Offline maps help you get around an unfamiliar area whenever you anticipate encountering bad cellular reception and no internet connectivity. Google Maps and other map apps have had offline maps for a while now. But Apple Maps only had a little-known caching workaround to produce something even remotely similar to full offline maps — until now.
A new feature in Apple's latest big iPhone software update lets you personalize how you appear on other people's incoming call screens and even customize individual contacts on your own incoming call screen if they don't have a preferred style to show you.
Visual Voicemail revolutionized phone calls and the voicemail system when Apple introduced it with the original iPhone. Now, thanks to iOS 17, Apple has done it again with its newest calling feature, Live Voicemail. This feature uses speech-to-text technology to show you voicemail transcriptions on the incoming call screen in real time, helping you decide if it's important enough to answer the call.
If you're an avid YouTube viewer, you may find yourself overwhelmed on the home page by recommendations from your past viewing habits. But now, you can have a clean slate on your YouTube home screen, free of recommendations.
You may think your iPhone has all the features you could ever need or want, but that may change once you discover the features and services you're missing out on by residing in the United States.
Whether you subscribe to Apple TV+ or not, the TV app on your iPhone is a great place to watch movies and TV shows. On the surface, it looks like a pretty straightforward app, but hidden features are lurking in the shadows that can enhance how you use it.
Apple's upcoming iOS 17 is expected to include many new features first seen on Android, but there are also some exciting, unique features that Android needs to steal pronto.
Whether you're staying in your hometown for the weekend or traveling to a nearby or faraway city, live music is always a great option for entertainment — but finding decent music or a good music venue isn't always easy. With new features added to two of its core apps, your iPhone just made it easier to do both.
Taking a cue from Apple and its Health app for iOS, Google has created a central hub to collect health and fitness data on your Android device. With it, you can share and sync health and fitness data, such as steps, heart rate, water intake, sleep quality, and calories burned, between different apps and devices and use your favorite app to view all the information.
You may know the traditional way to take a screenshot on your iPhone, but it may not be the best action for your needs. There are faster ways to capture an image of your iPhone's screen, methods for capturing overlays and other elements that won't show in regular screenshots, and even options for blocking screenshot thumbnail previews from appearing.
On the latest iOS software, your iPhone comes with significant privacy and security enhancements to protect your data even more than Apple did before. From safeguarding your iPhone to passcode-protecting files to making it easier to browse the web safely, there's a lot you need to know and start using.
Siri can perform many actions for you on your iPhone, such as sending messages, providing information, getting directions, looking up a contact, and playing music. Still, there are even more important Siri voice commands that every iPhone owner should know — even the ones who hate Siri.
In the past, Apple never really put much work into its Contacts app for iPhone, making the tool much less useful than its Mac and iCloud counterparts. But now the Contacts app for iOS is a force to be reckoned with. Packed with new features (some hidden), it's finally good enough to beat all of the third-party contacts apps that previously reigned supreme.
If you're doing the same tasks on your Android phone repeatedly each day — like playing a specific playlist at the gym, viewing work documents, or watching your favorite music video — you can save some time by automating your routine, turning each task into a one-tap gesture on your home screen.
You may prefer reading news stories, web articles, and books on your iPhone over listening to them in spoken form. Still, sometimes it's necessary when driving, walking, cycling, cleaning, working, or performing other activities requiring a little multitasking. To help you out, Apple has a text-to-speech service on your iPhone — you just need to know how to find and set it up.
When you see foreign words on a sign, unfamiliar currencies on a dinner menu, or a recipe using a different measurement system, there's a good chance you google it for a translation or conversion. Your iPhone's Translate app comes in handy for real-world language translations, and Siri's pretty good at converting measurements, but there's an app on everyone's lock screen that can do both: Camera.
Apple's Contacts app just got its biggest update ever. Since the first iPhone in 2008, there have only been minor upgrades here and there to how you manage and interact with contacts. That changes with iOS 16.
With Apple's latest accessibility feature, you can get live transcriptions of anything you're listening to on or around your iPhone. Real-time captions work for phone calls, video conferences, FaceTime, music, podcasts, streaming media, movies, games, and more — even someone sitting right next to you talking.
The home screen is the most important part of your iPhone when it comes to customization, and Apple just gave us even more options to personalize it.
Some phone lines make it nearly impossible to get past the busy tone, whether it's a viral call-in giveaway, your state's unemployment office, your local post office during the holidays, or the repair office for a broken warrantied product you have. Thankfully, there are apps you can use to help break through the noise.
Apple's Weather app has been around forever, at least for iPhone, and it's gone through many design changes over the years. But we're at a point now where we can actually customize how the Weather app looks and feels in many different ways, some of which you probably haven't even considered.
If you're like me, you take more than just a few screenshots throughout the day, and they add up fast on your iPhone. When you snap that many images of the screen, your Photos app's "Screenshots" folder can swell beyond triple digits if you don't manage it, and your "Recents" folder will become a cluttered mess. But there is a trick to keeping screenshots in check, and you can have total control over it.
If your current cellular provider costs too much, has poor reception in your area, or doesn't support features you'd like to use, switching to another carrier is the obvious move. But can you bring your current iPhone or Android phone?
Whether you drop your iPhone into a toilet or your dog's water bowl or regularly take it into the shower or pool, water will likely become nestled inside its speaker grilles. Water exposure causes audio playback through the speakers to soften and sound muffled, and getting that water out is no easy task. Luckily, there's an app for that.
There are many things your iPhone or iPad can do, and Apple does an excellent job of documenting everything on its website. But there are some features that won't show up in any Apple manuals or help pages.
SharePlay is arguably one of the most significant features to hit FaceTime since group calls, and it's still hard to find apps that support shared experiences in FaceTime. Apple does list a few apps, but there is no official index of all the apps with SharePlay integration. That's where we come in.
To the end user, mobile apps are sometimes expensive. To the developers, those costs are justified for all the hard work put into making the apps. Sometimes app creators will meet in the middle by putting their apps on sale or giving them away for a limited time to gain more traction in the App Store.
Have you ever been locked out of your iPhone? Maybe you forgot your passcode. Or perhaps someone with access changed the passcode as a prank. Your iPhone's display could have even been damaged and unresponsive. Whatever the reason, there's an easy way to get back access to your iPhone the next time it happens.
Apple's iOS 15.4 update for iPhone is out after 46 days of beta testing, and it has some exciting features you won't want to miss. Here's everything you need to know about the new software.
Unless you have unlimited cellular data, you probably connect your iPhone to every Wi-Fi network you come across. It could be a local coffee shop, public library, or just a friend's place. Wherever it is, you'll need to ask for the access point's password if it's a secured network, and that can be a hassle if the place is busy or the owner forgets the credentials. Luckily, Apple has a solution for this problem.
Your Pixel's Now Playing song discovery tool received a few updates in Android 12, and the feature is finally comparable to other music recognition services.
Gaming on smartphones has grown considerably since the days of The Impossible Game and original Temple Run. Mobile games can be just as in-depth as console and PC video games, but some of those require external controllers for the best gameplay possible. One controller you can use is the PlayStation 5's DualSense wireless controller, and it pairs nicely with most Android devices.'
With the holidays right around the corner, it's easy to miss a big software update on your iPhone, and by that, I mean iOS 15.2, which was pushed out Monday, Dec. 13. There's a surprising amount of new features and changes in the updated firmware, and there are a few big ones you need to know about.
Apple's next big iOS update is ready for your iPhone, and it's out just a little bit more than a month after the iOS 15.0 update was released — and 14 days after iOS 15.0.2. The hottest feature you'll find in iOS 15.1 is definitely SharePlay, but what else is hiding within Oct. 25's new firmware?
The emergence of Facebook's collaboration with Ray-Ban to launch Stories smartglasses has finally put an exclamation point on a new category of smartglasses: the pre-augmented reality wearable segment.
The march to the mainstreaming of augmented reality can sometimes seem slow, but this week things picked up in earnest.
Over the past week, practically every major tech company working on augmented reality has held their quarterly earnings calls with investors, and each addressed or at least mentioned the role of AR during their prepared remarks. However, Facebook's earnings call had some of the spicier commentary on the technology.
Brands are increasingly adopting augmented reality to promote their products and services, and they have multiple paths for bringing AR experience to their audiences.
The recent announcement that Facebook will begin inserting advertisements into its VR experience on its Oculus Quest headset has set the VR and augmented reality industry into a frenzy.
Over the past few weeks, Google, Snap, and Facebook have all taken their turns to show off their new augmented reality technologies. This week, it was Apple's turn, with new AR features for iOS 15 along with new capabilities for developers.
