How to save PDF files to iBooks

By Lory Gil on May 23, 2013

Apple is the largest tech companies in the world. They literally sell millions of iPhones every year. On any given day, someone who has just started using an iOS device will start reading iDownloadBlog. Because we know that there are a lot of “noobs” out there who don’t know every aspect of their iPhone or iPad, we like to have a tutorial on the basics every once in a while.

We know that a lot of our readers are well versed in the nitty-gritty of their devices and don’t need a refresher course. However, we also know that there are plenty of new readers who could use some pointers, but are afraid to ask. That’s why we write these basic tutorials. We want everyone to know how to do everything on an iOS devices.

In this tutorial, we are going to tell you how to get a PDF file on your iBooks shelf for safekeeping and easy access… Read More

 

How to create ringtones for your iPhone using iTunes

By Lory Gil on May 16, 2013

How many times have you been sitting around with friends when their phone rings and you hear the opening theme to Knight Rider, or the subtle hum of the Starship Enterprise and thought to yourself, “Dang, I wish I had that ringtone.” Well, now you can and it won’t cost you a dime.

You can convert any song or audio clip in your iTunes library into a ringtone with a few simple steps. We’ve got a step-by-step tutorial to show you how to create awesome ringtones that will make you the envy of the party… Read More

 

How to enable Guided Access in iOS

By Lory Gil on May 10, 2013

My nephew loves to play with my iPad. I have a special folder with kid’s books just for him. He loves flipping through the pages of Wreck-it-Ralph, Wheels on the Bus HD, and all of the Dr. Seuss apps. He is autistic, so buttons, tabs, and anything he can tap on easily distract him. If I am not totally vigilant, he will be out of his book and into my Facebook app before I even realize it.

Apple added a helpful feature for making sure that hands don’t accidentally (or purposefully) tap something that they should not have. It is called Guided Access and it disables the touch screen in designated areas or the entire screen of your iOS device. We’ve got a tutorial to show you how it works… Read More

 

How to turn on vision accessibility features in iOS

By Lory Gil on May 7, 2013

Touch screen devices like Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, are not particularly usable for visually impaired people. If you are blind, or simply have a difficult time seeing the small images and texts on the screen, iOS devices are effectively useless.

Apple has worked to make their touch screen products usable for those with impaired vision. Apple’s accessibility features offer a variety of options for vision including VoiceOver, zoom, inverted colors, and more. We have a basic tutorial for activating these features, plus an explanation of what each one does… Read More

 

How to set up email VIP lists

By Lory Gil on May 4, 2013

When Apple inveiled iOS 6, one of the new Mail features was the addition of a “VIP” inbox. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Some of you may have already started using the VIP feature. For those of you who have an Aunt Linda in your ear, asking what this VIP “doo-hickey” is all about, send them our way and let us guide them through the steps to setting up VIP contacts.

By setting up VIP contacts in your Mail app inbox, you will have a separate folder for your important email correspondences with certain people. If you get dozens (even hundreds) of emails every day, it may be difficult to weed through the garbage to find the important ones. The VIP contacts feature automatically sends all emails from your selected contacts to a separate folder so their correspondences are much easier to find.

In this post, we will show you to use setup a VIP email inbox on your iPhone or iPad… Read More

 

How to backup your iPhone contacts

By Lory Gil on May 1, 2013

Every once in a while, a friend will ask me what to do when some terrible thing has happened to their iPhone. Usually, it involves the device crashing or freezing. And usually, it involves someone who doesn’t back up their data.

Before I move on, let me just say this. If you don’t back up your data, don’t complain when all 975 images of the past year of your baby’s life have suddenly disappeared from your iPhone. Back that sh#@ up! Don’t be a fool.

If you chose not to use iCloud to back up your contacts, but want to secure the phone numbers of all those ladies you will never call back, there is a way to do it and it is just about the easiest thing you could ever do.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to backup your iPhone contacts so you can save them or transfer them to a new iPhone… Read More

 

How to share Reminders lists with others

By Lory Gil on Apr 27, 2013

I have to admit that, ever since I discovered Wunderlist, I stopped using my Reminders app for the most part. I love Apple’s Reminders application and had used it for a while on all of my devices. I think I just wanted to try something new when Wunderlist came out and it satisfied my listing needs.

When Sebastien asked me to write a how-to guide for sharing Reminders on iCloud, it rekindled my love of the simple list-making app. Not only is it easy to create and edit reminders, but you can also share and collaborate on lists with anyone else in the world, even if they don’t have an Apple device with them. All they need is their iCloud account… Read More

 

How to set up multiple email signatures on your iPhone or iPad

By Lory Gil on Apr 26, 2013

Not everyone knows all of the aspects of their iOS devices. Especially when Apple regularly updates its mobile operating system and throws you for a loop. Because of that, we like to write little how-to guides for those looking for some help. We know it isn’t “news,” and some how-to guides are fairly common knowledge for some of our more tech savvy readers. Think of our tutorials as a conversation with aunt Linda. She is always asking questions about how to use her device and we are here to help.

For this tutorial, we are going to explain how to set up your iOS device so that you can use a different signature for each email account. If you prefer to keep you personal life separate from your work life, you might find this little tip useful… Read More

 

iDownloadBlog challenges you to join our March Madness pool

By Jim Gresham on Mar 18, 2013

Again we hit the hallowed time during the year when the world exalts American college basketball players as if they were gods. Millions of dollars in lost productivity across the US puts a further damper on the economy as we all turn from work to watch basketball.

At iDownloadBlog we relish the opportunity to participate in this worldwide assault on productivity – not that we will stop bringing you the best Apple news for a month. Join us beyond the fold to learn how to monitor the action from your favorite iOS devices and sign up for the iDownloadBlog tourny pool… Read More

 

Seagate dominates the mobile storage competition with 1TB Wireless Plus

By Jim Gresham on Mar 14, 2013

After meeting with Seagate at CES, I was excited to get my paws on their new Wireless Plus, which is big brother to the recently retired and previously reviewed GoFlex Satellite. We all need our digital content on the go and, often, our iOS devices do not have enough room. I know my 16GB are carefully utilized on both iPad mini and iPhone. Toting around a Wi-Fi enabled 1TB Seagate drive prevents the need for choosing which media to bring along. Just drag and drop your media file to the Wireless Plus and walk out the door… Read More

 

A beautiful verbal clock for your Lock screen

By Jim Gresham on Mar 4, 2013

Continuing our Lock screen modding series, we take a closer look at an elegant verbal clock. Having an affinity for well-designed typographical imagery, this verbal clock is a perfect addition for my iPhone. A sleek black, gray, and white interface, I am impressed with the elegance of its minimalism. Follow us beyond the fold to find out how to set your iPhone up similarly… Read More

 

A simple Lock screen that displays the local weather forecast

By Jim Gresham on Feb 25, 2013

The iPhone Lock screen has not changed since 2007 and it is certainly boring, even outdated. Everyone loves a good Lock screen and we wanted to give a quick how-to for a simple tweak. Getting things looking fresh on your iPhone can be a jumbled mess while plowing through Cydia, looking for the right packages. A few days ago we had users submit their favorite Lock screens, screen shots, and tweaks, which led to this post. While this initial posting is simple, we hope it inspires you to construct your own beautiful Lock screens… Read More

 

How to back up your jailbreak tweaks before updating in iOS 6

By Mike Schnier on Feb 21, 2013

Many of our regular readers have been asking us about backup solutions for their devices after the release of iOS 6.1.2 and the jailbreak that followed shortly afterwards. I want to be clear here: automated backups can be very bad news. If you restore your tweaks without going through Cydia, and an update breaks a single tweak, you won’t have a fun time attempting to find the incompatible package that crashes your phone at startup. While minor updates (like 6.1 to 6.1.2) are less likely to cause conflicts, the risk is never zero.

With that warning in mind, there are a number of options for backing up your Cydia tweaks when upgrading to iOS 6.1.2… Read More

 

How to enable HDR Camera mode on iPad, and iPod touch 4G

By Mike Schnier on Feb 20, 2013

HDR is a photography mode that stitches together several pictures along a range of exposure settings. Using various algorithms, the effect creates pictures that can have fewer dark or washed out spots than a conventional digital still, which is great if you intend to capture textures and detail instead of glare or shadow.

Apple introduced HDR photography to iOS 4.1, but the feature wasn’t rolled out to every device. The devices that currently lack the option to enable HDR in the stock camera app include the iPod touch 4G, iPad mini, and the iPad 2 to the iPad 4. Lucky for us, this disabled feature is fairly easy to manually reintroduce on a jailbroken device… Read More

 

How to manually fix the Weather app issue after jailbreaking with evasi0n

By Mike Schnier on Feb 5, 2013

As you may be aware, the initial release of the evasi0n untethered jailbreak broke a few minor features in iOS 6, most visibly the native Weather app on the iPhone and iPod touch. Word from the developers is evasi0n’s exploit corrupted an important plist settings file for System apps like Weather, Siri, and the App Store. Lucky for our tech savvy readers, there’s an easy fix that can replace the broken plist file in minutes. The script we are working with come from pod2g himself… Read More

 

How to transfer SMS and iMessage history between iOS devices

By Mike Schnier on Jan 30, 2013

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been waiting for the upcoming release of the iOS 6.1 untethered jailbreak before you upgraded to the iPhone 5. Upgrading to a new iPhone is exciting, but there are always a kink or two in the process. One of the upgrading issues that always bothers me is the fact that iTunes doesn’t make it easy to copy your text message history to a new device; your only option is to restore from a backup, and that doesn’t always work.

Unfortunately even third party utilities like iTools.hk or CopyTrans Contacts are currently unable to transfer SMS and iMessage history between devices since iOS 5 and up. I was able to find a manual method, but it requires following the process to the letter. The guide also works with the iPad and iPod touch, but these devices will only display iMessages.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to backup your SMS and iMessages, and we will also show you how to transfer these messages from one device to another… Read More

 

How to install MAME ROMs on a non-jailbroken device with Gridlee

By Mike Schnier on Jan 27, 2013

As we reported on Saturday, Gridlee is a freeware arcade game from 1982 which was re-released on the iTunes App Store by David Loureiro. This would have been unremarkable, if Gridlee was a straight port from the source code and if it wasn’t actually powered by an up-to-date and fully featured version of MAME4iOS Reloaded.

This means if you have a program capable of tunneling into the iOS file-system through USB, you can once again have a working version of MAME on a non-jailbroken device, complete with your own ROM images. As I can’t think of anyone who would legitimately want to play Gridlee on an iPad, this was likely an intentional attempt to sneak the emulator back into the App Store, so we’re guessing Apple won’t be hosting the file for too long. Grab it while you can… Read More

 

Use iFunBox’s ‘Power Saving Mode’ to prevent select apps from running in the background

By Mike Schnier on Jan 24, 2013

Want to take a load off your iOS device’s CPU, battery life, and cellular bandwidth by preventing certain apps from running in the background? Sure, you could install a tweak like WeeCloseApps, but it doesn’t set automatic profiles for app behavior, and it doesn’t work on non-jailbroken devices.

Luckily, there’s a powerful iOS file browser for Mac and PC called iFunBox, which works on both jailbroken and non-jailbroken devices. Among its features, iFunBox allows users to edit ‘Power Saving Mode’ profiles. Right click on an installed app and you can set one of three multitasking states: allow background, always background, and kill switch. ‘Allow background’ is the default state of most apps, while ‘always background’ is normally applied to music and podcasting apps that you’d want active in the background, and ‘kill switch’ is applied to power-hungry games… Read More

 

Use iFunBox’s ‘App Inspection’ tool to see which apps can access your data

By Mike Schnier on Jan 23, 2013

We’ve seen services like Clueful catalog apps that can access our private information, and many of us are familiar with tweaks like Protect My Privacy and Firewall iP that attempt to keep our data secure. But what are our leaky apps actually doing, and what are the real risks?

Unfortunately we don’t have all the answers for you, but you can do some snooping of your own. The most user-friendly tool for inspecting the APIs your actual installed apps can access is built into a popular iOS filebrowser called iFunBox… Read More

 

How to change button skins in Robert Broglia’s Emulators on iOS

By Mike Schnier on Jan 16, 2013

In the comments section of our article on Snes9x EX+’s release, one of our readers asked if there was a way to swap out the overlays for the on-screen buttons. I thought the question was interesting enough to answer in a full tutorial.

While there isn’t a built-in option for skinning Snes9x EX+, nor are there any themes for the app currently available on Cydia, with a jailbroken iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, it’s not too difficult to manually edit raster graphics used in any app. All you need to do is navigate to Snex9x EX+’s app directory and edit the overlay bitmap… Read More

 
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