Did you ever try to take a photo of something flat on the ground, and spend ages trying to line it up right so that it is square in the frame? No, well, humor me here, because Apple just granted everyone’s biggest iOS camera wish: The camera app now has a level that kicks in when you hold the iPhone horizontally, and which will tell you when you’re holding the iPhone, uh, level.
The Files app is iOS 11’s Finder. You can use it to browse the files in your iCloud Drive, along with files and folders in your Dropbox, and inside other apps that open up their file systems to iOS. Apple has also added some keyboard shortcuts to the Files app. This lets you carry out many common tasks without touching the screen when you have a hardware keyboard attached.
Most of the new keyboard shortcuts are great, and show how serious Apple is about the new user-accessible iOS file system. But some serious limitations mean you’ll still need to reach up and tap the screen to do the most basic things.
Zoom’s new Livetrak L-12 could be the only box you need to turn your iPad into a mobile music studio. In one unit, the L-12 combines a mixer, a 12-track recorder, and an interface that lets you hook up all your musical instruments and gadgets to your iPad. And that’s just the beginning.
Often, our eye is drawn to something because of its color. But sometimes we’re attracted by a pattern, or perhaps color even detracts from an image (like a row of cars in front of a beatific white building). At those times, we should shoot black-and-white images, which emphasize pattern, texture and shape.
The iPhone — with its giant screen, its great camera and its huge library of photo apps — is fantastic for shooting B&W pictures. Let’s take a look at how to shoot amazing black-and-white photos with your iPhone.
In iOS 11, developers have a new way to access your Photos library: write-only access. Instead of granting permission for an app to read and write to your Photos library, just so it can save the odd image, an app can now only be allowed to write — or save — images, without getting to poke around inside your library to see what else is there. It’s much more private,
Since last fall, your Mac and your iOS devices have shared a Universal Clipboard. That is, you can copy on one device and paste on another. It’s seamless, and incredibly useful. For instance, you could copy a shipment tracking number in Mail on your Mac, then paste it into the tracking app on your iPhone. Or you could take a screenshot on your iPhone, then paste it into a blog post you’re writing on your iPad.
Universal Clipboard is so easy to use, you might have used it already without even realizing. Here’s how it works.
Capo touch is the iOS version of Capo, an amazing Mac app that lets you slice and dice a song, slowing it down so you can learn it on guitar or another instrument.
Developer SuperMegaUltraGroovy added some great new features to Capo touch version 2.5. If you’re a long-time user, you’ll appreciate the interface tweaks, the Apple Music support and the new audio-scrubbing engine. If you never used Capo, and you play a guitar, you should buy Capo touch right now.
Your iPhone isn’t slacking off when it sits in your pocket. No, it’s industriously counting your every step, ready to tell you the total so you can celebrate by buying cake if you hit your daily goal. The good news is that the iPhone pedometer comes built-in, and requires no third-party apps to do its stuff. The even better news is that there’s a free app — Pedometer++ — that makes it even better.
Your iPhone knows where you are, pretty much all the time, and you probably know that it can share your location with other people, too, if you let it. Many apps ask to know where you are so that they can do their job (a weather app, a mapping app), but the iPhone has a few built-in ways to let other folks know where you are, and also to help you find a lost iPhone. There are so many ways to use location sharing that it can get a little confusing, but really, all those options are connected to the same service.
Let’s see how they all tie together.
Inside the iPhone’s Health App, the app that counts your steps and hooks up with other apps to monitor your activity and health, lives your Medical ID. This is a page containing everything important that you might want a doctor or first responder to know in an emergency, and is accessible from your iPhone’s lock screen without a password.
By default, the app only contains your name, and a few details automatically culled from your address book, but fleshing it out is quick and easy. Here’s how to set up your Medical ID with any and all the information you want to make available.
We’ve been able to share and collaborate on iWork documents for a while, but in iOS 11 (and macOS High Sierra) you’ll be able to collaborate on any document, just by sharing it through iCloud Drive. To begin with, this will only work with Apple’s own apps, but third-party developers may add real-time collaboration features to their own apps. Here’s how to get started.
If you’re looking for a way to lose a few hours later today, you could do a lot worse than Groovebox, a free music-making app for iPhone and iPad. It’s simple enough to start making music as soon as you launch it, but offers enough depth (and enough in-app purchases) to keep you going for quite a while.
In iOS 11, you can share your iCloud storage with family members. This is a big deal, thanks to the new supersize iCloud plans, which make it a lot cheaper to buy a single 2TB plan and share it among all your family members.
With all that storage available, you can keep a huge iCloud Photo Library, and take full advantage of the new Files app in iOS 11. Never again will you run out of storage on your iPhone, iPad or the MacBook you foolishly specced at just 128GB of storage space. Here’s how to share iCloud storage with your family members.
When you share a photo via email, iMessage or most other apps, you also send the location of that image. No big deal, right? You’re only sending pictures to people you know anyway. But what about when you sell something on a site like Craigslist or eBay? If you don’t manually remove location data from your pictures, anyone can see where you took your photo, which is probably your home.
Right away, anyone can see where you live, and what you have at home. You still might not care, but if you do, here’s how to remove all that information before you send a photograph. (You’ll also learn about an interesting quirk in iMessage.)
If you’ve ever traveled to a foreign country with your iPhone or iPad, you may have come across the dreaded No Service error. This happens when you get off the plane and switch on your iPhone. But instead of connecting to a cellular network, your iPhone just spins its wheels and refuses to connect.
Apple offers a support page to help out, and a zillion forum pages serve up advice, but none seem to cover this particular tip, which I discovered after hours of painful futzing with settings.
With iOS 11, your iPhone gets smart enough to realize when a Wi-Fi connection is flaky, and gives up trying to join it. This might be most useful if you’re one of those people who keeps your Ask Join Networks setting activated, but it should help anyone who uses their iPhone in multiple places — i.e. everyone ever.
It used to be that when you got back from vacation, you’d drop your film off at the lab and cross your fingers. You hoped you’d get some half-decent photos back a week later, while memories of that cool restaurant you liked faded with your tan.
Now we share our photos with friends and family while we’re still on the beach, then forget about them. But we can, and probably should, make a little effort to preserve our vacation memories. And — you guessed it — there are apps for that.
Is it too late on a Saturday night to hit the hardware store for that essential dingus you need for Sunday’s DIY project? Has the local supermarket closed already, or do you still have time to buy some more beer? Does the Kanaan restaurant (“Best Humos in Berlin”) even open today? Just ask Siri.
You may be used to firing up Google Maps, searching for the store or restaurant you’re interested in, then tapping around in the app to get to the opening times. But did you know that Siri can also tell you if a local business is open, or when it will be?
You already have all the travel gadgets you need for a successful and relaxed trip. Today we’re going to look at travel apps. Specifically, apps that make your trip better and easier, like great city guides.
We’ll also showcase apps that work around limitations you face while traveling, like a lack of bandwidth. Let’s get started!
Using one-handed maps is currently suboptimal, because you need two fingers to zoom the map. But in iOS 11, the familiar pinch-to-zoom gesture is joined by a new tap-to-zoom, which lets you navigate the entire interface with a single thumb. This means that you can easily check the map while walking, or even — if you are an irresponsible psychopath — while riding a bike.
Your mobile data plan takes a hammering when you travel. All the stuff you usually do while sitting in bed using your home Wi-Fi — like reading Cult of Mac and viewing cute capybara GIFs — will eat through your monthly allowance. And that’s before you get to the extra use of maps and Google to find your way around.
Today on Tech Travel Tips, we’ll look at ways to stop your iPhone and iPad from using up all your data in the first few days of your vacation.
At home, you can pretty much trust your own Wi-Fi network, and you kind of have to trust your cellular provider. But as soon as you fetch up at a hotel, airport, Airbnb rental or coffee shop, you risk everything.
Short of leaving your MacBook or iPhone out on the table while you visit the bathroom at a hacker conference, using public Wi-Fi is just about the worst thing you can do with your devices when you travel. Fortunately, there are ways to protect yourself — and they’re cheap and easy.
A new 1Password update copies one-time passwords to your clipboard as soon as you log into a site or app, making what was a tedious process nice and easy. The update is free for both Mac and iOS users of 1Password.
Welcome to Tech Travel Tips, a week of travel tips for vacationers. This week we’ll show you how to keep your devices safe while traveling, what apps to download before you go, what settings you should change before leaving the house and — kicking off the week — the best travel gadgets to take with you. Let’s get started!
The rumors say that SoundCloud is on its way out. The company is laying off staff, while burning through streaming bandwidth with no real way to make any money. If you’re a musician, this is a big deal, because SoundCloud is where you share music, and where you go to hear other musicians’ music. It’s a mixtape and an audition reel combined.
The smart move is to take your music to YouTube, because a) it’s not going away, b) it’s free, and c) it’s where everyone goes for free music anyway. The problem? You need to make a video. You could always just put a still image up there, but then the kids will get bored and move onto something else. But as a musician, you’d probably rather spend your time making music instead of making movie.
Luckily — surprise surprise — there’s an app for that. It’s called Wizibel, ands it comes from master iOS music-app-maker Klevgränd.