iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

Notifications on your iPhone provide you with important updates and information at a glance. However, if you're like me and don't dismiss or interact with your notifications frequently, they can start to pile up. When your Notification Center becomes cluttered and clogged up, you can easily clear notifications on iPhone all at once. Read on to find out how!