iPhone How-To - page 5

When Apple launched the AirTag, you could link the tracking tags to only one person. Luckily, Apple expanded that. Now you can share an AirTag with up to five other people, so each one can see where it is.

Here’s how to share an AirTag with family members or friends.

If your iPhone storage is full, you’ll need to quickly clear up space. You don’t need to panic and delete all your pictures, though. There are easy ways to free up iPhone storage without losing any precious data forever.

Apple put a convenient screen in Settings that can walk you through non-destructive ways to clear up space on your phone. Apps that you don’t use frequently can be temporarily uninstalled (and instantly redownloaded when you need them again). If you sync data to iCloud, like photos and music, your phone can automatically offload some of that data. You also can limit the number of podcasts your phone keeps, if you’re falling behind on your listening.

Here are the easiest steps you can take if your iPhone storage gets too full.

A little-known feature in macOS lets you share your Mac’s screen to someone else’s Mac directly from the Messages app — no third-party apps or downloads required. It’s great if you need to give tech support to a far-off family member in a pinch. Often, you just need to see what’s happening instead of counting on what your dear old father is trying to describe over the phone.

Get him to share his Mac’s screen with you, and you likely can solve his problem quickly. Even better, it’s not complicated setting up screen sharing on a Mac like it is on a PC. It takes only a few clicks in the Messages app. Let me show you all around this awesome hidden feature.

Being able to see your iPhone battery percentage right in the status bar is incredibly useful. You can keep an eye on it throughout the day if you’re getting low and need to top up.

The standard battery icon gives you a rough idea of where your iPhone stands. But instantly seeing the exact battery percentage number can give you peace of mind. It’s useful seeing the precise number without pulling down Control Center or checking a battery widget, wherever you are.

For those of you with real battery anxiety, you can even add a widget to your Lock Screen and Home Screen. I’ll show you how.

It can be hard figuring out what advice will actually save your iPhone battery life and what’s basically tech superstition. What settings can you easily change that make the biggest impact without ruining your phone?

Low Power Mode is the obvious setting, a single switch that pulls all kinds of levers behind the scenes. Turning down your brightness as far as you can is another easy trick. But how about quitting apps? Does it make any difference? What about the always-on display? Should you turn it off?

Here are the 10 things you can do to save iPhone battery life — and help your iPhone battery thrive over the long term, too.

In iOS 18, users can finally change out their iPhone Lock Screen buttons from the standard Flashlight and Camera to whatever they want. There’s a giant selection of buttons you can swap in their place.

In fact, any button you can put in iOS 18’s new customizable Control Center is a button you can put on your iPhone’s Lock Screen. Plus, you can add different shortcut buttons to different Lock Screens, making them context-dependent (and tied to a Focus Mode if you like).

Here’s how to swap out the iPhone Lock Screen buttons to put whatever you want at your beck and call.

iOS 18.2 drops a huge number of new features onto the iPhone. The second major iOS 18 update, available now, expands the capabilities of Apple Intelligence — and adds plenty of goodies for everyone else, too.

Keep reading or watch our video on the new features awaiting iPhone owners in iOS 18.2.

iOS 18.2 will go out to iPhones everywhere next week, but you don’t need to wait. It’s possible to go ahead and install the iOS 18.2 release candidate — the final version before Apple pushes it to the public — this weekend. That way you’ll have time to play around with the AI-powered Image Playground and other new Apple Intelligence features.

Getting iOS 18.2 now doesn’t require doing anything dodgy or risky. You’ll download the final version of the upgrade straight from Apple … just a little earlier than scheduled.

Working in an office or in the city, you’re probably inundated with noise from people chattering, cars running and nearby music. Your iPhone has a built-in feature called Background Sounds for playing rain noises or white noise to tune it all out.

You don’t need to download any apps or pay a cent; it comes for free on your Mac and iPhone. Let me show you how it works.

Apple Music has a karaoke mode for people who love to sing along as they listen. Apple Music Sing lets you turn down the lyrics so you can karaoke to your favorite hits with just one tap.

In fact, I’m using it right now to listen to some of my favorite music without the lyrics distracting me from reading and writing. Let me show you how it works!

When traveling internationally with your iPhone, staying connected and avoiding unexpected surprises can be a bit of a balancing act. Whether it’s navigating unfamiliar streets, keeping in touch with family, or ensuring you don’t get hit with outrageous roaming fees, a little preparation goes a long way. Here’s how you can improve your iPhone use while traveling internationally.

Apple added Share Item Location to the Find My app to let AirTag users securely share with an airline the exact position of a tracking tag attached to lost luggage.

Here’s how to use the new feature to show an airline employee that your bag is actually just outside Concourse C in the Atlanta airport, not in Denver where they think it is. They can even see the exact position of the luggage.

You’re at a party and your friend takes a great picture. You ask them to AirDrop you a copy and the two iPhones won’t connect. So frustrating … what the %^#* is wrong? Why can’t you share iPhone photos the way you used to? You probably just need to tweak a setting to turn on AirDrop’s capability to work with any iPhone.

You see, Apple changed the way AirDrop works in iOS 16. If you haven’t updated your AirDrop settings, it might not work the way you want. Here’s how to set the easy wireless file-transfer system so you can get that picture from your friend.

Sick of apps constantly asking you to rate them? There is a way you can block App Store rating requests completely on iPhone, iPad and Mac so that the pesky popups no longer appear. We’ll show you how.

Anyone getting real work done on an iPad might need to add a font to their word processor or image creation app. The process is more complicated than it should be, but you can bring the huge numbers of fonts available for Mac or Windows to your tablet, too … if you know how.

I’ll walk you step-by-step through the installation.

iOS 18.2 brings exciting new Apple Intelligence features like Image Playground, Genmoji, Visual Intelligence and ChatGPT integration. These flashy new tools let users create images and custom emoji, look up information using the iPhone’s camera and tap into one of the hottest AI chatbots around.

How well do they work? Keep reading or watch our hands-on video to see iOS 18.2’s new Apple Intelligence features in action.

Songs disappear from Apple Music all the time due to licensing problems or artists doing controversial things. Spotify found itself caught up in similar situation in 2022, losing Neil Young’s discography in a protest of the streaming service’s association with podcaster Joe Rogan. Luckily, there’s a way you can find out if any songs in your library have been removed from Apple Music behind your back.

If you own a Mac, you can quickly find out by building a special Smart Playlist. I’ll show you how.

You can use Apple Maps to plan multiple stops along the same route. You can add three, four or even 15 stops to your trip if you want.

Here’s how it works.

Update: With the U.S. election now over, this feature has been disabled.

As Americans head to the polls Tuesday for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Apple makes it easier than ever for iOS users to stay informed with real-time results. The Apple News app’s Live Activities feature displayed election results right on an iPhone or iPad’s Lock Screen and Home Screen.

You can set it up with just one tap in Apple News on each device. But watch out: Doing so could ensure you’ll obsessively look at your devices thousands of times in the next couple days as results come in.

Everyone misplaces their iPhone.* You’re walking around, you set down your iPhone, you do some chores, you get ready to go. Where is it? If you own an Apple Watch, it really is the fastest way to find your lost iPhone.

It’s totally easy to ping your iPhone from your Apple Watch. At the push of a button, you can make your iPhone ring, even if it’s on silent. And, while you might know about the basic feature that lets you ping your iPhone, the Apple Watch also offers advanced options for tracking down your missing device.

Bonus: Even if you don’t own an Apple Watch, anyone in your Family Sharing group can ring your iPhone even louder with the Find My app. And if you don’t have a family, you can use any other device signed into your Apple account.

Skip the hassle of manually sending your family all the vacation photos — enable a shared iCloud Photo library instead. Everyone in your family automatically gets all the family photos as if the images were in their own camera roll — in full quality.

Your iPhone will identify faces in photos (securely and privately), and any pictures of people who are in the family will be added to the shared library. If all of your phones are in the same place while you’re taking a lot of pictures, even if you aren’t in them (like at an aquarium or a museum), those pictures will be added automatically, too. As you’re shooting in the camera, you can easily toggle between the shared library for everyone and the private photo library on your own devices.

Starting a Shared Photo Library with your family is the best way to organize family photos. Continue reading to see how to turn it on.

Apple Intelligence brings the long-awaited new Siri … but not quite yet. The Siri improvements so far include extensive knowledge of Apple products, integration with ChatGPT, a brand-new design and the ability to text Siri your questions rather than speaking them aloud.

The even-more-powerful Siri that will be able to see your screen and take actions on your behalf inside apps has been delayed to iOS 19 — with a fully conversational LLM-powered Siri likely another year further.

But there are quite a few neat things you can try out now, if you’re willing to board the Apple Intelligence train. Here’s what the new Siri can do.

iOS 18.1 comes with a veritable boatload of big new features. The update, which is out now, brings Apple Intelligence, hearing aid support for AirPods, sleep apnea detection for Apple Watch, phone call recording and more.

Apple Intelligence features are being rolled out slowly with every new iOS update. The process is expected to take a while. This first update hits the ground running with 10 features. But that’s not all — there’s more in this update for those of us with an older iPhone or who live in the European Union.

Keep reading or watch our video on the new features in iOS 18.1.

Studies show that a haptic keyboard improves touchscreen typing speed and input accuracy, but very few people know you can enable it on your iPhone.

Android phones years ago had haptic keyboards, but without a precision vibration motor, the haptic feedback was too slow to complete the illusion. With the Taptic Engine — hardware in every iPhone since the iPhone 6s that can simulate all kinds of vibrating textures — Apple created a perfectly convincing effect to enable the haptic keyboard way back in iOS 16.

Leaving the keyboard click sounds on in public is a minor social faux pas, but you really do type better when you have some sort of feedback for hitting the keys. It feels incredible. I turned it on years ago, and every time I type something in on a friend’s phone without it enabled, it feels broken. You can’t go back once you turn it on — it’s that great.

Read on to see where to enable it.

It’s only taken 17 years, but iPhone call recording is finally here. In iOS 18.1, you can record a phone call on your iPhone for future reference. If your device supports Apple Intelligence, you’ll get transcriptions of the phone calls, too.

This feature is a great way to refer back to a previous conversation. Who said what? What date did they say? What exactly did you agree to?

If you used a shady call recording app before, you can bid it adieu. There’s a convenient button built right into the Phone app; and you can refer back to your recordings in Notes. Here’s how it all works.