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.

By default, when you raise your wrist, the Apple Watch screen wakes up. Also by default, it shows you the Watch Face, assuming you want to see the time and have access to complications. But perhaps you’d rather see the most recent app or activity you were using instead. You can change the setting for Wake Screen from Watch Face to Last Activity. Here’s how to automatically reopen an app on your Apple Watch.

The absolute best iPad Pro accessories on the market aren’t always easy to find. I’ve scoured lists across the internet and created a few of my own, but the iPad Pro is still relatively new and companies are releasing products all the time. Once you have a top-notch keyboard, it’s fun to see what other awesome items are out there. Look no further, here’s the seven best iPad Pro accessories available now.

Signing a contract via email used to entail a printer, pen, and scanner. But now you can do the whole thing right on your iPhone in the Mail app. Once you’ve perfected your on-screen signature, you can continue to use the same one and even change what color it is. To do this, we’ll use the Markup feature that was introduced with iOS 9. Here’s how to sign a PDF document in the Mail app.

How to Make Hands-Free Calls on the iPhone (iOS 17)

Do you find yourself answering the phone and quickly putting it in speakerphone mode so you can use your iPhone hands-free? Do you find it annoying to scroll through contacts, calls, and messages just to make a phone call? Well, there’s an easier way. You can set your iPhone settings to place and receive calls hands-free, automatically, within the Settings app. It’s part of Apple's accessibility and Hey Siri features. Here’s how to use Siri to make calls and have them automatically answer on speaker so you never have to use your hands.

There are plenty of keys and character variations that the small keyboard of the iPhone simply can’t fit on the screen. However, accented characters and other extra options are available—they’re merely hidden so as to take up little space. You can use this tip anytime you’re using the iPhone’s onscreen keyboard to see more options. Here’s how to view alternate characters on the keyboard.

Whether you want to use this feature to take travel journaling notes about your adventures or to remember a particular place you went that you liked, saving a Map location in Notes is easy to do on your iPhone. You could add the location to your Map Favorites as well, but placing the location in Notes gives you a chance to add extra information. Here’s how to save a map location in notes.

Panorama Mode in the iPhone Camera app is an awesome way to capture the full shot. Instead of being limited to the edges of your screen, Panorama mode allows you to move your phone and capture a wider shot. Your phone then stitches the multiple shots into one long, beautiful image. Panorama mode is particularly perfect for taking photos of landscapes or city horizons. However, you may want to switch what direction Panorama mode captures in. Turns out, it’s easy to do. Here’s how to switch directions in Panorama Mode.

Monday, Apple held its WWDC keynote event on the first day of the convention. We saw previews of all the latest software coming out this Fall, including the larger-than-expected iOS 10 update. And within that update is the revamped, redesigned Apple Music. But is Apple doing enough to keep its now 15 million paid subscribers? Or should we abandon the comfort of the Apple ecosystem for the features of Spotify?  We can’t know for sure until iOS 10 is installed on our iPhones, but let’s look at what Apple did share about the new and improved Apple Music. Does it measure up?

When it comes to peoples’ iPhone and iPads, there’s one complaint that I hear more than all  others: why must I keep these annoying built-in apps that I never use on my iPhone? I, for one, have never used either Apple’s Stocks app or its Compass app, and yet there they are, sitting relentlessly on my device taking up space—space that I would prefer to reserve for my photos and third-party apps that I actually enjoy.

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