Sorting your photos into albums is a great way to only show off the photos you want to to the people you want to show them off to (follow that?). It’s also the way some third party apps, like Instagram or Camera +, will sort the photos you edit within them. Renaming those albums, however, isn’t entirely intuitive. Here’s how to do it, simply and quickly, right from the comfort of your own iOS device.
Weather apps are fairly thick on the ground in the App Store, and iOS even comes with its own Weather app, and has done so since day one. If that’s good enough for you, then keep on enjoying it; there’s nothing wrong with that.
However, if you’re a big fan of apps like Clear, where the interface is simple, minimalist, and just gets out of the way, you’ll love WeatherCube for iPad. It’s a universal app, and chances are you’ll dig it’s clean, functional lines enough to use it often on your iPad 3, 4, or Mini.
Check it out.
Sometimes, it takes a bit for an email to come through on your iPhone via the Mail app. That might be due to the way your iPhone checks mail servers. Here’s a quick way to find out what type of email access your iPhone is doing, and then what kind of fix might be in order.
Ever try to create a picture-in-picture video? It’s kind of a pain, what with the two video streams, the two audio streams, and the like. You can use iMovie on your Mac or iOS device, of course, but it requires some heavy lifting in the video editing department.
Enter Eye Report, a sweet little video app that lets you take video with your rear iPhone or iPad camera and then film yourself with the front camera, putting it all together into one smooth picture in picture video, without any editing needed.
Shared calendars keep things running smoothly around my home, letting various folks in my life what’s going on with me and my family so that everyone is up to date on the latest information about our whereabouts. It used to be that I had to hop onto the calendar on my computer or via a web browser to share them with specific people, but no longer.
Here’s how to share an iCloud calendar with others, right from the comfort of your iOS device.
We’ve shown you how to get to an email draft on your iPhone before by tapping and holding on the Send button to bring up your most recent draft. At the time, though, that only brought up a single email, typically the last draft you had written.
These days, however, there’s a new thing happening, with a list of more than one draft appearing (if you have more than one). Here’s how to make that happen.
Tired of welcoming our Google overlords? Have a free Gmail account, and just lose your contact sync via Exchange? Well, why not put your contacts over on iCloud for easy synchronization across all your Apple products? Makes sense to me.
Here’s how to do it.
I’m guessing you take a lot of photos with your iPhone or iPad, right? I know I do. After taking them all, or saving them from web pages or text messages, they tend to add up. But how do you know how much space they’re taking up, specifically, on your iOS device?
Here’s the short and simple way to figure that out, plus an extra tip to boot.
I frequently “shop” for books using my iPhone, snapping pictures of books I want to read as I move through the store, and keeping them in my Camera Roll. This is a quick an easy way to keep track of stuff I want to check out later, but there’s really no organization to it. What would be cool is an app that I can keep track of the books, movies, and music I want to read, watch, and listen to that keeps track of stuff while organizing it.
Enter Done Not Done, a sweet little wishlist app that does just that, and more, adding recommendations from Facebook and Twitter friends to boot.
One of the wacky things you may notice if you’ve just gotten a new iPhone is the default double alert whenever you get a text message, whether iMessage or SMS. Why Apple has this as the default, I’m not sure, but it kept freaking me out before I figured out how to turn it off.
However, I’m willing to see that you might want the double alert, or more (shudder), and there’s a simple way to make that happen, as well.
Here’s how.
So, it’s Sunday evening, and you realize you have an email from your boss from Friday that you really need to follow up on. You launch your Mail app on your iPhone and go to the Inbox, only to find that the message you saw on Friday afternoon is no longer in the Inbox because you archived it all on your computer before you want home.
Instead of freaking out, you can find that archived email, right there on your iPhone, and move it back to the Inbox where it belongs, so you can follow up on it before your boss comes in on Monday.
Here’s a neat idea that will make you wonder why you hadn’t thought of this already. I know that’s what I thought as soon as I saw it.
Even though we have stuff like Find my iPhone and Find my Mac available, what about that honest person who finds your iPad or iPhone on a bus or in a restaurant and wants to return it to you? If you haven’t engraved your contact information onto the iPad (and who does that, really?), and you’ve set a passcode to get past the lock screen, that kind individual will be out of luck in trying to find you to get your iPad or iPhone back to you.
What’s a helpful iOS device owner to do, then, to help a good samaritan return a lost item?
This one’s for those of you who have to deal with that one person. You know the one? That guy who always reads off the “www” part of web addresses. As in, “go to double-u double-u double-u A-O-L dot com.”
If you want to blow that person’s mind (and maybe get yourself to websites just a bit faster with iOS via Safari’s mobile web browser), here’s how to do it.
Ever wonder how long it’s going to take to charge your iPhone up all the way? Would it be helpful if your iPhone made some type of sound if it was ready to be taken off the charging cable?
Cleverly named iOS app, Battery, can help you with both of these things, and it’s free to boot. Check it out.
I like Instagram, with its fun filters and social features. I’m glad the latest controversy over the terms of use and privacy concerns has been dealt with, at least for now. One thing that I’ve always wondered, though is why Instagram didn’t have any text overlay features.
With InstaWeather (and InstaPlace, really), you can place some location and weather-aware overlays on your Instagram photos, giving you a whole new conduit for sharing information or amusing your Instagram friends.
When you’re using your iPad and want to send the signal up to the big TV in your living room via Apple TV and AirPlay, you can double click on the Home button, swipe to the right, and you’ll see the Media bar, with the brightness, volume, orientation lock, and AirPlay destination settings.
But on the iPhone, when you swipe once to the right, all you’ll see is the orientation lock (or Mute, if you’ve set your hardware switch to lock orientation), and the play, forward, and reverse buttons for media playback via the Music app. Where is the AirPlay setting button? And what about a volume slider?
As a person with a funkily spelled last name, at least for English speakers, I appreciate that Siri tries to say my name, but I never really assumed she could pronounce it correctly. If you’re having trouble with Siri’s pronunciation of any of your contact names, here’s an easy trick to get her to say it correctly.
Just in the last year, we’ve published over 400 helpful tips and tricks for both iOS and OS X. That’s a lot of learning, and a lot of information for you to go through. We though it might be nice to take a look back through them all and come up with our favorite tips, organized into topical sections for your browsing pleasure, below.
Ever wish you could just write on your iPad or iPhone and have it type up your notes for you? Long for the days of the Newton, or just wish you had Android-style handwriting recognition on your iPhone? Well, wait no longer, as MyScript Notes is here, powered by the same tech as what powers the Samsung Note, so you know it’s gonna be good.
Apps are a great gift to that person on your holiday shopping list that already has an iOS device. You used to be able to do this from in the App Store, but that was taken away as of iOS 6. iTunes gift cards were the only way to go.
Now, however, the option to send apps as gifts is back, along with a way to schedule the gifting email so you can better target a birthday or, say, winter holiday that might be coming up. Hint, hint.
Here’s how.
It’s possible that you’ve been unable to save Facebook photos to your camera roll since upgrading to iOS 6. Maybe you’ve just given up on saving photos from the iOS Facebook app, even. Several users reported this issue when iOS 6 first came out, but maybe you missed out on any solutions.
Well, there’s a potential simple fix that might make it possible for you to start saving Facebook photos to your Camera Roll again.
Google Maps for iPhone is out, and it’s a solid replacement for Apple’s Maps app in iOS 6. Jailbreakers can make Google Maps the default maps app on their iPhones, but everyone else has to deal with the fact that Apple will never let you fully replace its own Maps with Google’s. It’s a shame, but it’s the walled iOS garden we all live in.
That doesn’t mean you can’t use Siri to get directions with Google Maps, however. You don’t even need to jailbreak. There’s a simple trick that makes it possible.
Ever since iOS 4 (I think – thanks, Shane!) came out, you’ve been able to send more than one photo attachment per email message, up to a maximum of five. What happens when you need to send more than five photos in one email, though?
That’s where Instamail Photos comes in. It’s on sale right now for $0.99 in the App Store and works pretty darn well.
I keep my iPhone in silent mode most of the time; custom ringtones mean relatively little to me. However, as anyone who keeps their iPhone on silent at work knows, text messages and other notifications that come in can still cause the iPhone to vibrate. This can be a little embarrassing, especially if you have set your iPhone on a particularly resonant surface, like a meeting table or a classroom desk, say.
This may be too basic of a tip for most of you, but there’s bound to be a few folks out there who haven’t heard this one. I ran into someone in real life (gasp!) the other day who hadn’t known that he could hold his iPhone in landscape mode, like a real point and shoot camera, and click the button now located in the upper right of the iPhone to take a photo.
It was like a light went on over his head as soon as he tried this. If you haven’t heard of this great way to take a snapshot, now’s the time to give it a try.