Leanne Hays

Author Details

Leanne Hays's picture

Author Details

Leanne Hays

Leanne Hays has over a dozen years of experience writing for online publications. As a Feature Writer for iPhone Life, she has authored hundreds of how-to, Apple news, and gear review articles, as well as a comprehensive Photos App guide. Leanne holds degrees in education and science and loves troubleshooting and repair. This combination makes her a perfect fit as manager of our Ask an Expert service, which helps iPhone Life Insiders with Apple hardware and software issues.
In off-work hours, Leanne is a mother of two, homesteader, audiobook fanatic, musician, and learning enthusiast.

We all want our kids to avoid screen addiction and be safe online, but that can be hard to accomplish when children have open access to the internet via their iPhone or iPad. Fortunately, Apple's Screen Time parental controls are easy and free to use. In the past you might have had to pay for iPad or iPhone parental control apps to make sure inappropriate content wasn't getting through on your kids' devices, but not anymore. Learn how to set up Screen Time settings on your child's iPhone and iPad, and how to lock those settings so your curious kids can't access the content you've blocked.

Now that November is here I can officially start thinking about Christmas gift ideas, and lucky for me I was tasked with writing this roundup of top tech gifts under $100. I found so many cool things to buy for the 2018 holidays; gifts for women and men, and even a few things kids and teenagers will love. Let's get started with my 2018 Buyer's Guide for tech gadgets, including toasty warm winter texting gloves, a GPS tracker to help find lost items, a smart water bottle, and more. Your friends and loved ones are going to be really happy with their presents this year! 

I love using a thesaurus when I write, so the absence of this option from the iPhone's dictionary feature, Look Up, used to be a sore spot for me. Beginning with iOS 12, I no longer need a third-party thesaurus app, because a thesaurus is included in Look Up on iPhone and iPad for free! Let's get started learning how to add a thesaurus to Look Up, so you can find just the word you're looking for, be it a synonym or antonym. 

How to Find an Apple IMEI Number & Serial Number on iPhone or iPad

Have you ever needed to know how to find the serial number for your iPhone or iPad? These unique numbers can be used to identify your devices, so knowing how to find them is important. In this article, we'll go over what exactly serial and IMEI numbers are, why you might need them, and the easiest ways to track them down. Read on to learn more about how to find the serial number for your iPhone or iPad.

How to Use the iPhone Measure App

The iPhone has a bunch of great native apps that can really help you get your work done. But one of the best, little-known apps that come on your iPhone is the Measure app. The iPhone Measure app, while sometimes imperfect, does a pretty decent job of taking appropriate measurements of spaces. There are a few keys to getting it to work right, but this has helped me out in so many circumstances where I did not have a tape measure ready.

The native Apple Books app, formerly iBooks, has the ability to save e-books and audiobooks to a wish list for later purchase. This feature, called Want to Buy, is perfect for keeping track of which e-book or audiobook you'd like to read or listen to next. Let's get started learning how to save audiobooks and e-books to purchase later in the Books app on your iPhone or iPad. 

If you have a child who uses your iPad or iPhone, you'll love this tip. Keeping our kids from seeing inappropriate content online can be a struggle, but Apple makes putting parental controls on your iPad or iPhone easy. (We cover how to use Parental Controls to set restrictions on a child's personal device in a different tip.) If you ever hand your iPhone to the back seat to keep your kids occupied on a long car ride or let them watch a movie on your iPad while you get dinner together, you'll want to read how to restrict your iPad or iPhone for your child to make sure they're only accessing age-appropriate material. 

One of the iOS 12 features I've been eagerly awaiting is Apple's new Shortcuts app. This new app allows you to instruct Siri to accomplish a task or series of tasks with native and third-party apps, all triggered by a phrase of your own choosing. In addition to creating your own Shortcut, Apple's latest help app also lets you choose from a Gallery of pre-designed shortcuts. Let's get started learning how to find the Shortcuts app on iPhone and iPad, and then use the Gallery to install a Shortcut we all need from time to time: finding directions home. Once you've installed the driving directions Shortcut, you can choose and configure as many other Gallery Shortcuts as you need. We'll go over how to create your own Shortcut in a future tip.

Pages