How-To


Playing an iPhone prank on your friend for April Fool’s Day is a pretty brilliant, easy way to get your shenanigans on. Today is April 1, so we thought this would be a good time to bring up our three favorite iPhone pranks to play on your friends. From the classic ellipsis gif prank to the home screen fake out — your friends will never see it coming.

When you tilt your screen on iPhone, it automatically rotates. This is helpful in many different scenarios; but on iPhone Plus models, a horizontally rotated phone makes certain stock apps look slightly different—this is called Landscape mode on iPhone.The larger screen on the iPhone Plus models is used to present more information in split screen format. When your iPhone 6, 6s, 7, or 8 Plus is held horizontally, your iPhone is in Landscape mode. Some iPhone Plus users appreciate the split screen Landscape mode, especially in apps like Mail, where they can simultaneously view their inbox and a specific email. However, there are plenty of iPhone 7 Plus or iPhone 8 Plus users who would rather just turn off auto rotate on iPhone or Landscape mode entirely. We’ll show you what Landscape mode looks like in different apps below with horizontal iPhone screenshots from the iPhone 7 Plus. Then we’ll get to how to turn off auto rotate on iPhone in case you decide Landscape mode is not your style. We'll also cover how to remove split screen from Landscape mode on your iPhone Plus and continue enjoying the extra horizontal screen space.

I often refer to Evernote as my “second brain.” The app allows me to follow a modified version of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy, a productivity method designed to help you arrange a systematic workflow to prioritize, manage, and execute important tasks while snoozing those that can wait. Today, I don’t know what I would do without my omnipresent, all-knowing digital assistant. Here are some tips that will keep you coming back to the green, glowing reliability of Evernote.

I think we can all agree that money can be a tense subject. Rarely do we enjoy reminding a friend they owe us twenty bucks for last week’s group dinner. But, if you’re a social animal in the slightest, I’m sure you’ve found yourself splitting a tab with friends and family. At the beginning of this year, some of the iPhone Life team took a trip to Mexico, where we had to split a whole lot of different things from dinner to snorkeling. But it was easy to keep track of and pay each other back thanks to the app Splitwise (free). Here’s what it does and why we love it.

If you have an iPhone 6s or later, you can turn on Siri by saying, “Hey, Siri” even when your iPhone isn’t plugged in. However, you also have the option to press and hold your Home button to activate Siri. With iOS 11 on iPhone, you can now turn press and hold to activate Siri off and reply solely on activating Siri with your voice by saying, “Hey, Siri.” If you often accidentally activate Siri when pressing your Home button, this is a great way to stop that from happening. Here’s how to turn off Press Home for Siri and instead only activate with Hey, Siri on iPhone.

The games I play most often on my iPhone are those I can easily pick up for a few minutes and set back down without needing to get too heavily involved. I also very much enjoy a game that makes me think a bit by figuring out some elaborate puzzle. The puzzle adventure game Aurora for iPhone or iPad combines both of those in an adorable game that asks you look at things from all different perspectives. Here’s what this game is all about and why we love it.

iPhone Life’s resident iPhoneographer and Managing Editor Rheanne Taylor has a favorite photo editing app that she uses constantly for her polishing her photos: Darkroom Photo Editor (free). But it’s not just her—avid photographers will tell you their all-time favorite filter from Darkroom at the drop of a hat, and a quick look at the app’s review will tell you much users love it. This app offers users a lot of control over their photos with a wide range of options. Access to the basic features of the app is free, but users say it’s well worth $3.99 to get all the premium tools or $5.99 for all the tools and filters. We’ll tell you more about the Darkroom app below, including what  it can do and why we love it.

One of the big safety features of iOS 11 is the new Do Not Disturb While Driving feature. When it’s on and set up, your iPhone won’t receive notifications while you’re driving unless you let it know you aren’t the person driving. It will also send automatic text replies to those who try to reach you to let them know that you’re driving and not available. And if it’s an urgent message, the person can reply "Urgent" and the text will go through. It’s a great feature for those who get distracted by their phone when driving. Here’s how to turn on Do Not Disturb While Driving with iOS 11 on the iPhone.

Apple Music's social networking feature lets you follow your favorite musicians. They share things such as behind-the-scenes photos, lyrics they're working on, a new video, and whatever else interests them. When you add songs to your music library, by default the artists are automatically added to your Connect Posts. But you may not want to follow some of these artists. In my case, for example, I added Beethoven, but it seems unlikely he'll be sharing anything. You can change the default so that artists aren't automatically added. Or you can unfollow selected artists that were added by default. Here’s how to unfollow artists in Apple Music on iPhone.

For new Apple Music users, Apple offers a three-month trial. When those three months are up, you can choose to cancel your subscription if you’ve decided it’s not for you. But Apple will automatically begin to charge your account if you haven’t turned off auto renew. On the other hand, let’s say you’ve been using Apple Music for a while but want to cancel. You can use this tip to make sure your account isn’t automatically renewed for another month of Apple Music. Here’s how to turn off Apple Music auto renew on the iPhone.

Want to get rid of that annoying, “Sent from my iPhone” signature? Here’s how. Better yet, if you have more than one email account connected to your Mail app, you can create different signatures for the separate accounts. This is especially convenient if you have mail accounts for different purposes, such as one for work and one for personal use. You can create different signatures for Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, iCloud, and more. Here’s how to create different signatures for separate email accounts on iPhone.

When you do a search in Safari, it preloads the top search result in the background so that if you do indeed select that result, the page will appear almost instantly. What this means, though, is that if that's not the web page you want, you've already used up some of your data to preload it. This is fine if you're on Wi-Fi or an unlimited data plan, but perhaps not a good idea if you're trying to keep down your data usage. Fortunately, you can turn off this feature, thereby avoiding data usage for web pages that you may not want to access.

If you come across an unfamiliar word while using your iPhone, it's easy to quickly get the definition. If you have an iPhone with 3D Touch you can look up a definition with ease. Of course, you can also look up a word if you don’t have 3D Touch by tapping and holding to highlight a word, then tapping Look Up. For those with iPhone 6s (Plus) or later, however, use this tip to 3D Touch a word for the definition.

Welcome to App Saturdays! (*insert jazz hands*) Every Saturday we’ll feature an app we love, telling you what it can do and why it’s awesome.

Our brains have a great way of never shutting up. Just search Mindfulness in the App Store and you’ll see that people are actively looking for ways to relax, let go of the past, calm their heart, and come to a present state of awareness. But do any of those apps deliver on what they promise? I’ve tried a few and have even found some that I like. But never before have I found an app that utilizes a proven method of hacking our unconscious responses. You’ll be amazed what a simple breathing technique can do for your body, mind, and spirit. Don’t take my word for it though; this is the same breathing technique used by the military and professional athletes. This is Box Breathing. Here’s what it does and why we love it.

For some, it’s not easy to catch every word spoken when watching their favorite shows, videos, and movies on their devices. My mom has grown accustomed to watching her shows with closed captions, simply because she likes the added benefit of reading while she watches. Luckily, it’s easy to set up. You can turn on closed captions for media as your default on iPhone or iPad; here’s how.

I use the Reminders app on my iPhone quite a bit. I’ll create a reminder to pick up my dry cleaning, to buy my cousin a birthday present, or to pay a bill. When I create Reminders, I usually set them to remind me on a certain day, at a certain time. But if I need to make a change to one reminder among many, manually shuffling through them is a pain. For example, I made a Reminder to “pay a fee for the school trip” my son was going on. I forgot what the fee amount was and needed the information before the due date. Instead of tapping each folder and scrolling through them to find it, I simply accessed the Reminders search field. Here’s how to search for a particular reminder on iPhone.

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