It's no secret that you can quickly toggle the flashlight and open Camera from your iPhone's Lock Screen using the bottom left and right buttons. But what you may not know is that you can customize those buttons to perform different actions on your iPhone.
The updated Messages app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac has some really cool new features, but the one you may end up using the most is something you're already familiar with: Tapbacks. With iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia 15, Tapbacks are improved and contain even more reactions to choose from.
In less than a month, WWDC, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, will reveal the company's plans for the upcoming iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 software updates. But we already know what accessibility features will be hitting iPhones and iPads later this year, and many of them will be helpful to everyone, not just users with accessibility issues.
When you take a screenshot on your iPhone, it's automatically saved to your Photos app. You can ignore the screenshot thumbnail or swipe it away, but you shouldn't. If you open the screenshot editor instead, you'll gain access to your iPhone's most useful screen capture tool: full-page screenshots.
Our everyday lives are inundated with displays from smartphones, computers, tablets, TVs, and other devices, so it's important to find ways to limit your screen use wherever possible to improve your overall digital well-being. One simple thing you can do if you have an Apple Watch is make your watch tell you the time so you don't have to look yourself — and this little-known feature is easy to unlock.
Your iPhone's Messages app has some impressive new features and changes with iOS 17, and you've probably already noticed some of them just by using the updated app. But there are less apparent features, even hidden ones, that have likely eluded you that you're going to want to know about. There are even some new Messages features yet to be officially released.
Apple Notes started with humble beginnings as a scratchpad of sorts, a place for us to stash some simple text for later. It's received many upgrades over the years, but Apple's latest iPhone software update is a game-changer.
Android's back gesture, formerly the back button, has long been a blessing and a curse. While it gives us system-wide backward navigation, the action can sometimes be unpredictable. But Google may have a solution with its new predictive back gesture, which gives you an animated peek at where you're about to go next to help you decide on continuing or staying with the current view.
When you need to take notes, sketch out projects, brainstorm with others, create mood boards, or map out ideas without constraints, look no further than Freeform, Apple's new collaboration-friendly digital whiteboard.
The Calculator app is probably one of Apple's most-used iPhone apps, yet I always meet people who don't know all the little tricks there are to using it more efficiently. You may know most of them, but there's a chance you don't or at least forget about some of them.
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.
There's a little-known secret in the world of microwave ovens that even the manufacturers don't care to tell you in their manuals. And once you know it, you'll never go back to using your microwave as you used to.
For some time now, Samsung, LG, and other smartphone manufacturers have had one-handed modes that let you reach on-screen content with your thumb that would otherwise be unreachable without another hand or uncomfortable grip. Google has finally caught up in Android 12 with its own version for Pixel phones.
In the dark, even the lowest brightness option on the iPhone can still feel a thousand burning suns. No matter whether you're in bed or at the movie theater, you don't want to create a distraction with your smartphone. That's why you might want a brightness that isn't readily available on your device — but luckily, there may be a way to go lower than the lowest brightness.
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.
When iOS starts barking at you that you've run out of iCloud or iPhone storage, a quick trip to your settings to see what the culprit is may show that Messages is one of the worst offenders. But if deleting message after message doesn't free up your storage much, it's likely because "Messages" doesn't really mean messages.
Apple's iCloud is a fantastic way to ensure that all of your photos, messages, notes, and other important data are backed up and appear on all of your connected devices. However, you may have information like reminders attached to accounts other than iCloud, which won't appear when signing into iCloud on a new device. Here's how to get the full picture of where your reminders are stored.
If you're anything like me, you use the Calculator app on your iPhone like fifty times a day, and you're sick of the same user interface it's had since iOS 11 came out. While you can't mod the button shapes and sizes, there is a way to breathe new life into your calculations with some Calculator theming.
When iOS 14 came out, Apple released Translate, an app for translating voice and text between several languages (even within Safari). Unfortunately, it's not as comprehensive as some third-party apps or even Siri. That's why Apple uses Microsoft's translation services within Shortcuts. It may sound surprising, but we're not complaining since you can do some pretty awesome things with it.
Apple just released the second iOS 14.2 public beta (build number 18B5061e) for iPhone today, Wednesday, Sept. 30. The update adds emoji from Emoji 13.0 to iOS for the first time, including smiling face with tear, seal, ninja, anatomical heart, among many others from the collection.
Apple just released iOS 14.2 developer beta 2 (build number 18B5061e) for iPhone today, Tuesday, Sept. 29. The new update adds fresh emoji to iOS, including smiling face with tear, seal, ninja, anatomical heart, among many others from the Emoji 13.0 collection.
There's a set of drawing tools that have been available for a long time on the iPhone that helps you create handwritten notes and sketches. It's great when you need a free-form way to capture your ideas, and now it's even better. Apple added shape recognition in iOS 14 so that you can now draw geometrically perfect shapes using finger doodles, giving the older shapes tool a run for its money.
Web browser extensions are one of the simplest ways to get starting using open-source intelligence tools because they're cross-platform. So anyone using Chrome on Linux, macOS, and Windows can use them all the same. The same goes for Firefox. One desktop browser add-on, in particular, makes OSINT as easy as right-clicking to search for hashes, email addresses, and URLs.
When it comes to platform games on mobile, endless runners are some of the hardest to play since they can go on seemingly forever. There's always room for improvement since your goal is to beat your previous score (or someone else's high score). But which endless running games are worth your time?
Apple's scheduled to show off the first look of iOS 13 at WWDC 2019 on June 3, but what will the new operating system hold for iPhone? Rumors suggest that many features initially planned for iOS 12 will show up in iOS 13, codenamed "Yukon," and dark mode will be the big ticket item this year.
It feels strange to be walking through an open field in a small village in the English countryside. There's no one else around — just the four of us: me, my husband, my 12-year-old son, and my adult niece. The day is spectacular, particularly for England. The sun is shining, and the temperature is in the low '70s.
You don't have to be a frequent flyer to know how indispensable navigation apps have become. Many of us rely on these apps for traveling from state to state and getting around in foreign cities, but even more of us count on these apps to beat rush hour traffic and find the quickest routes to school or work. So naturally, we all have our favorite mapping apps, but which one is truly the best?
You can mod every aspect of your phone's software with root, but if you want to make changes at the hardware level, you'll need a custom kernel. If you've looked into custom kernels before, one name undoubtedly kept coming up: ElementalX. It's easily the best custom kernel out there, and the reason for that is its awesome developer, flar2, aka Aaron Segaert.
Update: The new Galaxy phones are now official! Check out all the details on the Galaxy S10 and S10+ or the Galaxy S10e.
As a developer, before you can make augmented-reality robots that move around in the real world, controlled by a user's finger, you first need to learn how to harness the basics of designing AR software for a touchscreen interface.
Apple's iOS 11 is finally here, and while they showed off several of the new features it brings to your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch back at WWDC 2017, they've only just touched the surface of what iOS 11 has to offer. There are a lot of cool new (and sometimes secret) features to explore, so we've collected them all here for you.
Thought I would cross-post a piece I did a while ago.
Sometimes I forget that I'm also a fiction writer, so I thought it might be a nice change of pace to share one of my stories with you. I wrote this piece awhile ago for an anthology that never came together and I'm tired of just sitting on it.
Apple's Messages app already has a ton of great features, from audio message transcriptions to message editing and screen effect triggers. But some important new features and changes are included in the latest software updates for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that make Messages even better.
Still on the fence about Apple's native Notes app? The latest Notes update for iPhone, iPad, and Mac is about to change your mind. With some fantastic new features and plenty of valuable tools from previous software versions, Notes is becoming a clear winner when it comes to saving important information from your personal and professional life.
While many of the features in the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro series build on what we've seen in previous iPhone models, Apple has packed the 2024 lineup with iOS 18 and plenty of fresh upgrades worth considering.
Apple's Weather app keeps getting better and more refined with each new software update. For example, 2023's big update gave us yesterday's weather, averages, and wind maps, while 2022's unleashes Lock Screen widgets, severe weather alerts, and an iPad version. Now, we have significant changes to feels-like details, an update to measurement units, more pollutant statistics, and more.
Apple's Calculator app received a massive redesign, making it so much more than a simple calculator with built-in scientific functions. There's a new Math Notes feature that ties in with the Notes app, it can keep a history of your calculations, and you can even convert over 200 currency and measurement units.
Your iPhone only has a few physical buttons, buttons with a set number of default actions assigned to them, like sleeping your display, controlling volume levels, and even taking pictures. But as much as these buttons can do for you, they can do more. You're not stuck with the out-of-the-box defaults. Every push button on your iPhone can be customized in one way or another.
Phone in one pocket, wallet in the other? It's the classic combo guaranteed to give you more pocket bulge. But it's 2024. Half that stuff in your wallet is practically antique. It's time to finally ditch all the dead weight and get a MagSafe wallet for iPhone — and we've got the best picks to slim you down to the essentials.
