Third-Party Apps

Running from the law? Stuck on a moped that can’t go over 50 miles per hour? No worries. Whatever your reason (we don’t need to know), Google Maps makes it easy to avoid highways on your iPhone. You can easily turn off highways in Google Maps options, and get directions that steer clear of those highly populated highways. The alternative route will likely take more time, but if back roads are what you want, Google Maps can help. We've covered avoiding toll roads in Google Maps before; now it's time to avoid those highways. Here’s how to use Google Maps to avoid highways.

iPhone app developers release updates from time to time, whether it be to fix bugs or add new features. If you're wondering, "how do I get updates for my apps?" there are two answers. You can change your settings to update apps automatically, but there's also an easy way to check which updates are available for your apps and download them. Let's learn how to quickly update apps all at once on your iPhone. 

Face it; kids are going to use technology as a regular part of their lives. Whether it's a home or at school, for recreation or education, or all of the above, your children and grandchildren will learn all the ins and outs of your iPhone, iPad, and whatever other devices you may have around the house. We already know it's important to limit screen time to keep our kids well rounded, but what about other parental controls? Apple has created several iPhone and iPad restriction settings that adults can put in place without ever needing to purchase a parental control app, and even more settings are coming with iOS 12! There are many reasons you might enable restrictions on your iPhone; they act like a child lock app and control major aspects of privacy, allowed content, and more. Here are two restrictions I find very helpful; preventing kids from adding or deleting apps on your devices. Let's get started learning how to use these parental control settings.

This is something I’ve always wondered about but didn’t realize there was a solution for until recently. When someone dies, what happens to their Facebook page? This must have been a question posed by many users because Facebook allows you to designate someone to manage your Facebook page if you should happen to die, this is called a Facebook legacy. You can also set your profile to automatically delete once Facebook has been notified of your death. Either way, here’s how to create a will for your Facebook page.

Super Bowl LIV, featuring the Patriots vs the Chiefs, is coming up on Sunday, February 2, at 5:30 p.m. ET at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. While there is no dedicated Super Bowl 2020 app, there are a number of apps that football fans will want to make sure to download. Let's take a look at the various apps available. 

If Facebook is draining your battery, gobbling up your storage by caching huge amounts of data, or otherwise causing problems on your iPhone, you can delete the app and create a Home screen icon for the website instead.

Spotlight Search, with iOS 9, is able to search within the apps you use and link directly into specific sections of that app. For instance, you could search for a recipe from Spotlight Search and receive results from multiple cooking apps on your phone. However, each new app downloaded is automatically added to Spotlight Search. For the applications you don’t need Spotlight to search through, turn them off in Settings.

Finally, in iOS 9, there is an option to delete all of your mail via the Mail app. This only works with individual mailboxes, such as Yahoo, not the All Inboxes mailbox. If you're using Gmail, you'll need to select Delete All instead of Archive All in Gmail Settings. If you're worried about losing emails you want to keep, there's a setting you can enable to prevent accidentally deleting emails.

So, a few days ago I needed to find an ATM, but I wasn't familiar enough with the area to know where to find one.  Thankfully, Google Maps makes it easy to find nearby ATMs, grocery stores, and gas stations!

If you travel or do business internationally, you know how costly roaming charges are. Unless your mobile carrier is T-mobile (limited to 2G data speed), you need an additional service plan for international texting. AT&T international texting costs $10 a month, as does Sprint, but don't worry; you can text free in Italy, Germany, the Philipines, or almost any other country you can think of with iMessages. With iMessage, you can text from anywhere for free, as long as you have a Wi-Fi connection and the person you're messaging also has an iPhone or Mac. If you want to be able to internationally text friends without iPhones for free, you'll need a free texting app. Let's get started learning how to avoid monstrous phone bills by sending free iMessages, or using a free text app!  

Our phones have officially become our cameras too, with our Photos apps full of everything from selfies to vacation shots. Yet how do you take that suave picture of youself and put it on Facebook? Or, upload that gorgeous photo you took of Niagara Falls as your cover image? Easily.

Some of your Facebook friends like games. A lot. Some of your Facebook friends want you to like games a lot too. And you know this because they've sent you so many Facebook game requests that you are considering unfriending them just to make the onslaught stop. 

We at iPhone Life don't want to tell you who to be friends with, but you don't actually have to unfriend the Facebook gamers you know in order to make the game requests stop. Here's what you can do instead:

If you are traveling to a place where you won't have reliable or affordable access to data or Wi-Fi, Google Maps allows you to save the maps you need ahead of time for later offline use. 

Have you ever been watching something on Netflix with your iPhone or iPad only to realize the app was using cellular data instead of Wi-Fi? Most of us do not have unlimited data available, so that can be an expensive mistake. To avoid using data when you don't have to, it's a good idea to prevent data-gobbling apps from accessing data as their default setting. You can do this by turning off cellular data for specific apps, like video and music streaming apps, and changing the frequency with which apps like Mail fetch new data.

With all of our information in "the cloud," it feels like we have everything at our fingertips. Emails, dates, calendar appointments, and phone numbers easily pop up on whatever device we're using and sometimes we take for granted how it all syncs up. Syncing your Google and Yahoo contacts with your phone is a super simple process and I'm going to walk you through it now.