Ready to switch from Android to iPhone? Before you make the move to an Apple device, you need to know the biggest problems you’ll face during the transition — and how to avoid them.
While some challenges are manageable, others are unavoidable. If you feel ready to jump to Apple’s ecosystem from Google land, here’s what you need to know.
iOS 27 will bring a long-requested upgrade to the iPhone Apple Wallet application: the ability for users to create their own passes directly within the app, according to report published Monday.
If true, this would significantly expand how iPhone owners manage everyday cards and tickets with the app.
Apple on Monday seeded the iOS 26.5 Release Candidate to beta testers, signaling that eager iPhone users should circle May 11 on their calendars. The major new feature is fully secure, encrypted messages when using RCS… though this will remain in beta even after iOS 26.5 launches.
Monday also brought the macOS Tahoe 26.5 Release Candidate, as well as equivalents for iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV and more.
You can easily hide photos and videos on your iPhone to keep secret and/or illicit images out of your main Photos library. Hiding items from the camera roll makes sure nobody except you can see your embarrassing pictures, salacious nudes or old selfies with your ex.
Apple introduced the Hidden photo album years ago in iOS 8. But after Apple redesigned the Photos app in iOS 18, you can no longer find it at the bottom of the Albums tab — because the tab bar is gone. But in iOS 26, it’s back again!
Here’s what hiding photos does to your iPhone, how you can stash those incriminating or mortifying pix, and where to find them.
A very sad day has come, and a beloved relative has passed away. And it seems Apple is making the experience worse because it refuses to unlock the deceased person’s iPhone!
It’s not that Apple refuses to — it literally cannot. And it all comes down to the way encryption works.
Fortunately, there’s a simple way to prevent this problem. It just takes some preparation.
This week on the Cult of Mac podcast: A slightly suspect rumor indicates Apple pulled the plug completely on the Vision Pro headset. Can that really be true? What does the future hold for the Vision Pro, visionOS and Apple’s rumored smart glasses?
Also on the Cult of Mac podcast:
Listen to this week’s episode of the Cult of Mac podcast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video version, embedded below.
You can easily remove any object from a photo using Apple Intelligence’s free Clean Up tool on your iPhone, Mac or iPad. It works fairly well — but it’s good to know its limitations.
As the only graphic designer among my friends, I’ve frequently been asked over the years to Photoshop unwanted elements out of pictures. Take, for example, a romantic shot of a couple in a gazebo, with a phone sitting on the handrail in an obvious spot. The image might look a lot better if you delete that stray device.
Or imagine a group photo from a fun night out, with someone’s dumpy tote bag sitting by their feet, or a picture from a big conference that shows an ugly lanyard around someone’s neck. With Apple Intelligence’s free Clean Up feature, anyone can make the tote bag and the lanyard disappear, right from their iPhone.
Now, you have the power to clean up your own photos — a chance to make your almost-perfect shots perfect in an instant.
Apple could be preparing one of the most dramatic iPhone redesigns in its history, with a 20th anniversary model that appears to eliminate screen bezels entirely.
It seems Apple users won’t need to go with the upcoming folding iPhone to get an iOS handset with an innovative design.
You can record a phone call on your iPhone for future reference using a built-in tool. 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 your device supports Apple Intelligence, you’ll get transcriptions of the phone calls, too. They’ll go in a Call Recordings folder in the Notes app.
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. Here’s how it all works.
OpenAI has been secretly developing a smartphone designed to compete directly with iPhone, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Sunday. It’s a significant reversal from the company’s previously stated hardware strategy, which included smartphone alternatives like AI companion devices.
Apple could deliver a significant performance upgrade to the base iPhone 18, with the smartphone potentially receiving a major increase in RAM — up to 12GB — according to a new analyst report.
This comes despite an ongoing RAM shortage that’s driving up prices of rival devices. But keeping up with AI probably doesn’t give Apple much choice.
The daily games hiding inside the News app are my favorite puzzles to play. Some are digital versions of classic games like crossword puzzles and sudoku. Others are entirely new.
All five games are available to all Apple News+ and Apple One Premier subscribers. Here’s how to play each of the daily word games in Apple News+ on iPhone. Check them out in this quick video.
iMessage effects can add extra meaning, emotion and fun to your texting. In Apple’s Messages app, you can add bold, italics, underline and strikethrough text, just like in a formatted document. You can even choose from a bunch of cool, animated effects, including full-screen blasts of lasers, confetti and fireworks.
Apple’s text message effects can make quite an impression. You can make congratulations more bombastic (to rejoice in someone’s finest moments). Or, you can use formatting and effects to convey sarcasm, stress and sorrow more clearly.
These text effects are fun and incredibly useful. Keep reading below or watch our video.
Apple Music Classical is an iPhone app specifically designed to deliver a great experience browsing and listening to instrumental music. Apple carefully curated its catalog of millions of tracks, tagging them by composer, work, movement, instrument, orchestra, artist and more.
Why does there need to be a separate app for classical music? Apple says it succinctly on its support page: Classical music “has longer and more detailed titles, multiple artists for each work, and hundreds of recordings of well-known pieces.” This app “is designed to support the complex data structure of classical music.”
This is how to discover, find, add and listen to music in Apple Music Classical.
Apple on Wednesday released iOS 26.4.2 to fix a bug that allowed messages deleted by a user to remain on the iPhone.
“Notifications marked for deletion could be unexpectedly retained on the device,” Apple said in its security notes about the update. “A logging issue was addressed with improved data redaction.”
Beyond that, it seems like a minor update that focuses on various bug fixes and incremental performance improvements rather than new features. Tablet users got iPadOS 26.4.2 at the same time.
Plus, those not yet willing to make the jump to iOS 26 got their own update — iOS 18.7.8 also appeared on Wednesday, along with iPadOS 18.7.8.
If you know how to schedule texts on iPhone, you can make sure you never forget to send a reminder, birthday greeting or early morning message for someone in a different time zone. You can schedule a whole slew of texts up to a week in advance, with links, photos, attachments and more, using the iPhone’s Send Later feature.
This can save your bacon if you’re the type of person who forgets to text someone later. And it’s really easy to do, once you figure out how to use the somewhat hidden feature. Watch our quick video.
Apple briefly removed the popular calorie-counting app Cal AI from the App Store last week. The episode offers a clear message to developers everywhere, according to a new report: The company is still very much in charge of how apps handle payments — even in the wake of a landmark court ruling that loosened some of its long-standing rules.
You can FaceTime with Android and Windows friends, too — you don’t need to leave them out of the loop. You need to jump through some extra hoops, naturally, but you can video chat with your whole family and friend group.
While there’s no FaceTime app for Android or Windows, if you have an iPhone, you can initiate a group call by creating a link. Others can join the call from their web browser. It will be end-to-end encrypted, just like regular FaceTime calls, for maximum privacy.
Here’s how it works.
If you forgot your new iPhone passcode, you can reset it with your old one up to three days later. This can save you hours of trying to remember the new passcode, or worse, resetting your phone from a backup.
You just have to tap Forgot Passcode? on the Lock Screen after you enter it several incorrect times.
Keep reading for a detailed walkthrough. And don’t worry — if you change your passcode intentionally to keep someone out, you can instantly expire your old one.
Potential folding iPhone buyers can breathe a sigh of relief. New images of cases for the device — supposedly dubbed the iPhone Ultra — show it including MagSafe. Previously, we saw no sign of this feature in leaks about the much-anticipated handset.
This could have been a deal-breaker for some buyers.
Apple will bring a minor but important upgrade to the iPhone’s Home Screen customization experience in iOS 27. It will reportedly allow you to “undo” and “redo” changes to your Home Screen.
This small tweak should make rearranging apps and widgets far less frustrating, especially when you accidentally move or delete something.
There’s a setting called Lockdown Mode you can activate on your iPhone that will make it virtually impossible to hack. Just by flipping a switch, you can make your iPhone incredibly secure. So secure, in fact, that Apple says no phone using Lockdown Mode has ever been hacked.
Sure sounds great. Surprise — here’s why you don’t want to use it.
The Camera Control button on the iPhone opens the Camera app, takes pictures and can even adjust camera settings on the fly. It offers a quick shortcut to using one of the most popular and important iPhone features.
By default, it’s a simple button to quickly take pictures, but there’s so much more you can do with it — if you choose. The physically clicking button also accepts touch input when you swipe your finger along it. And it utilizes pressure sensitivity and haptic feedback for you to adjust different camera settings.
Learn how to master the iPhone’s Camera Control button in our guide below, or watch our quick video.
iPhone Game Mode enhances graphics and reduces controller latency automatically when you launch a game. This optimizes performance to make your iPhone gaming as fantastic as possible.
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.
Phone users are sticking with Apple at unprecedented levels, according to a new nationwide survey, underscoring the growing strength of the company’s ecosystem and the challenges facing rivals trying to win them over.
And while Android users’ loyalty to their smartphone maker is noticeably weaker, that doesn’t mean huge numbers are switching to Apple.