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.
What makes the Apple ecosystem so alluring? Individually, the iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple Watch might not be the best devices in their respective categories. Yet, when combined, they form one of the best ecosystems in the world.
It’s this Apple ecosystem — the so-called walled garden — that makes it almost impossible to ditch Apple devices. But what makes it so good?
If you’re 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.
Or, if you work at home and want some of that office or coffee shop ambiance, you can add some of those chatter sounds back in. You can even simulate a commute, with sounds of a bus, train, airplane or even boat.
You don’t need to download any apps or pay a cent. Background Sounds is a free feature on your iPhone, iPad and Mac. Let me show you how it works.
Stop me if this sounds familiar: Your old iPhone just doesn’t have the same pep it used to and you’re desperate to speed it up. Ignore the nasty iPhone conspiracy theory — the real reason for the slowdown is rooted in battery chemistry, diminishing amounts of available memory, and the evolving demands of modern iOS apps.
Fortunately, you can take steps to improve the speed of your older iPhone. Here’s what to do.
Apple secured a new agreement with Amazon ensuring the satellite features millions of iPhone and Apple Watch users depend on — including Emergency SOS — continue to work, even as the company that currently powers them is set to be acquired, the companies said Tuesday.
“This ensures our users will continue to have access to the vital satellite features they have come to rely on, including Emergency SOS, Messages, Find My, and Roadside Assistance via satellite, so they can stay safe and connected while off the grid,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, in an Amazon press release Tuesday.
You can change out your iPhone Lock Screen buttons from the standard flashlight and camera icons to whatever you want. There’s a huge selection of buttons you can swap in their place. Just about any button you can put in Control Center is a button you can put on your iPhone’s Lock Screen.
Plus, you can assign different shortcut buttons on different Lock Screens, making them context-dependent (and tied to a Focus Mode if you like). Apple offers a standard selection, but your options will vary depending on what apps you’ve installed.
Here’s how to swap out the iPhone Lock Screen buttons to put whatever you want at your beck and call.
Update: And just like that, now Lexus enters the fray. Reports indicate the Toyota-owned luxury brand will add support for iPhone car keys in the coming months, according to references found in Apple’s backend code. It joins many others.
From a single BMW model in 2020 to dozens of brands today, Apple Wallet’s digital car key keeps gaining momentum. Could it soon become as standard as a seat belt? It looks to be headed that way, at least — and for good reason.
Surprise! Apple might not release an iPhone Fold this fall.
Wait, it’s a joke. Sort of. It’s still virtually certain that Apple will introduce a folding handset in a few months. However, it reportedly won’t be named what everyone expects. A reliable source says the real name is (drum roll) … iPhone Ultra.
A new set of leaked images purporting to show Apple’s long-rumored folding iPhone surfaced online Sunday, offering what a tipster claims is a closer look at the device’s final design.
The camera hump has supposedly shrunk considerably. Take a look:
Apple’s Focus modes are a powerful way to change how your iPhone, iPad and Mac look and feel whether you’re driving, sleeping, relaxing or working. It’s all about fully immersing yourself in whatever you’re doing.
You can change all kinds of things: from who can reach you and which apps send notifications to custom Lock Screens, Home Screens and more. The tools can totally transform how your phone looks and works based on context. You don’t need all the same apps and widgets on your Home Screen while you’re at work or yoga as you do at home.
Setting up a Focus with rich customization makes your phone more personal. Keep reading to find out how.
You’re at the airport, phone battery at 8%, and a USB charging port is right there. You plug in — and your iPhone flashes an alert asking whether to allow an accessory to connect. Should you panic? Are you at risk of “juice jacking?” Probably not. But you should know what that allow-accessory message means, and how to make sure you’re charging safely.
Your iPhone is at serious risk of getting hacked if you haven’t updated it recently. Apple and security researchers warn that a sophisticated hacking tool known as DarkSword can compromise iPhones through malicious websites.
The fix is easy and available for every iOS device since 2015. Plus, it doesn’t require you to install iOS 26 or put Liquid Glass on your handset.
Go do it now!