By Sarah Kingsbury
One of the Apple Watch's many benefits is the ability to manage incoming messages and notifications from your wrist. But if you've let the notifications pile up, don't worry about going through and dismissing them one by one; there's an easy way to dismiss all your notifications at once. When your Apple Watch notifications start to pile up, here’s how to clear all of them at once.
By Becca Ludlum
There are several reasons why you might want to see comments on a Facebook post—I often want to see comments if the poster is asking a question I'd like to know the answer to. You can receive notifications about future comments by leaving a comment yourself. Indeed, I often see people comment "following" or "commenting because I'd like to receive updates" on Facebook status updates. But did you know that you can easily subscribe to updates without commenting on a thread? Here's how to follow a Facebook thread and receive notifications of comments without leaving a comment.
By Conner Carey
Folders are a great way to organize your apps, especially if your apps are beginning to pile up. Lots of apps use notification badges to let you know there’s a task to complete within the app or new content to check. But when those apps are in a folder, the notifications badges are added together to give you one number in a red circle. However, you can 3D Touch a folder to see what specific apps have unchecked notifications. Here’s how to 3D Touch a folder to see app notification badges.
Siri is an awesome time saver. Want to view your most recent calls, text someone, get directions, or post to Facebook? Just ask Siri. You can even do all this from your lock screen. The problem is, so can anyone else. If your settings allow for it, anyone can access your call history, send a tweet, or get directions to a contact's home from your lock screen just by bringing up Siri and asking.
By Conner Carey
With iOS 9, you have the option to sort pull-down notifications. This allows you to group or ungroup apps and view notifications sorted manually or by most recent. When you group apps, they’re sorted into blocks under notifications with the most recent app appearing at the top. When apps are ungrouped, notifications will sort intermixed by most recent unless sorted manually.
Touch ID has seen some major improvements since the release of the iPhone 6s. It’s more accurate and works much more often than it used to. But now, I find Touch ID unlocks my iPhone before I have a chance to check the notification that has popped up. Or, if I’m driving and I just want to change the song from the Lock screen, sometimes Touch ID works too quickly and I end up unlocking my iPhone and having to take the extra step of opening the Music app. Well, here’s our trick to get around that.
By Jim Karpen
Sometimes particular conversations or individuals can become a bit of a nuisance in Messages — so much so that you'd like to stop receiving notifications for that conversation. Maybe you are part of a group conversation run amok or a family member likes to text you during work hours? Fortunately, you can turn on Do Not Disturb for any particular conversation.
By Conner Carey
It’s easy to miss appointments when our calendars are always full, and pasting sticky notes to computer screens just doesn’t cut it anymore. However, your phone is happy to do the thinking for you; change the Default Alert Time and your Calendar app will remind you.
By Violet Cooper
If you need to call someone, but it's not convenient to place the call right now, you can use the Reminders app to help you remember to make the call later. If you use Siri to create the call reminder, you'll be able to call the person directly from the reminder notification.
By Paula Bostrom
There have been a couple of times now that I’ve been startled out of a deep sleep by my iPhone emitting a high pitched screeching sound. The sound was to make me aware of an AMBER (child abduction) Alert.
I think AMBER Alerts are a great thing and help save lives, but what annoyed me was that the alert was from a city almost 300 miles away from me. Was it really relevant to me?
Most of the time the alerts are pinged off of cell towers and are specific to the area. I’m not sure why I received this particular alert, but it made me consider turning it off.
iOS 8 finally brought the ability to customize the iPhone and iPad interface by allowing you to add widgets to the Today screen in Notification Center. In an earlier post, I explained the simple steps for doing this. You simply swipe down from the top of the display to view the Notification Center and tap on the Edit button at the very bottom. This reveals widgets that are associated with apps that you already have installed on your device. You simply tap on the green button to add a widget.
Vidget (free) is different. Instead of being an app such as ESPN Sport Center with an associated widget, its sole function is to let you easily add a bunch of widgets to your Today screen, with about 20 different widgets currently available.
By Sarah Kingsbury
Thanks to iOS 8, Apple lovers finally have access to widgets on their iPhones. But users will find some widgets more useful than others. Maximize their utility by deleting widgets you don't need to see in the Today view in Notifications and arranging the rest in the most convenient order.
We’ve all been there. The notifications that pile up on your locked home screen or notifications screen can be overwhelming. Follow this simple tip to delete unwanted notifications clutter.
By Abbey Dufoe
Some notifications on iOS 8 have become interactive! With most, you can swipe left and delete unwanted notifications in seconds, but they don’t delete from the app (so you can go back later and check them out). Here’s how:
By Jim Karpen
If you own stocks or have an interest in how the market is doing, you can use Siri to check current stock prices. In addition, you can compare performance, ask more general questions about how the market is doing, ask about the performance of specific indices such as the Nikkei, and more. Note that this functionality is available on the iPad as well, even though iOS on the iPad doesn't include Apple's Stocks app.
By Abbey Dufoe
Apple doesn’t often allow you to modify user experiences. I'm not saying that’s a bad thing, but it’s even more fun when you can! iOS users are now able to modify the “Today” view in the pull-down Notification Center in iOS 8.
