How-To

The iPhone camera keeps getting better and better, which makes us all want to improve our photography skills, whether we’re using an iPhone 6 or the fancy iPhone 7 Plus with its dual lens. But all the high-tech features won’t save your photos alone. Getting a foundation in iPhone photography techniques can help you take professional pictures on your everyday device, which is why we at iPhone Life have partnered with iPhone Photography School to bring you a comprehensive guide for beginners and advanced users alike. You’ll learn how to properly focus your iPhone camera, set exposure for well-lit pictures, use lighting to your advantage, and much more. When you become an iPhone Life Insider, you’ll get immediate access to this and all of our other awesome guides, as well as all the usual benefits of an Insider subscription.

You’ve always been able to send sketches and drawings to other Apple Watch users with Apple Watch. Now those same text message drawing options come to iPhone and iPad with Digital Touch on iOS 10. You can send sketches, fireballs, and even your heartbeat in iMessages to other iPhone users. You can also choose a photo and write your Digital Touch message over it before sending your iPhone text drawings to a friend. We’ll go over all the different things you can do with Digital Touch on iPhone or iPad. Here’s how to send Digital Touch drawings in Messages with iOS 10 on iPhone.

Instagram introduced My Story to the app a while back. My Story allows users to film or snap pictures and short videos to share with their followers. If a follower is on at the right time, they can even tune into your Story in real time, or they can tap on your circle at the top of their Instagram feed later on to watch it. Your Story lasts a day before disappearing, allowing your followers to keep up with you in yet another way. But maybe there are some followers you’d rather didn’t view your Story on Instagram. You have the option to hide your Instagram Story from specific people; here’s how.

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. 

As any self-proclaimed social media guru can attest, there’s no shortage of intuitive social-sharing apps to pique your interest these days. Between Instagram, Snapchat, and Periscope, the ability to share moving images and live stream videos has become as easy as point and shoot. The best part is that you need not even be a videographer to achieve professional results. With the right app, publishing content (or posting that next-level selfie) on the fly is now easier than ever. Between apps that can be used to speed up or manipulate a video shot with your iPhone and amazing GIF-making apps, the following are four of our favorite free video-editing apps that let you make your own gifs on your iPhone.

I love using my Calendar app to keep track of my family's schedule. It can only be so helpful, though, when I'm the only one using it. Having a shareable family calendar means that we can all be on the same page—all the time. The family calendar just might be my favorite feature of Family Sharing! Here’s how to add an event to your family calendar on iPhone.

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.

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.

You may have seen some really stunning artwork on Instagram recently that looks like a photo with a really intricate filter. These photos as artwork became a huge trend on social media when the photo editing app Prisma started trending. There are entire Instagram accounts dedicated to sharing Prisma photos and for good reason—they’re stunning. Here’s how to turn your photos into artwork on iPhone.

In the world of Facebook, unfriending someone is a big deal. And if you actually know the person, they’ll likely figure out you’ve unfriended them at some point and want to know why. Perhaps it’s not that serious and you would like to stay friends, but you don’t want to see what they post. Luckily, Facebook has the option to unfollow someone while remaining friends. Here’s how to do it.

A new Instagram feature allows you to upload up to ten photos and videos in one post to your Instagram feed. This creates a sort of slideshow on Instagram that you can share with your friends via your Instagram feed. The slideshow appears on Instagram much the same as a regular post, except you have the ability to swipe left and right to view the other photos or videos in the post. I’m sure Instagram users will come up with many creative ways to use this slideshow feature to its fullest. This is another improvement from Instagram on par with its deciison to finally allow users to create a second Instagram account. Nice to see the company implementing requested features. Here’s how to share multiple photos or videos to Instagram in one post.

There are two main ways to rent a movie from iTunes. If you use your iOS device or Apple TV, you have to watch the movie on that iOS device or another Apple TV. However, you can Airplay a rented movie from your device to your Apple TV. But if you want to be able to move a rented movie from one device to another, you have to download it to your computer. However, the process is basically the same whether you’re in iTunes on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV, or on your computer. Renting is the least expensive way to watch movies with iTunes, and I recommend using this option whenever available. Often Apple won’t let you rent new releases, but otherwise, renting is usually an option. Here’s everything you need to know about how to rent a movie from iTunes, from how to watch rented movies on iTunes, how to play iTunes movies on TV, how to download movies from iTunes, how long does an iTunes rental last, and how to delete a movie from iTunes once you've watched it.

‘How much data does Netflix use’ is an important question to answer if you have limited data on your iPhone or iPad. If you often enjoy streaming Netflix on your device, your Netflix data usage can quickly get out of control. We’ll cover how many GB (gigabytes) Netflix uses per hour, which makes it easy to figure out how much data Netflix uses per movie. Remember, if you’re streaming Netflix on Wi-Fi or watching offline content you’ve downloaded from Netflix, there’s no reason to be concerned over Netflix data usage, unless you have very limited bandwidth with your Internet provider at home. Netflix does use a decent amount of data when you’re streaming movies and TV shows, but you can control how much data Netflix uses within the app on your iPhone or iPad. Let’s jump in: here’s how much data does Netflix uses on iPhone or iPad and what to do about it.

In most western countries, the Calendar app on the iPhone or iPad has Sunday set as the first day of the week. But considering the work week tends to divide quite distinctly into weekdays and the weekend, with most of our appointments and business meetings taking place Monday through Friday, you may prefer to set Monday as the first day of the week. Or if you have an unusual schedule, you could set any day of the week you prefer to be the first day of your personalized week. Here's how to change what day your week starts in the Calendar app on iPhone.

In the Calendar app on iPhone, you can view days and months automatically. But you can also turn on week numbers, which will allow the Calendar app to display the week number of this year. Not everyone will find this tip necessary but if you like or need to know what week of the year it is, use this tip to display it. Here’s how to show week numbers in the Calendar app on iPhone.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Apple ditched the flag icon in Mail. When you flag an email, an orange dot appears next to the flagged message, instead of the good ol' flag icon. If you’d prefer to get the flag icon back, you can easily do so in Settings. Likewise, if you later decide you preferred the dot, you can use this top to switch back. Here’s how to get the flag icon back in Mail on iPhone.

With iOS 10, you can purchases items in Safari using Apple Pay. The process for doing this is so quick and simple that you may find yourself impulse buying at speeds faster than your bank account can handle. If you need to cut yourself (or someone else) off from spending too much money buying things in Safari with Apple Pay, you can turn the function off all together in Settings on iPhone. Here’s how to turn off Apple Pay in Safari.

I've had the experience of finding a smartphone and having a hard time figuring out who the owner is. It always seems urgent, since I know the owner is desperately looking for it. Should you find a lost iPhone or iPad, you can simply ask Siri who the owner is. Siri will tell you the owner and show contact information. Here’s how to return a lost iPhone or iPad to its rightful owner.

When you’re the host of a Facebook event, you can edit a guest's invitation. This gives you the ability to remove them, thereby un-inviting them from the event. You can also select the status of their RSVP, meaning you can say they’re Going, Interested, or Can’t Go. However, they will be notified that you’ve done this. Regardless, sometimes you just need to use your Host privileges, which is why Facebook set it up this way. Here’s how to un-invite someone from your Facebook event.

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