iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Signal is a privacy app that uses end-to-end encryption for individual and group texts, videos, documents, voice, and picture messaging. Open Whisper, Signal's parent company, produced Signal using grants and donations, utilizing Open Source software, with the aim of providing a free and secure platform for worldwide communication, without SMS or MMS fees—this even includes free long-distance calls to anyone, anywhere in the world who also has the Signal app! No one at Signal or anywhere else can read or view communications on the platform, they can only be viewed by the individual user, who can also choose when each message will disappear. Since the whole point of an encrypted communication app is to ensure privacy, Signal is free of tracking, affiliate marketers, and ads. Signal uses your existing address book and phone number, and will only allow you to register one mobile device, so you'll need to choose if you want to use your iPhone or iPad. Getting Signal on your iPhone is free and easy, it pops right up in the App Store, but Signal for iPad is a bit more complicated. Read on to learn how to get Signal on your iPad!

We've already gone over how to sign up for Instagram on your iPhone, how to create a second Instagram account, and even how to deactivate your Instagram account if you need a break, but there's one more thing we need to go over. A major frustration for Instagram users has been the inability to download Instagram on their iPads. After all, it would be great to edit photos or watch a video on a larger screen, to switch back and forth between watching a movie on the iPad and checking Instagram notifications, and to just have another option for using the app. In the past, you needed to use workarounds to download and install Instagram on your tablet, but now there's an official iPad version of Instagram. Unfortunately, the official version is tiny; it doesn't fill the iPad screen and leaves a large, black frame around the app. Don't worry, though, we'll go over a trick you can use to get fullscreen Instagram on your iPad 

When downloading apps, your iPhone has the ability to either use cellular data or to only download apps while your device has access to Wi-Fi. If you do not have an unlimited data plan, you may want to disable downloads using cellular data to ensure you're not wasting data unknowingly. However, being able to download apps when you don't have access to Wi-Fi can also be extremely useful. In today's tip, we're going how to change the download settings on iPhone to either enable or disable downloads over cellular.

Do you find it totally creepy when an ad pops up on your iPhone for just exactly the sort of thing you’d like to purchase? Does it seem like your phone has just a little too much inside information about your preferences, and you’d like to establish some boundaries between yourself and the wide world of capitalism? If so, it’s time for you to learn how to limit ad tracking in Apple Apps on your iPhone.

It’s not often that I feature a gaming app. For the most part, we understand that a fun game isn't a top priority for many on iPhone. But if you'd be so kind as to indulge me, I have a gaming app to feature that is, by far, my favorite iOS game ever. I have played a lot of iOS games. I succumbed to Candy Crush many years ago when it first was a huge hit; I played Super Mario Run and beat every possible metric to completion last year. I have enjoyed many games, but none of them have been able to hold my attention for as long as Battlejack. This game combines the simplicity of blackjack with the adventure of an RPG (role-playing game), creating an addictive mix of strategy, luck, and powerful creatures. Check out more on what this game does and why I can’t get enough of it below.

What are haptics? Haptics are a tactile way for your iPhone to respond to touch, pressure, or both, in the form of a small vibration. For example, on the iPhone 7, there isn't a physically pressable Home button, so Apple added Haptic Feedback, which you feel when "pressing" the static Home button. If you're wondering, "how do I turn off System Haptics?", you can easily do so from within your iPhone Settings. Here’s how to turn off haptics from 3D or Haptic Touch on your iPhone.

When using my iPhone, I often download apps to try out. Later, when I unlock my iPad, all of the apps I downloaded to test on my iPhone are suddenly on my tablet! This is annoying, but thankfully you can fix it with a quick setting. Here's how to turn off app sync between iPhone and iPad.