iOS & iPhone Features
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, where wishing your friend a "Happy Birthday!" or congratulating them on a promotion unexpectedly flooded your screen with balloons or confetti.
How To: Find & Recover Apple Notes Stored in Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, AOL & Other Third-Party Mail Accounts
If you can't locate a specific entry in the Notes app on your iPhone, chances are that it's hiding in a different place than you thought, connected to a third-party email service such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook. When one of those notes gets lost or accidentally deleted, you're going to run into issues, but it's possible to recover it.
How To: iOS 17.1 Has 24 New Features and Changes for iPhone You Won't Want to Miss
Apple's first big iOS 17 point update for iPhone just came out, and it includes some of the features initially planned for the iOS 17.0 release last September. But there's much more to iOS 17.1 than that — exciting new features and changes are hiding within Books, Music, StandBy, App Store, Lock Screen wallpapers, Apple Wallet, and more.
How To: The Notes Widget Sucks — So Here Are 4 Better Ones for More Useful Sticky Notes on Your Home Screen
I won't mince words: the Notes widget in iOS 14 is bad. But you're not stuck with it if you want sticky notes on your home screen.
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: There Are 18 New Features Hiding in Your iPhone's Camera App on iOS 17
The Camera app on your iPhone includes new features with the iOS 17 update that will help you take better photos and more impressive videos, but there are a lot of cool new things available that you might not see right away.
How To: Figure Out Your Total Calorie Burn in Apple's Health App
If you transition to an Apple Watch from another wearable like Fitbit, you might be a bit confused by the new calorie burn counter. Instead of ending your day with thousands of calories burned, your watch says you've burned just hundreds. Could it be you're less active with your Apple Watch? Probably not. It's more likely because of the different way the watch counts your calories.
How To: Enter Recovery or DFU Mode on Your iPhone SE (2nd Generation) to Bring Your Device Back to Life
If your new 2020 iPhone SE is frozen, unresponsive, or won't load the system, and a standard power down and up procedure didn't work, there are few more things you can try. Force-restarting the device may do the trick, recovery mode is a last-ditch option, and DFU mode is your fail-safe.
How To: Silence Annoyingly Loud Emergency Alerts on iPhone Without Disabling Them Completely
Wireless emergency alerts help warn mobile phone users of imminent threats to life or property, such as extreme weather and natural disasters. These alerts target affected geographic areas and come with a loud sound scary enough to make you want to turn off emergency alerts altogether on your iPhone, but there's a way to keep emergency alerts without the ear-splitting, intrusive sound.
How To: Disable iOS 17's Live Voicemail on Your iPhone's Incoming Call Screen
Apple's Live Voicemail lets you preview what an incoming caller is speaking to your voicemail system in real time. It's a revolutionary feature like Visual Voicemail on the original iPhone, only better since it helps you screen calls to quickly decide whether to answer or ignore callers. It's similar to answering machines, whose popularity peaked in the mid-90s, but you quietly read transcribed messages instead.
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.
How To: Apple's Reminders App Has the Ultimate Solution for Managing Grocery Lists on Your iPhone
If you couldn't pick between putting your grocery list in the Reminders or Notes app, there's now a clear place for it. With the latest software updates, the Reminders app, which now supports sections, sports a groceries template that automatically moves the items you add to related categories to help you better find products in-store.
How To: The Simple Trick to Stop Your iPhone from Automatically Going to Sleep
You're halfway through reading an article on your iPhone, when the display just turns off. Frustrated, you open the article again, only for the display to go black again. You shouldn't have to keeping touching the screen to keep your iPhone from going to sleep. Luckily, you can delay or even stop your iPhone from doing so with just a few taps.
How To: 18 Siri Commands Every iPhone Owner Should Know
Siri can perform many actions for you on your iPhone, such as sending messages, providing information, getting directions, looking up a contact, and playing music. Still, there are even more important Siri voice commands that every iPhone owner should know — even the ones who hate Siri.
How To: There's an Easy Way to Type Fractions as Single Characters on Your iPhone's Keyboard
Whenever you need to type out a fraction on your iPhone, whether in a message, word document, presentation, math problem, recipe, or wherever else you need it, it's easy to use numbers and slashes. But there's a way to make fractions look more professional and easier to read straight from your keyboard.
How To: Fix the 'Number Changed to Primary' Bug on Your iPhone
The iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR aren't the newest devices from Apple Inc., but all three have a serious problem in Messages. When sending a friend an SMS/MMS text rather than an iMessage, the phrase "Number changed to Primary" appears in front of every message. What gives? If this issue is driving you mad, there are a few tricks that may exterminate the bug until Apple gets around to issuing a patch.
How To: Two Settings You Should Double-Check to Make Sure Your iPhone's Alarm Goes Off
It happens to almost everyone. You wake up one morning, check your phone, and realize your alarm never went off. Now you're late to start the day, and you spend every night onward paranoid it'll happen again. But if you have an iPhone, there are two things you can check to make sure the alarm always goes off on schedule.
How To: Scroll Hands-Free Through Long Webpages on Your iPhone to Read Articles at the Perfect Pace
You can't always have your hands on your iPhone, which is why Apple developed Siri. When Siri can't do your hands-free bidding, there's Apple's newer Voice Control feature. But if you don't like barking commands at your iPhone, there's another option — at least, when it comes to scrolling through webpages in Safari.
How To: Drag-and-Drop Emails on Your iPhone to Notes, Reminders, and Other Apps in iOS 15
There has been drag-and-drop functionality for iPhone since at least iOS 11, but iOS 15 adds a new ability that makes essential emails even easier to find when you need them.
How To: Add Custom Shortcuts to Your iPhone's Share Sheet & Reorganize Them for Quicker Access
With Shortcuts, Apple has designed a way to create your own tools and automations right on your iPhone. And to top it off, your creations can be accessed in a variety of ways, including Siri phrases, widgets, and the Shortcuts app itself. Perhaps even more useful is adding them as custom actions to your Share Sheet and making them available to you system-wide.
How To: Disable iOS 12's Annoying Password Creation Feature on Your iPhone
Maybe you prefer writing passwords in a notebook. Maybe you like creating your passwords yourself. Whatever the case, you don't like iOS 12's new automatic password generator, and you don't need it to pop up every time you enter a new password in Safari or a third-party app. Lucky for you, iOS 12 lets you disable the feature altogether. Unfortunately, that perk comes with a catch.
How To: 7 Hidden iPhone Apps You Didn't Know Existed
Your iPhone has hidden apps that work behind the scenes to filter SMS messages, trust computers, deal with payments, test ads, and perform other actions. You won't find any of them in your App Library, but there are tricks you can employ to unlock and use some of these secret apps.
How To: Change Your iPhone's Default Text Responses for Incoming Phone Calls to Quick Reply in Style
Since iOS 6, "Respond with Text" has allowed us to quickly respond to a call we can't (or don't want to) answer. But Apple only gives you three options to choose from, and if you don't have time to type out your own response, those three might not cut it. Luckily, you can customize these three replies to whatever you want.
How To: Automatically Turn on Speakerphone for Every iPhone Call
When you make or receive a call on your iPhone, you're forced to use the built-in ear receiver at the top of the phone to hear anything—unless you're already connected to a Bluetooth device. If you don't have Bluetooth in your car, or prefer to just use the speaker instead, having to manually switch to speaker mode can get annoying real fast.
How To: Safari for iPhone Lets Advertisers Track Your 'Clicks' — Here's How to Disable It
Apple wants to support the advertising economy, but its primary focus of late has been user privacy and security. In Safari, cross-site tracking, which lets content providers track you across websites and apps to show you more targeted ads, is disabled by default. However, content providers can get around that using less privacy-invasive ad measurements, but you can stop that too in iOS 14.5.
How To: The Hidden Action That Opens Apple Pay from Your iPhone's Lock Screen
I think everyone with an iPhone should be making every purchase they can with Apple Pay. I also think everyone who uses Apple Pay should open the Wallet app ahead of time, instead of simply tapping their iPhone to the card reader. But there's a much faster way to open Wallet than slogging through the sea of apps on your iPhone. You can open it right from the lock screen.
How To: The Ultimate Guide to Freeing Up Space on Your iCloud Account
We've already shown you how to free up internal space on your iPhone, and now it's time to tackle another problematic storage issue—your iCloud account.
How To: 23 Things Your iPhone's Volume Buttons Can Do Besides Volume Adjustments
The volume buttons on the side of your iPhone can do more than just adjust the volume levels for media, ringers, alerts, Siri, and other sounds and voices. You can use them to perform different actions in certain apps and even create custom actions using the Shortcuts app. It's not exactly button mapping, but it's as close as you'll get without jailbreaking iOS.
How To: Home Screen Customization Just Got Even Better for iPhone with 15 Important New Features
The home screen is the most important part of your iPhone when it comes to customization, and Apple just gave us even more options to personalize it.
How To: The Fastest Way to Get Detailed Flight Info on Your iPhone & Mac
Turns out, you no longer need third-party flight tracking apps to get information on yours or others' flights—your iPhone and Mac can now give you flight details right from your Mail, Notes, and Messages apps.
How To: All the Apps That Work with Picture in Picture (PiP) on Your iPhone
Since iOS 9, the iPad has had Picture in Picture mode, which lets you minimize a video that you're watching into a floating overlay so that you can multitask in other apps while it plays. For iPhones, it came a little later, first appearing in iOS 14. It's not just for the Plus or Max displays either — any size display works.
How To: This Is What Happens to Your iPhone Every Time You Turn On Low Power Mode
When you enable Low Power Mode on your iPhone, it's not always clear what measures it's taking to reduce battery drain and conserve power. Changes to energy-hungry features you use daily may be immediately noticeable, but some things you use frequently may be disabled or reduced without any apparent indicators.
How To: Your iPhone Will Automatically Add Events to Your Calendar in iOS 10
iOS 10's Calendar app comes with a new Found Events feature, which scans Mail and Messages on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch for events and lets you add them to your calendar. This one is easy to set up, because it's automatically enabled and on all the time, so you don't have to do anything.
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: The Easiest Way to Resize Photos on Your iPhone in Bulk or Individually
The rear cameras on iPhones have remained at 12 megapixels since the iPhone 6s, but with each new iPhone model, more data is going into photos. That means larger file sizes. If you're running into issues with your pictures being too large, whether you're sharing or uploading them, there's an easy way to resize an image or group of images using a shortcut.
How To: Everything You Need to Know About Your iPhone's Focus Feature — From Creating and Editing Focuses to Automating Them
In iOS 15, Apple unveiled a new feature called Focus, an extension of Do Not Disturb that lets you focus on the one thing that's important at any particular moment. It does so by minimizing distractions from your iPhone and other Apple devices, but there's a lot you should know about setting up and using Focus on your iPhone or iPad before you dig in.
How To: Stop Notification Banners from Popping Up for Custom App Icon Shortcuts on Your Home Screen
Users on Android could customize their app icons for some time, but it's a relatively new addition to the iPhone. You could change icons since iOS 12, but it really took off in iOS 14 and got even better in iOS 14.3. Still, it's not as easy as on Android, and you'll see a notification every time you open an app with your custom icon. However, there is a workaround to stop those annoying notifications.
How To: Type Curse Words with Apple's QuickPath Swipe-Typing Keyboard in iOS 13
The iPhone's autocorrect feature is wonderful and convenient, but it doesn't always work with informal language like profanity. If you've ever used the F-word, there's a good chance you've had your curse words "corrected" to other words that don't ducking make sense. And with the release of iOS 13, swearing in your messages and on social media could get a little harder.
How To: Sync Your iPhone Reminders in iCloud & Other Accounts Across All Your Apple Devices
Apple's iCloud is a fantastic way to ensure that all of your photos, messages, notes, and other important data are backed up and appear on all of your connected devices. However, you may have information like reminders attached to accounts other than iCloud, which won't appear when signing into iCloud on a new device. Here's how to get the full picture of where your reminders are stored.
How To: Switch from Grid to List View for Apps on Your iPhone's Home Screen in iOS 14
The average iPhone user has between 60 to 90 applications installed. On one of my devices, I have over 600. With a ton of apps to sort through, it can sometimes be challenging to find the one you're looking for without having to use the Search tool (which is even better in iOS 14). Even then, you may still come up dry.