iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Customize Someone Else's Contact Poster on Your iPhone

Contact Posters are one of the most fun new features to play around with, but you might not always want to use the picture someone else has picked out. Whether it's a painful reminder of an ex's new relationship or a picture you find a bit off-color, knowing how to change someone's Contact Poster is a handy tip as your friends go wild with customization. Let's learn how to do it.

Siri is an awesome time saver. Want to view your most recent calls, text someone, get directions, or post to Facebook? Just ask Siri. You can even do all this from your lock screen. The problem is, so can anyone else. If your settings allow for it, anyone can access your call history, send a tweet, or get directions to a contact's home from your lock screen just by bringing up Siri and asking.

Some of your Facebook friends like games. A lot. Some of your Facebook friends want you to like games a lot too. And you know this because they've sent you so many Facebook game requests that you are considering unfriending them just to make the onslaught stop. 

We at iPhone Life don't want to tell you who to be friends with, but you don't actually have to unfriend the Facebook gamers you know in order to make the game requests stop. Here's what you can do instead:

There are a variety of reasons why you might want to transfer your photos from your iPhone to your computer. Maybe you’re running low on storage space and need to clear out some room in your Photos app; or maybe you just like the extra bit of security that comes with having your photos on multiple devices. Here’s how to use AirDrop to transfer photos between devices.

 

How to Use Google Maps Offline

By Sarah Kingsbury

Have you ever asked, "Can I save a Google Map offline?" The answer is yes! If you are traveling to a place where you won't have reliable or affordable access to data or Wi-Fi, you can actually download maps in Google Maps, which allows you to save the maps you need ahead of time, and you will be able to access them offline.  

 

Panoramic photos are great for capturing an expanded view of a beautiful landscape. Typically, this is done by moving your iPhone from left to right or right to left as you take the photo in Pano mode. But what about when you want to capture a shot of something really tall, like a tree, for example, or even the Eiffel Tower? Well, you'll be excited to hear that you can take vertically oriented panoramic photos with your iPhone too!

Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure, and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is Part 21 of the series. If you are just getting started, check out the beginning of the series here.

Have you ever been watching something on Netflix with your iPhone or iPad only to realize the app was using cellular data instead of Wi-Fi? Most of us do not have unlimited data available, so that can be an expensive mistake. To avoid using data when you don't have to, it's a good idea to prevent data-gobbling apps from accessing data as their default setting. You can do this by turning off cellular data for specific apps, like video and music streaming apps, and changing the frequency with which apps like Mail fetch new data.

The ability to mark, move, or delete emails using the Mail app comes in handy when you need to manage your inboxes. You can easily mark, move, or delete an email in your iPhone's Mail app from within the body of an email using the menu at the bottom of your screen. You can also manage individual emails from within your inbox by swiping to the left over the email. But this is tedious if you have a large number of emails to deal with.

You can send contact details (also known as a contact card) via text or email directly from the Contacts app in your iPhone. Do you often find yourself typing out phone numbers or addresses into a text when you need to share one contact's information with another contact? Well, you'll be happy to hear that there's a much easier way to share contact information on your iPhone—and it doesn't involve copying and pasting or tediously typing it out.

The Brookstone HDMI Pocket Projector Pro ($249.99) was a wonderful surprise for me; an extremely functional, portable, and practical creation that is well worth the extra $49 investment for the required Apple A/V adapter — if you don't already have one that is. Once you've got the Apple A/V adaptor, connecting your iPad or iPhone to the projector is as simple as plugging it in and turning it on. With this projector you can instantly view your iDevice's high-definition videos and images, games, and even native iOS apps like Keynote or FaceTime, all on a variable sized viewing screen the can enlarge the image to a 115-inch diagonal size.

Apple's Health app can tell you how many flights of stairs you've climbed or steps you've taken, your cycling distance, calories, weight, and, starting with iOS 13, how often your headphones were too loud. Sorting through all that data could be daunting, but the Summary tab can be customized to show only what you want to see: simply go open the Health app, tap the Summary tab, tap Edit in the top right corner, and then select the kinds of data you want to see in your summary. More health minded? With a HealthKit accessory, you can track your resting heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate. Looking to focus on nutrition? The Health app can show your nutrients including sodium, fat, carbohydrates, and fiber. Choosing which of all these metrics to view is easy! Let me show you how.

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