Tips

Did you know that the iPhone allows your phone to automatically answer calls after a certain number of rings? Here’s how to set your iPhone to automatically answer calls after a fixed amount of time. If you’re the type of person who’s always near their cellphone but sometimes takes too long to answer, or if you find the swiping-to-answer motion annoying (like my mom) or difficult to do, then you can enable this feature from your Accessibility Settings. 

If you're worried that your child is spending too much time on their iPhone or iPad, and may even have a screen addiction, Apple's new operating system, iOS 12, is here to help. With iOS 12, parental restrictions are easy to put in place, and you can limit not only the total amount of time spent on a device but also set restrictions for individual apps, as well as content and privacy. Let's get started learning how to set up Screen Time restrictions for a child or teenager on iPhone or iPad.  

Screen addiction is a very real issue for many smartphone users, and Apple is taking the problem seriously. Since the rollout of iOS 12, there's a Screen Time feature that can help iPhone and iPad users become aware of how much time they spend on their devices, then cut back if they feel the need. One of these settings is called Downtime. What does Downtime in Screen Time do? It's exactly what it sounds like; a set time of day where your device reminds you that it's time to unplug and do something else. Let's get started learning how to set up Downtime in iOS 13 now. 

If you have favorite shows in the Podcasts app, but keep forgetting to check for new episodes, you'll probably benefit from turning on notifications so you can keep up to date. On the other hand; if you're subscribed to lots of podcasts, it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the new episode notifications. Let's learn how to customize your Podcasts notifications, so you're informed about the shows you really want to listen to, while silencing notification about the ones you only occasionally tune into. 

The iPad and iPhone Mail app is a convenient way to check your email, but did you know you can add more than one email account to your iPhone or iPad? To set up new email accounts like Gmail and Outlook on your iPhone, you just need to open Settings and scroll down to Passwords & Accounts to reach the Add Mail Account section. Read on for more on how to add a new email account to the Mail app on your iPhone and iPad.

Face it; kids are going to use technology as a regular part of their lives. Whether it's a home or at school, for recreation or education, or all of the above, your children and grandchildren will learn all the ins and outs of your iPhone, iPad, and whatever other devices you may have around the house. We already know it's important to limit screen time to keep our kids well rounded, but what about other parental controls? Apple has created several iPhone and iPad restriction settings that adults can put in place without ever needing to purchase a parental control app, and even more settings are coming with iOS 12! There are many reasons you might enable restrictions on your iPhone; they act like a child lock app and control major aspects of privacy, allowed content, and more. Here are two restrictions I find very helpful; preventing kids from adding or deleting apps on your devices. Let's get started learning how to use these parental control settings.

Did you know your iPhone has a helpful feature that allows you to color code email addresses that you're composing messages to? You've probably had the experience of inadvertently sending an email to the wrong person and the problems that can cause! Fortunately, Apple's Mail app has a feature that lets you identify a particular domain by highlighting it blue and turning all other addresses red. This can be useful if, for example, you want to make sure you don't inadvertently send your work-related emails to someone outside your company. Recipients within the company will have their email addresses appear blue in the To field, and the email address of recipients outside the company will appear red.

Many advertisers on the web use a bit of software called cookies to follow you around so they can continue to advertise to you across the web. People are simply more likely to make a purchase if they’re familiar with a product, so cookies essentially make you familiar in the hope that you’ll eventually decide to buy. But with iOS 11 on iPhone, you can ask Safari to prevent this cross-site tracking so that ads aren’t able to follow you around the internet. If you’ve ever clicked on an ad, only to have that same ad suddenly appear on every website you go to, this setting is designed to make that stop. Here’s how to stop advertisers from following you around the web in Safari with iOS 11 on iPhone.

Reader Mode in Safari is a great way to reduce the clutter on a web page to make it easier to read. When you enable this reading mode, Safari strips away all the ads, sidebars, and other extraneous material and only shows you the article and its accompanying images. The Reader Mode feature is especially useful if text size is an issue for you when​ reading. Here’s how to change font size with Reader Mode on iPhone, so you can stop squinting and start reading!

Maybe you want to make a video with your iPhone camera, but you don't need it to be high resolution. After all, high-quality videos look gorgeous, but they also take up a lot of storage space. If you have the iPhone 6s or 6s Plus or later, 4K video, in particular, takes up large chunks of storage. Whether you want to save storage or ensure you’re recording the highest-quality video possible on your phone, it's great to have the option to change your iPhone's video-resolution settings. Here’s how to change the video resolution on your iPhone.

Did you know you can record slow-motion videos on your iPhone? No slow-motion app is needed, you can use the Slo-Mo setting in your iPhone's native Camera app. Recording slow-motion video on iPhone is a great way to get a shot that would have otherwise gone by too quickly or to just get a great laugh watching and re-watching your slo-mo videos (pets and kids are the funniest slo-mo subjects.)  Depending on which iPhone model you're using, you can record slow-motion video at 120 or 240 fps (frames per second.)