Tutorials

How to turn on vision accessibility features in iOS

Lory Gil ∙ Updated January 13, 2016

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…

How to set up email VIP lists

Lory Gil ∙ Updated February 16, 2017

When Apple inveiled iOS 6 way back, 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.

How to share Reminders lists with others

Lory Gil ∙ Updated April 20, 2018

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.

Update: While still correct, this article is slightly outdated. We have published a new tutorial on how to share reminders from iPhone, Mac, or a web browser. Click on that link for the most up-to-date way to share reminders with others.

iDownloadBlog challenges you to join our March Madness pool

Jim Gresham ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

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...

Seagate dominates the mobile storage competition with 1TB Wireless Plus

Jim Gresham ∙ Updated July 24, 2016

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...

A beautiful verbal clock for your Lock screen

Jim Gresham ∙ Updated January 22, 2018

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...

A simple Lock screen that displays the local weather forecast

Jim Gresham ∙ February 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...

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

Mike Schnier ∙ February 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...

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

Mike Schnier ∙ Updated January 28, 2017

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...

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

Mike Schnier ∙ Updated December 29, 2016

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...

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

Mike Schnier ∙ Updated January 22, 2018

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...

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

Mike Schnier ∙ Updated December 25, 2017

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...