Rachel Needell

Author Details

Rachel Needell's picture

Author Details

Rachel Needell
Rachel Needell is a Feature Writer at iPhone Life, and a poet and author. With 10-plus years of experience working with Apple devices, she specializes in all-things iPad and is a Notes App expert, having worked on both the 2023 iPad Guide and the Notes App Guide. You can usually find her writing in the Daily Tip newsletter as one of our senior Tip writers. Rachel received her Master’s degree in English Literature in 2021 and her most recent work appears in the Winter ’21 edition of New Note Poetry. When she’s not obsessing about Apple products, you can find her voraciously reading fantasy books with her cat in Asheville, North Carolina.
How to Control Your Apple Watch with Your iPhone

Sometimes, the Apple Watch screen is just too small. And while most of us wouldn't want a bigger watch on our wrists to fix that problem, it might be nice to be able to more easily maneuver the screen from time to time. That's why I'm loving the Apple Watch Mirroring feature on iPhone. It allows you to navigate your Apple Watch from your iPhone, making certain hard-to-read-menu items and hard-to-press buttons a lot easier to access. 

Apple has created a lot of hype around its new Apple Watches, dropping an extreme sports watch they're calling the Apple Watch Ultra alongside the Apple Watch Series 8 and Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) at the tech giant's September 7 "Far Out" event. The new Series 8 contains a few essential new features like fertility tracking and crash detection, while the Ultra increases durability, water resistance, depth pressure, and more.

In 2021, watchOS 8 brought with it the addition of AssistiveTouch, an accessibility feature to help make the device easier to navigate for those who have difficulty using the small touchscreen. With watchOS 9, Apple expands on its gesture control. One of the coolest new gestures is the ability to double-pinch to start and stop your workout. This means you don't need to be able to touch the screen to pause or restart your workout.

This Gesture Is the Easiest Way to Take a Photo on the Apple Watch

In 2021, watchOS 8 brought with it the addition of Assitive Touch, an innovative accessibility feature to help make the device easier to navigate for those who have difficulty using the small touch screen. With watchOS 9, Apple expands on its gesture control, adding pinching to move forward and clenching fist to tap. One of the coolest new gestures is the ability to double-pinch to take a photo, eliminating the need to even press a button when taking a photo with the Apple Watch Camera Remote. I'll show you how below.

How to Use Heart Rate Zones for Exercise on in watchOS 9

In watchOS 9, the new ability to see and track heart rate zones really takes Apple Watch workouts to the next level. Heart rate zones for exercise are a way to monitor the intensity of your workout. Although this feature won't be available to the public until September, once you have watchOS 9, you can add heart rate zones to any workout. Here's how!

iOS 16: How to Save a Screenshot to Quick Note

Sometimes you may find yourself scrolling on your phone and come across something that you want to save. You can always take a screenshot, but that screenshot might get lost among your other photos when you need to find it again. A great solution for this problem is adding the screenshot to a Quick Note. Now, the next time you happen to see the perfect chicken noodle soup recipe, you can save it directly to your notes in only a few quick steps!

Apple's Reminders app helps you organize your schedule and tasks into tidy lists that you can check off after completion. With iOS 16, you now have the option to pin a list to the top of the app just like you can pin a note in the Notes app! This is really great if you have a lot of reminders cluttering the app and you want to be able to find one particular list super quickly. 

A particularly fun and exciting iOS 16 addition to the Photos app is the ability to share an entire photo library. While this feature is amazing for family vacations, group projects, and more, you will want to make sure you are only sharing the photos you want to share. To keep some of your photos private while using a Shared Photo Library, we'll show you how to use Share Manually.

We all love being able to switch quickly from app to app, and have everything be exactly where we left off. It’s also nice to receive notifications from apps even when they’re closed. However, you may find yourself needing save some extra battery life or data. If that’s the case, we’ll show you how to turn off a feature called Background App Refresh to make your battery last a little longer.

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