How-To

For years, we’ve recommended turning off Background App Refresh on your device to save battery life and cellular data. Background App Refresh automatically refreshes apps you have open in the background so that when you go to look at the app again, the page is already up to date and loaded. Which is why the feature can siphon off your data without you noticing. But now, with iOS 11 on iPhone, you can choose to turn Background App Refresh on only when your device is using a WiFi connection. That way, you can enjoy the perks of the feature without worrying about how much data it’s using. Here’s how to set background app refresh to Wi-Fi only with iOS 11 on iPhone.

Birthdays are a great thing to celebrate with those you care about. If you have someone's birthday saved with their contact information, the Calendar app will automatically create an all-day event for that date. However, with iOS 11, Facebook events seem to have dissapeared from Calendar along with Facebook birthdays. For some this will be welcome, since it means seeing generally less birthdays. But if you want to hide birthdays altogether, it's a a simple process. Here’s how to hide birthdays in the Calendar app on iPhone.

I’ve tried Mealime (Free) in the past and shared my experience. It’s one of the few practical daily meal planning apps, as it offers meals you can make within about 45 minutes. Every meal I’ve tried is super delicious, and my only real complaint is that there needs to be even more variety (new recipes are added every week). However, if you’re a busy professional or caretaker who wants to feed yourself and your family healthy meals, I highly recommend giving Mealime a try. The free version is limited but perfect for testing it out. The pro version of Mealime is $5.99 a month; so if you decide you love it too, it won’t break the bank. We’ll go over more of what Mealime does and why we love it below.

With each new iOS, Apple improves the once barely adequate Notes app. Now, it’s a bona fide note-taking app with lots of features. With iOS 11, the list of features grows with the ability to add tables to a note now possible. Making a table in the Notes app can be helpful for creating various items. For example, you could use one to keep an easy tally of your expenses. Here’s how to add a table to Notes with iOS 11 on iPhone.

I remember the days of taking home a huge vocabulary list home from school and spending hours memorizing the definitions. Back then, it was pain in the ass. But nowadays, I get a secret joy from using those same vocabulary words I dreaded. I don’t know about you, but as an adult, I still want to learn new words and continue to expand my vocabulary. Of course, the best way to do that is to read. But the next best way may very well be this app. The Daily Word is a super simple app that gives you a new word to learn each day along with its pronunciation, definition, and an example sentence. Here’s more on what it does and why we love it.

One of the Apple Watch's many benefits is the ability to manage incoming messages and notifications from your wrist. But if you've let the notifications pile up, don't worry about going through and dismissing them one by one; there's an easy way to dismiss all your notifications at once. When your Apple Watch notifications start to pile up, here’s how to clear all of them at once.

If you have an Instagram account, you’ve surely seen reposted photos with credit given to the account it originated from. But there is no option to repost a photo within the Instagram app, so how do they do it? With a third-party app! Being able to repost photos is crucial for businesses and fun for individuals. There are multiple third-party apps you can use to repost photos to Instagram, but I’m going to show you my favorite and how I use it along with the Instagram app to repost a photo.

If you take a photo within Messages, it isn’t automatically saved to your iPhone. If you take a photo you really like, you’ll want to manually save it with this tip. It’s nice that iPhone doesn’t automatically save those photos so that you aren’t accidentally taking up too much space or saving private photos meant only for the conversation. But if you send a photo you like, here’s how to save it to the Photos app.


Playing an iPhone prank on your friend for April Fool’s Day is a pretty brilliant, easy way to get your shenanigans on. Today is April 1, so we thought this would be a good time to bring up our three favorite iPhone pranks to play on your friends. From the classic ellipsis gif prank to the home screen fake out — your friends will never see it coming.

When you tilt your screen on iPhone, it automatically rotates. This is helpful in many different scenarios; but on iPhone Plus models, a horizontally rotated phone makes certain stock apps look slightly different—this is called Landscape mode on iPhone.The larger screen on the iPhone Plus models is used to present more information in split screen format. When your iPhone 6, 6s, 7, or 8 Plus is held horizontally, your iPhone is in Landscape mode. Some iPhone Plus users appreciate the split screen Landscape mode, especially in apps like Mail, where they can simultaneously view their inbox and a specific email. However, there are plenty of iPhone 7 Plus or iPhone 8 Plus users who would rather just turn off auto rotate on iPhone or Landscape mode entirely. We’ll show you what Landscape mode looks like in different apps below with horizontal iPhone screenshots from the iPhone 7 Plus. Then we’ll get to how to turn off auto rotate on iPhone in case you decide Landscape mode is not your style. We'll also cover how to remove split screen from Landscape mode on your iPhone Plus and continue enjoying the extra horizontal screen space.

I often refer to Evernote as my “second brain.” The app allows me to follow a modified version of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy, a productivity method designed to help you arrange a systematic workflow to prioritize, manage, and execute important tasks while snoozing those that can wait. Today, I don’t know what I would do without my omnipresent, all-knowing digital assistant. Here are some tips that will keep you coming back to the green, glowing reliability of Evernote.

I think we can all agree that money can be a tense subject. Rarely do we enjoy reminding a friend they owe us twenty bucks for last week’s group dinner. But, if you’re a social animal in the slightest, I’m sure you’ve found yourself splitting a tab with friends and family. At the beginning of this year, some of the iPhone Life team took a trip to Mexico, where we had to split a whole lot of different things from dinner to snorkeling. But it was easy to keep track of and pay each other back thanks to the app Splitwise (free). Here’s what it does and why we love it.

If you have an iPhone 6s or later, you can turn on Siri by saying, “Hey, Siri” even when your iPhone isn’t plugged in. However, you also have the option to press and hold your Home button to activate Siri. With iOS 11 on iPhone, you can now turn press and hold to activate Siri off and reply solely on activating Siri with your voice by saying, “Hey, Siri.” If you often accidentally activate Siri when pressing your Home button, this is a great way to stop that from happening. Here’s how to turn off Press Home for Siri and instead only activate with Hey, Siri on iPhone.

The games I play most often on my iPhone are those I can easily pick up for a few minutes and set back down without needing to get too heavily involved. I also very much enjoy a game that makes me think a bit by figuring out some elaborate puzzle. The puzzle adventure game Aurora for iPhone or iPad combines both of those in an adorable game that asks you look at things from all different perspectives. Here’s what this game is all about and why we love it.

iPhone Life’s resident iPhoneographer and Managing Editor Rheanne Taylor has a favorite photo editing app that she uses constantly for her polishing her photos: Darkroom Photo Editor (free). But it’s not just her—avid photographers will tell you their all-time favorite filter from Darkroom at the drop of a hat, and a quick look at the app’s review will tell you much users love it. This app offers users a lot of control over their photos with a wide range of options. Access to the basic features of the app is free, but users say it’s well worth $3.99 to get all the premium tools or $5.99 for all the tools and filters. We’ll tell you more about the Darkroom app below, including what  it can do and why we love it.

One of the big safety features of iOS 11 is the new Do Not Disturb While Driving feature. When it’s on and set up, your iPhone won’t receive notifications while you’re driving unless you let it know you aren’t the person driving. It will also send automatic text replies to those who try to reach you to let them know that you’re driving and not available. And if it’s an urgent message, the person can reply "Urgent" and the text will go through. It’s a great feature for those who get distracted by their phone when driving. Here’s how to turn on Do Not Disturb While Driving with iOS 11 on the iPhone.

Apple Music's social networking feature lets you follow your favorite musicians. They share things such as behind-the-scenes photos, lyrics they're working on, a new video, and whatever else interests them. When you add songs to your music library, by default the artists are automatically added to your Connect Posts. But you may not want to follow some of these artists. In my case, for example, I added Beethoven, but it seems unlikely he'll be sharing anything. You can change the default so that artists aren't automatically added. Or you can unfollow selected artists that were added by default. Here’s how to unfollow artists in Apple Music on iPhone.

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