iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

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.

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If you've been wondering, "how do I scan a QR code on my iPhone?", you're in luck. Before iOS 11, you needed a third-party app to be able to scan QR codes on an iPhone or iPad. Now, you can use the stock Camera app on your phone or tablet to scan QR codes, and it’s pretty easy to do. We will show you how to use the Camera app on your iPhone or iPad for scanning QR codes.

Augmented Reality (AR) is supposedly "the next big thing" in videogames, and Apple has embraced that possibility by outfitting iOS game developers with ARKit to help standardize and accelerate AR on iOS. During the recent iPhone 8 and 8 Plus and iPhone X launch event, Apple had a developer from Directive Games take to the stage and demonstrate the company's ARKit-powered new game, The Machines. After upgrading to iOS 11, the first AR-enabled game I played was The Machines ($4.99). Does it live up to the hype? Read on to find out.

We've already gone over how to take and share a screenshot on an iPhone. With iOS 12 or later, the screenshot appears in the lower-left corner of the screen for a few seconds. If you want to use Apple's Markup feature on the screenshot, you can tap on the fleeting image to instantly make your changes, adding text, drawings, and more. If you accidentally took the screenshot, you can also immediately delete the image by tapping on it. We'll cover how to mark up screenshots with iOS 13 on your iPhone below.

Online shopping is more popular than ever. Not only is it super easy to click and have a product show up on your doorstep, but also shipping prices and wait times are low enough to make you want to buy just about everything online. But once you’ve ordered something (or many somethings), you start receiving tracking numbers. And then to check the status of a package, you end up searching through emails trying to find your tracking number again. But what if there was an app that seamlessly synced across all of your devices, tracked your packages, and alerted you about arrivals? Ah yes, say hello to Deliveries: A Package Tracker ($4.99). Whether on iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, you’ll always know the status of your packages. Here’s more on what Deliveries does and why we love it.

You’ve probably received thousands of pop-ups asking you to rate and review an app during your time with your iPhone and iPad, but how often have you actually rated and reviewed them? Pop-ups of any kind are super annoying, and if I really love (or strongly dislike) an app, I go out of my way to rate and review it. But the overwhelming majority of these requests are denied before my brain even acknowledges what the pop-up asked me to do. Luckily, with iOS 11 and later on iPhone, you can turn off in-app requests to rate and review apps fairly easily. Here’s how.

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Do you like to multitask and find yourself trying to text with one hand? Or are the newer iPhone models just too big for you to use one-handed? Well, the one-handed keyboard on iPhone has come in handy (pun intended) more than once after learning this tip. This one is super quick to access and makes quickly typing out a message that much more convenient when you only have one hand at the ready.

If you get special satisfaction each time you discover a new way to use your iPhone or iPad, you're going to love our latest Flipboard magazine featuring our very best iOS 11 tips. Follow "The Epic Guide to iOS 11 on iPhone & iPad" magazine on Flipboard to get time-saving tips on how to use Apple's new Battery Life suggestions, turning your Live Photos into gifs, setting up Emergency SOS on iPhone, and much more. 

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Perhaps the best smart accessory you can get for your smart home, if you have a dog or cat, is the SmartFeeder ($119.99–$149) from Petnet.io. I have a dog that I love, but my wife and I work and our kids are at school, so it's nice to know that our dog can be fed regularly. Additionally, we try to be precise about how much we feed our dog, and the Petnet.io app lets us choose the exact amount of dry dog food. The app is elegant and simple and I found it easy to set up the app and the online account, as well as the hardware.

A heavily requested feature for iOS 11 was Dark Mode. Dark Mode essentially turns white space black while leaving media, photos, and content the same. However, we did not get an official Dark Mode in iOS 11, and we haven't gotten one for iOS 12, either. Hopefully this will come out soon because macOS Mojave does offer this feature. For now, though, the next best thing is pretty darn fantastic. Inverting colors on iPhone in the past meant distorting the look of photos and content as well. But iOS 11 introduced Smart Invert, which is (almost) as good of a Dark Mode as we need. Here’s how to turn on Dark Mode or Night Mode in iOS 12 on iPhone, this will invert colors on your display and reduce eye strain.

Now that we've all got our hands on the iOS 12 update, it's worth a reminder to check a few settings. One of the biggest changes with iOS 11 was the new driving Do Not Disturb for iPhone feature. If you haven't used this driving mode for your iPhone yet, it's a safety feature that's well worth your time to set up. I’ll show you how to turn on Do Not Disturb While Driving, how to turn off Do Not Disturb While Driving, and I’ll also cover the Do Not Disturb While Driving text message auto-reply on the iPhone!

How To Add Emergency Contact on iPhone for Emergency SOS

The Emergency SOS feature lets you call for help in many different ways, including discreetly by holding down a button, via satellite, and even automatically if a car crash or fall is detected. After an Emergency SOS call ends, your iPhone will automatically send a message with your location to your Emergency contact(s). Add an extra layer of security to your life by adding your iPhone emergency contact.

With the release of iOS 11 and Apple’s debut of the new iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Pluse, and iPhone X, I wanted to feature an awesome augmented reality app so we can get a taste of what’s to come. With iOS 11 out, Apple’s ARkit for app developers is available too. Which means we’re going to see more and more apps that utilize the iPhone’s camera to present some kind of graphic, game, or information as a part of the world around us. The most popular example of AR on iPhone to date is, of course, Pokemon GO. But I’ve heard a lot of people wondering if and how AR could be used for more than just gaming. Well, I’ve got an incredible example today. Say hello to AR MeasureKit. Who needs a tape measure when you’ve got an iPhone? I’ll go over more ofwhat it does and why we love it below.

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