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.

Are you stuck on a song you love? Want to find more music like it? You can create a radio station from your favorite song in Apple Music. Apple Music has different kinds of radio stations. Stations like Beats 1 are stations of their own, more similar to regular radio. Radio stations you create from a favorite song in Apple Music use algorithms to find other songs similar that you might like to hear, similar to the way Pandora works. Here’s how to create a radio station from your favorite song in Apple Music.

Apple CEO Tim Cook had an exciting announcement at the Worldwide Developers Conference this year; an Amazon Prime Video app would soon be coming to Apple TV. Six months later, it's finally happened; the Amazon Prime Video app is ready to download and use with your Apple TV. This marks the official end of Amazon's refusal to cooperate with Apple in facilitating streaming for Amazon Prime tv shows and movies on Apple TV. Why wouldn't Amazon allow a video app for Amazon Prime customers on Apple TV up until now? Well, Amazon competes with Apple, not just in devices like the Kindle Fire versus the Apple iPad but in selling and streaming media. Up until a few months ago Amazon wouldn't even sell Apple TVs on their platform! But now it appears the ice has not only cracked but melted altogether, and Amazon is streaming favorites like The Man in the High Castle, Vikings, and The Tick for Apple TV at last. So let's take advantage of this truce and learn how to watch Amazon Prime on Apple TV with the official Amazon Prime Video app. 

If you take a photo within Messages, it isn’t automatically saved to your iPhone. If you take a photo you really like, you’ll want to manually save it with this tip. It’s nice that iPhone doesn’t automatically save those photos so that you aren’t accidentally taking up too much space or saving private photos meant only for the conversation. But if you send a photo you like, here’s how to save it to the Photos app.

iPhones with 3D Touch are able to jump directly into specific places within apps by 3D Touching an app’s icon. Most Apple stock apps have Quick Actions, such as the Notes app. When you 3D Touch the Note app icon, it will show your most recent note and give you four options for Quick Actions: New Note, New Checklist, New Photo, and New Sketch. We’ll go over how to use 3D Touch to quickly create a new checklist in Notes on iPhone.

When Apple released iOS 9, Notes added a lot of features including the ability to create folders, share websites, add images to Notes, and more. Those features are still present in Notes on iOS 10 as well. One of the things you can do in Notes is draw a sketch and add it to the note. If you have an iPhone with 3D Touch (iPhone 7, 7 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus), you have the ability to sketch dark or light lines, depending on how firmly you press when drawing. Here’s how to make more nuanced sketches in Notes with 3D Touch on iPhone.

Want to take a quick selfie? You can get to the Camera app with the front-facing camera pointed at you in two taps with this tip. If you have an iPhone with 3D Touch, you can jump right to the Selfie setting in Camera from Control Center. Next time you want to take a selfie, use this tip to quickly get to the place you want. Here’s how to take a selfie from Control Center using 3D Touch.

Over the decades, I've heard some call iOS gaming escapism, while others may call it a distraction from the headline news on any given day; but as a lifetime core gamer, I've found myself extremely grateful on more than one occasion for the comfort, the exhilaration, the competition ,and the break from the day-to-day, real-world ups and downs that some of the more deeply immersive iOS game can provide. Mobile gaming has come a long way over the years and we now have plenty to choose from when it comes to core iOS games. On that note,  it's my pleasure to present iPhone Life's picks for best core iOS games.

iPhones with 3D Touch have Quick Actions that allow you to activate 3D Touch by hard-pressing an app and revealing places within that app you can quickly jump into. For example, when you 3D Touch the Settings app, you see multiple options, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Battery. By tapping on of the options, you’ll jump into that place within the app. You can do a similar thing with the Phone app on iPhone. Except when you 3D Touch the Phone app, your options include Create a New Contact. Here’s how to create a new contact from the Home screen with 3D Touch.

Part of iOS 10 on the iPhone is having a widget screen that’s to the left of your Lock Screen. The widgets screen allows you to see snapshots of certain apps and information. But you can use the search bar at the top to do a phone-wide search for Mail, Notes, websites, apps, wikipedia pages, movies, Twitter, and more. Don’t worry about privacy—you’ll have to unlock your phone before accessing the information. But if you know what you’re looking for, this feature can save you some time getting there. Here’s how to search your iPhone from the Lock Screen.

Did you know Apple makes its Music radio stations completely free? You don’t even need an Apple Music membership in order to take advantage of them. If you want to create your own radio station from a song you like, you will need an Apple Music membership in order to do that. But you can listen to free radio stations in Apple Music with or without paying for a subscription. The free radio stations include Beats 1, Bloomberg Radio, ESPN News and Sports, and NPR News and Culture, to name a few. Here’s how to listen to free radio stations in Apple Music without a subscription.

Apple Maps Favorites allow you to skip typing in your home address every time you want to navigate there. Instead, you can save your often-used locations, including work, home, and any place else you want, by opening Maps, searching for your favorite location's address, tapping on it in the search results list, and then scrolling all the way to the bottom to tap Add to Favorites. Your list of favorites will appear every time you open Maps, and navigating to one of them is just one tap away. Read on to learn more about how to add Favorites to your Apple Maps and how your Favorites can help you plan your frequent trips.

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