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iOS tip: 4 handy iPhone Home button settings you need to try

ben patterson — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 16:20:04 +0000

Ready to take charge of the Home button on your iPhone or iPad? Learn how to make it easier to double-click the iPhone Home button, change what happens when you hold the Home button, try some nifty triple-click tricks, and more.

Note: The following tips don’t apply to the all-new iPhone X, which lacks a physical Home button.

1. Change the iPhone Home button double-click speed

For those of us who no longer have the split-second reflexes, double-clicking the iPhone Home key (or the iPad Home key, for that matter) to switch apps can be harder than it sounds. Indeed, if you don’t click fast enough, you’ll simply wind up back on the home screen. Luckily, there’s an easy way to change the speed with which you need to double-click the Home key.

Tap Settings, General, Accessibility, Home Button, then pick a double-click speed: Default (the standard setting), Slow, or Slowest.

When you tap a new option, your iPhone will “buzz” three times to give you an idea of how quickly (or slowly) you need to double-click.

2. Skip pressing Home when unlocking your iPhone

Got a Touch ID-enabled iPhone? If so, you may have noticed that when you wake your handset by clicking the Power button and rest your finger on the Home button to unlock your iPhone, you still have to press Home again to get past the iOS lock screen. (Thanks, iOS 11.)

Want to skip that final Home button press? Click Settings, General, Accessibility, Home Button, then scroll all the way down and flip on the “Rest Finger to Open” setting.

Now, if you click the Power button and simply rest your fingertip (one you’ve registered with Touch ID, of course) on the Home button, your phone will unlock itself immediately, no additional button presses needed.

3. Keep Siri from beeping when you press and hold Home

By default, you’ll enable Siri—you know, Apple’s tireless, voice-activated digital assistant—when you press and hold the Home button. All well and good, but if I had a nickel for every time I activated Siri by mistake, well…you get the drift.

If you’re tired of turning on Siri by accident whenever you hold the Home button down for too long, there’s a way to turn the shortcut off.

Tap Settings, General, Accessibility, Home Button, go down to the Press and Hold to Speak section, then pick a setting: Siri, Voice Control, or Off.

If you pick Voice Control, pressing and holding the Home button will turn on iOS’s old Voice Control feature, which lets you do basic things like dial a number of play music via voice command. If you ask Voice Control a more complex question—like “Should I bring my umbrella today?”—you’ll get little more than a confused beep.

If you don’t want anything at all to happen when you press and hold Home, pick the “Off” button. Doing so will disable Siri altogether, unless you dig into your Siri settings (Settings, Siri & Search) and turn on the “Listen for ‘Hey Siri'” option.

4. Turn on the Home button’s triple-click shortcut

You probably already know that double-clicking the iPhone Home button lets you quickly switch between apps. What you may not know, however, is that you can triple-click the home button, too, and you can set the triple-click gesture to do some nifty tricks.

For example, you can triple-click your way to a “smart” invert colors feature that acts as a de-facto dark mode, perfect for reading on your iPhone or iPad at night in a dim room.

There’s also a zoom feature that lets you pinch to zoom your iPhone or iPad’s screen, a “color filters” mode that switches your screen to black and white, and a “voiceover” feature that reads aloud any text on the screen.

To start triple-clicking the home button, tap Settings, General, Accessibility, scroll all the way down to the Accessibility Shortcut setting, then pick a feature. If you choose only one, it’ll switch on automatically when you triple-click the home button. If you pick more than one, triple-clicking Home will let you choose which of your selected Accessibility options you’d like to use.

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iOS tip: 6 iOS 11 tricks that even an older iPhone or iPad can do

ben patterson — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 18:13:03 +0000

No “Live” photos, 3D Touch or Face ID? Me neither, and indeed, compared to the all-screen iPhone X or the lightning fast iPhone 8, my old iPhone 6 is looking decidedly long in the tooth.

The good news, though, is that some of the best new features in iOS 11—from one-handed typing to the ability to quickly scan receipts—will still work on older iPhones and iPads, including the iPhone 6 (circa 2014), the iPhone 5S (from 2013) or even the four-year-old iPad Air. (Click here to see exactly which iPhones and iPads are compatible with iOS 11.)

Read on for 6 new iOS 11 tricks that’ll work on your older iPhone or iPad, starting with…

Scanning QR codes

QR codes—you know, those blocky-looking digital squares that, when scanned, generally refer you to a URL—aren’t quite as ubiquitous as they used to be (although according to some, QR codes are on the way back). However, you’ll still occasionally find them stamped on billboards, magazine ads, movie posters, and other random places.

Thanks to iOS 11, the iPhone’s camera now boasts a built-in QR code scanner.

Until recently, the only way to scan a QR code using your iPhone was with a third-party QR scanner app. With the arrival of iOS 11, though, scanning a QR code with your iPhone or iPad has become much easier.

Instead of scouring the App Store for a QR reader, just fire up your iPhone’s camera and point the camera lens at the QR code. Within a second or so, a “Website QR Code” notification should appear, prompting you to open the URL the code is referring to.

Getting help in an emergency

If you’re in distress and you’ve got your iPhone on you, there’s a new and easy way to call an ambulance or the police, assuming you’ve updated your handset to iOS 11.

Need to dial 9-1-1? Just click the iPhone’s power button rapidly five times.

The trick: click your iPhone’s power button five times in quick succession. When you do, a trio of sliders will appear on your iPhone’s lock screen: swiping the first will turn off your phone, the second will call up your Medical ID information (which you can fill out in the iOS Health app), while the third and final one will dial 9-1-1.

If you wish, you can add one or more “emergency contacts” who will automatically be notified if you make an emergency call on your iPhone. To do so, launch the iOS Health app, tap the Medical ID tab, tap Edit, scroll down to the Emergency Contacts section, then tap the green “+” button to start adding contacts.

Last but not least, you can set your iPhone to automatically dial 9-1-1 the moment you click the power button five times. Tap Settings, Emergency SOS, then switch on the Auto Call setting. Of course, you might want to think twice about enabling the Auto Call setting if you’ve got an iPhone-obsessed little one.

Scanning receipts or other documents

I’m a little obsessive-compulsive when it comes to saving my receipts, but I also hate littering my desk with little scraps of paper. That’s why I’ve been scanning all my receipts with my iPhone, but until recently, I’ve had to use a third-party scanning app (Scanbot, in my case).

The Notes app for iOS 11 makes it easy to scan receipts and other documents.

With iOS 11, though, your iPhone or iPad—and yes, even an older one—can scan receipts and other documents without the help of a non-Apple app.

Just open the Notes app, start a new note or open an existing one, tap the “+” button at the bottom of the screen, then tap Scan Documents.

Next, aim your iPhone’s (or iPad’s) camera lens at the document you want to scan. Once the Notes app “sees” the document, it’ll automatically snap a photo and crop the image. You can then tap the Action button (the square one with the upward arrow) to save the scan to your device or your favorite cloud-based service (like iCloud Drive, Dropbox or Google Drive).

Typing on your iPhone with one hand

I’m still disappointed that the stock iOS keyboard has yet to support gesture typing, which lets you type words by swiping the keyboard rather than tapping it.

Wish it were easier to type on your iPhone with one hand? Just enable iOS 11’s new one-handed typing feature.

With iOS 11, though, Apple has at least embraced one-handed typing—a feature that squishes the keyboard to the left side or the right, making it easier to typing with a single thumb.

To start typing with one hand, open the iOS keyboard (just open any app that supports the keyboard, or tug down on the iOS home screen to reveal the Spotlight search box), then press and hold the globe key or the emoji key. (Don’t see either? Tap Settings, General, Keyboard, Keyboards, then make sure there are at least two different keyboards listed. If they’re aren’t, tap Add New Keyboard to add one.)

Once you press and hold the globe or emoji button, a Keyboard Settings pop-up will appear, and at the bottom, you’ll see a trio of little keyboard buttons. Tap the left one to squish the keyboard to the left, tap the right one to make it scoot to the right, or tap the center button to return the keyboard to two-handed mode.

Easily typing numbers and symbols on the iPad’s keypad

While the iPad lacks the iPhone’s one-handed mode in iOS 11 (although who needs it, given that you can split the keyboard), it gets another keypad-oriented feature that’s among my favorite iOS 11 improvements.

Just flick a letter key to type a number or a symbol on the iPad’s new QuickType keyboard for iOS 11.

The new “QuickType” keyboard boasts shortcuts to numbers and symbols on the standard letter keys, and it lets you type a number or a symbol by simply swiping down on the appropriate letter key, no Shift key required. That means, for example, you can swipe down on the “Q” key to type the number 1. Pretty neat, once you get the hang of it.

Sharing your Wi-Fi passwords

So, let’s say a friend is visiting you at home, they’ve got no cellular signal on their iPhone and they ask if they can jump on your Wi-Fi network for a minute.

Want to share your Wi-Fi password with a friend? Just open your Wi-Fi settings and bring your iOS devices close together.

Normally, you’d have to go through the business of digging up your Wi-Fi password and reading it to them, one digit at a time—a tedious chore, particularly if you’ve created a strong Wi-Fi password (as you should).

Thanks to iOS 11, though, you can now quickly share your Wi-Fi password with any of your iPhone- or iPad-toting friends, provided they’re nearby and listed in your iOS contacts.

First, make sure your iOS device is connected to the Wi-Fi network you want to share. Next, ask your friend to open their iOS Wi-Fi settings (tap Settings, Wi-Fi) and tap the name of your Wi-Fi network. When they do, iOS will prompt them for your password.

Now, move your iPhone or iPad near their iOS device. With a second or so, a prompt asking whether you want to share your password should appear. Just tap the “Share Password” button to proceed.

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iOS tip: 7 ways to make the most of Safari for iPhone and iPad

ben patterson — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 15:05:40 +0000

If you’ve ever grown weary of squinting at the tiny text on a web article, you’ll love a one-tap Safari feature that makes cluttered web pages easier on the eyes. Safari for iPhone and iPad also boasts tools that let you pin favorite websites to your home screen, mark up and share web pages, juggle your saved web passwords, look up obscure words, and more.

Make web articles easier to read

If you stumble across a web-based article that hasn’t been optimized for mobile devices, you’ll probably have to squint to make out the tiny text. Luckily, Safari for iPhone and iPad boasts a built-in “reader” mode that makes the desktop version of web articles much easier to read.

Just tap the little four-line button on the left side of the Safari web address bar. Safari will automatically reformat the article, boosting the font size of the text and stripping out extraneous sidebars and other elements.

To change the font style and background color in Safari’s reader mode, tap the “aA” button on the right side of the Safari address bar, then tap to pick a new font face, font size, or background.

Mark up a web page

Ever wish you could take a Sharpie to a web page and show your markups to a friend? It’s actually pretty easy, and it takes just a few taps to get started.

On the page you want to mark up, tap the Action button (the square one on the bottom of the screen with the upward arrow), then tap the Create PDF button (in the second row of buttons). Next, tap the blue Markup button (the circular one with the tip of a pen in the middle), then start drawing with your fingertip—or, if you’re the lucky owner of a new iPad, with an Apple Pencil.

Tap at the bottom of the screen to choose from a selection of pen or pencil tips, pick a new color, or use the lasso to drag your doodles around. You can also tap the “+” button to add captions, paste in your signature, add a magnifying glass, or draw arrows, squares, thought bubbles, and other shapes. Last but not least, tap the Action button (again, the square one with the up-arrow) to save your marked-up page or share it with a pal.

Note: You’ll need to update your iPhone or iPad to iOS 11 if you want to start marking up web pages.

Review (or delete) your saved passwords

If you’ve ever wondered what happened to all those website passwords that Safari has offered to save, there’s an easy way to find out.

Tap Settings, Accounts & Passwords, App & Website Passwords to see a list of saved Safari passwords on your iPhone or iPad. Just tap a password entry to view the saved username and password info or make any changes.

To delete a password, go back to the App & Website Passwords screen, tap the Edit button in the top-right corner of the screen, select the passwords you want to delete, then tap Delete.

Mark a web site as a “favorite”

There’s an easier way to save the web address of a oft-visited web site than fiddling with Safari’s Bookmarks menu.

Just browse to a favorite site, tap the Action button (the square one with the upward arrow) on the bottom of the screen, then tap the Add to Favorites button.

Now, tap the address bar; when you do, you should see the website’s icon sitting in your grid of “Favorites.” Tap and hold a Favorite to edit it or delete it, or drag it to reorder your Favorite buttons.

Add a site to the home screen

If you’d rather pin a favorite website on your iOS home screen than keep it hidden away in Safari’s Favorites panel, you can do so in just a few taps.

First, surf to the site you want to pin, tap the Action button (again, it’s the square one at the bottom of the screen with the up-arrow), then tap Add to Home Screen.

When you do, a preview of your soon-to-be home screen icon will appear; go ahead and rename the icon if you like, then tap Add.

Close an open Safari tab on another iOS device

When you tap Safari’s Tabs button (the one in the corner that looks like one square on top of another), you can see a list of all the Safari tabs you have open on your other iCloud-connected devices.

That you may already have known; what you may not know, though, is that in addition to viewing your open Safari tabs remotely, you can close them remotely, too.

Just swipe on a tab from right to left; when you do, you’ll reveal a red “Close” button. Tap it, and the tab you selected will close within a minute or so.

Look up a word in the dictionary

Find an obscure word during a Safari session? No need to copy and paste it into a new tab as a Google search; instead, simply look it up directly within your existing tab.

Just tap and hold the word to select it, then tap “Look Up” in the black bubble that appears.

A slide-up window will appear with the definition at the very top, along with more search results “suggested” by Siri.

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iOS tip: 4 ways to take charge of the new iOS 11 Control Center

ben patterson — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 13:12:03 +0000

Ever wish you could pick which buttons and controls appear in the swipe-up control panel for iPhone and iPad—a.k.a. Control Center—that lets you quickly turn on Do Not Disturb mode, skip or pause your music, toggle Airplane mode on and off, and more? Now you can, thanks to the latest version of iOS.

Read on to get the scoop on how to customize the new Control Center for iOS 11, tinker with a few Control Center security settings, learn how to reveal some hidden sliders and buttons, and more.

Reveal the iOS 11 Control Center on iPad

The process of opening the new Control Center on an iPhone remains the same as it did in previous iOS versions; just swipe up from the bottom of the display.

Keep swiping up from the bottom of your iPad’s screen to reveal the new iOS 11 Control Center.

Try that on an unlocked iPad, however, and all you’ll do is reveal the iPad’s new app dock. (Swiping up on the screen of a locked iPad will open Control Center as usual.)

So, what’s the trick for getting to Control Center on an iPad? Easy: swipe up from the bottom of the screen, then keep on sliding your fingertip up.

As you do, Control Center will appear on the right side of the screen, next to a grid of all your open iPad apps.

Related: 8 great iPad tips and tricks

Pick and choose which Control Center widgets to use

The old iOS Control Center was very much a take-it-or-leave-it affair; you got a specific set of controls, such as the Airplane mode button, a Do Not Disturb toggle, a flashlight button, a timer shortcut, and so on, and that was pretty much that.

Don’t want a particular button showing up in Control Center? Just remove it using the Customize setting.

With the iOS 11 Control Center, however, you can customize which buttons, sliders and toggles appear, perfect for anyone who loved the Control Center flashlight but could do without the Calculator shortcuts. Just tap Settings, Control Center, Customize, then start tweaking.

To remove a setting from Control Center, find it in the Include section, tap the red circle next to its name, then tap the Remove button. To add a control, scroll down to More Controls, then tap the green “+” button. You can rearrange your custom Control Center buttons by holding and dragging the three-line handles next to their names.

Keep in mind that you can only customize buttons in the bottom half of the iOS 11 Control Center. The buttons at the top—including the Airplane mode button, the Music panel, the Brightness and Volume sliders, and the Do Not Disturb button—can’t be removed or rearranged.

Tap and hold a Control Center button to see more options

There’s more than meets the eye when it comes to some of the buttons and controls in the new iOS 11 Control Center.

For example, simply tapping the Flashlight button in Control Center on an iPhone will toggle the flashlight on and off. If you tap and hold (or “deep press” on an iPhone 6s or later) the Flashlight button, however, you’ll reveal a five-level slider that lets you adjust the brightness of the flashlight.

Tap and hold a Control Center button to reveal more features—for example, the time slider in the Timer setting.

Tap and hold the Brightness slider, and you’ll find a button for Night Shift, the sleep-friendly iOS feature that adjusts the color of the screen to warmer, eye-soothing temperatures.

Next, tap and hold the Timer button and you’ll get a slider that lets you change the length of the timer by swiping up or down.

If you tap and hold the Camera button, you’ll reveal a pair of handy shortcuts: one for Take Selfie, another for Record Video.

Those are just a few examples; keep tapping and holding to reveal more hidden Control Center functions.

Hide the Control Center from the lock screen

Yes, it’s handy to swipe up on your iPhone’s screen to quickly go into Airplane mode, silence your ringer, turn on the flashlight or jot down ideas in the Notes app.

Enable a simple setting to keep Control Center hidden on the iOS lock screen.

That said, anyone else who picks up your iPhone or iPad will be able to tinker with your Control Center settings, too.

To keep Control Center hidden from your locked iPhone or iPad, tap Settings, Touch ID & Passcode, scroll down to the Allow Access When Locked section, then toggle off the Control Center setting.

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iOS tip: 3 things to know about the new iPad dock in iOS 11

ben patterson — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 14:23:05 +0000

Anyone who goes ahead and updates their iPad to iOS 11 will notice a big change—a welcome one, if you ask me—to the app dock at the bottom of the home screen.

No longer just a shaded area for your six favorite apps, the new iOS 11 iPad dock looks and acts a lot more like the dock on a MacBook or an iMac. Indeed, not only can the revamped iPad dock hold more apps, you can also summon it almost any time you want, even when you’re not on your iPad’s home screen.

Note: Before we dive into the nitty-gritty about the new iPad dock, I should pause and mention (as I do every year around this time) that you’d be well advised to wait a bit—say, a week or so—before taking the leap to iOS 11. You’ll find many of the standard reasons in this post from a few years back, but this time around, there’s another pressing issue: a whole crop of older apps simply won’t work on iOS 11. Luckily, you can see a list of installed apps that won’t play nice with iOS 11 before you upgrade; to do so, tap Settings, General, About, then Applications.

Read on for three things you need to know about the new iOS 11 iPad dock, start with…

You can reveal the iOS 11 iPad dock whenever you want

While the old iPad dock was only visible on the home screen, the new dock can be called up anytime, even within an app.

You can reveal the new iOS 11 iPad dock at any time—even within an app—by flicking up from the bottom of the screen.

Just flick up from the top of the iPad’s display; when you do, the dock will spring into view. Go ahead and tap an app to open it.

If you swipe up from the bottom of the screen and keep on swiping, you’ll reveal the new Control Center and a grid displaying all your open apps; just tap an app to open it, or drag it off the screen to close it.

You can add more apps to the dock than before

The old iPad app only held six app icons at a time; the new iPad dock for iOS 11, on the other hand, can cram in up to 14, including a couple of “suggested and recent” apps on the right side of the dock.

You can now add up to 14 apps to the new iPad dock in iOS 11.

The procedure for adding and removing apps to and from the iPad dock remains the same: just go to the home screen, then drag an icon in or pull one out.

If you like, you can disable the section of the dock reserved for “Suggested and Recent Apps.” To do so, tap Settings, General, Multitasking & Dock, then switch off the “Show Suggested and Recent Apps” setting.

Bonus tip: Wondering why the iPad’s app icons no longer shake when you tap and hold them? This surprised me too, but it turns out you simply need to hold an icon a beat longer than before. When you do, all the icons on the home screen will shake just like they used to, allowing you to rearrange your rows of home screen icons or tap the little “x” to delete an app.

You can use two apps at once by dragging an app icon out of the dock

If you’re working in an iPad app and you want to open a second app side-by-side with the first one, just flick up from the bottom of the screen to reveal the iPad dock, tap and hold an app icon, then drag it onto the screen.

You can use two iPad apps side-by-side by dragging an app out of the new iPad dock.

Those with newer iPads (such as the iPad Pro, the fifth-generation iPad, the iPad Air 2, or the iPad Mini) can use this trick to trigger Split View, an iOS feature that lets you use two iOS apps on the same screen.

If you have an older iPad (like the iPad Air or the iPad Mini 2), you can still do a little multitasking with Slide Over, which lets you peek at a second app in a thin overlay.

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