By Sarah Kingsbury
Use timers a lot? Here's a fun way to use music on your iPhone to time showers and other activities like workouts or your kids' chores. If you like to fall asleep listening to music or podcasts and want playback to stop after a set time, this tip will work for that too.
By Conner Carey
iBooks allows you to browse, buy, and read books on your Apple devices. You can even download samples of a book to read before you buy it. The Featured section has the latest titles, and you can find just about anything else by searching. It does what Kindle won’t with in-app purchasing that makes the process from buying to reading instantaneous.
By Conner Carey
With the introduction of larger iPhone screens, Apple also created the feature Reachability. You may have activated this by accident in the past; it’s when your interface temporarily moves to the bottom of the screen, providing access to icons or links that were out of reach while holding the phone with one hand. To activate Reachability, you simply tap the Home button twice. Don’t click the Home button, or the App Switcher will pop up. However, if you don’t care for this feature, here’s how to turn off Reachability.
Your music library holds everything...right? Well it doesn’t have to. You have the option to add a song to a playlist without that song automatically ending up in your Apple Music library too. For example, if you’re creating a Christmas playlist, you probably don’t want to hear those same songs play on shuffle in May. Luckily, it’s easy to change this feature in Settings. Here’s how to add a song to an Apple Music playlist but not your library.
By Jim Karpen
When you’re playing music from your iPhone, you’ll notice the Lock screen will provide information on the song playing as well as some added controls. It doesn’t matter if you’re listening to playlist, your music library, or streaming Beats radio — the Lock screen will look roughly the same. Here’s how to control Apple Music from Lock screen.
By Paula Bostrom
This tip works for iOS 8.3 // The feature cannot be found on iOS 9 or later.
Apple requires users to enter a password or use Touch ID every time content is obtained from the iTunes or App Stores. The purpose of this is to prevent others who may have access to your Apple account from making unauthorized purchases and running up the bill on your credit card. In the past, it didn’t matter if the content was purchased or free, a password still had to be entered to download the material. Now, with iOS 8.3, you no longer have to enter a password when downloading free material from iTunes or free apps from the App Store. It’s free, so what does it matter?
By Rheanne Taylor
With as much time as the average user spends on Facebook, you would probably think that we all know everything there is to know about the popular social media site—but think again! There are actually a lot more hidden features to Facebook than you may realize, and this guide is here to help you start taking advantage of each of them.
By Conner Carey
In your Contacts app, you can assign photos to each contact for easy recognition. When you open the Messages app, you’ll see a photo next to each message if that contact has been assigned a photo. However, if you’d prefer to turn this feature off, it’s easy to do. Here’s how to disable contact photos.
By Conner Carey
In order to sometimes fit more names on your iPhone's screen, your Contacts’ names will appear shortened. By default, your settings are set to shorten only the first name. However, you can customize this feature or turn it off completely in your Settings app. Here’s how to change how long names are shortened in lists.
By Jim Karpen
The fourth-generation Apple TV has been quite popular, and it's likely that in some households it's being used by multiple individuals, each with their own iTunes account. Fortunately, this new model lets you add each person's Apple ID. Then when someone wants to use the Apple TV to access their media, it's simply a matter of switching accounts.
Kindle by Amazon may still hold the monopoly on e-books, but Apple is trying to catch up. The iBooks app has seen consistent improvements. One great advantage it has over Kindle is the ability to purchase a book within iBooks and immediately begin reading it. Another great feature is the ability to preview chapters from the Table of Contents with an iPhone that has 3D Touch. Here’s how to do it.
By Conner Carey
The Apple News app is a great place to follow your favorite magazines and websites, and the day's top stories. You can save articles to read offline, Like articles to see more of the same, Mute Channels you don’t want to hear from, and Share articles you want your friends to read as well. Regardless of what topics you’re interested in, there’s easily something for everyone here. Here’s how to share articles in News that you find and love.
With the introduction of iOS 9.3, we saw new additions to Apple apps that are 3D Touch enabled. One such addition is the Settings app. Often, there are three main places within our Settings that we need to visit on a regular basis: Battery, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. By adding 3D Touch to the Settings app, Apple has made it super easy to access those frequently visited sections. If you have an iPhone with 3D Touch (iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus), then this will be a welcome addition.
By Conner Carey
If you have an Apple Watch paired with your iPhone, you’re familiar with Activity rings. On the Apple Watch, your activity is represented by three concentric circles that track how much of your daily goals you have met. There’s a red circle for your Move goal, a green one for Exercise, and a blue one for Stand. However, you can also view these Activity rings in graph form in the Health app and include it as a part of your health Dashboard. Here’s how to view your activity rings in your health app dashboard.
By Conner Carey
In the Apple News app, you have the option to save articles for reading offline. Perhaps you’re about to be in a zone without Wi-Fi and you want to have a list of reading during that period of time. Or maybe you’re at work when you discover an article and you want to save it for the commute home. Whichever the case, it’s an easy process to make sure your New Stories are saved and available offline.
By Rich Hall
You can check the balance on your AT&T bill or the remaining number of minutes you have directly from your iPhone. From the Home screen, go to Settings >Phone >AT&T Services. Select Check Bill Balance or View My Minutes. AT&T will promptly send you a free SMS with the info.
By Conner Carey
Using Do Not Disturb on your iPhone is a great way to take a break from technology to focus on something else. There are multiple ways to turn on Do Not Disturb. One such way is in Control Center. You can also turn it on in Settings. However, the easiest way is to simply ask Siri to turn it on. Turning on Do Not Disturb will silence calls, alerts, and notifications. Here’s how to use Siri to turn Do Not Disturb On and Off.
By Conner Carey
When things stop working, whether in an app, with Bluetooth, or anywhere else, the first thing to do is turn off your iPhone and turn it back on. Often this will reset whatever wasn’t working and fix your problem. This may seem obvious, but judging by the number of readers whose problems we have solved with this advice, perhaps it isn't. So, here’s how to turn your iPhone on and off when things aren’t working.
One of the things that confused me on the Apple TV was when the music I was listening to kept playing even after I closed the app and began navigating to other apps. I would then navigate back to the Music app and stop it from playing. As you might expect, there is a simpler way to do this.
You can use Siri to control Apple TV settings on your 4th generation Apple TV, and this is especially useful if you want to reduce a movie's background sounds. This feature of Apple TV not only makes the dialog more audible, but also reduces the chances that you'll disturb your neighbors.
