iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Quickly Turn Off Night Mode on iPhone (iOS 17)

Night mode on iPhone is a feature that makes low-light photography easier. It allows the camera sensor to capture more light than normal so that a photo with little lighting can still come out crystal clear. However, sometimes, this feature will activate when it isn’t really needed, and its delayed photo capture can be annoying when you're not expecting it. Here’s how to turn off Night mode on iPhone quickly.

Protect Yourself from USPS Text Scams (iOS 17)

USPS text scams are becoming more and more common lately. You’ve probably received a text recently saying that your package is being held at a warehouse because it can’t be delivered for one reason or another. The text might even provide a URL to a website that looks exactly like the United States Postal Service website. However, these texts are almost always a scam. Let’s go over how to avoid falling for these USPS scam texts.

Apple added lots of little shortcuts to 3D Touch when it debuted iOS 10. One such useful shortcut is setting the timer from Control Center using 3D Touch on iPhone. Doing so will give you preset options to choose from, allowing you to set the timer in a single step. You can also still tap on the timer to set a specific time not listed as an option. Here’s how to set the timer from Control Center on iPhone.

It's 2016 and our world is in a tumultuous state. Same old story some would say; wars, famine, human strife, and suffering. Particularly here in America, it seems like society in general is on edge and dealing with serious issues of justice, intolerance, and discord. For me, one of my greatest solaces over the decades has been and still is the good ol' Grateful Dead. The experience of their music, live shows, and the collective optimism and enthusiasm of the "Deadhead" scene has been an anchor for me in the storm of life ever since I was in my late teens, which is when I first started seeing shows, back when de facto band leader, Jerry Garcia was still alive.

Depending on your point of view, the new effects features in the Messages app is either lots of fun or totally ridiculous. But you never know when you’ll need to send your friend fireworks and confetti, so you might as well be prepared. Reduce Motion on iPhone is a setting we’ve recommended turning on in the past to save battery life. Keeping it on will still help battery life, but if you want to enjoy Message effects, you’ll have to turn it off. This is due to the function of Reduce Motion, which cuts out all the extra transitions and animations on iPhone. If you’ve been wondering why the new, fancy effects in Messages hasn’t been working for you—here’s how to fix it.

iOS 10 introduced a lot of smaller tweaks and features that make a big difference. One of my favorites is the one-step email list unsubscribe. This is especially useful if you signed up for something only to receive loads of spam emails with no obvious unsubscribe button at the bottom. This happened to me recently when signing up for a contest. I realized after the fact that I had also signed up to receive loads of emails from all different kinds of websites promoting something. Inbox overwhelm set in. But then I saw that beautiful unsubscribe box at the top of the page. Thank you, iOS 10. Here’s how to easily unsubscribe from email lists in Mail with iOS 10 or later.

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A lot of people are asking, "How do you use voicemail transcription on the iPhone?" The feature itself is pretty easy to use, but it can be a little glitchy. We'll go over everything you should know about how to use voicemail transcriptions on your iPhone and what to do if voicemail transcription is not working on your iPhone. Here's how to use the voicemail-to-text feature of Visual Voicemail on your iPhone. 

iPhone Predictive Text is awesome at turning your garbled typing into coherent messages, notes, and more. Except when it's not. If you've ever felt so frustrated with bad iPhone spelling suggestions that you wanted to turn off Autocorrect on your iPhone, why not try adding words to the iPhone dictionary instead? Here's how to change words in Autocorrect.

How to Turn On Read Receipts for Certain Contacts

Read Receipts let the person you're texting know when you've read their message. This can be a great way to subtly let people know that you've received their text, but it also can become a privacy problem. Luckily, read receipts are turned off by default on all iPhones. However, if you want to turn them on for specific people, there is a way. Here's how to turn Read Receipts on for specific messages.

How to Add a Website to Your Home Screen (2023)

If you have a favorite website you use daily, consider adding the website to your Home Screen on iPhone or iPad. This is perfect for quickly accessing a website without needing to enter the URL in Safari each time. You can bookmark the website to a Home Screen icon that looks just like an app and opens just as easily. Here's how to add a website to your Home Screen.

Old-fashioned thermometers require contact. Either the thermometer must be kept under the arm or under the tongue until a little beep lets you know it has a reading. If you have multiple sick kids on your hands, the last thing you want to do is spend thirty minutes checking temperatures and cleaning the thermometer each time. Instead, meet Flo by Zeraph ($49.99). It’s a contact-free smart thermometer that can tell you instantly whether or not someone has a fever. No need to hold it under the tongue, simply hold it up to a forehead and let the green or red light be your guide. Or open the Flo by Zeraph app on your iPhone or Apple Watch to see their exact temperature. 

In the Health app on iPhone, you can create a Medical ID with important information in the case of an emergency. Your Medical ID can be accessed from the emergency dialler without unlocking your iPhone. When creating your Medical ID card, you’ll have the option to sign up as an organ donor with Donate Life America’s organ donation registry. Here’s how to register as an organ donor in the Health app on iPhone.

If you’re having trouble with iOS 10, or simply don’t like the changes, you can revert your iPhone back to iOS 9.3.5. The key is to do it as soon as possible and downgrading iOS takes a certain file called an IPSW file, which you can find a link to below. You certainly can downgrade from iOS 10 back to iOS 9, and doing so is the equivalent of uninstalling an update on iPhone. But it’s good to note ahead of time that you’ll need the backup you made before upgrading to iOS 10 in order for this to work smoothly. Without it you risk losing data and information that no iOS downgrade is worth. To downgrade iOS there are three major steps: put your iPhone into DFU mode, revert your iPhone using the downloaded IPSW file, and restore your iPhone with an iOS 9.3.5 backup or older. It may seem daunting to downgrade your iOS, but we’ll go step-by-step so that it’s an easy process. Here’s how to downgrade from iOS 10 to iOS 9 on iPhone or iPad.

When you want to share an app, there are a couple of ways to go about it. If you have the app downloaded to your iPhone, you can easily share it right from your Home Screen or app folder. If you'd like to share an app that you don't have downloaded or easily accessible, you can also share it from the App Store, which only takes a few additional steps. Here's how to share an app with a friend or family member in a few simple steps.

How to Add Emojis to Text Messages

There are two ways to add iPhone emojis to your text messages: using the emoji keyboard and using predictive text. Both methods require you to have the iPhone emoji keyboard enabled. Once you've done this, you'll be able to choose from a huge array of emojis, including the popular heart emoji, shrug emoji, facepalm emoji, and even clown emoji! Let's learn how.

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