How-To - page 6

You can go beyond the basics if you customize the iPhone’s Action button with shortcuts. You can make a fart sound, or get ChatGPT to help you write an email, or just about anything else you dream up.

Apple lets you assign the iPhone’s Action button to one of eight preassigned things — but if you choose Shortcut, you can do much more. Shortcuts offer a way to reach inside an app and automatically run a feature without opening it. With the iPhone 16’s Action button, you have a physical button you can press no matter what you’re doing on your phone, adding quick access to custom actions.

Some power users use the Action button to do incredibly useful (or frivolous) things. I’ll show you how to do the same — and also how you can trick your phone into assigning two or more shortcuts to the single Action button.

You can find new music on the Apple Music Discovery Station, which gives you a tailored playlist to suggest new artists and jams you’ve never heard before but should like based on your personal musical tastes.

Personalized recommendations have long been a reason people cite for sticking with Spotify over Apple Music. But you can add the Discovery Station to my list of eight reasons you should make the switch. Apple Music offers personalized music picks, too, and the system works great.

I’ll show you where to find Apple Music’s Discovery Station and how to make the most of it.

Here’s how to keep track of your mental health using the new mood-tracking feature in iOS 17. Logging how you feel throughout the day with your iPhone should help you identify what’s causing you trouble or what works for you, whether it’s work, family, exercise, sleep or other things.

In order to make any kind of meaningful change, you need to understand fully what helps, what doesn’t, and what you can do. And that means effectively tracking your mental health. Luckily, starting your log is easy. Set it up once, and your phone will ask you every day so you don’t forget.

Let me show you how to start a log of your mental wellness in iOS 17.

StandBy mode is a headline iOS 17 feature that turns your iPhone into a smart display on your nightstand, at your desk or in the kitchen. It’s an attractive way to put your phone to work as a small information board or digital clock when you’re not using it.

Of course, it works best if you have a phone with an always-on display like the iPhone 14 or 15 Pro. However, it works on any iPhone with MagSafe running iOS 17. Best of all, StandBy remembers different preferences for different rooms, so you can set it up as a bedside clock in the bedroom, a digital photo frame in the living room, or a music controller in the kitchen. Here’s everything you can do with StandBy on your iPhone.

As if Siri’s unhelpful answers were not irritating enough when you actually want them, Siri often interrupts a conversation, meeting or TV show when you haven’t asked for anything at all. The good news is you make it stop — if you know how to deactivate Siri on your Apple devices.

A hidden setting in iOS 17 will speed up Haptic Touch, the fantastic feature that lets you preview links and bring up option menus on your iPhone. If you use Haptic Touch all the time like I do, changing this setting will make your iPhone feel supercharged. It brings up handy shortcuts — hidden actions, content previews and contextual menus — in a flash. And that saves you precious time as you tap around your screen.

Alternatively, if you find Haptic Touch annoying and trigger it accidentally all the time, you can slow down the time needed to activate the gesture. That way, a tap won’t be mistaken for a tap-and-hold.

Although the Mac offers fantastic support for opening and editing PDFs in the built-in Preview app, the simple act of copying and pasting text from a PDF can still be a nightmare. For instance, selecting text on a two- or three-column document often selects across the whole width of the page, which is totally useless. Luckily, there’s a better way to copy text from a PDF on a Mac using Apple’s Live Text feature.

Taking a quick screenshot and using Live Text often yields better results when you need to copy text from a PDF or an image. (It also works with photos and old document scans as well as PDFs. Here’s how to do it.)

The Mac offers many options for taking screenshots without installing third-party apps. You can take a Mac screenshot that shows the entire screen, get a clean image of a specific window, or select specific areas to capture. There’s also a built-in way to take a video of your Mac screen (and even record a voiceover for your screen recording using your microphone, headset or AirPods.)

We’ll show you various ways to take a Mac screenshot so you can decide what’s best for your needs.

In a pinch, your iPhone 15 can charge your Apple Watch or AirPods, and even juice up another iPhone. This feature proves very convenient if you know how to use it. Here’s how to take advantage of this capability.

There are a few useful things you can do with an old Apple Watch after you upgrade to a new one. You might think of the Apple Watch as being a disposable product — because who would wear two watches? But there are actually quite a few surprising use cases for having a daily Apple Watch and a secondary watch.

Keep reading or watch our latest video.

You can turn multiple Live Photos shot on your iPhone into a video. Simply select a group of Live Photos taken in a burst, and you can create a single, stitched-together video that you can save to your library and share on social media.

Here’s how it’s done.

With the recently-released PC emulator UTM SE, you can now emulate Windows on iPad directly. You can revisit old PC games, just like how you can use Delta to play old Nintendo games. You can also install Mac OS 9 or Linux. With Ubuntu, Debian or other versions of Linux, you can run all kinds of open-source software for getting real work or programming projects done.

But bad news: You can’t use it to run macOS Sonoma on your iPad. There’s some confusion about this, but unfortunately the long-held dream of turning your iPad into a Mac will have to wait for another day.

Setting it up is a little finicky — but the reward of seeing that classic Windows XP desktop on your iPad can make it all worth it. Keep reading to see how it works.

Here are a few secret tricks and gestures that will help you get around your iPhone faster. These hidden gestures help you text pictures to your friends faster, scroll through big pages and screens, type special characters and use your phone one-handed.

This is a follow-up to an earlier article with three other secret iPhone gestures you need to know. Learn all of these gestures and you’ll feel like an iPhone power user.

You can download the watchOS 11 public beta for free — right now. With it, you can try out the great new Fitness features coming to the Apple Watch before Apple ships the update to everyone. And if you’re already running the watchOS 11 developer beta, you can switch over to the public beta for additional peace of mind.

Of course, there are a few things you should look out for. Beta software can be buggy and can lead to data loss or apps that don’t work. Battery life will certainly take a hit. Not to mention, installing software updates on the Apple Watch is kind of annoying. They take a long time to download; the watch has to be above a certain battery percentage, sitting on its charger — and you’ll have a new software update to install about every other week.

If you’re still sure you want to try it out, you’ll need to install iOS 18 on your iPhone first. I’ll show you how.

You can download the macOS Sequoia public beta for free — right now. You can get a look at the exciting new features coming to the Mac before the update is shipped to everyone. And if you’re already running the Sequoia developer beta, you can switch over to the public beta for additional peace of mind.

Of course, there are a few things you should look out for. Beta software can be buggy and can lead to data loss or apps that don’t work. Not to mention, a lot of the most exciting features announced at WWDC24 aren’t included yet, like Apple Intelligence.

If you’re still sure you want to try it out, you should make sure you have a backup of your most important data with two copies of your photo library before you try installing. I’ll show you how.

You can download the iOS 18 public beta for free — right now. You can get a look at the exciting new features coming to the iPhone before the update is shipped to everyone. The iOS 18.2 beta enables additional Apple Intelligence features on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models.

Of course, there are a few things you should look out for. Beta software can be buggy and can lead to data loss or apps that don’t work. If you’re still running the iOS 18 developer beta, you can switch over to the public beta for some peace of mind.

If you want to try it out, you should make sure you have a backup of your most important data with two copies of your photo library before you try installing. I’ll show you how.

Checking the health and maximum capacity of the battery in older iPad models isn’t as easy as it should be, but we can walk you through the process. Finding out how worn out the tablet’s battery is can help you decide if it’s time for a new model.

But for those who already upgraded to the latest iPad Pro or iPad Air, checking battery health is a snap.

Final Cut Camera is a new Apple app that offers incredible manual control over your iPhone’s camera system. If you use your phone for professional videography — or even for a hobby project — you should use this free app to take videos rather than sticking with the stock Camera app.

Final Cut Camera comes absolutely packed with professional features the Camera app can’t match. The new app gives you finer control over exposure, white balance, color temperature and more. You can enable image overlays to see which parts of the frame are in focus or overexposed. In short, it’s a highly versatile camera. You can even pair it with Final Cut Pro for iPad to capture footage from multiple iPhones simultaneously.

Final Cut Camera is totally free on the App Store. Keep reading to learn how to use it. 

Are your Apple earbuds acting weird? Sometimes you need to reset your AirPods Pro, AirPods Max or regular AirPods to eliminate connection problems and other minor glitches. You have two possible courses of action: a hard reset and a soft reset.

Follow this guide to learn the difference between those two options, plus how to reset, unpair and remove the earbuds from the Find My network.

Check In is an iPhone feature that tracks your travels and lets contacts know when you’ve safely reached your destination. It’s great for traveling, or kids going to and from school, or even going on a date. You no longer need to count on remembering to text someone when you make it home safely — your iPhone will let them know for you.

Check In is like sharing your ETA in Apple Maps, but tweaked for personal safety. Friends, family and loved ones will be automatically notified if you’re stopped for any reason before reaching your destination. The safety feature also offers timer-based check-ins, which come in handy for situations like meeting a stranger from Craigslist. If you don’t check in after a set time, your iPhone will alert your contacts.

Here’s how to use it — frankly, every parent should know how this works.

If you’ve never tried making your own Siri Shortcuts, I’ve compiled a short list of the best shortcuts for iPhone to introduce you. Shortcuts can quickly run automated actions on your phone (and on your iPad or Mac). They’re made using Apple’s Shortcuts app, where you can visually piece together actions offered by the apps installed on your device.

You can run a shortcut by asking Siri or by putting a widget on your iPhone’s Home Screen. Not a lot of people know this powerful feature exists — or what it can do for them. For eight examples of what you can do with shortcuts, keep reading or watch our video.

There are a lot of things you can do with old iPhones. In fact, it might be worth keeping them around rather than trading them in. There are all kinds of things you can use an old iPhone for: a DIY HomePod, a games console, a camera, a weather station, a smart display or a digital clock. And someone else you know may want it if you’re feeling generous.

Here are the nine things you can do with an old iPhone.

You can make a GIF on your iPhone or Mac out of any Live Photo or video you have in your photo library or saved to your computer. You don’t need to download any apps — simply add a shortcut, and you can do it directly from the share sheet.

Of course, not all looping animated images are GIFs. A faster way to animate your Live Photos is with the iPhone’s built-in Loop effect. In the Photos app, just tap on the “Live” tag in the upper left and select “Loop.” This will produce higher-quality results, but might not be compatible with third-party apps like Snapchat or Discord.

If you need an actual GIF file, there’s still a pretty easy way to make them on your phone or Mac. I’ll show you how.

Customizing the widgets Smart Stack on your Apple Watch is a great way provide easy access to the apps you use most. If you have a Tim Cook-esque Apple Watch face full of complications, you can rely on widgets instead. You just need to edit the widgets in your Apple Watch’s Smart Stack to provide the same quick access to your most-used apps and activities.

Today, I’ll show you how to make the most of your Smart Stack of widgets on Apple Watch.

Last year’s fireworks made you say ooh and ahh, but when you look at your iPhone photos from that night, the sound you make is more of an ugh. Want to shoot better fireworks photos this time around?

Don’t blame Siri or some engineer in Cupertino for previous photo fails. The iPhone camera, as mighty as it is, can’t do all the thinking for you — especially in challenging lighting conditions like a fireworks display. But with a little thought and preparation, you can make this holiday worth reliving on your iPhone camera roll.

Below are some simple tips to make your iPhone fireworks photos sizzle.