and YouTube as an in-app feature only, picture-in-picture mode is now an OS-level feature in iOS 14. That means any app can quickly flip the switch to let you watch videos in an overlay window while you multitask in other apps. However, sometimes you only need to hear the audio and not see the video, and that's totally possible too.

How To: This Workaround Lets You Record Music Playing on Your iPhone While Filming a Video

As soon as you try recording a video in the Camera app on your iPhone, any music playing on your device comes to a halt. Apple Music. Spotify. Pandora. Tidal. Deezer. No matter what you're listening to, as soon as you switch to "Video" in the Camera app, the music will stop. However, if you want background music in your movie files, there's a workaround to avoid having to add an audio track in post.

How To: Turn Your Live Photos into Looping or Bouncing GIF-Like Videos That Anyone Can Watch

Live Photos haven't caught on as much as Apple probably would like, but they're far from the gimmick that critics initially claimed they were — and things are only getting better as time moves on. Some aspects of the feature are somewhat hidden, however, and you need to find them to unlock Live Photos' full potential.

How To: These Are the iPhones That Can Upgrade to iOS 14

The latest iOS version hit iPhones in September 2020, but which models work with iOS 14. There's good news on that front since all iPhone models that could run iOS 13 can also run iOS 14. That means all of the following iPhone models are compatible with iOS 14 and all of its features. And as you can see below, the iPhones that came out in the fall of 2020 have iOS 14 preinstalled.

How To: There's an Easy Way to Turn Off Camera's Night Mode on Your iPhone 11, 11 Pro, or 11 Pro Max

Night mode on the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max is a godsend if you want clearer photographs in dimly lit environments. But if you want to keep the image dark or full of shadows as an effect of sorts, it's not immediately obvious how to disable Night mode, which turns on automatically when the app thinks you need it. But it can be turned off.

How To: Your iPhone's Using More Data Than It Needs, but This Could Stop It

While mobile data caps are larger than they used to be, many of us still have limits to contend with. If you find yourself up against that ceiling month after month, your iPhone itself might be to blame. Luckily, there's an easy fix to stop your iOS device from burning through data in the background.

How To: Add Dropbox, Google Drive & Other Cloud Storage Apps to Files on Your iPhone (& Manage All Your Docs from One Place)

The built-in Files app on your iPhone has only gotten better since it was introduced in iOS 11, with small improvements after each new iOS version. You can manage files on your internal storage as well as in iCloud Drive, but one of the best features is being able to manage media and documents from all of your cloud storage accounts in one place.

How To: There's a Quick Gesture to Open Hidden Camera Settings on Your iPhone

The camera on models in the iPhone 11 series includes an ultra-wide lens to take wider images, Night mode for taking better-looking photos in low-light environments, and a 16:9 frame for shooting. With these new features comes a slightly redesigned interface in the Camera app, one that even the second-generation iPhone SE received despite only having one of those three features.

How To: The Fastest Way to Share Your Location via Messages on Your iPhone

Apple makes it simple to share your location with your family and friends using tools built into the "info" page for each conversation thread in Messages. With those tools, you can send your current location or share trackable real-time coordinates. But iOS always has a few hidden tricks to make things easier than they seem, and that's precisely the case if all you need to do is share your current location.

How To: Use the Hidden Quick Scroll to Browse Emojis on Your iPhone Faster

When words aren't enough, emojis are there to help. Your iPhone has almost two thousand of them for you to communicate in a more lively manner or to express indifference, excitement, joy, and other emotional states. However, the more emojis that come out, the more difficult it is to find the one you want — unless you know your way around your keyboard.

How To: Scan Any QR Code in Seconds with Your iPhone

A QR code is a fun and convenient way to link people to a website or app. On iOS, you have a few ways to scan these codes. You can download a QR scanner to get the job done, but Apple has one built into iOS. Or you can add the QR Code Reader tile in Control Center, but that's not even necessary. There's a better way, one that requires basically no effort to pull off.

How To: Use the Volume Buttons to Respring Your Buggy iPhone Without Having to Re-Jailbreak

Software issues occur more frequently on jailbroken iPhones, though, they're usually minor bugs that can be fixed easily with a respring. But if your device freezes up, restarting is the only way to get back to normal, which also means having to re-enable your jailbreak. There is one way, however, to respring without interacting with the touchscreen and having to re-jailbreak.

How To: Your iPhone's Screen Will Turn Off Faster if You Disable This Setting

Have you ever noticed that when you put your iPhone to sleep, it takes an extra second longer than it probably should for the screen to go black? It's a bit strange and forces you to wait another moment until your iPhone locks. But most of you can avoid the small delay entirely by just changing one setting.

How To: Share Your iPhone's Medical ID with First Responders When Placing an Emergency Call or Text

In the event of an emergency where you can't answer for yourself, trained professionals can view your Medical ID on your iPhone to learn about your medical situation, granted that you have created one. But that's not all your Medical ID can do. With a new feature, iOS can share your Medical ID data automatically with first responders when you place an emergency call.

How To: There's a Much Faster Way to Activate Dark Mode on Your iPhone

With iOS 13, Apple introduced system-wide dark mode for the first time on the iPhone, and there are several ways to activate it. You could use the brightness slider to change the theme, have Siri do it for you, or adjust it straight from the Settings app. But there's one way that's faster than all others so that you can switch from light to dark in no time.