iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Enable Siri: How to Switch Back to Hey Siri on iOS 17

While previous versions of iOS required you to say, "Hey Siri," to activate Siri, iOS 17 drops the "Hey" and now allows you to summon your virtual assistant with just a simple "Siri." Some may find this more convenient, while others may find it more frustrating since simply saying Siri's name is enough to accidentally make unneeded reminders, set random timers, or search the web.

Your New Favorite iPad Case is Here!

(Sponsored Post) By Amy Spitzfaden Both on Tue, 12/03/2024

Zugu iPad cases are considered the very best in their class for good reason. But even the most careful iPad owners will notice dust and dirt accumulating during regular use. Zugu's soft microfiber cloth and specially formulated wipes will keep your iPad sparkly clean. Learn more about Zugu's specially formulated wipes and how you can protect your iPad for years to come!

Your music library holds everything...right? Well it doesn’t have to. You have the option to add a song to a playlist without that song automatically ending up in your Apple Music library too. For example, if you’re creating a Christmas playlist, you probably don’t want to hear those same songs play on shuffle in May. Luckily, it’s easy to change this feature in Settings. Here’s how to add a song to an Apple Music playlist but not your library.

If you ever wanted to hunt dinosaurs in your living room or swim through the ocean in your bathtub, then you might be interested in learning more about virtual reality. While Apple has spent the last few updates pushing augmented reality rather than virtual reality on the iPhone, that doesn't mean we should give up our iPhone VR dreams. So far, the best VR headsets have been for Android phones and PCs, such as Google's DaydreamView VR viewer, and the experience of an Apple virtual reality isn't available to iPhone or Mac users just yet. None of the major players, such as HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, have chosen the Mac as their platform of choice (often citing slow graphics and non-configurable designs). And while Samsung has embraced VR with its Gear VR for its phones, Apple users have had to make do with Google Cardboard and its knockoffs if they wanted to use an iPhone VR headset. If you are interested in iPhone VR headsets, there are six key things you need to know.

Apple’s voice-activated digital assistant has evolved a lot since it debuted with iOS 5 and remains one of the iPhone’s most popular features today. Siri can handle almost anything, from providing quick answers to your most basic questions to helping you simplify your life through integration with your device’s most core functions. Of course, with so many ways to use Siri, knowing where to begin can be somewhat daunting. Here we’ll share with you some of our favorite tips so you can fall in love with Siri too. To activate Siri with any of these tips, simply say, "Hey, Siri," or press the Home button on iPhone 8 and earlier and the Side button on iPhone X

The new Apple TV has a lot of promise, thanks to its ability to run third-party apps. As more developers wrap their heads around how to write (and play)Apple TV gaming apps, it could become a more compelling purchase. One such developer is Happy Labs, which makes a few such Apple TV apps, including Happy Swordplay ($2.99).

How to Quickly Lock All Notes at Once (2023)

Having password-protected notes is one of the best features of the Notes app. However, when you unlock one note, all notes with the same password will unlock as well. If your notes are scattered throughout your Notes app and you're worried about leaving any unlocked notes open, there's actually a simple trick that lets you lock all unlocked notes again with one tap.

How to Recover Deleted Photos from iPhone

If you've ever tapped delete when you didn't mean to, you'll want to know how to retrieve deleted photos on your iPhone. If you want to recover deleted photos on your iPhone, you can easily do it, as long as it's within a 30-day window. You can also permanently delete photos from your iPhone. Here’s how to undo deleted pictures and permanently delete pictures from your iPhone.

Before there was Apple Music, there was Spotify—a $10 per month streaming service that continues to be quite popular, with over 30 million paid subscribers worldwide and millions of songs available. A free, ad-supported version offers favorite artists and albums, but to get ad-free music and features such as offline listening and on-demand songs, as well as higher quality streaming, you’ll need to go with the premium version. I couldn't immediately find a way to upgrade to premium from within the app, but it's long been cheaper to sign up via your desktop computer anyway ($10 as opposed to $13 from within the app). In this post we’ll give you 15 tips for getting the most out of Spotify.

Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference will take place at the Bill Graham Civic Center in San Francisco, California. Developers from all over will attend, and Apple recently gave out scholarships for the event. However, on the first day, there’s a keynote that Apple users will want to tune-in for to see the latest operating systems and new laptops.

Some people are wondering, "Can you share iBooks?" While you can share purchased e-books with other members of your Family Sharing group, if you want to know how to share iBooks, now just called Books, with a friend outside of Family Sharing, this tip will show you how to give them an e-book. Sending the gift of a good book is a real pleasure, and being able to do so instantly with just a few clicks is even better! As long as you've set up an Apple ID and you have the email address for the friend you want to send a book to, you'll be able to complete your purchase quickly. So let's dive in with how to send an Apple book as a gift.

A lot of gadgets connect via the iPhone’s built-in Bluetooth these days. But what if you’re listening to music on your Bluetooth speaker when your phone rings and you don’t want the whole room to hear your conversation once you pick up the phone? Luckily, it’s easy to quickly switch the audio from a Bluetooth speaker to your iPhone’s internal speaker or to your AirPods or other Bluetooth headset. Here’s how to bypass a Bluetooth device when taking or making a call.

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