Tips

How to teach Siri how to call you

Siri is a great way to get to the things you want on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad without having to tap on anything – it works great for situations where you don't really have your hands free, but who says using Siri has to be boring?

In this quick post, we'll show you how you can spice up your conversations with Siri by configuring the voice assistant to call you something different.

Understanding iOS Location Services and what they do

Location services are among some of the most over-used features on any iOS device. Out of the box, iOS devices with location services enabled are configured to track your location in various reasons, including producing the best user experience possible.

In this guide, we'll show you all about how to configure your iOS location services so that you're not being tracked when you don't need to be, giving you the privacy you deserve.

How to dim your Mac screen brightness even lower than what’s allowed by macOS

Reduce Mac brightness even further using the QuickShade app

When you've pressed your display brightness down key on your Mac's keyboard as many times as you can without the screen going completely black, and it's still too bright for you, then you're probably like me and need a way to further dim the display's dimness level beyond the OEM minimum.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to further decrease your display's brightness than what's allowed by the standard brightness settings of macOS.

How to download Facebook photos and videos

If you've been on Facebook for a few years now, chances are you've shared a bunch of photos and videos with your friends and family thus far, many of which might no longer be stored on your iOS device or Mac.

Unfortunately, Facebook doesn't make things any easier by not providing a straightforward way to download the photos and videos users have uploaded to the service.

But worry not, our loyal fans, the iDownloadBlog tutorial series comes to the rescue. In this detailed tutorial, you will learn about five different techniques that will help you download Facebook photos and videos onto your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or Mac without too much hassle.

How to open a new private window in Safari for Mac

One of the features of the Safari web browser built into your Mac that will come in handy time and time again are the private browsing windows that you can open to browse the web privately without having your browsing history stored in your computer for the next user to see.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to open a private browsing window in Safari on your Mac so that you're ready the next time you need to perform a web search incognito.

How to show Safari toolbar on iOS without having to scroll back up

Since the iPhone's inception, Apple's mobile Safari browser has had this neat little feature for quickly jumping to the very top of any webpage simply by tapping the status bar.

Following a major redesign of Apple's mobile operating system with the 2013's release of iOS 7, Safari's top and bottom toolbars now shrink and disappear as you scroll down. As a result, you must scroll back up a bit to access the URL field, bookmarks and other features in the toolbars.

In this tutorial, you're going to learn about a cool new shortcut that you can use to quickly reveal Safari's toolbars without scrolling back up.

How to remove iOS configuration profiles

Back in March 2013, security firm Skycure found that some configuration profiles on iOS pose a major security vulnerability because they use root certificates that might allow harmful software to bypass Apple's sandboxing rules and install on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

Apple has since removed a few apps from the App Store that were found to install root certificates which could allow monitoring of data.

Still, the fact remains that configuration profiles could be exploited to compromise SSL/TLS security solutions. If you have a configuration profile installed on your device that's no longer use by apps, you should delete it in order to make sure your data remains protected.

In this tutorial, we're going to demonstrate how easy it is to delete iOS configuration profiles that are no longer needed, thereby increasing your security.

How to increase privacy in Safari for iPhone and iPad

Safari on iPhone and iPad

Most of you who use an iOS device probably use Safari as your main and default web browser despite the vast number of third-party alternatives like Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Opera, etc., available in the App Store. But how often do you think about the privacy of your information when you're using it?

Apple gives you several privacy options for using Safari on your iPhone or iPad to keep your information safe. In this tutorial, we aim to make you more familiar with them and talk about how to use them to make Safari secure and private.

How to subscribe to websites with Safari’s Shared Links

Apple's Safari browser has a little known yet very useful feature called Shared Links, which basically saves in one central place links to articles that your Twitter followers and LinkedIn contacts post, and those published as RSS feeds.

Most websites, iDownloadBlog included, offer a series of regularly published articles in the form of RSS feeds that can be subscribed to in Safari so that they appear within your Shared Links section.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to subscribe to articles from websites using the Shared Links feature in Safari for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Mac.