Facebook-owned Instagram announced Monday that users can now save their own live-streamed Instagram videos to their iPhone. You can now tap Save in the upper-right corner of a finished live video to save the broadcast to the Photos library on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. The iPhone photography app will continue to remove live videos from the interface after you've watched them, but you can now hold onto any video to re-watch it later. These updates require Instagram 10.12, available free from App Store.
Apps
Activity, Popcorn, Vellum, and other apps to check out this weekend
It's Saturday again, and you know what that means. It's time for another edition of our Apps of the Week roundup. This week we have some great selections for you, including an activity-tracker, a movie-finder and a wallpaper client. And as always, we've picked two great new games for you to check out.
Netflix ditching stars for thumbs-up/down system, planning to stream mobile content in HDR quality
Netflix is abandoning star ratings in favor of a binary thumbs-up/down system set to start rolling out in a few weeks, Fast Company reported Friday. Variety says Netflix is also planning to stream content in High Dynamic Range (HDR) quality on supported mobile devices. HDR video offers a more dynamic and richer range of colors, brighter whites and deeper blacks. Lastly, they're experimenting with mobile-specific cuts of movies and TV shows tailored to viewing on smartphone screens.
FiLMiC Pro 6.0 hits with overhauled UI, iPhone 7 exclusive features and other improvements
Anyone who's serious about taking videos on their iOS device would agree that FiLMiC Pro for iPhone and iPad leaves Apple's stock Camera app in the dust.
The filmmakers' go-to app, this ultimate video recording and editing software has become even better thanks to yesterday's update which brought out a redesigned user interface along with a number of new features.
The update includes iPhone 7-exclusive capabilities such as gamma curve controls for Natural, Dynamic, Flat and LOG (a first for mobile video), live adjustments for Shadow, Highlight, RGB, Saturation and Vibrance curves, temporal noise reduction up to 1080p resolution and more.
Alexa comes to the iPhone
Siri competitor Alexa has come to the world's most popular smartphone via an incoming update for Amazon's shopping app for iPhone and iPad. The release marks the first time Amazon's personal assistant has supported non-Alexa hardware.
Just tap the mic in the app's search bar to ask Alexa questions, get weather updates, shop and search items, order and track products, play music, use Alexa Skills and Smart Home features, and much more.
By sneaking Alexa into its iPhone app, Amazon's made it possible for Apple customers to experience its Siri rival in full glory without needing to buy an Echo speaker.
St. Patrick’s Day stickers launch on Instagram
Yesterday was the Saint Patrick’s Day, a cultural and religious celebration held on the traditional death date of Saint Patrick who was the foremost patron saint of Ireland. To celebrate the festivities, Instagram has added a handful of themed stickers which you can plaster all over the photos and videos in your Stories. They’re available in the United States, Ireland, Australia and the United Kingdom through the weekend so go ahead and dazzle your followers with St. Patrick’s Day-themed Stories.
Facebook kicks off global rollout of Snapchat-like Stories feature in its mainland app
Facebook has infamously ripped off Snapchat’s Stories feature wholesale with auto-vanishing slideshows on Instagram and WhatsApp, in addition to the similar recently introduced feature on Messenger, called Messenger Day. The social networking behemoth was recently caught testing Snapchat-like Stories feature in its mobile app. According to TechCrunch, the company has now begun a staggered rollout of Facebook Stories to all users worldwide.
Apple wants to zero in on ‘Pro’ segment, but what about the large majority?
In a statement warmly welcomed by us internet folk, Tim Cook recently proclaimed "you will see us do more in the pro area." In our circles, this is unquestionably good news, as we all foster an insatiable appetite for new innovations, be that on a hardware or software level. More pro is great, however I invariably had to spare a thought for the average, not-so techy Apple customer.
I’m talking about the type of customer that after owning their iPhone 6S for more than a year, still has little concept of what 3D Touch does. Or how about the one that loves their new MacBook, but will gaze at you with a stunned expression when you introduce them to Force Touch on their trackpad. This is by no means meant to sound snarky or patronizing, because as a matter of fact, I don’t blame them for not knowing - I blame Apple for failing to take everyone along for the ride due to poor communication.
Shifting up the ‘Pro’ a notch in the future sounds great, that said how do you straddle the line between pleasing us tech-warriors and not entirely overwhelming a large majority of users, a majority already only privity to roughly half of the juicy features on their devices? Apple needs to find some cogent answers to this issue, and rather than creating a two-tier system in their hardware sold (labelling only some products 'Pro'), I contend that software could be the key.
How to free up space on your iPhone by clearing X’s cache and media files
Learn how to clear cached media and other temporary files in the X app on your iPhone or Android phone to free up storage space or troubleshoot issues.
Viber rolls out self destructing Secret Chats
Messaging service Viber today rolled out a new Secret Chats feature. Not to be confused with Secret Messages, a similar feature introduced in February 2017 that lets you define how long your photos, videos and texts are available after the recipient has opened them, Secret Chats use Viber's end-to-end encryption let you set a timer on individual messages so they disappear after a few seconds, get an alert when a screenshot is taken and be sure no messages get forwarded.
Concept: bezel-less iPhone 8 with wraparound AMOLED screen and Dark Mode
Following a concept video from Polish blog My Apple imagining what a system-wide Dark Mode in iOS 11 (along with a few other sought-after rumored features) might look like, user interface designer Vianney le Masne has taken it upon himself to put together some great-looking mockups depicting how iPhone 8's rumored OLED screen and the handset's bezel-less design could be leveraged to implement Dark Mode across iOS and in apps.
“With Dark Mode in iOS for the next iPhone, 2017 could be all about killing the four sides of your screen and making it all about your thumb,” said le Masne.
StoreSwitcher lets you easily switch between App Store accounts
If you have more than one Apple ID associated with your iPhone for downloading apps from the App Store, then having a way to switch between your accounts more easily might be at the top of your wish list.
A new jailbreak tweak called StoreSwitcher by iOS developer Ori Kadosh is a new release that was designed with these kinds of people in mind.