iOS 11 is Apple’s most keyboard-friendly version of its mobile software yet, but that doesn’t mean you have to hook up an external keyboard to use its best new keyboard-centric features. Today we’ll look at Type to Siri, which can be used whenever you’d usually talk to your favorite digital assistant just by tapping on the usual on-screen keyboard.
As if HomeKit and other automated home appliances weren’t bad enough, now you can buy a HomeKit-enabled light switch. That’s right. Instead of just walking into a room and flipping the switch on the wall to turn on the lights, you can now walk into a room, flip a switch on the wall to turn on the lights, and also deal with firmware and connection issues for the rest of your life.
Are you an iOS gamer? Do you love games so much that your iPhone may as well be a pocket games console? And do you also hate paying developers to make those amazing games for you? Then good news! because today’s how-to shows you how to get alerts whenever a top game gets its price reduced to free.
Does your podcast player app have too many options? Do you spend more time curating playlists than actually listening? Is it a struggle to add a new podcast, or just listen to the latest episode of a favorite? Then you may appreciate Sodes, an ultra-simple new podcast app from minimalist app developer Jared Sinclair.
Apple’s HomePod arrives in homes today. It’s already sold out online, but if you’re lucky you might still snap one up in an Apple store. And you probably should, because the HomePod looks to be just about the best small speaker you can buy — in terms of musical performance, anyway.
If you want to find out how to set up and get the best of your new HomePod, or if you want to read a bit more before deciding whether to get one, you’re in the right place. Below you’ll find all our HomePod coverage: how-tos, reviews, tips and opinions.
Some folks are having trouble getting their HomePods set up. For most of us, Apple’s streamlined setup is fantastic. The HomePod and your iPhone see each other, and the iPhone tells the HomePod everything it needs to know about your home network, and your iCloud ID. But this simplicity means that troubleshooting failed setups is hard. If you’re faced with nothing but a blank white screen when you plug in, here’s how to fix HomePod.
There are several workarounds for getting data off a USB stick or SD card, and onto your iPad or iPhone. We’ve even covered some. But until now, there’s been no way to just plug a USB stick into your iPad’s Lightning port, and browse the contents in iOS 11’s Files app. Thanks to an update to the fantastic FileBrowser app, that’s now possible.
Did you know that setting modern materials like silicone down onto traditional furniture finishes like oil and wax, or lacquer, could leave a mark? Judging by the insane clamor on the internet, roughly half of the planet has just discovered this fact, and is blaming it on Apple.
Those HomePod ring marks are a result of the oils in the finish of the furniture being sucked into the silicon base of the HomePod. The good news is the fix is easy, but if you’d listened to your grandmother, you never would have had this problem in the first place.
Shuffle and skipping are two great tools for listening to new music on your iPhone, using Apple Music. You can download lots of new music to your iPhone, then set it to shuffle while you take a walk. If you’re also wearing a pair of AirPods, a double tap on one of them will skip any tracks you don’t like. It’s a great way to listen to new music, with one big, annoying side-effect: You end up with lots of unwanted downloads cluttering up your iPhone.
But with one simple smart playlist, you can fix that right now.
We’d all rather that folks sent short messages via iMessage, or WhatsApp, or another civilized format that encourages brevity, but they insist on email. But what if your emails could pop up on your iPhone’s lock screen and be as easy to reply to as an iMessage. If you set it up right, your regular iPhone Mail app can do exactly that, using Push and VIP email. Let’s take a look.
Ever since the iOS 11.2 update back in November 2017, the iPhones 8 and X have supported “wireless” fast charging. This allows inductive charging mats to pour 7.5 watts of battery-juicing power into Apple’s latest iPhones. Previous to that, Qi charging mats could only supply a pathetic five watts of charging power. To take advantage of this, you’ll need a charger capable of Apple Fast Charging. Zens has a few new gadgets that will do just that. Let’s take a look.
Instead of recognizing the voices of various users and serving up their personal tunes, HomePod is tied to one person’s Apple Music library. That leads to an unfortunate side effect: Whenever anyone in your home tells your HomePod to play a track, that song is added to your listening history.
That means your teenagers’ ironic Ramones session, or your spouse’s un-ironic David Hasselhoff listen-a-thon, will pollute your listening history — and affect your future recommendations. Here’s how to stop that from happening.
Siri itself might be frustrating, but Hey Siri is great. And on the HomePod, the voice activation for your virtual assistant is even more impressive, because it hears you perfectly, even if you speak at normal volume while the music is hammering the walls, the floor, and your neighbors’ patience. Now it’s possible to have many Siri-equipped devices laying around a room, but somehow, when your say “Hey Siri,” only one device responds. Did you ever wonder how? Here’s the answer.
If you’re a home automation fan, then you’re going to love Apple’s new HomePod speaker. Not only can you use it to control your HomeKit setup with your voice using Siri, but you can also use the speaker as a Home Hub. That means that you can leave it at home taking care of business, letting you dial in to tweak things from wherever you are in the world.
This week we have apps that will help you to learn everything about your guitar, read up on the latest news, and use the Touch Bar to edit text on your MacBook Pro. But who are we trying to fool with all those? This weekend you’ll all be playing Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition all day long.
One great recent addition to GarageBand for iOS is the Visual EQ, an equalizer that is about as far away from the 1980s-style bank of sliders as it’s possible to get. The Visual EQ also shows you a waveform of the actual sound you’re adjusting, so you can see as well as hear the effects immediately. This visual element, combined with a clever three-“band” EQ, makes this a very powerful tool for shaping your music.
Ever since Apple introduced a measure to stop iPhones from unexpectedly shutting down in iOS 11, politicians and other morons have jumped on the story to gin up publicity for themselves. Now, thanks to their efforts, Apple has added a control that lets you switch off iOS 11’s Performance Management.
If you do switch it off, then your iPhone will stop slowing performance when the battery is too weak to supply enough power, and instead you can again face unexpected shutdowns. Here’s how.
Lire is an RSS reader for iOS, and it just added a great update in the form of drag-and-drop. Now you can grab any news story and drag it either to Lire’s own drop-shelf (iPhone and iPad), or to another app (iPad). It really makes great use of iOS 11’s drag-and-drop, but is let down by other apps’ poor implementation for receiving dropped items.
Apple’s HomePod is a smart speaker, but primarily it’s just a very good speaker. Siri is the (often frustrating) icing on possibly the best AirPlay speaker around.
Because the HomePod creates a wide stereo audio image, it’s also going to be great for watching movies. Today we’ll see how to hook up your HomePod to your Apple TV. Spoiler: It’s easy.
Guitar Gravitas is yet another iOS chords-and-scales app for guitar players, but this one’s worth a look because the layout is so damned useful. Unlike many other scale and chord apps, Guitar Gravitas presents exactly the information you need when you have the guitar in your hands and are ready to practice. It puts as much info as possible onto a single screen, without getting cluttered or confusing.
Apple Music on your iPhone or Mac can be controlled with fingers, mouse, keyboard, or voice. But with the HomePod, you’d better get used to talking. While you can stream music to your HomePod with any AirPlay device, if you want to control the speaker direct, you’ll have to do some talking. Happily, you can get practicing right now. Siri already has a bunch of useful Apple Music commands you can use, so let’s take a look.
Who cares if that cheap charging cable you buy is a fake? It’s just a cable, right? Maybe, maybe not. A fake Lightning cable could contain malware, for instance. Or it could be miswired, damaging your iPhone the way a miswired USB power cable can destroy a laptop computer.
The best case is that your device may not sync or charge. The worst case is that your iPhone could get damaged, or the cable could overheat and set fire to your home while you sleep. Here’s how to make sure a Lightning cable is legit.
The HomePod is like the creature the emerges from an egg in old-fashioned cartoons. The baby creature — dinosaur, bird, birdosaur — imprints on the first person it sees, then follows it around calling it mama or papa. Hilarity (of the 1970s kind) ensues, as the creature grows into a fully operational birdosaur and causes mayhem. Likewise, the HomePod latches onto the first iPhone it finds, automatically, and remains faithful forever (or until you unpair it, an option not open to 1970s cartoon characters).
But you can still let your friends have a go on your HomePod if you like. Here’s how.
I do wonder who might need their Time Machine backups to run every single hour. With the versioning tools built into Dropbox, or into text editors like Ulysses, and the reliability of SSD drives, hourly backups may be overkill. Or they may just be annoying. Or, if you have an older Mac, they may slow things down while you’re trying to work. Whatever your reason for complaining about hourly Time Machine backups, then, TimeMachineEditor has you covered. It’s a free utility that takes control of Time Machine scheduling.
This week, GarageBand saw the first new entry in its Sound Library since the feature was added in version 2.3. The Sound Library is a kind of App Store for music, letting you browse and download all kinds of samples, loops, presets and even brand-new software instruments. These come in sound packs arranged around a theme or genre. The new one is called Flex and Flow, and it brings you chilled hip-hop.