Apple has a new flashlight feature for iPhone models with Dynamic Island on iOS 18. This feature lets you adjust not only the brightness level but also the beam pattern, giving you control over how wide or narrow the light shines.
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.
YouTube has offered viewers a video queue on desktop browsers for some time, and the world's most popular video site is preparing to finally bring the queue feature to its Android and iOS mobile apps.
If you're tired of the default yellow link colors in your Notes app, which I find hard to look at in light mode, there's a way to change them to another color on your iPhone, iPad, and/or Mac running iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and/or macOS Sonoma 14 and earlier.
An always-on display isn't for everyone. If you aren't happy about your iPhone 14 Pro or 14 Pro Max's display being visible all the time, even when you press the Side button to lock the screen, there's an easy way to make the screen act like any other iPhone screen.
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.
You can play background sounds on your iPhone to help you focus, stay calm, or fall asleep, giving you a personal sound machine wherever you go. Even better, there's a way to set each of your apps to play one of Apple's six ambient soundscapes automatically. When you open the app, its assigned sound plays, then it stops when you exit or switch to another app.
Apple has given third-party developers access to Picture in Picture on iPad since iOS 9 and, more recently, on iPhone since iOS 14, but YouTube has been one of the few not to support the feature outside of Safari or premium memberships. Thankfully, that's no longer the case if you live in the U.S.
Safari has a helpful feature that shows your most frequently visited webpages whenever you open a new tab or window, but it's not for everyone. If you never use it, would rather have a minimalist start page, or want to prevent other people with access to Safari on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac from seeing the websites you frequent the most, you can get rid of it.
Your iPhone's built-in Voice Memos app is a great way to record the audio around you, whether it be conversations, lectures, meetings, interviews, discussions, chitchat, gossip, or other kinds of talks. But if your goal is to record audio on the down-low without being noticed, you'll need to know the hidden shortcut.
If you're like me, you don't have time to sit down and leisurely read an entire article from start to finish — but you still want to be informed throughout the day. Instead of just browsing the daily headlines, there's a free service that will summarize any article you throw at it, giving you a better idea of what's going on without committing to reading an entire article.
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.
With the arrival of Facebook Ray-Ban Stories smartglasses commanding the recent spotlight, the tech world acted like it forgot about Facebook's first foray in consumer hardware — the Portal line of video calling devices.
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.
Already among the leaders in AR development tools via its Unreal Engine, Epic Games has added another tanky weapon to its arsenal.
The march of Snap to become the world's augmented reality engine isn't slowing down. In a new deal announced on Thursday, Snap has revealed that it has signed an agreement to become the software driving Universal Music Group's (UMG) mobile AR music offerings.
The makers of arguably the two most important mobile AR apps, Niantic and Snap, both had good news this week, with the former preparing to replicate its success with Pokémon GO for another franchise and the latter notching another popular augmented reality Lens for Snapchat.
The Apple rumor mill never stops churning and when it comes to augmented reality smartglasses, the chatter has been particularly hot in recent months.
We're still basking in the afterglow of the HUGE Snap Partner Summit last week, where Snap made Snapchat a much stronger augmented reality platform while also unveiling the AR smartglasses version of Spectacles. This week, we got a peek at how Spectacles AR started and got our hands on Lenses from Lego and Disney featured during the keynote.
In the great smartglasses race, component makers, such as those that supply the crucial waveguide displays that make visualization of virtual content possible, have a vested interest in pushing the industry forward in order to ship units.
There's already some fierce competition between Snap and Facebook in the AR space, but it's about to heat up even more, with Snap snatching up a 3D mapping startup that could add some new AR capabilities to its arsenal.
Snap introduced some fantastic new augmented reality abilities in version 3.4 of Lens Studio, the company's tool that allows anyone to create AR lenses for the Snapchat app. The newest features include improved hand tracking and full-body segmentation.
The development of virtual reality at Facebook has been evolving lightspeed in the last few years. But while a relatively small group of VR enthusiasts and gamers are enjoying the social media giant's dedication to immersive headsets, it is the augmented reality space and its potential scale that truly has the tech market enthralled.
The pandemic has forced a number of public-facing businesses to either temporarily close or permanently cease operations, with one of the biggest victims of this trend being the movie theater business.
At its height, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many auto showrooms to close their doors. As the pandemic persists, many consumers are still hesitant to let their socially distanced guard down.
I am constantly hitting Apple's limit of 500 open tabs in Safari on my iPhone, so it's safe to say that I have way too many tabs to sort through. With that many tabs open in the browser, it can be impossible to track down the one needed at any given moment. If that sounds like you, stop browsing tab after tab to locate the right one because there are hidden tricks to searching those tabs that make it easy.
Mobile augmented reality gaming pioneer Niantic is chomping at the bit to get games like Pokémon GO out of smartphones and onto smartglasses, and it appears to be taking matters into its own hands.
Microsoft believes its Mesh platform can help developers build immersive AR apps more easily. We spoke with a member of the Microsoft team to learn more about the platform.
You're in a Zoom meeting, and you're click-clacking away at your keyboard, typing important notes from the call. More realistically, you're doing something unrelated to the meeting, such as browsing the web, playing a game, or messaging friends. Whatever it is you're typing, if your microphone is on, everyone on the Zoom call will be able to hear the sound of you typing.
Apple just released the second public beta for iOS 14.5 today, Wednesday, Feb 17. The update comes just one day after the company seeded developers the second 14.5 beta. Because of that, we've had 24 hours to sink our teeth in beta 2's new features, like 217 new emoji, Apple Music lyric sharing, Apple Music UI updates, and new Shortcuts options.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced many businesses into remote work models, whether they were ready or not, making Zoom a household (or home office) name for its video conferencing service.
Apple released the second developer beta for iOS 14.5 on Tuesday, Feb. 16. The update comes 15 days after Apple seeded developers the first 14.5 beta, which included a slew of new features such as default music app support, compatibility with PS5 and Xbox Series X controllers, and more.
Even the biggest fan of Mario Kart may have reservations about traveling to Super Nintendo World in Japan in the middle of a worldwide pandemic to experience the augmented reality-enhanced roller coaster ride that recreates the game in real life.
I must admit, upon learning that the NFL was broadcasting the contest between the New Orleans Saints and Chicago Bears on CBS, Amazon Prime Video, and Nickelodeon, the latter was the only option I wanted, purely for the novelty of the experience.
Few apps on the iPhone give you ways to change their color scheme aside from Dark Mode in iOS 13 and later, but that doesn't mean you can't give an app a new color theme or filtered look. With the Shortcuts app in iOS 14 and later, it's totally possible, and it'll work in practically any app.
One of iCloud Photo's biggest perks is its ability to store large video files taken with your iPhone, so you can fill up your iPhone's storage with other items. That said, when you play back those videos, you may not be watching the footage in its original quality. Instead, they may be low-res versions. To view the high-quality originals — or to make sure that's what you see — just follow this trick.
Home Screen widgets come in various sizes on iOS 14 and later, and which size you choose will depend on how much content or data you actually want to see. But what happens when you pick the wrong widget size? In a perfect world, you would just edit the current widget's settings, but Apple didn't make it that easy.
Apple's latest offerings, the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max all feature the A14 Bionic system on a chip, the fastest chipset ever seen on a smartphone, running 50% faster than any other CPUs. But despite the advanced technology, even the iPhone 12 is privy to internal issues, which is why you should know how to force restart it if it ever freezes.
It's not just iPhones. The entire smartphone market these days has a reputation for being expensive. Many flagship smartphones are advertised at $1,000 minimum. Looking for more storage space, or an extra camera or two? That price continues to rise. However, you don't need to take out a mortgage to buy a quality iPhone. In fact, when it comes to reasonable prices, you have more options than ever.
Google's 2020 Pixel Buds are one of the hottest true wireless earbuds of the year. With their unique, circular design, they stand out from the long-stemmed AirPods look you get from other wireless earbuds. The design is also sleek and minimal, making them the perfect candidate to use as a personal hearing aid.