If you’ll be using your Apple Watch’s fitness features, you’ll want to become acquainted with the Workout app, which helps you to keep track of your progress.
Starting with watchOS 3, you can customize your workout metrics, and in this tutorial, we’ll talk about all the ways you can do that. Read More
Power Reserve mode is a feature of watchOS that let’s you conserve what’s left of your battery when you get low on juice by limiting your Apple Watch’s functionality to nothing more than a time piece.
Starting with watchOS 3, the steps to enable it has changed, so we’ll show you how it’s done. Read More
Apple’s expressive Messages application on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch includes features that help you annotate image attachments with the Markup tools, touch them up with just a few taps using built-in Photos filters and browse files such as PDF or Pages docs separately of images—all without ever leaving the Messages app.
In this step by step tutorial, we’re going to teach you how you can edit, annotate and manage attachments in Messages for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Read More
One of the features Apple introduced in macOS Sierra that has a particularly practical application for users is Optimized Storage, a service that works to free up space on your Mac by removing unwanted files or moving infrequently used files to the cloud. Read More
If you use Apple Music to listen to your favorite tracks on your Mac, then it’s easy to follow along with the lyrics of any song.
You can view song lyrics on your Mac in one of two ways; either from the main iTunes window, or from the iTunes mini player. We’ll outline the steps for both ways to view song lyrics in Apple Music on your Mac below. Read More
Apple’s expressive Messages app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch allows you to change the way the message bubbles look and deliver your chats across in an impactful way with animations that take over the entire Messages screen.
Messages offer four built-in effects to animate the bubbles with different expressions and five fullscreen animations. Here’s how you can use these animated effects to deliver your chats in style. Read More
The iPhone 7 has a shiny new Home button that takes advantage of built-in pressure sensors and an enhanced Taptic Engine to detect and simulate clicks. Because the button no longer uses any moving parts, you’re less likely to break it. A new “Meet the new Home button” section in the iOS installer allows you to “make your iPhone experience even more personal by choosing the click that’s right for you”.
Of course, you can select between three degrees of haptic feedback that simulate clicks at any time using the stock Settings app, here’s how. Read More
Five years after its introduction in 2011, Siri finally made its debut on Mac with the release of macOS Sierra. Featuring much of the functionality that Siri contains on iOS, such as being able to check the weather forecast or set a reminder, Siri for macOS also has some exclusive abilities, such as handling documents in the file system and being able to pin results to Notification Center.
One feature that macOS’s Siri didn’t port from its mobile counterpart, however, is the ability to activate Apple’s digital assistant hands-free with the “Hey Siri” command. Fortunately, there’s a viable workaround available that enables users to invoke Siri in macOS with their voice to give commands from across the room. Read More
Apple’s Messages app provides an optional iOS-only mode which cuts down your cellular data consumption to a bare minimum when sending image attachments. I don’t know about you, but I worry about sharing high-resolution images when cellular data is on. In my experience, most normals are oblivious to the fact that sending a single shot-on-iPhone photograph through iMessage burns through one to five megabytes of data, sometimes even more.
In low quality mode, Messages uses only 100KB per image attachment. Another way to think about it: you can send 30 to 50 images for the same amount of data required to share a full-resolution attachment in Messages. In this brief tutorial, we’ll teach you how to tell Messages to send lower quality images in order to optimize your cellular data consumption and prevent unwanted overage fees. Read More
Instagram recently unveiled a new feature called Stories which allows you to shoot, annotate, and share photos and short videos outside of your normal feed. By default, all of your followers can see the Stories your post. Likewise, you can see all the Stories the people you follow are posting. This is where it sometimes gets overwhelming.
I follow a lot of random people on Instagram because I appreciate the quality of the photos they share on their feeds. However, I care very little for their Stories, which are typically more about their personal lives than sharing beautiful shots. In this case, I’d rather not see their Stories at all.
There are also some people who follow me with whom I don’t want to share my Stories, so I am opting to hide my Stories from these people.
In this post we will learn how you can hide your story from select people, but also how you can prevent other people’s stories from filling up your screen. Read More
With Auto Unlock, a new Continuity feature from Apple, logging into your Mac is as easy as wearing an authenticated Apple Watch on your wrist—no password typing required whatsoever.
For added security, Auto Unlock uses Bluetooth proximity information to determine when the watch you’re wearing and your Mac are at an arm’s length.
In this step-by-step tutorial, we’re going to take you through the process of setting up and using Auto Unlock on your Mac. Read More
Two-Factor Authentication strengthens the security of your Apple ID by preventing anyone from accessing or using it, even if they know your password. With Two-Factor Authentication, one of your trusted devices generates a one-time code when you make a purchase or sign in to your Apple ID, iCloud, iCloud.com, iMessage, FaceTime or Game Center account on a new device. Two-Factor Authentication is also required for Auto Unlock so you can unlock your Mac by wearing an Apple Watch.
In this tutorial we’ll show you how to protect your Apple ID with Two-Factor Authentication or, if you’re still using the older and less secure Two-Step Verification, upgrade to Two-Factor Authentication. Read More
Instagram has been testing a Drafts feature with a subset of its users since this summer. Today, the company has rolled out Drafts to everyone. With Instagram Drafts, you can save any half-finished photo edits and work on them later, which is handy for those times you get too busy to pos right away. And if you run an Instagram account for your business, letting your social media manager save a post as a draft makes it easy for you to review it in advance of publishing. Read More
One of the more useful features for iPhones that comes packed inside of Apple’s new iOS 10 release is voicemail transcription, which transcribes your voicemails into text so you can read them rather than listen to them.
The feature is available to users in the United States and it’s very much still in its beta stages despite the fact that iOS 10 is now a public firmware, but if you want to know how to use it, or to see if you can use it yet, then you’ll be happy to know it’s quite easy to follow. Read More
Your favorite assistant has finally made its way to the Mac, starting with the macOS Sierra software update that was recently released.
If you have used Siri on your iPhone or iPad before, then you’ll probably feel right at home with the assistant on your Mac since it works in a similar way. However, unlike your iPhone, you don’t have the ability to invoke Siri on your Mac by saying “Hey, Siri.” Instead, you will have to click on the Siri icon in the Menu Bar, or in the Dock.
Another way to invoke Siri is by using a keyboard shortcut. Admittedly, this is my preferred way of activating the assistant as it feels faster and more efficient than reaching for the mouse or trackpad and clicking on the Siri icon. Read More
Just like you probably do, I have a folder on my iPhone whose sole purpose is to store all of Apple’s apps that I don’t use. Stocks, Compass, Voice Memos, Tips, etc. They’re all in there because I can’t get rid of them. But this is changing!
Beginning with iOS 10, Apple now allows you to delete some built-in applications from your iPhone or iPad to help you tidy things up and bit and rid you of apps you don’t actually use.
This comes with some minor strings attached. For one, apps aren’t technically deleted from your device. That said, the process to remove them and get them back on the Home screen is similar to how you handle other apps. We’ll have a look at all this right now. Read More
watchOS 3 released alongside iOS 10 with a bunch of new features, core technologies and user interface enhancements. With watchOS 3, navigating your watch is now intuitive, as it should have been from the onset. A new Dock feature lets you access your frequently used apps with a press of the Side button and they load way faster, even on the original watch.
Apps can also take advantage of Background App Refresh technology to stay up to date, Messages now supports stickers, enhanced Digital Touch features and even fullscreen and bubble effects, like in iOS 10, plus tons more. Read More
Apple officially launches macOS Sierra to the public on September 20th, and that means you should probably start preparing your Mac for the upgrade so everything goes as smoothly as possible on launch day.
In this piece, we’ll talk about why and how you can prepare your Mac for installing macOS Sierra so you can avoid hiccups and the frustration of error messages. Read More
Every so often, iPhones have a brain fart and you may have to force them to restart or use DFU mode to restore because they either stop responding or start behaving sporadically.
With the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, which no longer have a Home “button,” there is a new process to force restart your device or enter DFU mode. These are both essential parts of any troubleshooting process, so it’s good to know how how to do them. Read More
