Phone

You've been trying to get in touch with a friend or family member, but they haven't returned your calls or messages. Are they just busy, is something wrong with their phone, or have they blocked your number? How can you tell if someone blocked your number? There's not a surefire way to know if your number is blocked, but there are a few telling signs that indicate someone blocked your number from texting or calling. Let's go over the clues that calls and messages from your iPhone are being blocked.

How to Block Caller ID Directly from Your iPhone

If you'd like to make private calls from your iPhone on a more regular basis, without having to enter a code each time, there's a setting you can change to accomplish this. To turn on call blocking:

1. Open Settings.
2. Scroll down and tap on Phone.
3. Tap on Show My Caller ID.
4. Toggle off Show My Caller ID.

We've gone over how to block a phone number on the iPhone, as well as how to block texts on the iPhone, but did you know that even when someone's number is blocked they can still leave you voicemails? It seems odd to be able to receive voicemails from someone you've directed your phone to block, but there it is, and in a way this peculiar feature has its merits. For example, if you've blocked an ex or cyberbully, it can be useful to know if they've moved on or if you may have cause to worry. So let's get started learning what happens when you block a number on the iPhone, and how to listen to voicemails from blocked numbers, as well. 

The camera roll on my iPhone is jam packed with pictures of my dogs—there's just something about those fuzzy faces that demands to be adored and photographed so that the pictures can be adored as well. Then of course there's the sharing; #instadog #socute #sorryyouguysicantrestrainmyself. I've been known to take dog photos with Instagram, share them to Facebook, then text and private message them to friends and family that really must see the latest iteration of canine cuteness right away. Therefore it is with great delight that I announce the discovery of my new favorite app, BarkCam, the "Instagram for Dogs." 

Signal is a privacy app that uses end-to-end encryption for individual and group texts, videos, documents, voice, and picture messaging. Open Whisper, Signal's parent company, produced Signal using grants and donations, utilizing Open Source software, with the aim of providing a free and secure platform for worldwide communication, without SMS or MMS fees—this even includes free long-distance calls to anyone, anywhere in the world who also has the Signal app! No one at Signal or anywhere else can read or view communications on the platform, they can only be viewed by the individual user, who can also choose when each message will disappear. Since the whole point of an encrypted communication app is to ensure privacy, Signal is free of tracking, affiliate marketers, and ads. Signal uses your existing address book and phone number, and will only allow you to register one mobile device, so you'll need to choose if you want to use your iPhone or iPad. Getting Signal on your iPhone is free and easy, it pops right up in the App Store, but Signal for iPad is a bit more complicated. Read on to learn how to get Signal on your iPad!

AirPods users: did you know you can answer a call on your AirPods? The streamlined look of AirPods makes this an easy feature to overlook; but if you’re one of the many people sporting AirPods, you’ll certainly want to utilize this feature. You can answer your iPhone with AirPods and hang up calls with your AirPods as well; we’ll go over how to do both. When learning how to use your AirPods, make sure this is one of the tips you memorize. If you wear your AirPods more than you don’t, you’ll definitely need to answer calls with them. Here’s how to answer a call with AirPods.

If you have multiple devices (iPhone, iPad, Macbook) that are all logged into your iCloud account, you’ve likely had this happen: one minute, you’re calm. The next, you receive an incoming call and every device you own is suddenly beeping and blaring. Up until now, I’ve avoided this by simply turning iMessages off for my iPad and Macbook. But there’s a better way now with iOS 11 on iPhone. Here’s how to make all of your devices stop ringing when you get a call with iOS 11 on iPhone.

A new iOS 11 feature on the iPhone allows your phone to automatically answer calls after three rings. If you’re the type of person who’s always near their phone but sometimes takes too long to answer, or if you find the swiping-to-answer motion annoying (like my mom) or difficult to do, then you can turn on this setting. Regardless your reason for turning it on, here’s how to set your iPhone to automatically answer calls after three rings with iOS 11.

Figuring out how to download music on Apple Music for offline listening is fairly straight forward—tap the plus sign next to a song and then the cloud icon. While downloading individual songs or albums on Apple Music is easy to do, learning how to download all music on Apple Music isn’t so obvious. If you want to listen to your Apple Music offline, you’ll need a way to download all Apple Music at once. However, unlike Spotify, Apple Music doesn’t provide a clear Download All button to download your music for offline listening. We’ll first explain how it is that you can use Apple Music offline, then we’ll jump into how to download all music on Apple Music with iPhone or iPad. Let’s go.

Let’s say you’re listening to music using your fantastic Bluetooth speaker and you get a call. When you answer that call, it will probably default to your iPhone. But what if you want the call to automatically default to you speaker? Or your headphones? You can choose where your call audio defaults to in your settings on iPhone. Here’s how to set your speaker or headphones as the default audio on iPhone.

Sometimes, whether it's an ex, a cyberbully, or an obnoxious telemarketer, a person just won't get the message and stop calling or texting you. That's when it's time to block their calls and texts on your iPhone. There’s no need to put up with unwanted messages or phone calls when Apple has a feature to block numbers on iPhone. Enabling call blocking for a specific number means you will no longer receive phone calls, FaceTime calls, text messages, or iMessages from that number. Here’s how to block a phone number on iPhone, as well as how to block texts on iPhone!

Your ringtone on iPhone lets you know when you have an incoming call or text. Since you’re likely to hear the sound often, it’s nice to choose one you like. You can choose to use a ringtone that Apple has built-in. But you can also use ringtones you’ve purchased within the iTunes Store on your iPhone. Here’s how to change your default ringtone on iPhone.

I had no idea this was a thing until I started looking for an answer. Let me explain: my mom has been slowly adjusting to using an iPhone. With her old flip phone, she merely closed the phone to hang up the call. But with an iPhone, you have to press the big red dot on the screen. But for her, it felt more intuitive to press the Home button. So she found herself thinking she’d hung up the phone when she hadn’t. This let me to search for an easy solution. There’s no setting on iPhone that allows you to use your Home button to hang up a call, but you can use a different button. Here’s how to hang up your iPhone with the click of a button.

How to Turn Do Not Disturb Mode for Individual Contacts  On or Off on iPhone 

1. Open the Messages app and select the conversation for which you want to turn on Do Not Disturb.
2. Tap the ‘i’ in the upper right corner.
3. Toggle on Hide Alerts.
4. Tap Done.

What does Do Not Disturb mode do? This iPhone setting means you won’t receive notifications from the contact you selected should they try to text or call you. To turn alerts back on, swipe left on the conversation in Messages and tap Show Alerts.

What is Dial Assist? Dial Assist on iPhone automatically adds international and local prefixes to phone numbers, so you don't have to enter them yourself. This feature is designed to be helpful, particularly when calling internationally since the call won't go through without the correct prefix. But for people who travel often, it may be preferable to save full international numbers with prefixes in their contacts, making Dial Assist redundant. If you'd like to turn off Dial Assist on your iPhone, read on.

How to Remove U2 Album on iPhone:

1. Visit: https://itunes.com/soi-remove.
2. Click Remove Album.
3. Sign in with your Apple ID and password.
4. A confirmation page will let you know that you’ve removed the U2 album from your library.
5. You may still see the album in your iTunes library. The confirmation page suggests signing out of iTunes and back in. You can also select the songs, right click, and select Delete from Library.

This will remove the U2 album from your iTunes library; the next part will show you how to delete the U2 album off your phone as well. 

Removing a song from your Apple Music library is as easy as adding a song. If the song you’re deleting is downloaded on your iPhone, you’ll have two options when removing it: Remove Download and Delete from Library. We’ll go over what each of those mean and how to delete songs from your Apple Music library below.

3D Touch on iPhone 7, 7 Plus, 6s, and 6s Plus allows you to jump into a specific place within an app using Quick Actions. This is done from Home screen by 3D Touching an app icon. Options for jumping into the app will pop up and you can select one. For example, the Settings app has Quick Actions for jumping to the settings for Wi-Fi, Battery, Bluetooth, and Cellular Data. Here’s how to jump into apps with 3D Touch on iPhone.