By Jim Karpen
I've had the experience of finding a smartphone and having a hard time figuring out who the owner is. It always seems urgent, since I know the owner is desperately looking for it. Should you find a lost iPhone or iPad, you can simply ask Siri who the owner is. Siri will tell you the owner and show contact information. Here’s how to return a lost iPhone or iPad to its rightful owner.
By Conner Carey
You can hide photos on an iPhone in the Photos app—kind of. By kind of, I mean you can hide the photos from Years, Collections, and Moments. However you can’t hide photos from All Photos, which means you aren’t really hiding the photo much at all. Anyone who looks through your photos will still be able to find the supposedly hidden photo private picture folder on your iPhone. But there is a way to really, truly hide photos on iPhone from prying eyes using the Notes app to make a private picture folder on your iPhone. For even more security, you can also use an app to hide photos in a secret photo album on iPhone. Here’s how to hide photos on iPhone.
By Conner Carey
Making a second Instagram account is fairly easy to do with the right instructions. If you already have multiple Instagram accounts, you can simple add an account for easier management of your Instagrams. It used to be that in order to have a second Instagram account, you needed to keep the two separate, forcing you to log in and out when switching between accounts. But Instagram finally got the (not-so-subtle) hint. Managing multiple Instagram accounts is easy now that Instagram has made it possible to switch between accounts without logging out. This means you can create a second Instagram account and add it to the first or set up a second Instagram account within your first. Doing this is perfect for keeping your business and personal Instagram accounts separate but equally accessible. Here’s how to create a second Instagram account and add it to your current one for easily managing multiple Instagram accounts.
By Conner Carey
Few people know that the passwords you’ve saved in Safari are available to view on your iPhone. Don’t worry about security, your fingerprint (Touch ID) is needed to access the passwords. But if you’ve forgotten your login name or password, this tip makes it easy to find and view them. Here’s how to view your Safari login names and passwords.
By Conner Carey
Instagram introduced My Story to the app a while back. My Story allows users to film or snap pictures and short videos to share with their followers. If a follower is on at the right time, they can even tune into your Story in real time, or they can tap on your circle at the top of their Instagram feed later on to watch it. Your Story lasts a day before disappearing, allowing your followers to keep up with you in yet another way. But maybe there are some followers you’d rather didn’t view your Story on Instagram. You have the option to hide your Instagram Story from specific people; here’s how.
By Sarah Kingsbury
Each Apple ID can be assigned a credit card for use with iTunes, the App Store, iBooks, and any other purchases you make via apps on iPhone. You can update your Apple iTunes billing info on iPhone or the computer and choose a different credit card for iTunes and your Apple ID. (You can also change your Apple ID, here's how) Keeping your iTunes payment information updated is important since any purchases you make —whether in-app purchases or Apple Music subscription— will be charged to that credit card. Here’s how to change your iTunes credit card on your iPhone and on your computer. The process is the same if you want to know how to add a debit card to iTunes in place of your credit card.
By Paula Bostrom
You can stream music from your iPhone to your Apple TV using Airplay. This wireless option makes listening to your music collection on your TV easy to do. It’s nice to Airplay your music to your Apple TV when you’re having a party or cleaning the house and you want music to serenade you. A college classmate of mine once told me that he played music constantly day and night. “I feel like I need a soundtrack for my life,” he said. It’s been 20 years since I’ve seen him and music playback has come a long way since that CD player clipped to his belt. If my former classmate now owns an iPhone, my guess would be that he is using AirPlay to keep his tunes playing wherever he goes. Here’s how to play music on Apple TV from iPhone using Airplay.
By Sarah Kingsbury
Need iPad and iPhone help? Sign up for iPhone Life Insider and I’ll help you with all of your iPhone troubleshooting and iOS-related issues. Here’s a question from an Insider whose photos have an inaccurate date stamp, which is causing photo management problems on their iPhone.
By Conner Carey
In the Calendar app on iPhone, you can view days and months automatically. But you can also turn on week numbers, which will allow the Calendar app to display the week number of this year. Not everyone will find this tip necessary but if you like or need to know what week of the year it is, use this tip to display it. Here’s how to show week numbers in the Calendar app on iPhone.
By Sarah Kingsbury
The default iPad and iPhone signature in iOS Mail is "Sent from my iPad" or "Sent from my iPhone." But while some people may be happy to declare what device they are using at the bottom of every email they send, others prefer to provide other information, such as the name of the sender and additional contact information. Here's how to remove or change your email signature. This tip will let you change your signature in Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook emails sent from iPhone as well as your Apple iCloud account.
By Conner Carey
Being able to use your iPhone or iPad as a remote for your Apple TV is a fantastic feature, especially since the included remotes are easily lost. Using Siri to type on Apple TV (Gen 4) isn’t perfect, which makes using your iPhone or iPad to type on Apple TV the quickest way to type anything on Apple TV. Forget sliding across or spelling out each letter of a strangely spelled word to Siri, just use the Remote app on iPhone or iPad to make it easy. Here’s how to use your iPhone or iPad to type on Apple TV.
By Sarah Kingsbury
Need iPad and iPhone help? Sign up for iPhone Life Insider and I’ll help you with all of your iPhone troubleshooting and iOS-related issues. Here’s a question from an Insider who wants to know how to mass delete emails on iPhone. In my answer I cover how to get rid of all emails at once on iPhone or iPad and how to clear all unread email on iPhone or iPad:
By Jim Karpen
Reader mode in Safari on iPhone allows you to read a webpage without any distractions. When you turn on Reader mode, only the text and photos are left. This makes it easy to focus on reading the article you’re looking at; I’ve also found that Reader mode makes the text easier on the eyes. Here’s how to use Reader mode in Safari on iPhone.
By Conner Carey
I recently wrote an article on how to get messages on Mac, but when I was doing my research, it became clear to me that users have trouble figuring out how to sync messages from iPhone to Mac. Even if you’ve been sending and receiving messages on Mac, it’s possible your iMessage suddenly stopped working. This problem with iMessage is a communication error between your devices. If you’re receiving messages on iPhone and separate messages on Mac, something has gone awry. But we can pretty easily fix iMessage by going through the steps to sync iPhone to Mac and iPhone to iPad. Here’s how to sync iPhone messages to Mac and iPad.
By Conner Carey
If you’re concerned about Notes disappearing on your iPhone, creating all your Notes in your iCloud Notes folder is the best way to go. But if you have a note with sensitive material that you want to keep super private, you can store those notes locally on your iPhone. To do this, you simply turn the On My iPhone account on for Notes. We’ll go over how to do that. Here’s how to keep your sensitive notes out of the iCloud.