- We are on our iPhones what feels like
every second of every day.
Shouldn't we at least stay up to date
on all the best tips and tricks?
Here are five quick and easy ones
that can improve your phone's privacy,
offer a crucial pandemic-era like hack,
and fix what could be the most annoying iPhone issue of all.
An ad identifier is essentially the phone version of cookies
that follows you around the internet,
remembering what you do and then exchanging that information
with websites along the way.
You can't just beat the ad identifier
by turning off apps' access to location data,
since there are still other ways
to estimate your phone's location,
like connections to WiFi networks.
You have to go a step further and it's very easy.
First, go to settings, tap privacy, select tracking
and disable the option that says "allow apps
to request to track."
And that's it.
The pandemic has totally upended the world,
and that even applies to a very minor problem:
Using FaceID to unlock your phone while wearing a mask.
There's one caveat though,
you need to own an Apple Watch too,
and both the iPhone and the Apple Watch have to be updated
to iOS 14.5 and watchOS 7.4.
As of now, the only way you can download those versions
is if you're enrolled in the Apple Beta Software program.
After you've made that update,
you can turn the new feature on.
On your iPhone, go to settings, FaceID and passcode,
unlock with Apple Watch, and toggle it on.
There are also a few tweaks
you have to make to your settings on the Apple Watch
or else the feature won't work at all.
You need to enable a passcode on your Apple Watch
which you can do by going to settings, passcode,
turn passcode on, and typing in your chosen code.
You also need to make sure wrist detection is toggled on.
From here, unlocking your phone while wearing a mask
should be easy. As long as your Apple Watch is on your
wrist, the iPhone will recognize it
and immediately proceed to unlock.
You'll feel the watch buzz on your wrist
and a notification will appear on it,
letting you know the iPhone has been unlocked.
Here's how to make sure the wrong eyeballs
never see private pictures.
First, go to your folder gallery
and then find a photo you want to hide.
Tap select in the upper right-hand corner.
Then tap the photo to select it.
Next, go to the bottom left corner of your screen
and tap the share icon.
Then scroll down past your share options
and tap the hide function,
marked by symbol of an eyeball with a line going through it.
When prompted, tap hide photo.
That'll put it in your hidden album,
which you can find by going to your photos
and scrolling all the way down,
under the utilities section, where it says hidden.
If that's still too public for you,
you can go to settings, photo settings,
and switch off hidden album
which will remove it from the utilities section,
so it's truly hidden.
There's only one thing more annoying
than constant iPhone typos: Trying to fix said typos
by holding and dragging your cursor to the exact spot
you need it.
Turns out, though, there's an easier,
infinitely less annoying way to edit your texts.
Hold the space button until all of the keys go blank.
As you're holding, you can now move your finger
across the bottom of your screen,
to direct the cursor wherever you want
without your finger obstructing your view of the cursor.
With data breaches happening all the time,
it is very important to have a strong WiFi password,
but it is also super annoying to then type
in what feels like a never-ending long password
anytime you need to share it.
Here's how to to cut down
on all that wasted WiFi sharing time
by directly sharing it from your phone.
First, make sure that the WiFi and Bluetooth settings
are turned on on both devices. The key
here is that the email address you use for your Apple ID
is saved in the other person's contacts, and vice versa.
Keep both devices close together
and within the WiFi and Bluetooth range.
Then, open WiFi settings on the device
that's receiving the password.
A window will pop up on the device
that's sharing the password,
asking if you want to share the password
with the other device.
Tap share password and voilà, password is shared.
We never said these iPhone hacks were complicated,
did we?