iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Best Tech to Bring to the Cookout

While cooking over fire may seem like an inherently primitive and lo-fi task, high-tech tools can make your barbecues easier and more enjoyable. In testing this new smart cookout gear, I was surprised and excited by how much it improved my cooking. Here is my definitive list of smart gadgets to help you channel your inner grill master and enhance your next outdoor gathering.

Find Out If Your Data's Been Compromised

(Sponsored Post) By Amy Spitzfaden Both on Thu, 01/08/2026

Here's a hard truth: it's a new year but the same people are buying and selling your information daily. But who are these people? This is where our friends at Incogni come in. They've launched a free data checker so you can see exactly which data brokers and people search sites have your information. 

I’ve long been complaining about the lack of any “find in page” functionality in most mobile Web browsers. Now that I’ve played a bit with JavaScript scriptlets, I can proudly present a working solution to this problem.

All you need to do is, independent of the Web browser you use, add the following favorite:

There are two ways to set a custom image as the wallpaper of your opening “unlock” screen:

  • Go to Photos, display the desired image, tap on the lower-left options button, and select “Use as Wallpaper” from the pop-up menu.
  • Open the Settings app and select General >Wallpaper.

Either of these methods allows you to use any photo or image on the iPhone/iPod touch as wallpaper. Follow these steps to add a wallpaper folder, so you don't have to look through all your photos to find an image:

Yesterday I wrote about a FAIL where movies for many iphone users are not playing. I do not have a the full answer as to why it’s not working, although it seems that the .flv (flash version) of the video is playing instead of the h.264 (apple version).   As of this writing, it still does not work for me; even after a few reboots.  However, I did find a way to get video to work.

It can be a nerve-wracking step, buying your child their first iPhone. There's a lot of inappropriate content in songs, movies, and apps, not to mention creepers and weirdos on the internet. Luckily, the iPhone has parental controls we can set to keep our children from accessing the more unsavory side of the digital world. In this tip, we'll learn how to use the Restrictions screen to enable restrictions and set a passcode so those settings can't be changed by anyone but you. Let's get started learning how to block websites, lock apps, and decide on Allowed Content, Privacy, Allowed Changes, and Game Center features. 

In addition to the four icons in the bar at the bottom, the Home screen holds 16 application icons. You can create up to eight additional pages for application icons and each page can hold an addition 16 app icons. So a total of nine Home screen pages, each of which can hold up to 16 app icons, plus the 4 icons at the bottom, means that you can have up to 148 apps on your iPhone.

Due to the Apple SDK constraints on developers of iPhone software, data exchanges with your phone is limited to email and local area network connectivity. 

Some iPhone applications such as “Files” allow you to import and read your Word, Excel, and PDF files from your desktop computer to your phone, and move that data to the iPhone by establishing a wireless connection between the phone and desktop over a LAN.

There is a starbucks near where I live, but the wifi there is horrible. Worse, I cannot get 3G, so basically, I go elsewhere. Then AT&T announced they were going to give iPhone users free wifi access. Great! But, you have to go through this silly login process: Link to process.. Whatever. It’s not a chore so much as just plain annoying. So much so, I do not bother and stick with edge.

If you want to transfer files from machine to machine on your network (without using a USB drive), there is a very simple application available in the iTunes App store called "Files lite". Look under the Productivity category to find it. It is an ingenious and free (if somewhat limited) way to turn your iPhone or Touch into a network attached storage device, as well as expand the ability to share files.

Work with your IMAP e-mail offline

By Anonymous (not verified)

IMAP e-mail accounts (such as Gmail and Hotmail) keep all of your e-mail on online servers, which means that you can't delete messages or read them unless you are online. Fortunately, you can set up your iPhone/iPod touch to copy your IMAP messages onto the device so that you can work with them offline. Here's how you do it:

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