iOS

With the release of iOS 11 and Apple’s debut of the new iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Pluse, and iPhone X, I wanted to feature an awesome augmented reality app so we can get a taste of what’s to come. With iOS 11 out, Apple’s ARkit for app developers is available too. Which means we’re going to see more and more apps that utilize the iPhone’s camera to present some kind of graphic, game, or information as a part of the world around us. The most popular example of AR on iPhone to date is, of course, Pokemon GO. But I’ve heard a lot of people wondering if and how AR could be used for more than just gaming. Well, I’ve got an incredible example today. Say hello to AR MeasureKit. Who needs a tape measure when you’ve got an iPhone? I’ll go over more ofwhat it does and why we love it below.

With WatchOS 3, the Apple Watch added the ability to make emergency SOS calls right from its Lock or Home screen. With iOS 11, the iPhone now has the same ability to call Emergency SOS. You turn this on within settings and enable Auto Call; so if you’re in a situation where you need help, it’s easy to make a call to emergency services such as 911. In order to call for emergency services on an iPhone running iOS 11 or later, you'll need to know your iPhone model since it's slightly different on iPhone 8. Here’s how to turn on Emergency SOS on iPhone.

Apple has released the official public iOS 11 this fall, which means it’s time to figure out how to use all the new features! Each new version of iOS comes with a steep learning curve, but we want to make it easy for you. That's why we created The Complete iOS 11 Guide for iPhone Life Insiders, and you can gain access to this video guide immediately when you become a member. This guide is packed with all of the how-tos, tips, and tricks you need to become an expert in iOS 11. We’ll cover everything you need to know, and we'll make it easy to follow with guided videos that’ll show you exactly what your iPhone or iPad screen will look like every step of the way. You’ll be teaching your friends iOS 11 tricks in no time. Check out a preview of the guide and learn more about the iPhone Life Insider membership below.

Best & Worst Features of iOS 11

By Sarah Kingsbury

In the 67th episode of the iPhone Life Podcast, the team shares their most loved and hated features of iOS 11 (spoiler: Donna's a big fan of Drag and Drop and Sarah loves lane guidance in Apple Maps). They also address concerns about the privacy and security of the iPhone X's Face ID feature and teach you how to optimize your storage with iOS 11.

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.

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.

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.

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.


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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 


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.

The Flyover feature of Apple's Maps, as you likely know, gives you a 3D view of a city. A list of these cities can be found on the website Flyover Cities. In iOS 8 Apple added a fun new feature called Flyover Tour that takes you on a 3D tour of the city's major landmarks. The Flyover Tour of New York City includes the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, Central Park, and more. Only some of the Flyover cities have a Flyover Tour. They include New York City, San Francisco, London, Paris, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Sydney.

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