iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Best Widgets to Organize Your iPhone

Widgets have been available on the iPhone’s Home Screen since iOS 14, but many of us don’t take full advantage of them, despite certain apps’ pleas for us to add them to our Home Screens. Widgets may seem like bigger distractions, taking up screen real estate and demanding our attention, but in reality, they can offer helpful information at a glance and allow us to interact with the apps without fully opening them or getting lost in other app notifications as we scroll to find one. Here are the best ways to utilize widgets to keep your display streamlined and efficient, plus a few team favorite favorites for you to try out.

Members of the iPhone Life team download and test the Apple beta software every year, to get a preview of the new software features. There's plenty to be excited about in the latest iOS update, and we'll fill you in on our favorites in this roundup. New iOS 14 features we've enjoyed so far include the Home screen organizing App Library, quickly finding just the right emoji with emoji search, watching videos and continuing FaceTime calls while using another app with Picture in Picture, improvements to group messaging, and more. Let's go over the best features we've found in the iOS 14 Public Beta so far. 

How to Manage Your Apple CarPlay Apps

By Amy Spitzfaden Both

Apple CarPlay is the smarter and safer way to use your iPhone while driving. The Apple CarPlay apps available to you are designed to make changing songs, getting directions, and checking your schedule easy and safe. We’ll show you how to add and remove apps on CarPlay, and how to change their layout on your screen. You can also check out our suggestions for the best Apple CarPlay apps to try.

Set a Default Calendar on iPhone & iPad (2023)

Have you ever set a work appointment in the Calendar app only to find that it's been scheduled in your family calendar rather than your work calendar? The problem is likely the result of having your family calendar rather than your work calendar set as the default calendar on your iPhone. In this tip, we'll go over how to set a default calendar on iPhone.

The iPhone as most people know it is not the same device when it’s in my hands. As a deaf person, my iPhone serves as a tool for accessing a whole new world. Some of the apps that hearing people use daily for recreational or professional purposes are apps I rely on to communicate with other people and to make my life more comfortable. In this article, I’ll highlight five of my favorite iPhone applications that make my life easier in every way. These apps include a helpful voice to text app, as well as a popular Apple app, FaceTime.

How to Stop Faces from Moving in Group FaceTime Calls

Many people have been struggling with the same issue when it comes to Group FaceTime on their iPhone: screen movement. Sometimes it can be nice to see the current speaker featured larger than the others. However, many people prefer for the members of their group chat on FaceTime to be equally sized throughout the whole call, regardless of who is speaking. Fortunately, this is an easy fix! Here's how to stop faces from moving during FaceTime.

Learn how to find blocked numbers on the iPhone and unblock someone on the iPhone. Unblocking a number on your iPhone couldn’t be easier, thanks to the forward thinkers at Apple who knew that the handy block feature should not be permanent. That’s because it’s easy to block someone accidentally or unknowingly. Maybe you were blocking robo-callers or spam texters and blocked a contact by mistake. Or maybe you intentionally blocked a friend or colleague and now you want to undo that. Or maybe you’re having trouble calling a contact, or vice versa, so you want to see the blocked numbers on your iPhone and check to see if that number is on it. Here’s how to do it.

Are app purchases shared in Family Sharing? Most of them are, including some paid and subscriptions apps, but other paid and subscription apps are only available to their individual purchasers. Family sharing is a great way to share apps on the iPhone or iPad, but you want to be able to monitor which ones are shareable to minimize extra purchases if something you have can already be shared, or to find new apps if the ones you currently have aren't available on Family Sharing. Luckily it's easy to do! 

In every issue of iPhone Life magazine, we feature the iPhone Home screens of people from different walks of life, so our readers can see how they use iPhone apps to meet a variety of needs. In our Summer 2020 issue, we featured Luca Sforza from Seattle, Washington. Luca runs a real estate photography business called Lensit Studio. The world of real estate photography has evolved in recent years to include video tours, drone photography, and 3D virtual photos, and the apps on his iPhone help Luca do it all.

Any set of wireless earbuds is going to be compared to Apple's AirPods and AirPods Pro. Fortunately, the AU-Stream Hybrid ANC Earbuds ($189.95) that Ausounds sent me to try have a lot of distinctions to make them a worthwhile competitor. First, they are compact enough to fit entirely in the ear with no microphone stalk extending towards the mouth of the user. That marginally impacts the quality of the speaker's voice, but it isn't too much of an issue since the primary focus is on listening not talking.

It was inevitable. Eve Systems, a company that has reimagined itself from an Apple Mac accessory company to a HomeKit automation powerhouse, has created a sprawling line of diverse products. These range from automated power strips that monitor your electrical use and temperature sensors that report indoor air quality. They further extend to a smart outdoor water controller that tracks water usage and even an indoor water detector that can be used to set off a cascade of automation events such as notifying you of a leak and, in turn, communicating with an Eve smart plug to deactivate the electrical pumping source of the water. And yet with all that HomeKit goodness, Eve didn't jump on the home video monitoring camera bandwagon, until now. Did Eve's drop dead simple HomeKit integration and stable quality make it into its first home security product?  Read on to find out.

While family sharing can be a useful way to consolidate your family's tech, there can be many reasons why you might want to hide app or e-book purchases. Some apps have credit card information you might not want to give your kids access to, and other apps may have content suitable for some family members but not others. Whatever your reason is for wishing to hide certain app or book purchases from Family Sharing, it is possible to do. First, here's how to hide app purchases, followed by how to hide book purchases.

In recent months, we’re reminded of the deeply entrenched racial divide in this country after the tragic loss of more members of our Black community, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. The widespread protests and civil unrest that have followed tell the story of a country that’s grieving and in search of a path forward. At iPhone Life, we are committed to fighting racial injustice and bias within policing, the tech world, and society as a whole. While large-scale action is needed to address the problem of systemic racism, we are also committed to taking personal action to support racial equality. 

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