iPhone How To - page 2

Sennheiser’s latest offering are the new HD 550 open-back headphones, designed to bridge the gap between audiophile-grade sound quality and gaming performance, the company said Wednesday. For Mac users who demand great audio whether they’re working with Logic Pro, enjoying Apple Music with lossless audio or diving into the latest Apple Arcade titles, these headphones promise to deliver a compelling listening experience.

“Audiophiles looking for featherlight headphones with honest voicing and deep bass extension are in for a treat,” said Sennheiser Audiophile Product Manager Klas Hanselmann. “While the HD 550’s airy detail is obvious, customers will fall in love with its delightfully polite touch — perfect for listening for hours on end.”

The new Apple Sports app gives iPhone users a handy tool for tracking sports scores and stats. Previously buried inside Apple News, the constantly updated sports data becomes much more accessible when delivered via a dedicated iPhone sports app.

You can choose which teams and leagues you follow, get live updates on scores (and betting odds), and tap to open live coverage of the game in a streaming app.

The official Apple Sports app is available on the App Store now. Here’s how to use it.

Apple added several nifty new features to Safari in iOS 18. The iPhone’s redesigned web browser boasts an all-new Page Menu. Plus, two big new features help surface what you’re looking for on the web.

The last big Safari redesign for iPhone, which arrived three years ago, moved the address bar to the bottom of the screen by default. It also shoved several useful features into a menu in the address bar, which made it difficult to discover them. Apple tries to reverse that second problem in the new Safari.

Here’s what’s new in iOS 18 in Safari on iPhone — keep reading or watch our video.

iOS 18 is getting a bunch of cool new accessibility features this year, including bringing eye tracking to the iPhone for the first time. You also can feel haptic music, control your phone with custom voice commands, use your phone in the car without suffering from motion sickness, and improve the accuracy of Siri and dictation.

Check out our video to see it in action or keep reading below.

If you’re one of the many people frustrated by the Photos app redesign in iOS 18, you can fix it to make it easier to use again. Apple’s updated design replaces the Photos app’s tab bar for navigation with a single, scrollable list view.

You scroll up for your photo library, and scroll down to browse your collections, people and albums. But its default layout makes it hard to find a few useful features, like Hidden and Recently Deleted. There’s only one library view now, but it’s sorted by Date Captured by default — a lot of people prefer to sort by Recents.

It’s possible to revert some these changes to “fix” the Photos app in iOS 18 and make it easier — or at least more comfortable — to navigate. However, the changes aren’t obvious. Here’s how to restore your sanity.

You’ve probably seen some of the beautiful custom iPhone Home Screens on social media after the iOS 18 launch. Some people go to great lengths to creatively customize their iOS 18 Home Screen layout, icons and widgets.

It makes sense. After all, you open your phone and look at your Home Screen dozens (or even hundreds) of times every single day. A custom Home Screen that matches your style can bring a little spark of joy to your daily life every time you whip out your iPhone. And iOS 18 makes Home Screen customization easier than ever.

Keep reading (or watch our video) for a quick introduction into the world of custom Home Screens. You’ll find out about new features coming in iOS 18, how to go above and beyond using Shortcuts, and how you can top off your iPhone aesthetic with widgets. I’ve scoured the internet (Reddit, mostly) to find the finest examples.

You can set notifications from specific apps to stick to the top of your iPhone screen. With persistent notifications in iOS, when your phone is unlocked and an important alert comes in, it will stay visible at the top of the screen until you act upon it. It’s an easy way to make sure you don’t miss (or forget about) critical notifications on your iPhone.

This proves super-handy for things like medication reminders. It also works wonders if you’re the sort of person that ignores notifications once they disappear from your iPhone screen. I’ll show you how to make your notifications sticky.

iOS 18 is a surprisingly rich software update with major new customization features and big changes in Photos, Messages, Notes, and more. Although Apple Intelligence features are going to continue grabbing headlines for the next year, it’ll only be available on the latest iPhones later in the fall. Among the smaller but interesting updates, a nodding head emoji is set to arrive, adding more expressive ways to communicate.

The iOS 18 update is packed with features — and it’s out right now. Find it in Settings > General > Software Update. It’s compatible with all the same devices as iOS 17.

After you update, here’s the big list of things you should check out. You should definitely start with editing your Home Screen, reading how the new Photos app works and checking out the new iMessage features.

iOS 18 will go out to iPhones everywhere on September 16, but you don’t have to wait. It’s possible to go ahead and install the final version this weekend when you have time to tinker with it.

And doing so doesn’t require doing anything dodgy or risky. You’ll be getting the final version of upgrade straight from Apple… just a little earlier than scheduled.

Update: This article is now moot, as iOS 18 is officially out.

Lighting is a crucial part of any video shoot, whether you’re filming a scene for an indie movie with an expensive camera or using your iPhone to capture video of your kid’s soccer game. These easy phone lighting tips can really boost the quality of your videos, whether you’re using the latest iPhone or an old Android device.

With tons of advanced features, Apple Maps competes quite handily with the likes of Google Maps and Waze. I put together a big list of the best eight features hidden in Apple Maps.

You can learn them all in this post — and see them in action in our video below.

Some people achieve and maintain zero unread emails; some let that red badge climb into the thousands. It’s never too late — you can become one of those clean inbox people like me. What can help you along the way to Inbox Zero are these six tips in Apple’s own Mail app for iPhone and Mac that you might not have known about.

Well, beyond the obvious Tip Number 0: You should always hit the Unsubscribe button at the bottom of every unsolicited promotional email as soon as you get the first one. After you kill all those unwanted subscriptions, these six lesser-known features of the Apple Mail app will make you a true pro at managing your email.

AirPods are the wireless earbuds that ordinary Bluetooth headphones want to be when they grow up. They’re seamlessly integrated with your iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and Mac. They’re deceptively simple — but if you want to get more out of them, you need to dig through Settings. These AirPods tips will show you where to look to unlock maximum functionality.

I did some spelunking and found six super-handy hidden features you might not know about.

The iPhone’s new Game Mode in iOS 18 will enhance graphics and reduce controller latency. It comes on automatically when you first launch a game.

Game Mode also reduces the background activities and services running on your phone. Luckily, if you don’t want that to happen, you can turn off Game Mode from your iPhone’s Control Center.

Here’s everything you need to know about how Game Mode works.

You can get rich topographical hiking maps of local trails and U.S. national parks on your iPhone, right in Apple Maps. New in iOS 18, you can build custom routes connecting walking paths and save them to your device for offline access.

You can use this feature to plan a hike as a day trip. Planning your route in advance could save you the hassle of getting lost without a signal — or keep you from starting an overly ambitious hike.

According to Apple, the update comes with data for “all 63 U.S. national parks.” In my testing, Apple Maps showed a thorough knowledge of the trails in northeastern and Appalachian Ohio, too. It could contain detailed trail data about your local park as well.

Here’s how to make the most out of the new hiking maps in iOS 18.

The iPhone 15 Pro’s customizable Action button lets you pick from several presets, including Accessibility — which lets you choose from 25 different accessibility features that you can toggle on or off. These features aren’t limited to the iPhone 15 Pro’s Action button, either. On any older iPhone, you can simply triple-click the side button to access those same 25 accessibility features.

Here are all 25 of the accessibility features you can assign to a button on your iPhone — and what they do.

StandBy mode is a headline iOS 17 feature that turns your iPhone into a smart display on your nightstand, at your desk or in the kitchen. It’s an attractive way to put your phone to work as a small information board or digital clock when you’re not using it.

Of course, it works best if you have a phone with an always-on display like the iPhone 14 or 15 Pro. However, it works on any iPhone with MagSafe running iOS 17. Best of all, StandBy remembers different preferences for different rooms, so you can set it up as a bedside clock in the bedroom, a digital photo frame in the living room, or a music controller in the kitchen. Here’s everything you can do with StandBy on your iPhone.

As if Siri’s unhelpful answers were not irritating enough when you actually want them, Siri often interrupts a conversation, meeting or TV show when you haven’t asked for anything at all. The good news is you make it stop — if you know how to deactivate Siri on your Apple devices.

keep reading or watch our video.

You can turn multiple Live Photos shot on your iPhone into a video. Simply select a group of Live Photos taken in a burst, and you can create a single, stitched-together video that you can save to your library and share on social media.

Here’s how it’s done.

With the recently-released PC emulator UTM SE, you can now emulate Windows on iPad directly. You can revisit old PC games, just like how you can use Delta to play old Nintendo games. You can also install Mac OS 9 or Linux. With Ubuntu, Debian or other versions of Linux, you can run all kinds of open-source software for getting real work or programming projects done.

But bad news: You can’t use it to run macOS Sonoma on your iPad. There’s some confusion about this, but unfortunately the long-held dream of turning your iPad into a Mac will have to wait for another day.

Setting it up is a little finicky — but the reward of seeing that classic Windows XP desktop on your iPad can make it all worth it. Keep reading to see how it works.

Here are a few secret tricks and gestures that will help you get around your iPhone faster. These hidden gestures help you text pictures to your friends faster, scroll through big pages and screens, type special characters and use your phone one-handed.

This is a follow-up to an earlier article with three other secret iPhone gestures you need to know. Learn all of these gestures and you’ll feel like an iPhone power user.

Final Cut Camera is a new Apple app that offers incredible manual control over your iPhone’s camera system. If you use your phone for professional videography — or even for a hobby project — you should use this free app to take videos rather than sticking with the stock Camera app.

Final Cut Camera comes absolutely packed with professional features the Camera app can’t match. The new app gives you finer control over exposure, white balance, color temperature and more. You can enable image overlays to see which parts of the frame are in focus or overexposed. In short, it’s a highly versatile camera. You can even pair it with Final Cut Pro for iPad to capture footage from multiple iPhones simultaneously.

Final Cut Camera is totally free on the App Store. Keep reading to learn how to use it. 

Check In is an iPhone feature that tracks your travels and lets contacts know when you’ve safely reached your destination. It’s great for traveling, or kids going to and from school, or even going on a date. You no longer need to count on remembering to text someone when you make it home safely — your iPhone will let them know for you.

Check In is like sharing your ETA in Apple Maps, but tweaked for personal safety. Friends, family and loved ones will be automatically notified if you’re stopped for any reason before reaching your destination. The safety feature also offers timer-based check-ins, which come in handy for situations like meeting a stranger from Craigslist. If you don’t check in after a set time, your iPhone will alert your contacts.

Here’s how to use it — frankly, every parent should know how this works.

If you’ve never tried making your own Siri Shortcuts, I’ve compiled a short list of the best shortcuts for iPhone to introduce you. Shortcuts can quickly run automated actions on your phone (and on your iPad or Mac). They’re made using Apple’s Shortcuts app, where you can visually piece together actions offered by the apps installed on your device.

You can run a shortcut by asking Siri or by putting a widget on your iPhone’s Home Screen. Not a lot of people know this powerful feature exists — or what it can do for them. For eight examples of what you can do with shortcuts, keep reading or watch our video.

You can make a GIF on your iPhone or Mac out of any Live Photo or video you have in your photo library or saved to your computer. You don’t need to download any apps — simply add a shortcut, and you can do it directly from the share sheet.

Of course, not all looping animated images are GIFs. A faster way to animate your Live Photos is with the iPhone’s built-in Loop effect. In the Photos app, just tap on the “Live” tag in the upper left and select “Loop.” This will produce higher-quality results, but might not be compatible with third-party apps like Snapchat or Discord.

If you need an actual GIF file, there’s still a pretty easy way to make them on your phone or Mac. I’ll show you how.