iOS tips - page 8

Maps is shaping up to be a pretty great navigational tool with its tight integration in iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan, as well as with much more error-free data.

I use Maps as a sort of mobile, digital yellow pages, finding businesses in town and looking up their phone number, hours of operation, website address, and more. It’s a couple of taps in, which can seem tedious after a while.

Now, though, with an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, you can get this info in a summarized form, using the new 3D Touch. Here’s how.

There are times when you need to sign a contract or other document that comes over via email. You could print it out, sign with a pen, and then scan it back to the recipient, of course, but that takes forever. Might as well fax it.

If you get a PDF form via the Mail app on your iPhone, however, you can sign it right there on your little pocket computer using just your finger, and then mail it back, all without ever committing ink to paper.

Here’s how.

The iPad Pro has become a huge favorite of illustrators and artists all over the place, and as these talented individuals get their Apple Pencils, they’re starting to see the joy of drawing directly on Apple’s massive and powerful tablet.

Thing is, the Apple Pencil doesn’t have an eraser on the end of it, unlike competitor artistic styluses (including 53’s own Pencil stylus, which features a big, soft eraser on the end opposite the drawing part).

Luckily, if you’re using an app like Savage Interactive’s Procreate, you can tweak things to make your finger do the magic eraser job.

Apple Pay is showing up in more places these days, but if you live in a town like mine, it can be hard to know exactly where those places are.

Want to know whether that hip restaurant down the street or your local pharmacy supports Apple Pay before you get there? Here’s a super easy trick using either your iPhone or your Mac.

We love our iPhones, but sometimes they act up. Apps slow down or crash, things don’t run as smoothly as we’d like, or things just get weird — and we don’t know why. Usually, the solution is to power off and restart the device, but if you inexplicably only have 10 seconds to sort out your iPhone’s issues, here’s a handy trick to help you out.

All you have to do is zap your phone’s RAM, and you don’t even have to leave your Home screen to do it.

If you’re an Apple ID owner, you know that two-step verification is the best way to make sure that only you have access to your personal credit card details along with your app, music, and video purchases.

Until a couple of weeks ago, Amazon–another company that probably has private financial information from you–didn’t have a way to do the same thing. That way, even if someone figures out your password, they’ll only have half the info needed to make changes to or access your account.

Now that the Seattle-based books-and-everything-else company allows for it, it’s time to zip up your personal details. Here’s how.

My iPhone 6 Plus is a battery hog. I routinely get around 12 hours off of one full charge. I carry around external battery packs to make sure I’m not short when it matters.

I’d do pretty much anything to increase the amount of battery I have left at the end of the day, including the following fairly extreme trick.

If you’re one of the lucky ones to get your hands on a big, beautiful iPad Pro, you might be surprised that many of the same OS X keyboard shortcuts, like the ones for cut, paste, find, etc., are available right on your new giant laptop replacement.

The iPad Pro keyboard has a Command key on it, as do several third-party keyboards.

If you’re already a Mac user (and you should be), you’ll feel right at home when you need to create a new document in Pages, make your text bold or italic, or even show the word count in a document. Here are several key combinations you can use right out of the box.

You can of course check the status of your Apple Watch battery on your wrist, but it’s even easier to discover how much Apple Watch juice you have left right from your iPhone.

In fact, you can check the battery status of anything connected via Bluetooth, including headphones and speakers.

Here’s how.

The latest trend in news consumption is curation. Apple News — replacement for the earlier, less-than-successful Newsstand — does just that. It may not be the first app to repackage the web for easy reading (looking at you, Flipboard), nor maybe even the best, but chances are it’s already on everyone’s iOS 9 iPhone or iPad, making it a clear winner for mindshare.

News is pretty fantastic, as it allows you to customize and set up the News channels and outlets you want to check on regularly without having to rely on any specific outlet for updates. News pulls from your favorite websites RSS feeds and repackages it all in an intuitive, newspaper and magazine-like format for easy browsing and reading.

Let’s take a look at how to set it up and use the iOS 9 News app to your best advantage.

You know how it is — you unlock your iPhone with Touch ID so fast that you miss some important Notifications. You swipe down from the top of your iOS device’s screen to see what you missed and — ugh — you realize that your Notifications are sorted by app. How will you ever figure out which new Notification you missed?

Luckily, there’s a fairly simple way to get your iPhone and iPad to list your Notifications in date order, assuring you never miss one again.

Here’s how.

If you’ve got an Apple TV, you’ve got a ready way to get any videos from your iPhone or iPad onto your big screen.

While we all wait for the latest version of Apple’s famous “hobby,” why not watch a video or two on our current Apple TV, right from our iOS device of choice.

Here’s how to AirPlay videos from your iPhone to your giant TV.

Whereas most websites these days — Cult of Mac included — are responsive to whatever device you’re browsing on, there are still a few websites out there that will serve you a special mobile version when you head there on your iPhone.

Unfortunately, sometimes the functionality of the full desktop version of the website is missing from the mobile version. When that happens, you can use the iOS 9 version of Safari to get the full desktop versions even when the web developers don’t provide a link to do so.

Here’s how.

I’m a big fan of getting instructions off the internet: recipes, directions on car maintenance, or video game walkthroughs, for example. The problem is that you need to be online to view them.

Now in iOS 9, however, there’s a way to save web pages to a handy, offline-friendly PDF file. The next time you’re flying on an airplane and trying to get through Broken Age with a walkthrough, you’ll be in luck.

Here’s how to convert any webpage in iOS 9’s mobile Safari to a PDF and then read it in (or send it from) iBooks.

This week’s update to iOS 9.1 did more than just squash some bugs and tweak the Shift key. It also added a ton of new emojis to your built-in keyboard. If you want to put a number on it, iOS 9.1 adds 184 new, tiny pictures to spice up your text messages.

It may be hard to keep track of which ones are new, so we gathered up the newcomers for your convenience — along with where to find them.

Seriously, people, we have families to feed. Kittens to adopt. We need your ad impressions.

The new iOS content blockers, as well as traditional ad-blocking browser plugins, threaten the wallets of every ad-supported website, including Cult of Mac. Luckily, it’s easy to whitelist us (and any other sites you want to support). It’s incredibly easy to restore order to the online universe, whether you’re using an iPhone or a Mac.

AT&T finally activated Wi-Fi calling on its network, allowing iPhone users to seamlessly switch to their local wireless network to place calls when their LTE signal is weak.

Apple added WiFi Calling in iOS 8, but you probably haven’t had a chance to use it yet because the only carrier in the U.S. to support it has been T-Mobile. Now that the nation’s second-largest carrier is getting on board, more iPhone users than ever can take advantage of the feature to place calls anywhere in the United States, free of charge.

Here’s how to turn it on:

We received a message today on our Cult of Mac Facebook page asking about calls showing up on an iPad when the call originated on an iPhone.

There are a couple of different places to turn this feature off so you’re not juggling all your iPads and MacBooks when you make or receive phone calls.

iOS 9’s Wi-Fi Assist feature helps when you’re connected to a slow Wi-Fi connection by kicking in your cellular data network to help things seem a bit snappier.

The problem is that it can also rack up some data charges if you end up going over your data cap. If you’ve got a limited data plan with your wireless carrier, you’ll want to find this iOS 9 setting, which is on by default, and kind of buried in the Settings.

You don’t have to press so hard on your expensive new iPhone 6s or 6s Plus to get the groundbreaking 3D Touch working easily.

We’ve all been looking forward to this killer UI upgrade, but some users say they’re worried about breaking their new iPhone screens because they’re pushing so hard to get the “pop” level of 3D Touch.

Here’s how to make this a little easier to use.

Facebook Messenger keeps buzzing at me while I’m in the app itself. It’s annoying.

It seems like I’m getting messaged more and more via Facebook Messenger these days as my buddies and family take to the mobile messaging platform to connect in real time.

But the incessant buzzing, when I’m right there staring at the conversation, has got to stop. Here’s how I did it.

Apple has now been affected by the worst security snafu in iOS history when it found that hundreds of apps, mostly in the Chinese App Store, have malicious code in them, called “XcodeGhost.”

Apple’s pulled the affected apps from the App Store to contain the security breach, but you’ll still need to take a few more steps to make sure your iOS devices aren’t affected. Here’s what you need to do.

I can’t stand the new lowercase keyboard in iOS 9. It’s a fairly useless change to begin with, as it doesn’t make anything easier.

Sure, it shows whether you’ve pressed the Shift key or not, but the new Shift key is also improved, making the lower-case option aesthetic rather than functional.

So, if you’re like me, here’s how to put that keyboard back to the way it “should” be.

The busier my life gets, the more disorganized I become. I fumble for a notepad when I’m out and want to get someone’s phone number. I think of get short story ideas when I’m in the shower, and I have tons of books and movies I want to get (usually when I’m broke). Don’t get me started on shopping lists. Who has time to write those out?

My digital life is just as disorganized. There are web links to save, photos of stuff I want to share with friends, and notes I need to refer to while writing articles on the web. They’re each in their own separate apps or websites, making pulling everything together a pain.

Notes in iOS 9 solves this dilemma by allowing us all to keep all our photos, notes, shopping lists in the one place we’re most likely to find it: on our iPhones.

Better yet, you can dictate an idea for your next screenplay right out of the shower, then pick up your iPad when you get to work and resume it right there.

Here’s how to get the most out of your new Notes app, and never be disorganized again.

We’re all going to be diving into the deep end with iOS 9. While many of the changes are subtle, there are a fair number of differences in both the visual style and the under-the-hood workings of Apple’s new mobile OS.

That means this a perfect time to take a deeper look at all the killer stuff you don’t want to miss. These iOS 9 tips will help you make the most of all the great new features.