iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Apple Watch Series Comparison: From the First Generation to Apple Watch Series 9

It's hard to believe it's been ten years since the first-generation Apple Watch debuted. At first equal parts derided and celebrated, the Apple Watch has since all but taken over the world. From features like water resistance to blood oxygen tracking and car crash detection, Apple's self-described "most personal device" has evolved a lot over the years. Let's take a look at all Apple Watches in order from the original to the Series 10.

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.

Looking for a glimpse into the future? That's why 180,000 people gathered in Las Vegas this year for CES, an annual event where tech companies from all over the world debut their most innovative new products. A dedicated team of iPhone Life writers combed the far reaches of every hall to find the coolest new tech for your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Our Best of CES 2018 Awards went to the most forward-thinking, creative, and useful iOS-related gear and more coming to market this year.

When you want lines to draw within or a grid to help you stay on track, you can choose a one-time paper style or set up a default paper style to automatically appear in your Notes. To change the style of paper to a lined or grid pattern in the Notes app, tap on the export icon and select Lines & Grids to open the style sheet. When you type, the paper style disappears in that part of the tip; but for drawing by hand in the Notes app, choosing the paper style can make a big difference. Here’s how to change the paper style in Notes on the iPhone.

By now we’re all familiar with Touch ID, the fingerprint authentication security feature introduced with Apple’s iPhone 5s in 2013. The iPhone X replaces Touch ID with a facial recognition system, Face ID, which can be used to unlock your phone, open apps, make purchases in iTunes, and more. Biometric authentication protects our phones, but also introduces new privacy concerns by leaving iPhone users open to the possibility of criminals stealing data or law enforcement accessing it without a warrant. If you have even a few seconds notice before a robbery or unlawful search, you can discreetly and temporarily disable Touch and Face ID on your iPhone; let's learn how.

In a previous daily tip we discussed how to set up a Personal Hotspot using your iPhone, and how to connect your devices to it using Wi-Fi. But what to do if Wi-Fi is unavailable or unreliable? You're not out of options; it's time to connect to your Personal Hotspot using Bluetooth. While your Bluetooth connection will be slower than Wi-Fi, it does have its charms. Bluetooth uses far less power than a Wi-Fi connection, is more secure, and features automatic pairing—as opposed to Wi-Fi, which has a lag while your laptop, iPad or iPod connects, and may require you to rejoin the network every time your device goes to sleep. So without further ado, let's learn how to connect to a Personal Hotspot using Bluetooth!

Apple Music is a service that allows subscribers to browse and listen to a library of over 40 million songs. Apple Music users can also download music, make playlists, and follow friends to find out what they're listening to. There's even an Apple Radio feature where subscribers can tune in to a wide selection of live radio stations to hear streaming music, or create their own custom radio stations. If you find a song you like on any radio station you're listening to, you can save it to your Apple Music Library, add it to a playlist, and share it with other Apple Music listeners you've connected to. But how do you go about downloading a song or album from Apple Music when you find content you enjoy so much that you want to have constant access to it? Let's find out!

The camera roll on my iPhone is jam packed with pictures of my dogs—there's just something about those fuzzy faces that demands to be adored and photographed so that the pictures can be adored as well. Then of course there's the sharing; #instadog #socute #sorryyouguysicantrestrainmyself. I've been known to take dog photos with Instagram, share them to Facebook, then text and private message them to friends and family that really must see the latest iteration of canine cuteness right away. Therefore it is with great delight that I announce the discovery of my new favorite app, BarkCam, the "Instagram for Dogs." 

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 

How to Use Cellular Data for Automatic App Downloads (iOS 17)

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.

College football fans watch their favorite teams all season long in the hopes they'll make it to one of the dozens of bowl games in December and January. NCAA football fans enjoy three final games before the end of the NCAA football season ends with the CFP Final. This year college ball fans can look forward to the Clemson Tigers facing off against the Alabama Crimson Tide, and you can watch the ESPN live stream, without cable, on Apple TV. Let's go through your different options for streaming the College Football Playoff National Championship on Apple TV. We'll discuss how to watch NCAA games on your Apple TV through a variety of methods including streaming TV options, and even packages and perks offered by your cell phone provider. Let's get started learning how to watch college football on your Apple TV ahead of the big game!   

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.

Pages