iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Productivity apps on our iPhones can do a wide range of things from helping us organize our schedule to making sure we stick to it. The best productivity apps for iOS tend to have a streamline design while being easy to use right from the start. We wanted to cover the best productivity apps, specifically, for keeping your focus. There are lots of apps that are all about focusing or time-tracking. Some utilize the Pomodoro technique while others allow you to grow virtual trees that wither away if you leave the app. The best productivity app for you is the one that actually helps you focus. Here’s five of the best productivity apps for staying focused.

What is Chromecast? It’s Google’s equivalent to AirPlay. Except you need the very reasonably priced Chromecast ($35) to stream content from your iPhone, iPad, or computer. If you need a solution for easily streaming Netflix or Hulu on your TV, setting up and installing Chromecast is a great way to go and is significantly more affordable than the Apple TV. Chromecast setup isn’t hard to complete. But it takes more than just plugging it in to figure out how to set up Chromecast. We’ll make your Chromecast setup easy with how-to steps and photos below. Here’s how to connect Chromecast to your TV.

You can easily select text on iPad or iPhone by turning your keyboard into a trackpad. This is available on iPads running at least iOS 9 and iPhones running iOS 10. Before, when selecting text, there were multiple steps and your vision was obstructed by your own finger. Now you can press into your keyboard, turn it into a trackpad, and easily move your finger to select text or place the cursor in another place for easy editing. Here’s how to easily select text on iPad or iPhone.

A passcode on an Apple Watch works a bit differently than a passcode on an iPhone. On an iPhone, you have to enter the code or use Face ID or Touch ID every time the screen turns off. But it would be super annoying if you had to enter the password on your Apple Watch each time you lifted your wrist—no one would use one if that were the case. A passcode on an Apple Watch is only asked for when your Apple Watch restarts and when you’ve removed the watch from your wrist and put it back on. That’s why this Apple Watch feature is an effective privacy measure, and not so inconvenient that users won’t bother setting a passcode. Here's how to set a passcode on your Apple Watch.

How to Type the Degree Symbol on iPhone & iPad

There are quite a few symbols hidden behind numbers and letters on iPhone. The iPhone symbols for currency are a good example, but a less known hidden symbol is the circle that indicates a temperature degree, either Celsius or Fahrenheit. Little did I know, it's easy to type the degree sign from your iPhone’s keyboard. Here’s how to use the degree symbol on your iPhone or iPad.

Are you stuck on a song you love? Want to find more music like it? You can create a radio station from your favorite song in Apple Music. Apple Music has different kinds of radio stations. Stations like Beats 1 are stations of their own, more similar to regular radio. Radio stations you create from a favorite song in Apple Music use algorithms to find other songs similar that you might like to hear, similar to the way Pandora works. Here’s how to create a radio station from your favorite song in Apple Music.

Apple CEO Tim Cook had an exciting announcement at the Worldwide Developers Conference this year; an Amazon Prime Video app would soon be coming to Apple TV. Six months later, it's finally happened; the Amazon Prime Video app is ready to download and use with your Apple TV. This marks the official end of Amazon's refusal to cooperate with Apple in facilitating streaming for Amazon Prime tv shows and movies on Apple TV. Why wouldn't Amazon allow a video app for Amazon Prime customers on Apple TV up until now? Well, Amazon competes with Apple, not just in devices like the Kindle Fire versus the Apple iPad but in selling and streaming media. Up until a few months ago Amazon wouldn't even sell Apple TVs on their platform! But now it appears the ice has not only cracked but melted altogether, and Amazon is streaming favorites like The Man in the High Castle, Vikings, and The Tick for Apple TV at last. So let's take advantage of this truce and learn how to watch Amazon Prime on Apple TV with the official Amazon Prime Video app. 

If you take a photo within Messages, it isn’t automatically saved to your iPhone. If you take a photo you really like, you’ll want to manually save it with this tip. It’s nice that iPhone doesn’t automatically save those photos so that you aren’t accidentally taking up too much space or saving private photos meant only for the conversation. But if you send a photo you like, here’s how to save it to the Photos app.

iPhones with 3D Touch are able to jump directly into specific places within apps by 3D Touching an app’s icon. Most Apple stock apps have Quick Actions, such as the Notes app. When you 3D Touch the Note app icon, it will show your most recent note and give you four options for Quick Actions: New Note, New Checklist, New Photo, and New Sketch. We’ll go over how to use 3D Touch to quickly create a new checklist in Notes on iPhone.

When Apple released iOS 9, Notes added a lot of features including the ability to create folders, share websites, add images to Notes, and more. Those features are still present in Notes on iOS 10 as well. One of the things you can do in Notes is draw a sketch and add it to the note. If you have an iPhone with 3D Touch (iPhone 7, 7 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus), you have the ability to sketch dark or light lines, depending on how firmly you press when drawing. Here’s how to make more nuanced sketches in Notes with 3D Touch on iPhone.

Want to take a quick selfie? You can get to the Camera app with the front-facing camera pointed at you in two taps with this tip. If you have an iPhone with 3D Touch, you can jump right to the Selfie setting in Camera from Control Center. Next time you want to take a selfie, use this tip to quickly get to the place you want. Here’s how to take a selfie from Control Center using 3D Touch.

Over the decades, I've heard some call iOS gaming escapism, while others may call it a distraction from the headline news on any given day; but as a lifetime core gamer, I've found myself extremely grateful on more than one occasion for the comfort, the exhilaration, the competition ,and the break from the day-to-day, real-world ups and downs that some of the more deeply immersive iOS game can provide. Mobile gaming has come a long way over the years and we now have plenty to choose from when it comes to core iOS games. On that note,  it's my pleasure to present iPhone Life's picks for best core iOS games.

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