iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Step Up Your Security: 7 Ways to Up Your Game

There are many frontiers to protect in today’s world. Maybe it’s not enough to install smart blinds to hide from nosy neighbors and add security cameras and smart locks to deter unwanted guests. Now, with cybercrime a multi-billion-dollar global industry, we might also want to choose a secure app to manage our passwords, find a better backup solution to protect our digital archives from cyber theft, and make sure to keep our credentials unique. Check out our selections for the best home security systems, cyber security apps, and media to learn more about how it all works.

The Apple News app is a great place to follow your favorite magazines and websites, and the day's top stories. You can save articles to read offline, Like articles to see more of the same, Mute Channels you don’t want to hear from, and Share articles you want your friends to read as well. Regardless of what topics you’re interested in, there’s easily something for everyone here. Here’s how to share articles in News that you find and love.

With the introduction of iOS 9.3, we saw new additions to Apple apps that are 3D Touch enabled. One such addition is the Settings app. Often, there are three main places within our Settings that we need to visit on a regular basis: Battery, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. By adding 3D Touch to the Settings app, Apple has made it super easy to access those frequently visited sections. If you have an iPhone with 3D Touch (iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus), then this will be a welcome addition.

Using Do Not Disturb on your iPhone is a great way to take a break from technology to focus on something else. There are multiple ways to turn on Do Not Disturb. One such way is in Control Center. You can also turn it on in Settings. However, the easiest way is to simply ask Siri to turn it on. Turning on Do Not Disturb will silence calls, alerts, and notifications. Here’s how to use Siri to turn Do Not Disturb On and Off.

Ready to look for a new home, but don’t know where to start? Forget spending countless hours online or checking your newspaper’s local listings—there’s a quicker, more efficient way to find your dream property. As well as posting photos and prices, many of the following apps list previous sale prices of neighboring homes, local crime rates, and even rankings of nearby schools. All of you potential new homeowners can now breathe a collective sigh of relief as these eight free apps simplify your real estate experience. 

If you have an Apple Watch paired with your iPhone, you’re familiar with Activity rings. On the Apple Watch, your activity is represented by three concentric circles that track how much of your daily goals you have met. There’s a red circle for your Move goal, a green one for Exercise, and a blue one for Stand. However, you can also view these Activity rings in graph form in the Health app and include it as a part of your health Dashboard. Here’s how to view your activity rings in your health app dashboard.

In this fifth installment of my series on HomeKit-compatible devices, we'll look at yet one more gadget that Elgato has given me: Eve Door & Window ($39.95). Its simple function is to tell you whether a door or window is open or closed, and it keeps a log of openings. Previous posts have covered iHome's SmartPlug ($39.99) and Elgato's Eve Room ($79.95), Eve Energy ($49.95), and Eve Weather ($49.95). 

When things stop working, whether in an app, with Bluetooth, or anywhere else, the first thing to do is turn off your iPhone and turn it back on. Often this will reset whatever wasn’t working and fix your problem. This may seem obvious, but judging by the number of readers whose problems we have solved with this advice, perhaps it isn't. So, here’s how to turn your iPhone on and off when things aren’t working.

There are multiple ways to control volume on the iPhone or iPad. One such way is the volume control on the side of the device, another way is within the app playing audio. You can also adjust the volume from Control Center. This is nice because you can easily swipe to adjust the volume. Here’s how to use Control Center to adjust the volume.

Happy Earth Day! At its Spring Event, Apple covered all the ways in which it’s helping the environment. Apple’s goal is to run all of its operations on 100 percent renewable energy, and it’s a goal the rest of the world needs to take more seriously as well. When it comes to a getting a case for our iPhone, there are often other factors we consider like protection and functionality. So here’s some of the best cases that deliver both on features and eco-friendliness.

This year, Mother’s Day falls on May 8. That means it’s time to buy a gift and plan for flowers. I don’t care who you are, your mom waddled around for nine months and gained a tiger’s skin worth of stretch marks (or went through a strenuous adoption process) — the least you can do is get her a gift to show your appreciation. Even if your mom isn’t a tech pro, there are plenty of tech items she would love and get a lot of wonderful use out of. Here’s awesome Mother’s day gifts for the tech mom in your life.

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