Siri Suggestions is one way Apple makes your iPhone work better for you. These recommendations offer helpful actions and shortcuts based on how you use iOS. Still, they can frequently get things wrong, suggesting irrelevant shortcuts to apps, contacts, and other items repeatedly. Here's how to stop them.
Apps went from a novelty to the main way we control the functionality of our phones and tablets in what felt like an instant. Apps are ubiquitous, and you can find one for virtually every need. However, what's right for someone else isn't always right for you, and what's right for you might be right for more people.
Almost 190 secret characters are hiding behind your iPhone's default keyboard, and I'm not talking about what you see after tapping the "123" or "#+=" keys. These special composite characters can include accents, dots, and other diacritics, and you'll even see some strange typographical characters like the section sign, inverted marks, and per mille symbol. Here's how you find them.
Apple pushed out the Release Candidate for iOS 14.6 on Monday, May 17. The 18F71 build includes new features and bug fixes, including an option to unlock your iPhone with Voice Control. It comes just hours after Apple announced Spacial Audio and Lossless Audio playback for Apple Music, new features that will require iOS 14.6 to run.
Apple's iOS 14.5 overhauled the Podcasts app, combining new aesthetics with smart and efficient features. While you might find the app better at playing your favorite podcasts than past versions, you might also find something negative about the update on your iPhone: it may be eating up your storage.
Some record labels release albums across the entire music spectrum, dipping their toes into every genre, sub-genre, and language imaginable, while others attack only the categories they're good at. So if you're hunting for new music, and the Listen Now, Browse, and Radio tabs in Apple Music are getting stale, iOS 14.5 lets you browse like-minded artists, albums, and playlists by specific record labels.
Spotify has caught up to Apple in monthly podcast listenership and is even forecast to surpass Apple soon, but Apple just made some serious changes to its Podcasts app for iOS and iPadOS that could keep Apple at the top.
If you're like me, you're not too keen on being tracked. So when an app asks you if it can track your iPhone activity across other programs and websites for ads or data brokers, the answer is pretty much always "no." If you're tired of choosing "Ask App Not to Track" over and over again, there is a way to stop apps from even being able to ask in the first place.
Apple's Reminders app has come a long way. In the past, if you really wanted to keep track of your important daily, weekly, and monthly tasks, you needed to install a specialty third-party app to make it work. While those apps still offer valuable features, Reminders can get the job done for many iPhone users now. With iOS 14.5, Apple only sweetens the deal.
With its emphasis on well-rounded audible entertainment, Deezer gives all music and podcast fans the best of both worlds. As great as the app is, it's inconvenient to constantly tell Siri to play your music and podcasts through Deezer so that it doesn't default to Apple Music or Apple Podcasts instead. But as of iOS 14.5, you can set Deezer as your iPhone's "default" music player for Siri.
Popular chat apps like Facebook Messenger and (these days, sadly) WhatsApp might not cut it when it comes to privacy and security, but they sure do offer some fun ways to customize your chats. If you're worried that moving to Signal Private Messenger means you lose these features, don't — the privacy-focused app also lets you choose custom chat wallpapers for all your threads.
Keeping your friends up to date is one of the reasons chat apps exist in the first place, but sometimes we're not available to respond to every message or to let all of our contacts know what we're up to. That's where status updates come in handy, and the feature has finally found its way to Signal Private Messenger.
Want quick access to message threads with your favorite or important contacts? Just pin them to the top of the conversations list. It's a common feature in many messaging apps, including Apple's Messages in iOS 14. While it's not particularly well-advertised, TikTok also lets you pin chats to the top of your direct messages inbox on Android or iPhone.
Adobe Audition, Audacity, and other audio editing software have tools to isolate vocals and instruments in regular songs so that you can get an instrumental track for karaoke, vocals for an a capella version, or solo drums, bass, keys, etc. that you can use to learn the song yourself. The software is mostly for desktop computers, and it doesn't always do a good job, but that's where Moises comes in.
Apple's first release candidate for the iOS 14.3 beta came out on Dec. 8, but there must have been a serious bug in the system because iOS 14.3 RC 2 followed it just two days later on Dec. 10. These builds highlight everything that you should expect to see on the stable version very soon.
No matter how expertly crafted a playlist is or how long your favorite album runs, they all come to an end eventually. And nothing quite kills the vibe like your DJ suddenly running out of steam. But a feature in Apple Music for iOS and Android will continue playing songs after an album or playlist is over, choosing tracks that fit perfectly with what you were just listening to.
Apple released the first public beta for iOS 14.3 today, Friday, Nov. 13. The update includes ProRAW support for iPhone 12 and 12 Pro, upgrades to air quality in Weather, support for the PS5 controller, among other new features and changes.
Apple released the "release candidate" for iOS 14.2 today, Friday, Oct. 30. The update is available for both developers and public beta testers, and notably fixes a pressing bug in beta 4 — users would encounter a message telling them to update from their iOS 14 beta, despite no update being available.
Apple just released the third public beta for iOS 14.2 today, Wednesday, Oct. 14. This update includes new glyphs for the HomePod mini and Beats Flex, support for HomePod's upcoming new "Intercom" feature, new core media features, and SwiftUI fixes.
People are going nuts with their iOS 14 home screens. One look on social media shows just how creative people can be with their home screen widgets and customized app icons. That said, maybe you aren't looking for a crazy setup. Maybe you're someone who wants a simple, clean home screen. Friend, this trick is for you.
Nearly every native app on the iPhone received an upgrade or new features in iOS 14 — and Safari is no exception. The web browser now has better password protection, faster performance, privacy reports, and built-in translations, just to name a few. Some of the Safari updates went unnoticed by many, but they're there and ready to use in iOS 14.
The iPhone's built-in Reminders app got an overhaul last year with iOS 13, giving us a more modern design and plenty of new features, and iOS 14 doesn't mess with a good thing. Instead, iOS 14 brings lots of small tweaks all over the app to smooth out the experience and make Reminders more powerful and more customizable than ever.
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.
It's incredible what technology can do these days, but sometimes, it gets a little scary. For instance, FaceTime's "Eye Contact" feature, which Apple beta-tested in iOS 13 but released with iOS 14, makes it appear like you're looking right at the camera, even when you're actually looking at your friend on the screen. If you find this artificial trick a bit creepy, rest assured you can turn it off at any time.
In the tech world, our data is always under attack. When you download and install a new app, it can be difficult to know what information the app is actually accessing. Thankfully, a new emphasis on privacy in iOS 14 changes the game, exposing more of what your apps want access to — and even changing some behavior along the way.
The "Hidden" album on your iPhone has always had one problem — it was never truly hidden. Since iOS 10, when the feature was introduced in the Photos app, any image or video that you conceal in the private folder could be seen by anyone with access to your unlocked device. Finally, that has changed.
Apple just released the fifth public beta for iOS 14 today, Wednesday, Aug. 19. This update comes one day after Apple released iOS 14 developer beta 5. It follows iOS 14 developer beta 4 by 15 days, and iOS 14 public beta 4 by 13 days.
Apple just released the fifth developer beta for iOS 14 today, Tuesday, Aug. 18. This update comes two weeks after Apple released iOS 14 developer beta 4, and 12 days after the release of iOS 14 public beta 4.
If you spend most of the time on your iPhone shooting photos and taking videos, you'll be happy that Apple has improved a few aspects of its Camera app in iOS 14. Even if you're just a casual photographer or videographer, you'll benefit from the new changes to the default camera app on your iPhone.
Apple just released iOS 13.6.1 for iPhone today, Wednesday, Aug. 12. The update is the latest public update for iPhones since iOS 13.6, which Apple released 28 days ago.
Your iPhone comes with a feature that allows you to share your name and photo with anyone you iMessage in Messages. It's a useful feature if you want people to see a customized name or fun image that you pick, but seeing all those "Share your name and photo" alerts in conversations can get real annoying quickly. There's a way to stop that from happening, thankfully.
With bans looming or already happening across the world, TikTok still remains one of the most popular, entertaining, and addicting apps you can download right now. The problem is, browsing TikTok can be a bit painful at night since everything outside of the video feed uses a bright white theme. Thankfully, dark mode for TikTok is here, but there's a catch.
Apple's Dark Mode in iOS 13 and later offers a cool, comfortable viewing experience on your iPhone. You may prefer the dark theme all day long, but if you like to use it only at night, it's not very convenient to switch it on and off daily. But there's a setting that lets you set it and forget it, so you never have to do it manually again.
Screen recording is an essential tool for sharing what's on our smartphones. If you want to send your friends and family an unsharable video you're watching, or a neat trick you discovered on your phone, recording your screen is one way to do so. Messenger, Facebook's standalone chat app, simplifies the experience by implementing live screen shares directly in video calls.
In iOS 13 and under, whenever you were in an app or on the home screen, and a Phone or FaceTime call came in, the entire screen would be taken over by the incoming call. Apple changed it to a subtle banner notification in iOS 14 so that it doesn't wholly obfuscate what you're doing when the call happens. However, you can get the old design back if that works better for you.
Now that Google Meet is free for anyone with a Gmail address, you can expect to see invites from Google's service alongside Zoom calls.
In iOS 13.5 and later, developers can create and release contact tracing apps for iPhone, which could help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus in the U.S. With these apps comes COVID-19 exposure notifications, which you may or may not want to receive. If you don't want to get these alerts, you can disable them.
In the iOS 13.4 update, Apple added folder-sharing capabilities in the Files app. That means you can share multiple documents at the same time instead of doing it one by one. But that's not all — you can share folders with numerous contacts and even enforce access and permission settings.
With many office workers in the US being asked to work from home if their job allows, Magic Leap's customary updates for the Lumin OS and Lumin SDK brings some help to keep distributed workforces connected.
