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iPhone How-To - page 6

Meet friends, track kids, send your ETA: How to use Find My

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Image of Find My location sharing on iPhone with a crowded city street, captioned “Find The Whole Fam”
Find My is the built-in way to share location on iPhone.
Image: Apple/D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Location sharing is an incredibly versatile feature of iOS that makes coordinating with others much easier. Whether you’re meeting up with someone, exploring a new place, or spending the day out with friends, it’s a breeze to share your location. This feature is especially helpful in large public spaces, such as malls, amusement parks, and stadiums. If you’re wondering how does sharing location work on iPhone, you can check out this detailed guide: Everything You Need to Know About Location Sharing in iOS.

Giving directions on precisely where to pick up someone along a street block or in a parking lot is made much easier by sending a pin in an iMessage chat. With Family Sharing, I can see if my wife is on her way home without first sharing her ETA in Apple Maps. Another benefit is that I can use Find My to ping her phone if it’s lost in the house.

Here’s how to use location sharing.

Stop iPhone from autocorrecting swear words to ‘ducking’ and ‘shot’ once and for all

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Ducking Auto Correct
Ducking autocorrect. What a shot piece of software. It’s such an overcorrecting dock. 
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Here is how to stop your iPhone from autocorrecting swear words. It’s not a simple toggle switch in Settings, unfortunately — but it’ll only take you a few minutes to fix it once and for all.

Apple presents an annoyingly family-friendly image. It doesn’t want the iPhone to autocorrect a swear word to protect the innocence of children. It doesn’t want porn on the App Store (even if it’s a tap away in Safari).

Luckily, for the adults in the room, it’s all surface-level means of protection. Here’s how you can get your iPhone to let you swear again.

How to use the Reduce Interruptions Focus in iOS 18

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Image showing the Reduce Interruptions Focus mode in iOS 18, with the caption, “I Need To Be Alone”
Do Not Disturb continues to get smarter in iOS 18.
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Reduce Interruptions is a new Focus in iOS 18 that judges on the fly which notifications seem important, using Apple Intelligence.

Setting up a Focus mode by hand is a bit of a chore. You need to know exactly which contacts and apps you want to silence and let through. You need to keep maintaining them as you add new contacts and download new apps.

Reduce Interruptions is a new Focus mode that’s a slightly smarter Do Not Disturb. There’s no work necessary. And, if you do have a highly customized existing Focus, you can add its smarts on top of your existing rules and customizations. Here’s how to make the most of it.

How to create photo memories with Apple Intelligence

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Make a Photo Montage in the Photos app
Type in a prompt to make a photo montage in the Photos app.
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

You can create a photo memories movie using the Apple Photos app, powered by Apple Intelligence. Just type in a prompt, it’ll browse through your collection, and create a bespoke video set to music of your choosing. It’s a fun way to put together a memory movie. And you can be very specific with the kinds of prompts you give it.

The new Photos app powered by Apple Intelligence also has a more powerful search feature. Here’s how it all works together.

Remove an object from a photo with Apple Intelligence

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Clean Up Your Photos
Remove anything from any picture.
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

You can easily remove any object from a photo using the new Apple Intelligence Clean Up tool.

As the graphic designer among my friends, I’ve always been asked to Photoshop things out of my friend’s pictures. A romantic shot in a gazebo, with a phone sitting on the handrail in an obvious spot. A group photo from a fun night out, with someone’s tote bag sitting by their feet. A picture from a big conference, with an ugly lanyard around someone’s neck.

Now, you have the power to clean up your own photos — a chance to make your almost-perfect shots perfect. Here’s how it works.

Look up laundry tag and car dashboard symbols with your iPhone camera

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What Do They Mean?
Ever wonder what these symbols mean?
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Those tiny, cryptic symbols on clothing tags and car dashboards can confuse anyone. However, your iPhone camera can quickly decipher the meaning of laundry symbols and dashboard icons. You don’t need to look up a guide or Google their meaning. Just take a picture and your iPhone will tell you.

While in my testing the iPhone didn’t identify every single symbol, the feature will do in a pinch. And if you want to use a third-party app for the best possible results, I can recommend two that I found on the App Store that can help you.

How to set up automatic, scheduled Apple Cash payments

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Automatic Apple Cash Payments
Schedule payments using the easiest way to pay someone — Apple Cash.
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Set up scheduled, automatic Apple Cash payments to send money to your friends or family on a regular basis. You can use this to pay back your housemates for bills, send your kids some money or pay back personal debts.

Whatever the reason may be, Apple Cash is a fast and easy way to send money. I even have a pro tip for scheduling a singular payment in advance. Here’s how to set up recurring payments.