There are countless amounts of themes already available for iPhone/iPad with more emerging each week. It starts getting harder to find a theme that is truly worthy of your iDevice. That’s where we come in… Introducing Circul8. A theme that is well crafted with the perfect minimalism for a simple but effective look.
The best part? It’s free… Read More
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
When you sync your desktop contacts with your iOS contacts and then throw your Facebook contacts into the mix, you will inevitably end up with duplicates. Just like a physical address book, every time one of your friends gets a new email address or phone number, you end up with multiples from the same person.
Smart Merge helps you clear out duplicate contacts by fishing out email addresses, phone numbers, and names that are the same. It also comes with a backup feature so you can store a Dav-Card file in your email account, just in case something happens in the future… Read More
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
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
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
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
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
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
Earlier this month, Apple made some minor adjustments to the way app information is displayed on the App Store. In an effort to help parents clearly understand what their child is downloading, an app’s age restriction has been moved to the top of the summary page, just below its name.
This doesn’t always keep kids from sneaking a download or two when you aren’t watching. In addition to securing your iPhone from unwanted in-app purchases, you can also keep your iPhone from unwanted subject matter downloads by setting content restrictions.
Setting content restricts can be done with a few simple steps. These instructions work for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch… Read More
Trying to find a decent Lock screen theme in Cydia is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. There are thousands of them in there, and there are way more bad ones than there are good. So you’re forced to spend hours browsing.
But what if I told you there was an app in the App Store that, when coupled with a jailbreak theme, allowed you to either create your own custom Lock screen themes, or download hundreds of free themes, with a few quick taps?
Well, such an app exists. And if you haven’t seen it yet, this post is going to make your day… Read More
Last week we showed you how to delete individual digits from the iOS Calculator app by swiping. It wasn’t a major revelation, by any means, but a lot of folks seem to have found it useful.
In the same fashion, we have another trick to show you today. And if you’ve ever thought to yourself that it takes too long to navigate through the iOS Calendar app, you’ll want to see this… Read More
Last month, Filippo Bigarella released a handy little tweak called LastPic. For those who missed it, LastPic lets you quickly add the last photo you took to an iMessage conversation, similar to the Tweetbot function.
Unfortunately, the tweak is only compatible with the iMessage app. But luckily we’ve discovered a simple hack that allows you to use it with the popular jailbreak app biteSMS. And yes, we’ve got a tutorial for you… Read More
We’ve come across some pretty cool tricks in iOS over the years. There’s the six hidden buttons on the iPad’s split keyboard, the long-hold action in the Mail app that brings up your last draft, and my favorite, Photo Stream websites.
Today we’ve got another neat little tidbit to share with you involving the stock Calculator application. I know, for most of you this app rarely gets touched. But for those of you that use it more often, this tip could prove very useful… Read More
Remember the good old days, in iOS 5, when you could listen to a video’s audio in the background on your device while multitasking? All you had to do was double tap the Home button, swipe to the left to reveal the iPod controls, and press Play.
But for some reason, Apple disabled this feature in iOS 6, leaving us without a native way to do things like listen to YouTube videos in Safari while texting or browsing Twitter. But the good news is, we’ve come across a fairly easy way to get it back… Read More
Twitter’s Vine is fine for random sharing of six-second videos and today they issued an interesting new update promising to make embedding own or someone else’s clips easy as a pie. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
The new version won’t let you just grab an embed code in-app. For reasons beyond our comprehension, the software sends you to a special web page where the embed code can be created.
It’s not the end of the world, but the solution is cumbersome and inelegant, though it works. To start injecting those beautiful Vines into your blog posts, web pages, email newsletters or pretty much into any other other type of HTML content, just follow our quick guide and you should be fine… Read More
Yesterday, a Strategy Analytics report came out that showed iCloud as the top cloud media service in the US. People use it to store things like music and videos, but they also use it to store more personal stuff like contacts, photos and other data.
So you can see why users were relieved to hear that Apple beefed up its account security yesterday by adding a new two-step verification option. And for those having trouble getting it setup, we’ve put together this easy-to-follow 6-step tutorial… Read More
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
I’ve been using an iPhone since the first one launched in 2007, so almost 6 years. And in that time, I feel like I’ve learned most of the ins and outs of iOS. Like many of you, I’m the one friends and family come to with their tech questions.
But I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know everything about Apple’s mobile OS, as I learn new stuff everyday. And yesterday, I found out that you can turn your Photo Streams into websites, viewable by anyone, in just a few easy steps… Read More
Some of us are adamant that a bright future lies ahead of RSS. Though the majority of my news discovery happens on Twitter and Facebook these days, I still rely on RSS feeds every now and then. In fact, you could say I am a regular Google Reader user.
But with the impending shutdown of the service, loyal fans like myself have no other choice but find a new home for their feeds.
Cody has put together a useful list of the ten most popular Reader alternatives and there’s also that upcoming Digg Reader app. People who happen to manage their news sources in the excellent Flipboard app can bring their Google Reader feeds quite easily, here’s how… Read More
