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5 Apps to Start Your Day Right

By Rachel Needell

5 Apps to Start Your Day Right

Whether you’re an early riser or prefer to sleep in, everyone wants to begin the day on a good note. In this world of modern technology, it’s easy to start scrolling social media or checking work emails the minute you open your eyes. This kind of routine doesn’t give your sleepy brain or body any time to adjust and find a moment of peace before you’re thrown back into the thick of it. That’s why I’ve gathered a list of the best apps to open before you put yourself out into the world that will bring a little bit of positivity, learning, good habit-building, and gratitude into your fast-paced life.

How to Organize Your Calendar in 2025

(Sponsored Post) By Amy Spitzfaden Both on Thu, 10/31/2024

Apple is pretty good about updating its products, but it seems to have forgotten about the Calendar app and its many downsides. The makers of Informant 5, on the other hand, do not forget to regularly improve their app based on user experience. The latest updates to this calendar and task-management app are a productivity game-changer.

How to Change Your Apple Watch Face

Did you know that you can customize your Apple Watch face from the Watch app on your iPhone? This is helpful because changing your watch face on the Apple Watch can be tricky with the small screen. But from the Watch app on iPhone, it’s easy to go through all of your options and select the complications and colors you want to use. Here’s how to customize an Apple Watch face from your iPhone.

With iOS 10 on iPhone, Apple introduced the ability to use Apple Pay in Safari. What this means is that if you have any credit cards in your Wallet on iPhone, you can use them along with Touch ID to easily and quickly pay for items online in your Safari browser. Keep in mind that not all websites have the feature, but when it’s available you can use it for quick transactions. Apple Pay in Safari is available for all iPhones and iPads that are able to run iOS 10. It can also be done on Macs running MacOS Sierra using an Apple Watch running watchOS 3 for authentication. Here’s how to use Apple Pay in Safari on iPhone.

Folders are a great way to organize your apps, especially if your apps are beginning to pile up. Lots of apps use notification badges to let you know there’s a task to complete within the app or new content to check. But when those apps are in a folder, the notifications badges are added together to give you one number in a red circle. However, you can 3D Touch a folder to see what specific apps have unchecked notifications. Here’s how to 3D Touch a folder to see app notification badges.

To listen to Apple Music offline, you need to download the songs you would like to make available for offline listening. Apple Music allows you to add lots of songs to your library without having them take up space on your device, but if you want to listen to those songs offline (or without using your data plan) you should download the songs you want to listen to offline. Luckily, it’s easy to make an album or song available offline in Apple Music. Here’s how.

iPhone Notes Disappeared? Easy Ways to Get Them Back

Why did my notes disappear? iPhone notes disappearing or the entire Notes app being lost are most often caused by accidentally moving or deleting the Notes app or notes. In rare cases, you might experience a software glitch, such as right after an update. Regardless of the cause, we'll show you how to recover lost notes on your iPhone, plus how to get the Notes app back on your iPhone if you accidentally removed it. 

Control Center is great because it allows you to quickly do all kinds of useful things like turn Wi-Fi, Airplane Mode, and Do Not Disturb on or off, lock your screen orientation, control playback, adjust volume levels, open your phone's calculator, and use your iPhone as a flashlight. However, some people worry about privacy when Control Center is accessible from Lock Screen (although, rest assured, nothing private can be opened without unlocking your phone), and others get tired of accidentally opening Control Center in an app while playing a game. Which is why Apple made it possible to turn off access to Control Center from Lock screen and within apps. Here’s how to disable access to Control Center from Lock Screen.

The beauty of Apple Music is it allows you to add tons of songs to your collection without taking up storage space on your iPhone. But songs that aren’t downloaded to your iPhone also aren’t available for offline listening. If you’re someone who listens to music without an internet connection a lot of the time, consider turning on the setting that allows songs to automatically download to your iPhone when you add them to your Apple Music library. Here’s how to automatically download songs added to your Apple Music library.

Apple TV has come a long way in recent years. With the introduction of the 4th-generation Apple TV, we said goodbye to limited Apple TV channels and hello to the Apple TV App Store. But where do you begin when setting up your Apple TV? How do you know what the best Apple TV apps to get are? Consider this an introduction for the newbies and a checklist for those who’ve maybe had their Apple TV a while but never really looked into the full spectrum of what they can download. This is our Apple TV apps list stocked with the best Apple TV apps from your favorite categories: TV and movies, games, fitness, and more. We’ll also cover which of the Apple TV apps are free, free to download but subscription based (i.e. Netflix, Hulu, etc.), free with in-app purchases, or (one-time) paid. Without further ado, here are the best apps for your Apple TV.

How to Text on the Apple Watch with Scribble (2023)

While the Apple Watch keeps getting bigger and bigger (see the new Apple Watch Ultra), the tiny keyboard may feel a bit unruly and difficult to maneuver, especially if you have clumsy fingers like me. Instead, you can send Apple Watch messages with Scribble. The Scribble feature allows you to use your finger to write each individual letter of your response. It’s easy, but best for shorter messages. You wouldn’t want to write a novel with Scribble messages on an Apple Watch, but you might use it to say, “OK,” or “omw” (on my way). Here’s how to type on your Apple Watch with Scribble.

The iHome iPLWBT5 Docking Clock Radio ($129.99) could really eliminate some of the clutter on your nightstand. It's a clock radio, which iHome has been making for years, but it also doubles as a dual charging dock for your iPhone 7 and Apple Watch. There's a Lightning dock on the top, which should accommodate most cases except really protective ones. For iPhones in protective cases or an iPad, there's a USB port so you can charge a device via your own Lightning cable. Finally, sitting on the side is an Apple Watch magnetic charging base. 

With iOS 10, you can send stickers to your friends that you’ve acquired from the App Store that’s within Messages. Our tip on Stickers in Messages will give you the full rundown if you’re not familiar with how to get and use stickers. If you’ve been using stickers with your friends, you’ve probably received a sticker from a friend that you liked and wanted but didn’t know how to find in the App Store. Well Apple built an easy shortcut into Messages for this exact instance. Here’s how to get the same stickers that your friend just sent you in Messages.

TreasureHunter ($4.99) is a  iOS board game conversion of the identically named, mildly popular board game released in 2015. This card game was created by legendary game designer Richard Garfield (the creator of the wildly popular Magic the Gathering trading card game). The conversion to iPad board game app was done by the game's Germany-based publisher Queen Games, a company that has had a somewhat mediocre track record digitally converting its other physical board games such as Alhambra and Kingdom Builder to iOS board games. Does TreasureHunter rise above those previous efforts? Read on to find out.

iPhone and iPad word processors are nearly as plentiful on the App Store as flashlight apps. In order to stand out from the crowded selection, developers need to offer products that meet a specific need. In the case of prose composition, one word processing app that enables the narrative (e.g. story and screenwriting) and article construction and evolution process is Scrivener ($19.99). Originally available only for the Mac, Scrivener has recently made the leap to the iOS platform. How does it fare on both? Read on to find out.

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