iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Best Tech to Bring to the Cookout

While cooking over fire may seem like an inherently primitive and lo-fi task, high-tech tools can make your barbecues easier and more enjoyable. In testing this new smart cookout gear, I was surprised and excited by how much it improved my cooking. Here is my definitive list of smart gadgets to help you channel your inner grill master and enhance your next outdoor gathering.

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.

While you're enjoying the great outdoors this Summer, whether at the beach or elsewhere, you’re going to want the loudest portable waterproof Bluetooth speaker you can find. Your Bluetooth speaker needs to be wireless and portable to easily go on adventures with you while also being rugged (ideally waterproof) and as loud as possible so that everyone in your party can enjoy the music. Furthermore, there is a seemingly endless array of excellent quality Bluetooth speakers, however, out of the multitudes of Bluetooth speakers on the market, only a limited and select few can lay claim to being loud, waterproof, portable and heavy duty. I've compiled a list of some of the best, most durable and rugged Bluetooth speakers available right now. What follows are the top outdoor wireless Bluetooth speakers for those who are adventurous or accident prone.

Instagram is my favorite form of social media. We’ve been trying to convince our web editor, Sarah Kingsbury to get an account for months. And she finally did once I invited her to join, which was easy to do within the Instagram app since she’s also my Facebook friend. If you have friends on Facebook who don’t know the join Instagram, here’s how to invite them to give it a try.

With the success of the recently released Nintendo Switch portable gaming tablet, there has been a resurgence of interest among iPad gamers to bring their iPads to parity with what the Switch has to offer. One standout feature of the Switch is its analog joysticks on the left and right side of the screen. Perhaps Nintendo got its inspiration for this design from GameVice, a company that announced the first iteration of its iPad game controller back in 2014. Now that its iPad game controller idea has been amplified by Nintendo's success, read on to find out how the current version of the GameVice Mfi controller ($99.95) works with the iPad Pro and Mini form factors.

When you allow Siri to be accessed from your Lock screen, you may want to consider what Siri is capable of doing without unlocking your device. For example, let’s say you’re in a room with multiple other people. If one of them were to activate Siri when you have Voice Dial turned on, they could tell Siri to call someone without needing your passcode. But if you have Voice Dial turned off, Siri won’t make the call until you enter your iPhone’s passcode. This may or may not be important to you, but it’s good to know what can and cannot be accessed from Lock screen. Here’s how to turn Voice Dial off on iPhone.

If you're like me, you spend a lot of time each day dealing with email. The swiping gestures available for marking and flagging email messages on iPhone can save you some of that time. You can use swiping gestures to mark emails as read or unread or flag them for follow-up, as well as every other function, such as forwarding or moving to another folder. Here’s how to use swiping gestures in Mail on iPhone.

When you tilt your screen on iPhone, it automatically rotates. This is helpful in many different scenarios; but on iPhone Plus models, a horizontally rotated phone makes certain stock apps look slightly different—this is called Landscape mode on iPhone.The larger screen on the iPhone Plus models is used to present more information in split screen format. When your iPhone 6, 6s, 7, or 8 Plus is held horizontally, your iPhone is in Landscape mode. Some iPhone Plus users appreciate the split screen Landscape mode, especially in apps like Mail, where they can simultaneously view their inbox and a specific email. However, there are plenty of iPhone 7 Plus or iPhone 8 Plus users who would rather just turn off auto rotate on iPhone or Landscape mode entirely. We’ll show you what Landscape mode looks like in different apps below with horizontal iPhone screenshots from the iPhone 7 Plus. Then we’ll get to how to turn off auto rotate on iPhone in case you decide Landscape mode is not your style. We'll also cover how to remove split screen from Landscape mode on your iPhone Plus and continue enjoying the extra horizontal screen space.

Tagging someone on Instagram is pretty straightforward. If you’re viewing an Instagram photo you really like that you want to share with a friend, you can simply tag them in the comments and they'll receive a notification. But did you know you can also send an Instagram picture as a dm, or direct message? If you choose this option, it's more private because you don't have to mention them in the public comments. Let's learn how to direct message a picture on Instagram, or how to just tag someone on an Instagram photo without sending them a dm.

Unfollowing friends on Facebook is an easy way to stay friends with someone without seeing their posts. But maybe you want to reconnect with them now. You can easily choose to start following them on Facebook again, which will simply allow Facebook to show you their posts in your News feed. Here’s how to reconnect with people you unfollowed on Facebook.

Once you learn how to remove music from your iPhone, the process will come back to you like riding a bike. When users remove music from iPhone, they also tend to have questions about whether they’re deleting songs from iCloud or iTunes. I’m going to make deleting music from your iPhone as simple as possible, with tips for those who use Apple Music and for those who don’t. If you do have Apple Music, it’s also good to know the difference between deleting a song from your iPhone and deleting a song from iCloud Music Library or iTunes. There may come an occasion when you want to delete all the music from your iPhone. Or maybe you want to undownload songs on Apple Music to free some space up without deleting the music from your iCloud Music Library collection. There are a few different scenarios I want to cover for you; here’s how to remove music from your iPhone, iTunes, and iCloud.

Sleep deprivation in our always-on, social media-saturated world is a problem that is only growing as we add more tech to our homes. It affects our performance on and off the job and can result in significantly adverse health effects, particularly as we age. I have dealt with my share of sleep issues over the years, due to regularly traveling and working different shifts at my job. Although I don't have any magic-bullet solutions, I can offer what I’ve found to be the most helpful apps, gear, and tips for lulling you to sleep.

If your iPhone or iPad Calculator app has disappeared from your Home screen or Control Center, don’t panic; We'll show you how to get the Calculator app back. First of all, strange as it may sound, the iPad doesn't come with a built-in calculator app (but we'll show you a workaround!). While the iPhone does have one, beginning with iOS 10, Apple gave users the option to remove Apple stock apps from their Home screens. When the feature first became available, I started deleting every Apple stock app that I didn’t use. In that process, I deleted my free Calculator app, not realizing it would also disappear from my Control Center. A week later, when I needed to use a calculator, I swiped down to open the Control Center, and the calculator had disappeared! I panicked, “how could Apple remove the calculator?” "Show me my calculator!" "Where is my calculator?" After I emailed, Apple informed me that if I deleted the Calculator app, it would also disappear from my Control Center—thus causing me to look like a buffoon. This left me doubly confused and betrayed when I went through the same panic on my iPad, only to discover that this time I hadn't deleted it, Apple never added one. Has a similar instance happened to you? If the calculator on your iPhone or iPad has disappeared from the Control Center, or you can't find it at all, here’s what to do. Also, if you are a frequent user of the calculator app, you may enjoy learning to use the scientific calculator on your iPhone!

Learning how to use your Apple TV can be a bit of a process—just ask my mom who is still using the old silver Apple TV Remote with our new fourth-generation Apple TV. But our iPhone Life Insider program is all about breaking down the Apple ecosystem into bite-size pieces you can easily digest. From our one-minute video tips to our growing library of in-depth guides, we want to make Insider the best resource you have. And we’re passionate about it. Our latest project is the Complete Apple TV Guide, which covers everything from setting up your Apple TV and using the Siri Remote to finding the best apps for watching free movies and TV shows, plus much more. This is one of our most in-depth guides to date; check out a few of my favorite videos from the guide below and get a sneak peak of the immense value our Insider membership offers.

Do you have friends who use Facebook to play games like Candy Crush? Do those friends send you constant game invites, never getting the hint that you don’t want to play? If your answer is no, consider yourself lucky. Most of us have logged on to see that all of our notifications were merely invitations to games we’ve never, ever been interested in playing. Luckily, Facebook allows you to turn off notifications for game invites and apps completely. Here’s how to never get a game invite on Facebook again. 

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