iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Widgets have been available on the iPhone’s Home Screen since iOS 14, but many of us don’t take full advantage of them, despite certain apps’ pleas for us to add them to our Home Screens. Widgets may seem like bigger distractions, taking up screen real estate and demanding our attention, but in reality, they can offer helpful information at a glance and allow us to interact with the apps without fully opening them or getting lost in other app notifications as we scroll to find one. Here are the best ways to utilize widgets to keep your display streamlined and efficient, plus a few team favorite favorites for you to try out.

David and Donna share their full report after working for a week with Apple’s new AR headset. From controlling the OS with your eyes, to capturing 3D video, to making an avatar that looks uncannily like you, learn the promise and the problems with the Apple Vision Pro. Other topics include the new 15-inch M3 MacBook Air, password management tips, and using iOS 17 to diagnose car trouble.

If you need to hide contacts on your iPhone for any reason, there are ways to do it. We’ll go over a few different methods that will allow you to conceal a contact. Let’s take a look at how to hide contacts on iPhone.

If you want certain pictures to remain private, your first line of defense should be to make sure you have a passcode or FaceID set up so that you have to sign into your device. But if that's not enough protection, you have two options to lock photos on your iPhone: you can hide specific images in a locked Photos album, or you can lock the entire Photos app. Below, we'll cover how to place specific photos in a locked folder, as well as a couple of ways to lock your Photos app. 

It can be concerning if your iPhone keyboard is not working properly. Whether it is lagging, disappearing, not appearing, typing on its own, or typing incorrectly, it can be fixed! I’ll teach you how to reset your keyboard dictionary, and I’ll go over other basic troubleshooting steps.

If the search is not working on your iPhone’s Calendar app, it could be caused by an incorrect setting, lack of iCloud storage, syncing problems, or a glitch. I’ll teach you how to quickly troubleshoot the causes for all possible iPhone Calendar not searching issues in minutes.

Apple doesn't offer a way to transcribe Voice Memos, but we'll show you how to use a third-party app to transcribe voice notes from an iPhone or iPad. This way, you can easily get transcriptions for your brainstorms and recorded meetings!