Tips

Want to check your iPhone's battery health? Apple landed in hot water with customers a few years ago when a feature designed to slow the processors of older iPhone models to keep them from suddenly shutting down came to light. Critics maintained that Apple was throttling the speed of earlier iPhone models to push customers toward newer devices, while Apple insisted that the feature was necessary to cope with aging batteries. Now, Apple lets iPhone users monitor their battery life. You can also enable a feature that reduces aging by optimizing how your battery behaves when charging. Let's get started with how to check your iPhone's battery health. It's quick and easy, and a valuable piece of information about your device.

What are widgets? Widgets are a quick way to look at information from the apps that are the most important to you, choose to see more information, or even open the app directly from the widget. The widgets chosen will vary person to person, but some common favorites include Weather, News, and Stocks. You can add widgets to what Apple calls the Today View, which can be accessed by swiping right on the first Home screen on your iPhone.You can add, organize, and subtract your iPhone widgets whenever you want to, so let's get started learning how to add widgets to your iPhone's Notification Center!

The Apple Watch is an ideal purchase for on-the-go people who need an ultra portable device that can offer both functionality and durability. Many of the iPhone's best loved features are included in the Apple Watch, including fitness tracking and health monitoring, the ability to play music, and of course text messaging and calling. The Apple Watch also accommodates health apps with safety features designed to notify wearers of medical concerns and offer help to contact emergency services if needed. These features have been credited with everything from alerting Apple Watch owners to life-threatening health crises to enabling the Coast Guard rescue of an Apple Watch user stranded off the California coast after a kiteboarding mishap. Sometimes, though, it can be a little too easy to get in touch with Emergency Services via an Apple Watch; there have been multiple reports of accidental calls to 911 from Apple Watch owners who unwittingly triggered their device's SOS setting. How can you keep from joining their number and accidentally dialing 911 on your Apple Watch? Let's figure it out! 

Creating playlists is the best way to curate songs for different events, outings, and moods. I like to create playlists with all of the albums I’ve recently downloaded, so I can see which songs I like and which songs I want to remove. You can create a workout playlist for the gym, a beach playlist for vacation, or any number of other possibilities. And with iOS 11, your friends can easily check out your public playlists too. Here’s how to create and edit Apple Music playlists on iPhone.

Navigating in a different country and feeling confused trying to convert miles to kilometers? Or perhaps you learned the metric system and realized how much more sense it makes than the imperial system. Whatever the reason, you can easily change miles to kilometer in Maps on iPhone for all future directions. Here’s how.

When you want lines to draw within or a grid to help you stay on track, you can choose a one-time paper style or set up a default paper style to automatically appear in your Notes. To change the style of paper to a lined or grid pattern in the Notes app, tap on the export icon and select Lines & Grids to open the style sheet. When you type, the paper style disappears in that part of the tip; but for drawing by hand in the Notes app, choosing the paper style can make a big difference. Here’s how to change the paper style in Notes on the iPhone.

Few people know that the passwords you’ve saved in Safari are available to view on your iPhone. Don’t worry about security, your fingerprint (Touch ID) or Face ID is needed to access the passwords. But if you’ve forgotten your login name or password, this tip makes it easy to find and view them. Here’s how to view your Safari login names and passwords.

Do you find it totally creepy when an ad pops up on your iPhone for just exactly the sort of thing you’d like to purchase? Does it seem like your phone has just a little too much inside information about your preferences, and you’d like to establish some boundaries between yourself and the wide world of capitalism? If so, it’s time for you to learn how to limit ad tracking in Apple Apps on your iPhone.

What are haptics? Haptics are a tactile way for your iPhone to respond to touch, pressure, or both, in the form of a small vibration. For example, on the iPhone 7, there isn't a physically pressable Home button, so Apple added Haptic Feedback, which you feel when "pressing" the static Home button. If you're wondering, "how do I turn off System Haptics?", you can easily do so from within your iPhone Settings. Here’s how to turn off haptics from 3D or Haptic Touch on your iPhone.

The beautiful edge-to-edge display of the iPhone X leaves no room for a Home button. But if you find yourself missing the old Home button, you can add an on-screen Home button to your iPhone X screen thanks to the accessibility features. This is actually something that anyone with an iPhone can do, and it comes in handy if you have an older iPhone with a broken Home button. For iPhone X users, however, it’s the only way to retrieve the lost Home button. It’s not for everyone, but it’s great for those who want it. Here’s how to add an on-screen Home button to your iPhone X.

In Safari on iPhone, you can add an article you come across to your Reading List, which makes it easy to come back later and read all of the articles you saved. But with iOS 11, you can tell Safari to save those article so that you can read them even if you’re offline. This is an easily overlooked feature that’s actually really cool. Here’s how to save your Safari Reading list for offline viewing with iOS 11 on iPhone.

With each new operating system, Apple offers a range of new wallpapers as well. But it’s easy to forget that there are new wallpapers when you update to iOS 11, so I thought we’d quickly go over it in a tip. With iOS 11, you can use some beautiful new flower wallpapers, pictures of earth and the moon from space, or wallpapers with the classic Apple rainbow. Let’s jump in; here’s how to use one of the new iOS 11 wallpapers on iPhone.