How-To

For some, it’s not easy to catch every word spoken when watching their favorite shows, videos, and movies on their devices. My mom has grown accustomed to watching her shows with closed captions, simply because she likes the added benefit of reading while she watches. Luckily, it’s easy to set up. You can turn on closed captions for media as your default on iPhone or iPad; here’s how.

Enabling Touch ID for use in apps means you can lock apps with your fingerprint. Touch ID apps allow you to lock apps on your iPad or iPhone in order to protect sensitive information such as private documents or personal finance information, instead of setting a password you might forget. However, other apps such as Facebook don’t allow you to use Touch ID to lock the app. Whether or not an app uses Touch ID depends on the developer and how they intend you use the app. Once you have Touch ID enabled on your iPhone, you can use your fingerprint to open the Touch ID apps of your choosing. We’ll go over how to set up Touch ID apps below. We’ll also cover which popular apps are Touch ID apps and which ones offer fingerprint lock. And since setting up fingerprint lock on your iPhone often requires a passcode, we'll also cover how to put a password on apps.

Maybe you want to get to inbox zero. Or maybe you need more iCloud storage on your device. Either way, you can set how long deleted iCloud emails stay in the trash on your iOS device. Once your emails have left the trash, they’re gone forever. So consider that when selecting your time; otherwise, this is a fantastic feature. Here’s how to set how long deleted iCloud emails stay in the trash on iPhone or iPad.

Did you know Siri is keeping a record of your conversations? Don’t worry; Siri only keeps a page of your most recent conversations with the AI. Which can actually be incredibly helpful if you ask a question and need to look at the answer multiple times. You don’t have to keep asking Siri over and over again if you’ve asked once. Just use this hidden trick to view your recent Siri conversation history.

If you ever needed more storage space on your iPhone you might have noticed that the Messages file is quite large. The next problem you might have is learning how to recover deleted text messages after you overzealously delete them all in the name of downloading a new app. Learning how to recover deleted messages is easy; so you can officially breathe again.

We have a tip on how you can view the desktop version of a website you’re viewing in Safari on iPhone or iPad. But that tip requires you tap the Share icon, then select View Desktop Version. Did you know that you can use the page refresh icon to view the desktop version of a web page instead? I had no clue until very recently; it’s a pretty awesome hidden trick. Here’s a hidden trick for viewing the desktop version of a website on your iPhone or iPad.

3D Touch can be a cool, helpful feature for a lot of people. But I also know some who never use the feature or even find that it gets in the way of simply pressing and holding something on the screen. Whatever your reasoning, you can turn 3D Touch off on your iPhone. And it’s very easy to do. Here’s how to turn 3D Touch off on iPhone.

So you want to know how to hide photos on your iPhone, eh? Well the iPhone doesn’t really allow you to create a private photo album even though your photos are techincally hidden. Hiding picture on your iPhone within the Photos app has some big loopholes that makes it easy for someone to find the photos you mean to keep private. Which is why we’ll go over how to hide photos with the built-in 'private' photo album, yes, but also how to lock photos away on iPhone so that they are hidden behind a passcode. We consider this the way to really, truly hide photos on iPhone. But 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 creating a locked photo album.

I use the Reminders app on my iPhone quite a bit. I’ll create a reminder to pick up my dry cleaning, to buy my cousin a birthday present, or to pay a bill. When I create Reminders, I usually set them to remind me on a certain day, at a certain time. But if I need to make a change to one reminder among many, manually shuffling through them is a pain. For example, I made a Reminder to “pay a fee for the school trip” my son was going on. I forgot what the fee amount was and needed the information before the due date. Instead of tapping each folder and scrolling through them to find it, I simply accessed the Reminders search field. Here’s how to search for a particular reminder on iPhone.

We’re all familiar with updating our iPhone’s iOS; but every now and again, a little box will pop-up telling us that our carrier settings need to be updated. Regardless of what cellular provider you use (Verizon, TFW, Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T, etc), every carrier has settings that need to be updated at times. A carrier settings update won’t take long to install. But it’s important to update your carrier settings on iPhone because the updates allow your cellular provider to update your network, enhance performance, and add new features such a Wi-Fi calling. We’ll cover a bit more on what a carrier settings update is below, as well as how to update your iPhone’s carrier settings.

If someone attempts to unlock an iPhone too many times unsuccessfully, an iPhone is Disabled, Connect to iTunes message will inevitably pop up. An iPhone will become disabled for security purposes—otherwise a hacker could sit there and try every possible combination until they got in. But just because your iPhone is disabled that doesn’t mean someone tried to unlock your device without permission. An iPhone or iPad may become disabled if a child plays around and gets locked out. It’s also perfectly possible to forget your own iPhone passcode, which may also cause you to enter too many digits and end up with a disabled iPhone asking to be connected to iTunes. Luckily, there are multiple solutions to this problem. Here’s how to fix a disabled iPhone by connect it to iTunes, iCloud, or using Recovery Mode.

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.

With iOS 10 on iPhone and iPad, the Game Center app we’re used to is gone. Apple ditched the app, but most Game Center features remain. Within apps, you can still sign into Game Center. It will track your score for the Leaderboards and take a tally of your in-game achievements. But without a designated app, how do you change your Game Center username? Here’s how.

There is a big difference between deleting and disabling your Instagram account. If you want to delete your Instagram account, it’s actually quite easy to do. But when you delete Instagram, that account is gone forever. If you just want to take a break or see how it would feel to delete Instagram, you also have the option to deactivate your Instagram, which is also known as temporarily disabling your Instagram account. When you deactivate your Instagram, you always have the option of re-activating your Instagram account in the future. However, if you’re certain you want to permanently delete your account, we’ll show you how to ditch Instagram completely. Here’s how to delete an Instagram account, or just temporarily disable it via deactivation.

When you delete cookies from your iPhone or iPad, you free up storage space and improve your device's performance speeds. When you clear the cache and cookies on your iPad or iPhone, you can also better protect your online privacy and potentially remove any malicious bugs your device may have picked up. And the good news is that to delete cookies from your iPhone takes only four simple steps in your Safari settings. Keep in minde that clearing cookies on your iPhone will delete saved logins and other website information.

We do a lot of screen recording at iPhone Life for our Insider program. Before iOS 11, learning how to record your iPhone screen meant either finding a screen capture app or plugging your iPhone into a computer with a software that can screen record, which we’ll go over how to do below. But with iOS 11 on iPhone, you can record your screen with nothing more than the built-in function. There are many instances in which you might need or want to record an iPhone screen. There are plenty of iPhone screen recorders on the market if you don’t mind spending some money. But we’ll cover your free options here. Whether you have iOS 11 or iOS 10 & earlier, here’s how to record your screen on iPhone.

We’ve covered how to lock notes in the Notes app on iPhone. But what if you want to remove a lock? Perhaps you locked a note for a period of time but no longer need to keep it hidden: how do you get rid of the lock on that Note? Luckily, it’s just as easy to remove a lock from Notes as it was to add a lock. Here’s how to remove a lock from Notes on iPhone.

I love to add my photos to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, whether it’s to show off my vacation or share pictures of my kids for distant family members to see. And, of course, there’s the not-so-occasional cute photo of my pets. If you have an account on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, there is an easy way to upload your photos from your iPhone or iPad right to your choice of social media sites. Here’s how to upload photos to your social media account on iPhone.