If you're not using Control Center on your iPhone, you're missing out on a powerful tool that can streamline how you interact with your device, make certain tasks more efficient, and give you quick access to system tools, switches, and sliders for quick changes no matter where you are or what app you're in.
Apple has a new way to tidy up your favorite bookmarks in Safari, making them easier to access than ever before. This new feature saves space, allowing you to quickly see more of your favorites at the same time.
There's a quick way to see who you or somebody else has been chatting with the most in the Messages app for iOS and iPadOS. More specifically, it shows which conversations have the most attachments, such as photos and videos, giving you an idea of which chats are the most active visually.
Emoji have taken over the world, so there's a good chance you regularly use (or overuse) emoji on your iPhone's keyboard just like everyone else. But before emoji were popular, there were emoticons, short for "emotion icons" — and iOS has a secret emoticon keyboard just waiting for you to unlock.
If you've ever wanted or needed to use an app in a different language than your phone's primary language, your Android phone now makes it a simple process.
YouTube Music just refreshed the user interface for playlists, seemingly taking away the ability to shuffle the songs in your playlists. While the update has been rolling out for months, you might just be getting the updated look on your smartphone, and there's no giant "Shuffle" button like there was before. But that doesn't mean there's no more shuffling.
You can view and hide iCloud contact groups on your iPhone, but Apple won't let you create or delete groups or add or delete contacts from any groups unless you're on a tablet or computer. Why Apple refuses to add a group management tool to Contacts on iOS is anybody's guess, but there is a workaround you can use instead.
From time to time, you may need to locate the version and build number for a particular app on your iPhone or iPad, but it's not at all obvious where you can find the information. Well, there's more than one place to look on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, but none are perfect solutions. Knowing each method will ensure you can always find any app's real version number.
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.
The hottest word game right now is Wordle, a simple game that gives you six chances to guess the five-letter word of the day. I've already shown how you can add the real Wordle app — not a fake clone — to your iPhone or Android phone's home screen. But there's also a way to save Wordle for offline gameplay for years to come.
If you've ever used your iPhone's hidden Field Test mode to view your signal strength in decibel-milliwatts, locate the tower you're connected to, or find out the radio frequency in use, you no longer have to dig through all of the confusing-looking data every time you need to check. Apple updated Field Test's interface in iOS 15, and one improvement gives you more control of the Dashboard.
You're caught up on "Squid Games," and you've rewatched "Seinfeld" for the umpteenth time. You're looking forward to the next season of "Stranger Things," but it isn't out yet. Why not play Stranger Things on Netflix instead?
Your iPhone is full of apps that are all vying for your attention. Notifications from Facebook, Instagram, and even Apple Messages can get out of hand fast. With iOS 15, Apple gives you the tools to choose exactly who can contact you and when. Keep reading to see how to take control of your iPhone's notifications so that you only receive the most important alerts.
If you save your passwords in Chrome or even just use Android's default password manager, Google has some new security tools you'll be interested in.
The Shortcuts app can help you play the next unlistened podcast from one of the shows, but getting the latest unplayed episodes from your whole queue of shows in the Podcasts app is a little trickier. There is an easy way to do it on your iPhone, though, and you can even automate it so that Podcasts plays your most recent untouched episode automatically.
If you like to listen to popular songs from huge musicians and hard-to-find music from obscure indie artists, SoundCloud is for you — and you don't have to pay a dime. When you find a song you really love and want to play it back even when you're not connected to the internet, SoundCloud has offline listening, but there is a way to download your favorite tracks onto your iPhone for longevity.
Your iPhone keeps track of every single place you go, especially those you frequent most often, and syncs those locations across all your iCloud-connected devices. People who gain access or already have access to your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac may be able to view all of these locations to see where you've been and where you might be. If this worries you, there are things you can do.
Every now and then, an iOS secret surfaces that makes me wonder, "How am I just learning about this?" I remember the first time I found out how to delete numbers in the Calculator app, and when I discovered you could bulk-move apps around the Home screen. Now, there's another tip to add to the list: a hidden iOS app whose icon you quite literally can't find unless you know where to look.
There are hidden Wi-Fi networks all around you — networks that will never show up in the list of available unlocked and password-protected hotspots that your phone or computer can see — but are they more secure than regular networks that broadcast their name to any nearby device?
Since iOS 11, your iPhone has been capable of offloading hardly used apps to free up storage space for more useful data. But offloading only gets rid of the app's binary, meaning its documents and data are stored on your device in case you reinstall the app. That can take up a lot of space itself, so it's good to periodically review files for offloaded apps and purge the content you no longer need.
Working with people in different time zones can be difficult when scheduling a time to meet up virtually, whether it's on Zoom, FaceTime, another video chatting app, or just a good old-fashioned phone call. The time needs to be good for all parties, and trying to remember UTC offsets and doing mental math isn't easy. Luckily, there's an easier way to deal with time zones on your iPhone.
The internet is saturated with low-quality pictures, making it difficult to find a high-resolution image for specific albums, TV shows, movies, podcasts, music videos, apps, and books. Apple uses high-quality images, but it seems impossible to download cover art, posters, thumbnails, icons, and other images from within its apps on your iPhone. Now, with the help of a shortcut, it's as simple as can be.
One of the most significant changes in iOS 14 is something we've wanted for a very long time, and it will change the way you use your iPhone. Since the very first iPhone OS 1 (yes, before it was even "iOS"), we've been stuck with Apple Mail as the default emailing app. That all changes now.
Using your iPhone for a smart home remote just keeps getting better and better. Apple has consistently improved its HomeKit platform since the Home app came out, adding new features, tweaks, and refinements to the system with each update. And iOS 14 continues this trend with a few changes to help make your home even smarter and easier to use.
Thanks to the Snapdragon X55 modem, the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Note 20 are among the most compatible 5G phones on the market. There are few bands they don't cover, as the modem supports both Sub-6 GHz and mmWave. But even with such broad support, the Galaxy S20 doesn't get the best 5G reception.
Your Galaxy uses information from your SIM card to communicate with nearby towers and facilitate a connection. Which LTE bands you are assigned depends on a number of factors, including available bandwidth and your device's supported signals. But if speeds aren't great on your auto-selected tower, you can improve things by manually choosing a band.
Google has added a flurry of new features to its YouTube Music recently to prepare it to replace Google Play Music, which will be sent to live on a farm with Google Reader, Inbox by Gmail, and other sunsetted Google products by the end of the year.
With the Wigle WiFi app running on an Android phone, a hacker can discover and map any nearby network, including those created by printers and other insecure devices. The default tools to analyze the resulting data can fall short of what a hacker needs, but by importing wardriving data into Jupyter Notebook, we can map all Wi-Fi devices we encounter and slice through the data with ease.
The Digispark is a low-cost USB development board that's programmable in Arduino and capable of posing as a keyboard, allowing it to deliver a number of payloads. For only a few dollars, we can use the Digispark to deliver a payload to a macOS computer that will track the Mac every 60 seconds, even bypassing security like a VPN.
Anything from work or a missed flight to a worldwide pandemic (COVID-19, anyone?) can make it difficult or nearly impossible to see your loved ones. You can make phone calls or send iMessage, text, or email messages, but nothing compares to seeing family and friends right in front of you. That's where FaceTime comes in.
So far, iOS 13's major point updates have all been pretty exciting for iPhone. We've seen iOS 13.1, 13.2, and 13.3 come and go, offering more than 60 new features and changes combined to that very first version of iOS 13. While iOS 13.3.1 was a minor update, its successor, iOS 13.4, is a return to form.
So you want to know what that person who is always on their phone is up to? If you're on the same Wi-Fi network, it's as simple as opening Wireshark and configuring a few settings. We'll use the tool to decrypt WPA2 network traffic so we can spy on which applications a phone is running in real time.
Black Friday is upon us. Whether you prefer to duke it out in stores or calmly shop online, there's no doubt you'll find great deals on the items you're looking for this holiday season. It's the perfect time of year to buy something expensive, like a good pair of AirPods, Beats, or Bose, at a much more opportune price.
One of the coolest aesthetic features of iMessage is its animated message effects. If you're like many users, you might even have discovered them by accident, where wishing your friend a "Happy Birthday!" or congratulating them on a promotion unexpectedly flooded your screen with balloons or confetti.
Apple has seemingly always made it a priority to show how much it cares about user security and privacy — enough that it has a page dedicated to it, proclaiming that "privacy is a fundamental human right." It's true that there are few issues more important than user privacy when it comes to technology, and Apple only makes things better in iOS 13.
It's finally out. After months of testing, iOS 13 is available to install on your iPhone, which means over 200+ new features you can use right now. The update, released on Sept. 19, can be installed over the air or from a restore image using iTunes in macOS Mojave and older or Finder in macOS Catalina. Ditto for the 13.1 update issued on Sept. 24.
Apple shocked us all yesterday when it released iOS 13.1 developer beta 1. It was an unprecedented move since iOS 13.0 is still in beta testing and since Apple has never pushed out a "point" beta release before the stable base version. And now, you can get your hands on iOS 13.1 for iPhone if you're on the public beta.
Apple's upcoming update for the iPhone, iOS 13, is introducing over 200 new features. Many of those were never formally announced, instead silently released in new updates to the beta. After eight developer beta cycles, we were anxiously awaiting the release of developer beta 9. What we got instead, however, was the first iOS 13.1 developer beta.
September is nearly here, which means new iPhones are, too. We're looking forward to iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max, as well as the more affordable iPhone 11R. All three iPhones will run iOS 13, so Apple's entrusting beta testers to ensure its new OS is ready. The latest update, developer beta 8, is now here for us to test.
Apple dropped the sixth public beta for iOS 13 today, Aug. 15. This public update comes just hours after the release of developer beta 7, an interesting move for Apple. The company has recently stuck to a schedule of seeding the public beta at least one day after the developer beta, presumably to weed out any debilitating bugs that might have gone unnoticed.
