Third-Party Apps

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.

A while ago, Facebook introduced autoplay for videos on the social network. Perhaps the most obnoxious part about it is that every time a video ad starts playing in your News Feed, you are essentially paying with your precious data or battery power for them to advertise to you. Fortunately, it's easy to disable this feature. Here’s how to disable Facebook’s video autoplay.

A while back, you may have noticed color gradients suddenly appearing behind friends' Facebook statuses. At first, I found them quite disconcerting; but I’ve started to get used to the darn things, and I even use them now and again. By now, the feature has rolled out to most (if not all) Facebook users. Here’s how you can add colored or patterned backgrounds to your Facebook posts on iPhone.

We’ve all done it. We’ve all searched Facebook for a particular person while looking over our shoulder to make sure no one can see us. Whether it’s a long-lost friend, ex-partner, your mischievous child, or someone else, we’ve all searched for a person on Facebook that we don't want other people knowing we’ve searched for. I have a (silly) habit of looking up the person I have a crush on, only to feel embarrassed after the fact. So to soothe my blushing cheeks, I simply clear that Facebook search history and pretend I didn’t just do that. Here’s how you can clear your Facebook search history so we can all be secret onlookers together.

There are various ways to share Kindle books. With friends, you can loan ebooks out for a couple weeks. But if you set up Family Sharing with Amazon, you can share Kindle books with family members easily and with fewer limitations. When you share Kindle books, the recipient can read the Kindle book you lend them via the Kindle app on iPhone or iPad, as well as Kindle devices, including Kindle Fire. Kindle family sharing allows two adults to create an Amazon Household with up to four children. The two adults in your Kindle family must have separate Amazon accounts. However, setting up family sharing and sharing Kindle books with your Amazon Household is actually quite straightforward. We’ll go over how to set up Family Sharing on Amazon, how to share Kindle books with that family, how to access content shared with you via Amazon Kindle family sharing, and how to leave an Amazon Household should you need to in the future. Here’s everything you need to know about how to share Kindle books with family members.

Apple Maps got a lot of improvement with iOS 10, but one area in which it’s still behind Google Maps is transportation options when getting directions. Unfortunately, you still can’t get bicycle direction on Apple Maps. However, you can find a bicycle route in Google Maps. Luckily, you can easily use Google Maps to get great bicycle directions on your iPhone; here’s how.

How you view lyrics on iPhone will vary depending on what music streaming service you use and how you decide to display lyrics. Apple Music in iOS 10 adds lyrics to songs but usually only popular songs, which means you may still want to use an app to add or view lyrics that can’t be displayed by Apple. Don’t worry though, we’ll go over lots of ways in which you can see lyrics on iPhone while playing your music, from Apple Music to Spotify and more. We’ll also cover our favorite websites and the best app for adding and viewing lyrics. Here’s how to see get lyrics on iPhone while listening to your music.

If you’ve never had your Facebook hacked into, consider yourself one of the lucky few. Nearly everyone I know has had their Facebook account hacked into at some point or another. While you can never be sure no one will ever manage to get in, there are important steps you can take to make your profile secure again. If your Facebook has been hacked, here’s what to do.

Big news broke the internet recently. Since Instagram now has Snapchat-like features such as disappearing photo stories, the social network decided to continue its imitation: if someone takes a screenshot of your disappearing photo, you will receive a notification. While the internet seemed to freak out over this, it’s a great measure for privacy. Disappearing photos are supposed to...well, disappear. So it only makes sense that you’d receive a notification when someone decides your disappearing photo should be a more permanent photo on their device. Now that Instagram stories are a bit more secure, here’s how to take an Instagram photo that will disappear.

Facebook’s selection of free stickers is so much better than Apple’s, which is one of the many reasons users love Messenger so much. Stickers in Facebook Messenger work very similarly to stickers in Messages: you can download sticker packs and send them to friends. Since Facebook Messenger has such a great variety of stickers, they’re a lot of fun to use. Here’s how to download stickers for Facebook Messenger on iPhone.

Did you know that you can send and receive money from your friends via Facebook Messenger? I didn’t until I received a notification informing me that my sister had sent me $5. It seems there are a million apps for sending friends and family money these days, from Venmo to Snapchat. But if you already have a debit card connected to your Facebook account, then using Messenger to send or request money on iPhone is the quickest way to go. Here’s how to send and request money via Messages on iPhone.

With iOS 10, Apple Maps got a huge, and needed, upgrade. The Maps app is now capable of doing a whole lot more, including connecting to third-party apps on your device. For example, let’s say you want to make a restaurant reservation. If you have your reservation app-enabled for use with Apple Maps, then you can look for a restaurant, make the reservation, and get directions all within the Maps app. Here’s how to enable and use Apple Maps extensions on iPhone.

The TV app on iPhone or iPad allows you to bring all of your shows and movies together in one app. You can sign in with your cable provider to watch shows from ABC, NBC, and many others. You can also connect your streaming services such as Hulu, Netflix, and HBONow. If you’re concerned about using too much cellular data watching shows, you can turn this feature off. But if you’ve got enough data and want to watch your shows even when you don’t have Wi-Fi, use this tip to turn on Cellular Data for playback.

If you already have a Paypal account that’s connected to either your bank account or debit/credit card, sending a friend or family member money couldn’t be easier with Paypal on iPhone. The best part is that Paypal doesn’t charge you anything to send money to friends and family, which means it’s perfect for splitting a bill, settling a bet, helping a friend, or whatever other reason you might need to send them money. Here’s how to send someone money via Paypal on iPhone.

Instagram introduced My Story to the app a while back. My Story allows users to film or snap pictures and short videos to share with their followers. If a follower is on at the right time, they can even tune into your Story in real time, or they can tap on your circle at the top of their Instagram feed later on to watch it. Your Story lasts a day before disappearing, allowing your followers to keep up with you in yet another way. But maybe there are some followers you’d rather didn’t view your Story on Instagram. You have the option to hide your Instagram Story from specific people; here’s how.

Do you have friends who use Facebook to play games like Candy Crush? Do those friends send you constant game invites, never getting the hint that you don’t want to play? If your answer is no, consider yourself lucky. Most of us have logged on to see that all of our notifications were merely invitations to games we’ve never, ever been interested in playing. Luckily, Facebook allows you to turn off notifications for game invites and apps completely. Here’s how to never get a game invite on Facebook again. 

Instagram is my favorite form of social media. We’ve been trying to convince our web editor, Sarah Kingsbury to get an account for months. And she finally did once I invited her to join, which was easy to do within the Instagram app since she’s also my Facebook friend. If you have friends on Facebook who don’t know the join Instagram, here’s how to invite them to give it a try.

Unfollowing friends on Facebook is an easy way to stay friends with someone without seeing their posts. But maybe you want to reconnect with them now. You can easily choose to start following them on Facebook again, which will simply allow Facebook to show you their posts in your News feed. Here’s how to reconnect with people you unfollowed on Facebook.

You may have seen some really stunning artwork on Instagram recently that looks like a photo with a really intricate filter. These photos as artwork became a huge trend on social media when the photo editing app Prisma started trending. There are entire Instagram accounts dedicated to sharing Prisma photos and for good reason—they’re stunning. Here’s how to turn your photos into artwork on iPhone.

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