iPhone How-To - page 5

Traveling is a lot easier if you can keep track of your stuff with AirTags in your luggage. It’s been in the news lately: Airlines have lost flyers’ bags and people have recovered them because they had the foresight to put an AirTag in the luggage. You can make sure it’s with you all the way along your journey and quickly find it among the baggage claim at your final destination.

Read on for my tips on traveling with AirTags.

 You can convert a PDF to JPG on your iPhone instantly and for free — without downloading any sketchy apps or using any slow and confusing websites. This feature works using Shortcuts, a versatile automation system built into your iPhone. To learn more, check out this guide on making PDFs on iPhone and iPad.

After you download the shortcut, you can convert any PDF into a JPG straight from the share sheet on your iPhone. Watch the video or keep reading below to see how it works.

Say you want to send someone a YouTube link with a timestamp, to show them a specific part halfway through. Doing this is really easy from both the YouTube website or the app.

Let me show you how to share a YouTube video that starts at a specific time.

One of the top Apple Intelligence features is a new set of system-wide AI writing tools. You can invoke these intelligent writing helpers anytime, anywhere to help you compose, edit, rewrite, summarize, reformat or proofread text.

In my experience, they can really streamline reformatting a document and can be helpful for making your written communication better. Here’s how to make the most of Apple Intelligence writing tools.

You can back up your text messages (and iMessages) with iMessage Exporter, a free tool for the Mac. Whether you want to preserve your family message history for sentimental reasons, or need to keep conversation records for business, iMessage Exporter will get the job done.

You might already back up your messages in iCloud, but Apple charges an arm and a leg for space. You can save space (and money) by making a local backup and clearing out your cloud storage.

Keep reading or watch our video to see how.

In just a few minutes, you can create a cool iPhone Lock Screen wallpaper that can switch between two images with just a tap. Add the right images to your photo library, and you can toggle between them like magic.

For instance, you might pair up nearly identical photos of a muscle car with and without its headlights on. That way, when you tap your iPhone screen, the car’s lights flash on or off. Or maybe you take duplicate photos of your boss and add fiery red laser eyes to one of them so you can tap between “nice boss” and “boss from hell.”

To pull off this fun iPhone wallpaper trick, you need to add the right kinds of images to your photo library — I’ll share a few examples — and then create a custom Photo Shuffle wallpaper to toggle between them. Watch the video or keep reading below.

It’s a new year, and it’s a fine time to clear out some of the mistakes of the past. That includes no longer paying for apps or services you don’t use anymore. Luckily, it’s easy — if you know how to cancel subscriptions on your Apple devices.

Here’s how to find everything you’ve signed up for through the App Store, see what it’s costing you, and cancel it if you’ve lost interest. Or perhaps save a bit of money by changing how often you’re billed.

A diary can be a great and invaluable record of your life, but who has time for that? Well, now you do: Apple’s iPhone Journal app makes keeping a diary a breeze. Really, it couldn’t be any easier.

Apple’s Journal app, newly updated in iOS 18, lets you build a record of your life into a multimedia digital diary. Your iPhone will pull together details from your photos, locations and events to give you prompts for memories worth writing about.

Here’s the nitty gritty on using the Journal app — and its latest features.

With some careful modding, you can use an iMac as a display — and save more than $1,300 to get a high-end monitor similar to Apple’s pricey Studio Display.

Apple’s Studio Display is one of only a small handful of 27-inch Retina 5K displays on the market, boasting a resolution of 5,120 × 2880. Unfortunately, it costs quite a handful — $1,599. If you have an old iMac 5K sitting around, you already have a computer with the exact same display panel inside. So if you are willing to spend about $190 in parts and can convert it to a Studio Display, you can save a big chunk of change.

Here’s how you can mod it yourself — but be warned, it’s not for the faint of heart.

So, you’ve been using Safari’s Private Browsing mode on your iPhone or iPad, for whatever reason, but you forget to close out of the tab. The next time you open Safari, you’ll be thrown into whatever unscrupulous web page you had open last time — and the result can range from unfortunate to embarrassing, depending upon what you were looking at and where you are when you unexpectedly resume the Private Browsing session.

Luckily, iOS offers a foolproof way to avoid reopening a Private Browsing mode session. Let me show you how.

The Apple AirTag is arguably among the company’s most useful product releases in recent years. Once you set up an AirTag, it gives you powerful options for locating it (and whatever you attach it to). Put one of Apple’s tracking tags on an item like a keychain or luggage, and you can easily track its location from your iPhone, Mac, or iPad. If you’re wondering, do AirTags make noise, the answer is yes, but only in specific circumstances.

Since AirTag’s launch, numerous reports have detailed how the tracking tag helped owners find lost items. If you recently acquired an AirTag, here’s how you can set it up the right way and use it properly.

It’s Christmas Eve, and Santa Claus is on his way. You can find out exactly where he is with the help of the NORAD Santa tracker and your Mac or iPhone. You can even track Jolly Old Saint Nick’s progress in real time.

Here’s how to keep an eye on Kris Kringle‘s progress.

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.

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.

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.