iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Delete Unknown Fingerprints from Your iPad (or iPhone)

A good way to maintain a secure device is to ensure no one can access it but you. Having a passcode that you keep to yourself is a great way to keep a device private, but a device that uses Touch ID may end up with a few extra fingerprints from unknown persons. But you might not have known that you can actually test which fingerprints are yours and which fingers they belong to! Here's how to determine unknown fingerprints and delete them.

One of the best ways to use the Apple Watch is as a fitness tracker. Luckily, Apple designed the Apple Watch with fitness in mind, including various features, sensors, and metrics built-in to the device. If you're interested in strength training but are not a fan of using weights, or you would prefer to exercise in a way that's more natural to the body's movements, you'll want to learn all about Functional Strength Training on the Apple Watch.

How to Organize Your Calendar in 2025

(Sponsored Post) By Amy Spitzfaden Both on Thu, 10/31/2024

Apple is pretty good about updating its products, but it seems to have forgotten about the Calendar app and its many downsides. The makers of Informant 5, on the other hand, do not forget to regularly improve their app based on user experience. The latest updates to this calendar and task-management app are a productivity game-changer.

In iOS 13, Reminders lets you group related lists of reminders on the iPhone. When you create a group in Reminders, you can bring together related lists under one folder. This tip will help you set up groups and get your reminders organized. You can even use this method to add groups in Reminders on your iPad! Read on to learn how to use the updated iOS 13 Reminders app to set up groups of lists on the iPhone.

Apple has announced that WWDC 2020 will be entirely virtual, with both sessions and the keynote held online. Other tech giants, like Google and Facebook, are shifting their conference structure this year as well, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic caused by a new strain of coronavirus. What does this change mean for Apple users? We’ve got everything you need to know right here.

The Scribble feature makes Apple Watch lets you compose texts by writing the words on your Watch Face with a finger rather than dictating them to Siri. Quiet texts on the Apple Watch make it easier to send and receive texts discreetly. But what happens when your watch fails to correctly translate your scribbling into text? With Scribble on the Apple Watch, you can also edit incorrect words without talking to Siri. Here’s how to text on an Apple Watch and edit texts using Scribble.

I rarely write a tip that will impact people's health, but learning how to clean and sanitize your Apple devices, including your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, Mac, and even Apple TV remote, is part of how to prevent coronavirus. Some of these items are on our person nearly all the time, especially the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods, and therefore have more bacteria and viruses on them than the average toilet seat. Apple has recently changed their cleaning guidelines, so let's go over how to sanitize your cellphone, tablet, earbuds, smartwatch, and other Apple devices.

iOS 13 has a whole slew of new editing tools for you to explore—from auto editing, to vibrance, to color saturation, to photo cropping. And with the new features of the dual camera on the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro, including the Ultra Wide camera, Night Mode, an upgraded Portrait Mode, Smart HDR, Quick Take videos, and slow-motion selfies (a.k.a. slofies), you will never want to stop taking photos and videos! If you want to take your photo editing skills to the next level, check out these photo apps that will enhance your shots.

Did you know that you can close all your Safari tabs that have been open beyond a set amount of time, instead of waiting for Safari to hang up or slow down? When you close tabs regularly, Safari runs much more smoothly, but it’s easy to forget to close tabs in between use. Luckily, you can create a schedule to close all your Safari tabs. Here’s how to close tabs on Safari automatically.

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 Spring 2020 issue, we featured photographer and blogger Amber Faust, who uses her iPhone for social media, photo editing, games, weather, and more. If you have a story and apps you'd like to suggest, email Tamlin Day, and we may feature you in an upcoming issue of the magazine!

The Best VPN apps for iPhones and iPads can be difficult to choose. Between looking for VPN apps that don’t track you, that provide good server coverage, good customer service, and all the different features, there is a lot to check up on. We’ve written before about what a VPN is and what to look for when shopping for a VPN, but here we’ll list our favorite VPN apps, with a special emphasis on ease of use and simplicity rather than feature bloat. 

At the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to try ReliefHeat smart heat wrap ($99). I had just spent about eight hours flying to Vegas, so my back was sore and this was just what the doctor ordered. In fact, I might have given ReliefHeat an iPhone Life Best of CES 2020 award, but the company didn't have a formal booth at CES, just an exhibit at one of the evening events for the press. Still, it was a great example of smartphone technology that meets the everyday needs of consumers.

You can search Safari on the iPhone to find words or phrases, but did you know you can also Safari Search your open tabs? If you tend to have large numbers of Safari tabs open at once, this tip will help you search Safari for the tab you want without having to scroll through all your open tabs to find it. Read on to learn how to search Safari on the iPhone to switch between tabs.

These days, anyone can be a weather nerd. There is so much information from so many good sources that we can plan our vacations and outings with greater confidence than ever before. Using our iPhone weather apps, we know when the sun will rise and set, we can see the paths of impending storms, and we can even see whether lightning is striking the ground or vice versa. What we love about having access to all of this information is that there is a weather app for everyone. Between free weather apps and paid weather apps, there is no limit on the information available for the casual user or the full-on weather enthusiast. So here are our picks for each category.

The current panic about the novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 outbreak has made us all a little more conscious about bacteria, viruses, and germs in general. While you're busy house cleaning and washing your hands to prevent disease and kill germs, remember to disinfect and sanitize your Apple devices, including your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, EarPods, Mac, and even your Apple TV remote. Whether or not you ever come in contact with the coronavirus, studies have shown that our phones are downright filthy. A University of Arizona study shows that the average cell phone carries ten times more germs than a toilet. Ew. Bacteria found on iPhones include Streptococcus, MERS, and E. Coli, and viruses can linger on your smartphone as well. If this news leaves you wondering how to clean your phone and other Apple devices, this article will fill you in on all the methods to disinfect or sterilize them all without damaging them. Let's get started.

We've already shown you how to buy Kindle e-books on your iPhone or iPad, but did you know that there's a whole library of free e-books available for anyone who knows how to find them? There are literally thousands of books to read, in e-book form, and audiobooks as well, if you know where to download them. Come along, bookworm, and we'll reveal the reading apps that offer more free books to read than you can get through in a lifetime. 

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