iPhones may not come with the crazy amounts of bloatware that swell up Android devices, but there are still a handful of pre-installed apps that some users don’t want to have on their home screen.
While Apple doesn’t let you delete its stock apps in iOS 9, a new method for hiding them was recently discovered by YouTube user videosdebarraquito, who posted a video revealing his solution. Check it out below.
Twitter user and developer Peter Steinberger shouted out to the Twitterverse when his App Store app kept showing an app that needed an update, but would never actually update, even with an iPhone restart.
He got a reply from Zachary Drayer, a mobile developer himself, on how to get the App Store to force refresh.
It’s totally nonintuitive, but utterly cool, and you can do it on your Apple Watch and iTunes app as well. Here’s what to do if you’re in the same situation.
In Apple’s Messages app, you can easily add emojis with a quick click on the little happy face icon in the iMessage text field. If you use a chat app like Slack, you can do the same.
But what if you want to add an emoji to an email, a letter, or any other text field? Turns out there’s an often-overlooked menu item (with a corresponding keyboard shortcut) that lets you do just that.
Check it out.
If you’ve ever tried to set a square photo as your lock screen or homes screen wallpaper, you know that iOS will zoom into the photo, resizing it to fit the entire iPhone screen.
This is fine with some images, but square ones, like the ones you save on Instagram or take with your iPhone’s square photo feature, just zoom in too far, obscuring much of the photo.
Here’s a quick and easy work around that will let you see the whole square photo when you use it as wallpaper.
Trying to play a song in iTunes and getting the same error over and over can be frustrating. If your computer isn’t authorized with your Apple ID via iTunes, it won’t let you play any songs you’ve downloaded from the iTunes Store until it is. Sometimes iTunes will seem to get “stuck” prompting you again and again with the need to authorize.
If you’re having trouble playing your purchased iTunes on your Mac due to the repeated prompts to authorize your computer, there are a few things you can do.
Usually, an app update is a good thing. But sometimes, things go wrong: An update does the opposite of what you expect it to do. In that scenario, you want to roll your apps back, but unfortunately, at least on the iOS and Mac App Stores, Apple makes that seemingly impossible.
But it isn’t impossible — just a little tricky. Here’s how to roll your iOS apps back to an older version when things go wrong.
If you’re feeling guilty about your festive overindulgence, you may be planning to lose some weight and get fit in the new year. Well, sorry to be a Grinch, but research suggests that only 8 percent of New Year’s resolutions are successful.
The good news is that there is a better way. One that involves steadily building healthy habits over time. There are some handy iPhone apps that can help with this, but you won’t find them in the Health & Fitness section of the App Store.
This time of the year typically means gifts, both giving and receiving them. Surely some of you have gotten a brand new Macbook, iMac, iPhone or iPad (Pro, anyone?).
If so, you might be looking at a lovely morning playing with your shiny new toys. But where to start? What essential tweaks, software tricks and necessary little tips do you need to make sure they’re set up the right way?
Well, we’ve got your back, with roundups to help you easily set up your iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, iPad (Pro, Air 2 or mini), Apple Watch or new Apple TV the right way. Here’s the list of setup guides to get you up and running with your brand new Apple gear.
Sometimes I’m browsing a site like Cult of Mac on my iPhone and I’m looking for something specific, like a story about encryption, for example. Instead of swiping down the page and hoping I see the story I’m looking for, I want to just search for it.
When you’re on your Mac, it’s super easy to find something like this: simply hit Command-F, type in the text string you’re looking for, and Safari (or any other web browser on the Mac, really) will find them all in the web page you’re on, highlighting them for you.
But what about finding stuff when browsing the web on your iPhone? There’s no Command-key on the built-in keyboard, so how do you search your favorite web page to find keywords?
Turns out, there are two ways to do it, which is kind of odd.
So you’re watching a TV show or movie on your iPad and you hear the ding that means you just got a new email. You could double press on the Home button to bring up the multitasking bar and swipe over to your Mail app, but why?
One of the cool gosh-wow things of iOS 9 on a newer iPad is the picture-in-picture multitasking feature, which means you can switch over to any app while you continue watching that video.
Here’s how.
Sometimes you just want to plug your iPhone into your Mac without having to deal with all that iTunes stuff, like synchronizing or backing up.
Or, maybe a friend of yours needs to sip off your Macbook’s power and you don’t want to have iTunes sync their iPhone.
Either way, you can eject the connected iPhone, thereby avoiding all the iTunes stuff but still letting the physically connected iPhone pull power from the USB port. Even better: when you’re done charging, just pull the USB cable out from your Macbook without any worry.
Here are three different ways to do just that.
You know how it is: You press and hold the Home button to set a quick timer and Siri comes back all loud, “OK! Setting the timer! I’m in suspense!”
Or some such nonsense. Sure, you want to confirm that Siri’s not, say, adding an event to your calendar or calling your Aunt Tilly instead of setting a timer, but maybe you don’t need Apple’s AI helper to be all chatty about it.
Here’s how you can tamp down Siri’s sometimes-annoying banter.
Like iOS, OS X has its own Notifications Center to keep you abreast of all the stuff going on in your world, from calendar events to reminders.
Unlike iOS, OS X El Capitan defaults to a date sorting system that groups all your Notifications together by the date they were triggered. That’s super handy if you’re searching for a notification you got today, but don’t remember what app it came from. If, however, you want to sort by the app the notification is coming from, or–better yet–sort by date and app, you’re in luck.
Here’s how to choose a different option.
Wrapping Christmas presents takes talent. A talent I do not have.
Most of my wrappings look more like a crumpled mess of paper instead of perfect parcels fit for a king. Turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong by not including a very necessary ingredient in my wrapping repertoire: math.
Mathematician Katie Steckles published a brilliant explainer video today for the gift wrapping challenged among us that details some mathematical ways to ensure every present you wrap is absolutely perfect, no matter what shape and size it comes in.
Check it out:
Tired of the same old boring wallpaper on your shiny new iPhone 6s or 6s Plus?
You can now grab a cool app that will let you put one of up to 40 different animated images on your iPhone lock screen that you can animate with 3D Touch.
Here’s how to make it happen.
Notification Center on OS X seems like a great idea, most of the time, until you get a ton of notifications about things you really don’t care about all at once. You’ve got to click all the little “close” boxes, or click and drag the Notification banners to the right. It can be downright disconcerting.
You can turn on Do Not Disturb for 24 hours, after which it’ll default back to “Disturb.” You can hack your way in and turn off the feature altogether, but then you wouldn’t be able to see any Notifications, ever.
If you want the best of both worlds–Notifications that you can open the Center to see but that don’t pop onto your screen all the time–check out this cool tip.
One of the cooler features of having a pocket computer like the iPhone is being able to send a friend your location via Messages. Just a couple of taps on the iPhone and you can let anyone know where you’re at. It’s easy and super useful when you need to get a group together at a specific location.
The Apple Watch has a similar feature, which lets you do the very same thing without ever having to pull your iPhone out of your pocket.
Here’s how.
You have so much great video footage on your iPhone, but therein lies the problem. The thought of sitting down at a computer to edit any of it seems like a mountain you have no time to climb.
Cielo de la Paz is happy to help you reach the summit – rather quickly, too. de la Paz is a fearless creator whose soulful wanderings with her iPhone camera inspired Apple to select some of her work for the “Shot on iPhone 6” advertising campaign.
Maps is shaping up to be a pretty great navigational tool with its tight integration in iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan, as well as with much more error-free data.
I use Maps as a sort of mobile, digital yellow pages, finding businesses in town and looking up their phone number, hours of operation, website address, and more. It’s a couple of taps in, which can seem tedious after a while.
Now, though, with an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, you can get this info in a summarized form, using the new 3D Touch. Here’s how.
There are times when you need to sign a contract or other document that comes over via email. You could print it out, sign with a pen, and then scan it back to the recipient, of course, but that takes forever. Might as well fax it.
If you get a PDF form via the Mail app on your iPhone, however, you can sign it right there on your little pocket computer using just your finger, and then mail it back, all without ever committing ink to paper.
Here’s how.
The iPad Pro has become a huge favorite of illustrators and artists all over the place, and as these talented individuals get their Apple Pencils, they’re starting to see the joy of drawing directly on Apple’s massive and powerful tablet.
Thing is, the Apple Pencil doesn’t have an eraser on the end of it, unlike competitor artistic styluses (including 53’s own Pencil stylus, which features a big, soft eraser on the end opposite the drawing part).
Luckily, if you’re using an app like Savage Interactive’s Procreate, you can tweak things to make your finger do the magic eraser job.
Apple Pay is showing up in more places these days, but if you live in a town like mine, it can be hard to know exactly where those places are.
Want to know whether that hip restaurant down the street or your local pharmacy supports Apple Pay before you get there? Here’s a super easy trick using either your iPhone or your Mac.
I made an Apple Music playlist of Paste’s top 50 albums of 2015 via iTunes on my Mac. I was able to share it out on Facebook and to my friends via Messages, but I wasn’t able to see the playlist on my iPhone.
I made sure that I was logged in to my iTunes account on both my Mac and my iPhone, I signed in and out of iCloud, and I even force-quit Apple Music on my iPhone to try and fix the issue. None of these options worked.
After a bit of searching on the internet, I figured out what the problem was.
Here’s what you can do if you’re having the same issue.
Once Apple brought games to the Apple TV, it was a no-brainer that we’d all want to play them together on the couch in our living room.
Apple requires developers to support the new Siri Remote, but they can also allow third-party game controllers to move stuff around on the screen, too.
Crossy Road, the excellent Frogger-like hit iOS game with the seemingly endless supply of cute creatures to play as (that was also an Apple TV launch title), goes one step further. If you want to play with a buddy and don’t have a second gamepad, you can have your pal play Crossy Road on Apple TV with just their iPhone.
Here’s how.
Apple Watch is becoming second nature to me after several months of owning it. It’s gotten to the point where I feel like something’s missing when I don’t strap it to my wrist in the morning before starting my workday.
Thing is, the Apple Watch has so many animations on it that I sometimes feel like getting things done takes too long. I just want to find and use apps, with a minimum of fuss and bother.
Luckily, you can turn off those animations on Apple Watch to make it all feel a bit snappier.