Paula Bostrom

Author Details

Paula Bostrom's picture

Author Details

Paula Bostrom

Paula is a freelance media broadcaster and journalist. She enjoys life at home with her husband, two kids, two dogs, two cats and a parrot. Her iPhone is never more than two feet away from her and she can't imagine life without it.

How to Redeem iTunes Gift Cards & Check the iTunes Card Balance on Your iPhone

By Paula Bostrom

If you're here, you've probably been given an iTunes gift card and now it's time to redeem it. It's also possible that you've already redeemed your iTunes gift card and simply want to check the remaining Apple gift card balance or add more money to your iTunes balance. You're in the right place; we're going to cover everything you need to know about your Apple gift card. Once you see the steps, it'll be easy to redeem your iTunes gift card, check your iTunes gift card balance, and add money to your iTunes account. We'll also explain the difference between an iTunes gift card, an Apple Store gift card, and an Apple Music gift card and show you a few other things to make the whole process of learning how to use an iTunes gift card as smooth as possible.

How to Turn off Location-Based App Suggestions

By Paula Bostrom

How to Turn off Location-Based App Suggestions

In iOS 10, there are now two ways Siri makes app suggestions on the Lock screen. The first is the Siri app suggestions that appear in the Widget pane. The second are the time and location-based app suggestions that appear in the lower left corner of the Lock screen in the same place app icons appear when you’re using Handoff. If you don’t appreciate this feature, it’s easy to turn off app suggestions.

How to Use the Diverse Emoji Keyboard on the iPhone & iPad

By Paula Bostrom

How to Use the Diverse Emoji Keyboard on iPhone or iPad

A while back, Apple added more racial diversity to the faces on its emoji keyboard. While none of the emoticons or family groups offer options for different skin tones, the single human characters and body parts (hands, noses, etc.) all come with the diversity options. At this point, we’ve all seen Apple keyboard emojis in all their diversity, but not everyone knows how to use or change what emoji they select. Here’s how to use the diverse emoji keyboard on iPhone or iPad.

How to Send an iTunes or Apple Gift Card from Your iPhone

By Paula Bostrom

How to Send an iTunes or Apple Gift Card from Your iPhone

If you want to buy an iTunes or Apple gift card for a friend, you can easily do so right from your iPhone. Sending an iTunes gift card is a great gift because it can be used in iTunes, the App Store, Mac App Store, or iBooks so long as the recipient is logged in to each with the same Apple ID. This means the iTunes gift card you buy and send can pay for not only their music but any monthly app subscriptions or best selling novels they’ve had their eye on. If you’re not sure how to send that iTunes gift card, no worries, we’ll go over the whole process below. Here’s how to send an iTunes or Apple gift card from your iPhone.

How To Make Speakerphone Calls Using Siri

By Paula Bostrom

How To Make Speakerphone Calls Using Siri

I have several hours of commute time every week, and I don’t always have my iPhone’s Bluetooth headset with me. The last thing I want to do while going 55 on the highway is fidget around in Contacts looking for the person I need to call. Luckily, you can use Siri to make speakerphone calls whenever you need to keep your hands free. Here’s how to make speakerphone calls using Siri.

How to Edit a Video in Photos

By Paula Bostrom

How to Edit a Video in Photos

Video on the iPhone has gotten better and better. Now that we’re regularly using our iPhones to take said videos, we want them to take up as little storage as possible, which means any time we can trim off the video thereby reducing its file size is awesome. There are also those moments when you record preemptively in order to catch your shot, but afterward you want to edit out the excess footage. Luckily, you don’t need a fancy video editing software or app to do this. Here’s how to edit and trim a video in Photos.

How To Send Video Messages

By Paula Bostrom

How To Send Video Messages

Sometimes when you send a message, you want to send something more than just a text or a photo or an audio message. Maybe you want to send someone a video of your baby’s first steps or a cute video of your dog chasing his tail. Whether you want to take a video to send or use a video in your library, it’s easy to send video over messages.

How to Set Reminders on Your iPhone & iPad

By Paula Bostrom

How To Set Reminders on Your iPhone

I don't know about you, but if I don't write down my appointments and activities, I'm sure to lose them in a deep, dark corner of my mind. To say I'm merely forgetful is an understatement. The Reminders app allows me to set reminders on iPhone based on the time, day, or location. For example, my iPhone can remind me to pick up some milk on the way home from work using the phone's GPS. If you use iCloud, your reminders can also be synced among all your devices. Here's how to set a reminder on iPhone X and earlier iPhones. We'll also cover how to set an alarm or due date reminder, how to add a location-based alert, and how to get reminders to pop up on your iPhone so you don't miss them.

How to Customize Your Home Screen in iTunes

By Paula Bostrom

The placement of app icons on your iPhone’s Home screen can make life simple or hard. OK, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but app icon placement is important to those of us who crave organization. You can choose to organize your apps using your iPhone, but you may find it more efficient to do so using iTunes, since you can do things like reorder Home screen pages and sort apps according to your preferred criteria.

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