iOS tips - page 10

Anyone you exchange messages with via Facebook Messenger could know where you’ve been at any point. Chatted with your boss? He could use a newly discovered hack to figure out your sick days weren’t spent at home.

Facebook intern Aran Khanna found he could figure out where his friends were going daily with a bit of code, based solely on whether he had Facebook Messenger conversations with them. It even worked with people he wasn’t Facebook friends with if he had been in the same Facebook Messenger chat group.

He calls this code Marauders Map, and anyone can use it. Luckily, it’s fairly simple to hide your location from potential stalkers.

If a retailer asks for the last four digits of your credit card, but you’ve used Apple Pay, you might be out of luck if you use the actual digits off your plastic rectangle.

Every time you give a retailer or waiter your credit or debit card to pay for goods or services, the actual account number is there for them to steal. When you use Apple Pay, however, those numbers are hidden behind a unique “Device Account Number,” which is assigned, encrypted, and stored on a dedicated chip on your iPhone or Apple Watch. They don’t even get stored on Apple’s servers.

Finding that Device number, though, can be tricky. Here’s how.

If you have more than one credit card, chances are you’ll want to put them all into Apple Pay so you can use any of them when the mood strikes, or your card balance dictates.

If you’ve got an Apple Watch, you’ll need to add them to the Watch via a separate process than the way you added them to the iPhone.

Once you’ve added more than one card, though, you might want to change the default Apple Pay card. Here’s how to do just that.

Some iPhone users are getting a flashback to 2013 as a new version of the so-called “Unicode of Death” has returned to wreak havoc with their iMessages.

The security exploit, which activates when someone sends you the message in the image above, reportedly forces jailbroken handsets into Safe Mode and completely removes other units’ ability to access the Messages app.

Clear, high definition video is all about a frame rate of 60 frames per second (fps).

Luckily, your iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus can shoot in this high-speed format that will smooth out your videos as well as make the results of your slo-motion editing a much more watchable experience.

If you want to set your iPhone 6 or 6 Plus up to shoot 60 fps video, here’s how to do it.

There are two different channels for audio on your iOS device: there are ringers and alert sounds and there are media sounds, like from the Music app or various games on your iPhone.

The hardware volume buttons on the side of your iPhone are set to control both by default, but you can separate it out, making the hardware buttons only turn down the media sounds instead of both media and ringer sound.

Here’s our recipe on how to make sure you never miss a call because someone “accidentally” turned your volume all the way down.

It can be tricky to get the best shot when taking a selfie or group shot with your iPhone. If you want a better angle than the length of your arm can provide (or your ridiculous selfie stick will telescope to), you might consider setting your iPhone on a ledge or tripod and using the built-in timer mode to get yourself and everyone else into position before the shutter goes off.

It’s not super-tricky, but you do need to know where to look. Here’s our recipe to enable timer mode on your iPhone.

With the advent of Apple’s motion coprocessor chip (the M8 in recent iOS devices), any apps that you download and grant permission to can use this data to enhance their offerings.

This lets apps like RunKeeper, Carrot Fitness and others both gather fitness data from your iPhone as well as send it to the Health app.

This could raise privacy concerns for some, so being able to decide which apps we allow to access our fitness-tracking data — or whether the iPhone tracks these activities at all — can be a helpful.

Here’s our recipe for getting finer-grained control over your fitness-tracking data.

Oh, that pesky list view in your iOS Calendar app. It sure likes to go missing in various iOS updates, doesn’t it, like in iOS 7 when it just, sort of, disappeared.

It’s not totally gone now in iOS 8.3, but there is a new way to access it along with a new layout. There are also some funky ways to move around your Calendar app that may not be as intuitive as they should. These aren’t necessarily new to iOS 8.3, but it’s handy to know them, as well.

Here’s the recipe you’ll need to view your iOS Calendar the way you want on your iPhone and iPad.

On the Mac, it’s super-easy to search for a word or phrase within the currently loaded page. You simply hit Command-F on your keyboard and Safari, Chrome or any other web browser will open up a little field to type your search terms into.

But what about when you’re using mobile Safari on your iPhone or iPad? How do you find a specific word or phrase there?

It’s pretty simple, but not super-intuitive. Here’s our recipe for finding search terms on your iPhone’s version of Safari.

Now just might be the best time ever to be a Mac gamer, as a ton of big titles for PC and console are also available for Apple computers via the Mac App Store, Steam or GoG.com. It’s a golden era of cross-platform goodness, and it’s easier than ever to find a game you’ll love on the Mac.

Some of today’s hot titles demand a good controller, though. One of the best is Sony’s DualShock 4 controller (the same one that comes with the PlayStation 4). If you’ve got one, you’ve got easy access to a fantastic, ergonomic and just plain great gaming controller that will work with your Mac, requiring very little setup to make it happen.

Here’s our recipe for great wireless Mac gaming.

Sure, you’ve got Touch ID set up on your iPhone 6, but you’ll still need a passcode to keep your iPhone secure. If you have an older iPhone without Touch ID, or your fingerprint isn’t recognized for any reason, you’ll need to fall back on a passcode.

If you want to make your passcode even more secure, try using our recipe for a code with special characters instead of a simple number-based solution.

If you’re like me, you’ve got a ton of unread iMessages on your iPhone and tapping through them all just to get rid of your app badge anxiety seems like a bit too much effort.

Apple has your back, though, with a nicely designed way to mark all your iMessages as read. It might not be apparent at first glance where to find this magic trick. Here’s how.

Sometimes you just need to emphasize something. One of the best ways to do so when you’re texting is to make the words you really need to get across in all capitals. Or maybe you just want to shout at someone, and an ALL CAPS sentence will certainly get that across for you.

Before now, I’ve always just deleted the word I was trying to emphasize and re-typed it after double-tapping the Shift key in iOS (for Caps Lock). Now, however, it looks like you can change the case of the word after you’ve typed it without deleting anything.

Here’s how.

Got an iPhone 6 or smaller? You might be feeling a little cramped for space on your screen due to iOS 8’s new word-prediction system.

That little gray bar that sits just above your iOS keyboard is called the QuickType bar, and it’s where all the auto-correct and typing suggestions appear when you’re sending an email, typing a note or iMessaging with someone. The suggestions are based on your past conversations, which lets QuickType take your writing style into account. It even keeps track of who you’re writing to, since your word choice is typically tied to your conversation partner.

If you want to hide it because you need more space on your screen, you can do so in any of three ways. You can also bring it back if you’ve inadvertently hidden it and don’t know where it went.

You may have noticed recently that the Facebook app makes sounds. Like a post? Chirp. Refresh the news feed? Swoosh. It’s like your iPhone got suddenly chatty and wants you to know that you’re tapping on the screen with every blip and bloop.

Surely you’d like to turn these things off. You could just mute your whole iPhone with the sound toggle button, but if you want to have other audio come through, like video, music, or (gasp) phone calls, you can dip into your Facebook app settings and soon experience the bliss of a blip-free Facebook browsing experience.

Here’s how.

iOS 8 brought with it a couple of keyboard changes — adding support for predictive text suggestions when you’re using the built-in iOS keyboard.

This is pretty great stuff, unless it bugs you to have three words or phrases at the top of your keyboard. If that’s you, then here’s a simple way to disable the “feature.”

Let’s face it – not all of us want every purchase we complete via the iTunes or App stores available to anyone who uses our iPhone, iPad, or Macbook. Some things just need to remain, well, private.

Luckily, it’s pretty easy to hide the evidence from unauthorized users via a quick trip to the iTunes app on your Mac or PC.

Sometimes it’s important to let your buddies or loved ones know your location. Whether you need to share this information for safety reasons, or because you like them knowing where you are on our beautiful planet, iOS 8 and your iPhone make it super-simple.

There are two ways to let your friends know where you are at any given time with iOS 8. You can either send your location immediately, or you can share your location details with people over a prescribed amount of time.

Both options are right in an app you use all the time anyway: Messages. Here’s how.

iOS 7 made it easier than ever for iPhone users to toggle the brightness on devices through Command Center, but if you’re too lazy to go through a few flicks and swipes to adjust your screen’s brightness, we’ve discovered a way to dim your display by simply pressing your home button three times.

To activate the setting you have to do some digging through the Accessibility settings in iOS 8.1, but once you’ve set it up you’ll never go back to Control Center to adjust your brightness.

Here’s how to do it:

We all enjoy stuffing our iOS devices with enough movies, music, photos, and other content to keep your iPhone entertainment system pumping for decades, but overtime your device can get too full.

New games, songs and even an iOS update can put users in quite the dilemma about where to trim some gigs of fat. Luckily when not wanting to part ways with your favorite iOS content there’s other convenient ways to free up more storage space.

Today’s video takes a look at 5 tidying tips that can free up more storage on your iOS device for when you need it most. Uncover how to manage your storage, address the dreaded “other” space on your device and find even more by simply using these tips.

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iPhones and iPads are remarkably simple to use. And yet they are also incredibly powerful — and incredibly complicated — devices. Sometimes getting them to do exactly what you want isn’t as straightforward as you might like.

In today’s video, we show you five basic iOS tips that will make using your mobile Apple devices much easier. Edit documents, keep snoops at bay and more by using these easy and effective tips that every iOS owner should know.

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Some folks find that the iPhone’s noise-cancellation feature causes a weird, uncomfortable sensation. It’s a product of the way the technology works, as Apple Discussion member KiltedTim says, linking to HowStuffWorks:

“In order to cancel out background noise, the sound is not “eliminated” from the audio stream you’re hearing. It is countered by a second audio stream that basically eliminates your ability to hear it.

Since the sound and the “counter sound” are still hitting your eardrum, this can result in an odd sensation. Your ear is processing the sound, but your brain isn’t registering it. Since the inner ear controls balance, this will produce a dizzying effect in some people.”

If this is bothering you, here’s how to turn off the noise-cancellation feature, which Apple added to iOS 7. (Originally exclusive to the iPhone 5s, noise cancellation is now available to older devices in iOS 7.1.)

We’ve all had to do it: make those conference calls to services that require you to enter in a code, or a room number, or what have you.

If you call these numbers frequently and want to save a little time, you can enter in the extensions and codes into your Contacts app, but you’ll want to code in the bit of wait you’ll need for the conference call system to recognize it.

It’s easy to do, and you can do this right on your iPhone.

We’ve been using the Do Not Disturb function on our iPhones since iOS 6, really, as the feature really helps us have some down time. You can schedule or enable the feature for easy access, keeping those pesky calls, messages, and notifications off your iPhone screen when you just don’t have the brain space to deal.

But what about those calls and messages you really do need to get? What do you do there? Luckily, there are a couple of options to let certain calls come through.