By Chris Vasques
In iOS 11, Apple has dropped a major facelift, and functionality-lift, on the Control Center. If you use the Control Center a lot, the bold changes can be a little disorienting at first. From new and more useful controls to more customization, these are the coolest new features coming to iPhone and iPad with iOS 11.
With the iOS 11 beta 1 release, the Notes app looks poised to take on Evernote as the life-organizing app du jour. With in-line drawing, drag and drop features, tables, and expanded formatting options, iOS 11 integrates Notes into your daily workflow in new and organic ways. Continue reading to find out whether Notes in iOS 11 could replace your Evernote subscription.
By Jim Karpen
If you're like me, you spend a lot of time each day dealing with email. The swiping gestures available for marking and flagging email messages on iPhone can save you some of that time. You can use swiping gestures to mark emails as read or unread or flag them for follow-up, as well as every other function, such as forwarding or moving to another folder. Here’s how to use swiping gestures in Mail on iPhone.
By Conner Carey
iOS 10 is, arguably, the biggest update to come to iPhone. Not since the total redesign of iOS 7 have we seen changes this big to the iPhone’s operating system. From voicemail transcription (aka visual voicemail) to Siri with third-party integration, there’s a lot of new features to learn how to use. We’re still writing tips to cover all of the iOS 10 updates, but this roundup will feature my favorite top ten iOS 10 tips that we’ve published so far. We’ll include how to search for a destination that’s on your way in Maps, how to find your parked car with iOS 10, how to register as an organ donor in the Health app, and much more. Here’s the ten best iOS 10 tips every iPhone user should know.
By Conner Carey
Clearly something happened between the final beta and release of iOS 10. I had very few issues on the beta program, but iOS 10 public users, including myself, are having loads of problems and experiencing all kinds of big and little bugs. From battery drain in iOS 10 to Bluetooth connectivity problems, people are asking, “what were you thinking Apple?” We sure don’t know, but we’ve got plenty of troubleshooting fixes for those iOS 10 problems we’re all having. The first public iOS 10 update bricked some iPhones and iPads, but it seems Apple has fixed that issue with iOS 10.0.2. However battery drain remains the largest iOS 10 issue, so we’ll first cover how to fix that problem until another update can remedy the issue entirely. Let’s jump into the top iOS 10 problems and how to fix them.
By Conner Carey
With iOS 8 came iCloud Drive; and now, there's an app for that. iCloud Drive is, simply put, Apple's Dropbox. When you're logged into iCloud, you can easily save files to the drive, which are then accessible across all iOS devices and work in conjunction with OS X and Windows. With iOS 9, Apple has added an iCloud Drive app that makes it easy to view, edit, and manage the documents saved to your drive. The app is automatically included in the new update; however, the option to display the iCloud Drive app is hidden in your Settings.
By Rheanne Taylor
The purpose of a public beta is to allow users to try out a service and then submit feedback. With Apple’s iOS 9 public beta (which you can learn how to install here), that process has been made much easier with the included Feedback app, which allows users to report problems in a much more efficient way. Here’s how to submit your problems with iOS 9 directly to Apple.
By Conner Carey
When your iPhone is in Night Shift mode, the display emits light from the warmer end of the spectrum rather than the default blue light, which can interfere with sleep and strain the eyes. You can manually enable Night Shift mode or set a daily schedule for the feature. Here’s how to use Night Shift:
By Conner Carey
In iOS 9, you can view specifics on which apps are using your iPhone’s battery. If you find your battery is draining quickly, viewing detailed battery info is a great way to figure out why. You can see which apps use chunks of your battery life, how long the app was active, and how long the app was running in the background. This is also a great way to see how much time you're spending on a particular app; in case you're still in denial about your Facebook habit.
By Conner Carey
iPhone Proactive suggestions are really helpful sometimes. If you often invite the same group of people to meetings or events, or if you often email the same group of people, your iPhone will make it easy to continue to do so. Both the Calendar and Email app will provide suggestions when you begin to add commonly grouped contacts.
By Jim Karpen
Apple introduced third-party keyboards in iOS 8 after a lot of user requests. Now, the options seem endless, from the popular SwiftKey app to adding a gif keyboard for fun communication between friends. To add a third-party keyboard, the first thing you need to do is download a keyboard app from the App Store. Once downloaded, the setup is easy.
One of the interesting new features of iOS 9 is its "proactive" smarts. Apple wants your device to anticipate what you want to do depending on the context. A good example of that is how your iPhone or iPad now responds when you plug in earbuds or headphones. Your device figures that you want to listen to something, and a small icon appears in the lower left corner of your lock screen that shows the most recent audio app you've been using, whether that's Apple Music, Spotify, Podcasts, or any other app.
By Conner Carey
Siri received some major upgrades in iOS 9. One of the new ways you can use Siri is to ask about game schedules, scores and stats, and team members. If you have a favorite team, you can find out when they’re playing next as well.
By Conner Carey
With iOS 9, not only can you select multiple photos, but you can drag your finger over multiple photos to select them for sharing or deletion.
By Conner Carey
While Google and Apple go to war over ad revenues, we the consumers will sit back and enjoy our new option to block ads in Safari in iOS 9. Within days of the iOS 9 release, adblockers flooded the app store and ranged largely in price and performance. Now that the dust has settled, a clear contender for the best, free adblocker has emerged: AdBlock Fast.
By Conner Carey
If you’re on an iPhone 6, the iOS 9 update likely works wonderfully and does what Apple intended. However, users of earlier models of the iPhone are reporting a major lag in performance since updating. With every software release there are bound to be bugs. If you’re considering reverting to old software, keep in mind that iOS 9.1 will soon be available. If the performance bugs are minor, I recommend you wait; however, if the update has turned your iPhone into a fancy calculator, we’ve got four ways to make it a super computer again.
By Jim Karpen
After months of beta testing, iOS 9 will be available some time today for downloading. It offers a range of new features, including a News app, a more intelligent Siri, transit and walking directions in Maps, greater search capabilities, split-screen multitasking on the iPad, and more. I've been using the beta version since early August and really like it. In this tip I'll be covering how to update your device to iOS 9.
By Conner Carey
Not all streaming services are created equal. With the release of Apple Music, listeners quickly realized there were no quality control options. The difference, until now, was automatic: you heard higher quality sound when streaming music over a Wi-Fi connection than when streaming across cellular data. With iOS 9, Apple is letting you decide for yourself whether better music quality is worth increasing your cellular data usage or not.
By Conner Carey
One of the smaller changes with iOS 9 is the appearance of the keyboard when using the Shift key. Before, the keys were uppercase in appearance and the highlighted shift key was the only way to know you were typing in uppercase. With the update, the keys are lowercase except when Shift is active: the entire keyboard changes to uppercase. This can make it easier to know which case you're typing in; however, if you prefer the previous set-up, there's a simple Settings change to turn the lowercase keys off.
By Jim Karpen
The forthcoming iOS 9 has a lot of great new features, including the News app, split-screen multitasking on the iPad, transit and walking directions in Maps, new formatting options in Notes, and a more intelligent Siri. For the first time, Apple is making a beta version (which means a not-yet-final test version) available for public download. You can use the new iOS software and report any bugs to Apple. But beware: Apple advises users not to install it on their main device because there may still be some bugs and because some of your favorite apps may not work. If you'd like to give the new software a test run, you can download it by following these steps.
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