Continuity

CloudClip: Universal Clipboard for your Mac right now

Apple's newly-announced macOS Sierra is set to release to the public this Fall as the company revealed at WWDC 2016 this week, and it includes a variety of improvements that will make using your Mac even better than ever.

One of those improvements is Universal Clipboard, which is a Continuity feature that lets you share your clipboard between your iOS device(s) and your Mac.

But what if we told you that you didn't have to wait until the public release of macOS Sierra to enjoy a similar feature on your Mac?

Troubleshooting Continuity issues on iOS and Mac

Continuity and Handoff are features built into your iOS devices and Macs that allow the devices to work more seamlessly together. With Continuity, you have instant access to a personal hotspot on demand, the ability to send and receive SMS messages and to make and take phone calls from your Mac, and the ability to pick up where you left off on one device from another.

Although they can work well at times, there is always the lingering chance that the functionality may not work right for you or connectivity may be flaky. In this piece, we'll go over several troubleshooting steps you can take if your Continuity and Handoff experience isn't going as expected.

Cellular Continuity allows for phone calls on iPads even when your iPhone is off

Last week, it was reported that cellular Continuity would be making its way to iOS 9. The first carrier to support cellular Continuity is T-Mobile, which is unsurprising; it was the first to adopt Wi-Fi calling on iPhone as well.

Cellular Continuity allows you to use the Continuity features that debuted with iOS 8, features such as the ability to answer phone calls destined for your iPhone on Macs and iPads, without needing the involved devices to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network.

That means that you'll be able to leave your iPhone at home, and still receive phone calls on your iPad or other valid device while away from home and connected to the Internet via cellular or Wi-Fi.

But it goes deeper than that. After testing out this new feature on the iOS 9 beta, the Continuity features appear to be truly bound at the cellular network level. In fact, I could receive phone calls on my iPad while my iPhone was completely turned off. Watch our video demonstration for more insight.

iOS 9 includes support for Continuity over cellular

Soon, it looks like your iPhone won't need Wi-Fi to use Apple's awesome Continuity feature. As noted by the Verge, the iOS 9 beta seeded to developers earlier this week includes support for the feature over a cellular connection.

For those not familiar with it, Continuity was introduced in iOS 8 and it allows you to answer calls and messages on your Mac or iPad as long as they are on the same network as your iPhone. In iOS 9, that's no longer a requirement.

Meet Flow, Samsung’s cool take on Apple’s Continuity and Handoff features

OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 have brought out a set of features dubbed Continuity which allow users to easily transition between their Macs and iOS devices without skipping a beat. Now Samsung has responded with a feature of its own.

They're calling it Flow and it's pretty cool. With Flow, you can change devices in the midst of an activity or pause an activity until you're ready.

Now available in beta as a free download from the Google Play Store, Flow currently supports select Samsung tablets and smartphones: the Galaxy S5, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy Alpha, Note 4, Note Edge and the Galaxy Tab S.

DockPhone lets you easily place phone calls from your Mac

DockPhone is a new app that lets you dial and call any number directly from your Mac. Based on FaceTime's capabilities, and taking advantage of the new Continuity feature found on OS X Yosemite, DockPhone lets you make calls via your iPhone cellular connection right from the Mac, effectively adding a simple feature that users would have expected Apple to ship with Yosemite in the first place.

Continuity Keypad adds a beautiful phone dialer to OS X Yosemite

Out of all the features that Apple introduced with OS X Yosemite, Continuity is one of the most convenient and useful. With its ability to handoff apps between devices, make and receive phone calls, and send SMS messages from the desktop, Continuity has become one of the most-used features of OS X Yosemite. But despite its newfound call-handling features, Yosemite lacks a dialer for quickly making phone calls to numbers not in your address book, and that's where Continuity Keypad comes into play.

The best new features of iOS 8

Admittedly, the myriad of new and useful capabilities that Apple's just-released iOS 8 brings to your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad are going to prove hugely popular with mainstream users, to say the least. With iOS 8, Apple is appeasing harsh critics who'd frequently point out that Android is capable of things iOS cannot do, and then some more.

iOS 8 opens up Apple's mobile operating system to third-party development to a much greater extent than ever before. And stemming from relaxed policies, iOS 8 boosts on-the-go productivity with deeper inter-app sharing while implementing some of the features our Android friends have grown accustomed to, but in a typical hassle-free Apple fashion, things like third-party keyboards, custom actions, photo editing extensions within the context of Photos and Camera apps and way more.

And though evolutionary rather than revolutionary, we have no doubt in our minds that iOS 8 is going to significantly improve the functionality of Apple's mobile platform, and perhaps even give some folks less reasons to jailbreak.

To celebrate today's release of the free iOS 8 software update, we proudly present you this detailed overview of more than two dozen iOS 8 features we think you're going to fall in love with at first sight.

The best of iOS 8: from new features to developer tools

With the imminent introduction of the iPhone 6 will come the release of iOS 8, Apple's latest iteration in its mobile operating system. After spending the past several weeks with pre-release versions of the software, I can say that there are definitive grounds for anticipating its public availability. Whether you're planning on buying a new iPhone this fall or upgrading your current device to iOS 8, there are clear reasons to be excited about the features it has to offer.

Although it will be shipping with quite a few significant features – Apple claims this is their "biggest iOS release ever" – we've gone hands-on with the beta releases and picked our top ten favorite enhancements that will be available for qualifying devices this September. Here, in no sequential order, are the best of what makes iOS 8 great...

Apple TV rumored to receive Continuity integration with iOS 8 and Yosemite Macs this Fall

iOS 8 and Yosemite come with Handoff, a particularly useful feature for completing tasks across multiple devices and seamlessly moving from one device to another. Part of the broader Continuity capability, Handoff relies on proximity sensing via power-sipping Bluetooth 4.0 to detect nearby devices which then broadcast user tasks.

Handoff lets you easily create an intelligent Instant Hotspot on your mobile device, start writing an email on your iPad and continue right where you left off on a Mac, receive and make phone calls and handle text messages on Macs and lots more.

According to one blogger, Apple will be bringing Continuity to its Apple TV media-streaming box when iOS 8 launches this Fall, resulting in a much tighter Apple TV integration with Mac and iOS...