From the latest news to the most comprehensive tutorials, learn how to get the most out of your iPad with our step-by-step guides and expert tips.
When listening to your songs in the Spotify Music app, the album artwork is typically scaled down slightly so that there’s a bit of empty space in between it and the edge of the display.
A new free jailbreak tweak dubbed SpotifyFullScreenArtworkUI by iOS developer theo78825 scales up the album artwork a little bit more so it fills the whole top half of the screen.
Devices that don’t support Touch ID or just aren’t utilizing the feature typically resort to passcodes as the next best form of security. On the other hand, there tends to be a rather annoying delay after pressing the Home button before the passcode interface finally appears.
A new free jailbreak tweak dubbed Accelerated Unlock by iOS developer Youssef Mikhail does away with this unwanted delay and makes unlocking your device seem faster.
Facebook is working on a new feature to permit users to subscribe to news publications directly from its mainland mobile app. According to a report this morning from The Wall Street Journal, many details remain up in the air as discussions are currently underway.
The company is allegedly leaning toward a model that would let you read certain articles for free every month, before being prompted to pay. There's a catch: Facebook is said to limit this to the stories published natively through its Instant Articles service.
With that in mind, it may be no coincidence at all that Facebook recently launched new tools to help publishers make their Instant Articles compatible with the Apple News format as well as with Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages system.
This new functionality could roll out by the end of 2017, sources said. People familiar with the matter pointed out that the upcoming feature has long been requested by publishers.
While users currently can follow different news organizations, the rumored feature would permit them to use their credit card information on file with Facebook to directly subscribe to a news publication and have any subscriber-only content delivered to them through the app.
The development, if true, should pose some additional challenges to Google News platform as more and more people turn to Facebook for their daily news.
Image: Facebook's recent redesign of Trending pages.
If you haven't upgraded your Apple ID from Apple's older Two-Step Verification system to the more secure Two-Factor Authentication, iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra will do that for your when you install either operating system on your devices.
Apple communicated the change in an email to customers with Two-Step Verification enabled for their Apple ID. Here's the full text of the email communique, as obtained by MacRumors:
If you install the iOS 11 or macOS High Sierra public betas this summer and meet the basic requirements, your Apple ID will be automatically updated to use two-factor authentication. This is our most advanced, easy-to-use account security, and it's required to use some of the latest features of iOS, macOS, and iCloud.
Once updated, you'll get the same extra layer of security you enjoy with two-step verification today, but with an even better user experience. Verification codes will be displayed on your trusted devices automatically whenever you sign in, and you will no longer need to keep a printed recovery key to make sure you can reset a forgotten password.
Significantly improving the security of your Apple ID, Two-Factor Authentication requires both your Apple ID password and a one-time code when you sign in to a new device or browser with your Apple ID.
TUTORIAL: How to protect your Apple ID with Two-Factor Authentication
Unlike Two-Step Verification, which sends a six-digit verification code via SMS, Two-Factor Authentication is deeply integrated in iOS 9, OS X El Capitan, watchOS 2 and tvOS or later and features a mechanism that automatically delivers verification codes via push notifications to all trusted devices registered to a given Apple ID.
If you're not using either system to protect your Apple ID, you're wholeheartedly recommended to enroll your devices in Two-Factor Authentication. If your account isn't eligible for two-factor authentication, you can still use two-step verification to protect your Apple ID information.
One way or another, anyone installing Apple's latest OS updates this fall shall be asked to upgrade their Apple ID to the more modern Two-Factor Authentication system. Two-Factor Authentication is available in more than a hundred countries, listed in Apple's support document.
An upcoming summer update to Minecraft: Pocket Edition for iPhone and iPad will include full support for cross-platform multiplayer, the game's developer Mojang announced today in a blog post ahead of the Electronics Entertainment Expo show, which runs from June 13-15, 2017 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
“We’re releasing a new update for consoles, which brings players together across mobile, console and Windows 10,” developers wrote. They'll be adding in-game multiplayer server, too.
A server browser in the Minecraft start menu will let you search a list of servers which you can join right away. They'll be launching with four servers—Lifeboat, Mineplex, InPVP and CubeCraft—with more to follow at a later stage.
And as a cool bonus, any downloadable content you purchase will be accessible amongst the various devices at no extra charge!
Mojang highlighted the upcoming features in a promo video, embedded below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyr3XZrZssk
The free update will permit fans of Minecraft on iOS to play the game with players on other devices, including Android, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows 10 PC and VR. Currently, Minecraft: Pocket Edition for iOS lets you play with friends on Xbox One consoles or PCs.
Mojan will be rebranding the game on Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, mobile and VR as just “Minecraft”. Support for Minecraft: Java Edition, which is the original PC game, will continue. “This means when you buy 'Minecraft', you're buying a game that can you can play with friends across devices,” said developers.
Plus, this fall, players will be able to explore endless worlds, rendered in 4K HDR resolution, via another upcoming update. Support for 4K resolution across platform will be free.
However, advanced effects will require a new “Super Duper Graphics Pack”, which will bring out features like dynamic shadows, lighting that streams through fog, movement in leaves and grass, new textures for mobs and villagers, directional lighting, edge highlighting and more.
They'll have additional information about the release date of the free 4K update and “Super Duper Graphics Pack” DLC closer to release. As always, we'll keep you in the loop.
Minecraft: Pocket Edition for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is $6.99 on App Store.
Minecraft: Apple TV Edition is $19.99 on tvOS App Store.
Like many stock apps in iOS 11, Apple's Podcasts app has been redesigned around an Apple Music-style appearance with consolidated tabs, bigger thumbnails and more.
As reported by Recode's Peter Kafka and Six Colors' Jason Snell, Apple is also making some notable changes to the way podcast feed works so that both podcast creators and advertisers can see what listeners actually like.
As for users, they'll be able to download full seasons of their favorite podcast shows and the Podcasts app will determine if a podcast should be played in chronological order.
There are other updates focused on making podcast creators' lives easier as well. According to Apple's own spec sheet regarding the Podcasts app updates in iOS 11, the updated Apple Podcasts specification now provides the following features:
Podcast creators can now provide clear, concise titles. Improvements to how episodes are ordered and recommended within a season. The ability for new subscribers to receive the full current season in their Library. Quick play lets users pick up listening where they left off.Podcasts will be able to define individual seasons and explain whether an episode is a teaser, a full episode or bonus content. Snell explains that these extensions will be read by the Podcasts app and used to present a podcast in a richer way than the current linear approach in iOS 10.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFsAlcnlmSo
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As explained, Apple is going to share more data with podcast creators and advertisers.
With basic analytics, podcast creators will have the ability to see when listeners play individual episodes, what part of individual episodes they listen to, which parts they skip over and when they stop listening. To protect your privacy and prevent targeted advertising, Apple will provide aggregated, anonymized performance data that cannot be tracked to individual users.
Currently, podcast creators can see when someone has downloaded an individual episode, but that's about it when it comes to analytics.
How do you like these changes coming to the Podcasts app?
Share your opinion in the comments section below.
It has been a busy week amid preparations for WWDC 2017, but that hasn't stopped the jailbreak community from hammering out jailbreak tweaks to improve the aesthetic and function of jailbroken iPhones and iPads.
In this piece, we'll talk about all of the jailbreak tweaks that were released throughout the past work week. We'll start first by going in detail with our favorite released, then we'll outline all of the rest afterwards.
Your Status Bar is home to a digital clock that you can glance at throughout the day to keep track of time, but whether or not you like the way it’s formatted out of the box remains to be seen.
A new jailbreak tweak dubbed AdvancedStatusTime by iOS developer Maxwell Lang gives you a way to customize the time text string so that your time is displayed in the Status Bar how you want it to be.
If you take screenshots on your iPhone or iPad more often than the average Joe, then a companion jailbreak tweak like Memento by iOS developer Adit Kamath can be extremely helpful for your workflow.
This tweak offers a host of sharing features that you can take advantage of after snapping a screenshot and is fully configurable.
Depending on what kind of wallpaper you’re using on your Lock screen, a new jailbreak tweak dubbed TimeMover by iOS developer NeinZedd9 can help you re-orient your Lock screen clock to better match it.
Whether you want to move the time up or down or side-to-side slightly, or rotate it to follow the lines or effects appearing in your wallpaper, TimeMover has an intuitive tap and drag-based user interface for fine-tuning your Lock screen clock to match your unique setup.
AppLocker by iOS developer Ori Kadosh, is one of the most popular app security jailbreak tweaks in Cydia, and it has been updated this week with full support for iOS 10.
AppLocker lets you create a password that you will use to access your apps; it's requested every time you launch an app, and if you can’t provide it, you can't use the app.
Depending on how advanced of an iOS user you are, you may sideload apps from time to time.
In many circumstances, sideloading third-party apps via Impactor or Xcode involves trusting a certificate – a process you should be familiar with if you've jailbroken with Yalu102 or Pangu for iOS 9 – but iOS doesn’t make the trusting process easy or straightforward out of the box.
Here to fix that problem is a new free jailbreak tweak called QuickTrust by iOS developer 1GamerDev, which adds a “Trust” button directly to the certificate pop-up alert, as shown above.