Table of contents for iPhone 6S Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks Volume 1 in iPhone Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

By now you are undoubtedly familiar with most of what iOS 9 has to offer and what new features Apple have added to the iPhone 6s. Or so you think. iPhone 6s Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks will astound you with an array of things you probably didn’t know your iPhone could do. We explore the home apps, discovering how to get the most out of your device and customise it to suit your everyday needs. Not only that, you can take your phone to the next level with the variety of third-party apps on offer, from editing your photos to increasing security. For those looking to get even more out of their device, this book even explains the ins and outs of jailbreaking iOS and includes tutorials on some…

Get stock quotes Real-time stocks to hand By default stocks will be displayed in your Notification Center under the Today tab – you can also tap on ‘Show all’ to expand the list. If you don’t require this service then scroll down until you see the Edit option and then tap this. You can now disable the stocks feature by tapping the red ‘–’ icon. You can tap each stock icon to switch between the percentage change, the value changes and the total stocks, with one further tap on any stock name immediately whisking you off to the Stocks app. To manipulate the stocks that show in Notification Centre, you will need to make your selections in the Stocks app and changing the order of the stock names will also…

Multi-task Do other things while calling You can make and receive calls on your iPhone while doing other things in the background, which is a feature that you may come to use time and time again. For example, if you are surfing the internet with Safari and a call comes in, you can accept it and jump straight back to the browser. A green bar will be shown at the top of the screen that you can tap to return to the calling screen at any time. If you are playing a game on your phone and have headphones in, the other party will not hear any sounds from your iPhone; just your voice which is as it should be. The Phone app is there when you need it, but…

Merge duplicates Merge and link contacts Over time, it is likely that you will end up with a series of duplicate contacts that not only make your contact list bigger, but which cause confusion and mean you have to tap multiple entries to find the information you need. There is, however, a simple solution built into the Contacts app that will let you merge two contacts together in one easy step. Scroll through your list and find two contacts that share the same name. Select one of them and then tap the Edit option at the top. Scroll down to the bottom to locate the ‘link contacts…’ option and tap it. You will now be asked to select one and once you have, tap Link at the top. The two…

Global clocks Set the time for different cities Even though you will use the clock for the timezone of the country you are in the majority of the time, setting up world clocks is incredibly useful if you regularly keep in contact with people in other countries. Tap the + symbol in the right-hand corner and select a city or country from the long list that will be displayed. Use the search box to speed things up. Tap on the location and it will be added to your world clocks. Tapping Edit lets you remove any clocks (select the red dot that appears) and it also enables you to rearrange clocks (tap the three-line icon and drag it to the required spot). Why not switch between analogue and digital? Just…

Stay secure Create a unique finger password The Wallet app replaces Passbook in iOS 9, and it’s certainly an apt name for it as it replaces your physical wallet. It not only stores your coupons, tickets, boarding passes, etc, as before, but you can now add all of your debit, credit and store cards to purchase goods at outlets that using Apple Pay. The main concern with using a contactless payment method is security. When setting up the Wallet app, one of the first things you’ll find is that Apple will prompt you to set up a variety of security levels to make sure that your sensitive data is kept safe. One of these is Touch ID, a great system that uses your fingerprint as a way of accessing the…

Passwords Generate random passwords One little-known tip when using Siri is its ability to generate random, secure passwords to help protect your device. It uses Wolfram Alpha, a computational knowledge engine, and it takes mere seconds to do. Simply hold down the Home button on your iPhone and, when Siri activates, say “Wolfram password”. Siri will take a moment and then show you some results which you will be able to use to register for a site or service. It will also spell it out to you in written form using the phonetic alphabet. For more information, just scroll down. Siri’s search for a random password shows that the password would take a hacker a mere 229 years to crack. It also shows a list of common password types. Who’s…

Connect with artists Follow bands socially One of the recent additions to the Music app is the Connect service. Much like Twitter, you can browse through all of the available bands and artists and then choose to ‘follow’ them. Once an artist has been chosen, all of their posted activity will flow into the main Connect feed. Any posts of theirs that you enjoyed can be ‘liked’ and you can also add your own comments. If you don’t use the Connect service then you can replace its position in the Music app’s dock by turning it off. To do this, go to Settings>General> Restrictions and then turn off the ‘Apple Music Connect’ option. Now, when you return to the Music app, the Connect icon at the bottom of the interface…

Delete images Select and erase many photos Professional photographers always shoot many photos and they take dozens and then select only the best to show off. This is a great tip for improving your snapshots and there is no reason not to shoot as many as you can. Afterwards you can go through the images, selecting the ones you don’t need and deleting them to leave only the finest. After taking many photos, open the Photos app, select Albums, then Camera Roll and view your photos. Press Select and tap the images you don’t want to keep. Swipe up and down to see more photos and keep selecting them until you have marked all the unwanted ones. Press the trash can icon in the bottom-right corner and then tap Delete…

Search for text Find any word anywhere There may be occasions where you want to find where a particular word appears in a book. This situation would probably arise more often with study books, cookery books, reference works and the like, rather than novels you are reading for fun. You might be researching a subject, reading books associated with an iTunes U course, using a reference book and so on. All you need to do is to tap the magnifying glass icon at the right side of the toolbar and enter a word or phrase into the search box. Every place the search term appears in the book is listed. It shows the chapter, page number and the surrounding text. Another way to search is to long-press on a word…

Service used: Family Sharing Price: Free As fans of Apple products, it is highly likely that you will have more than one iDevice at home, possibly being used by multiple people. But what if you could bring all of your family’s accounts together and allow purchases made on one iPad or iPhone to be made available on another? And what if you didn’t have to share your own Apple ID or password but allowed everyone to have their own accounts while using a single credit or debit card that you can still control? With Family Sharing, you are able to link accounts together within a single group. Purchases made by one family member can be downloaded by another. Children under 13 can be forced to have their payments verified by…

Service used: Apple Music Price: £9.99/$9.99 When it comes to the Apple Music app, one of the most intuitive features you’ll come across in your exploration is the For You tab. This is the bit, in audio terms, for making you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, suggesting music matches tailored to your tastes. When you want to listen to fresh selections beyond your normal library of music, take time to explore the personalised playlists and you won’t need to look any further. What’s really neat is the way For You trains Apple Music to identify and learn your genre, band, artist and musical era preferences. Over just a few screens of selection ‘bubbles’ you can manipulate to signify your likes and dislikes – even the most eclectic music fan…

App used: Afterlight Price: £0.69/$0.99 When taking shots with the iPhone camera (or another and importing them), the results may not be how you envisioned them. While the default Photos app offers an editor, its feature list may not have enough grunt for some, which is where third-party apps can come in handy. It’s for this reason that we take a look at the image-editing app called Afterlight. This provides numerous features for enhancing your photos. For example, you can adjust the saturation/tone or apply several pre-rendered effects/filters that can be previewed in real-time. Afterwards, you can save the photo back to your Library or share it with others via photo-centric social-media services such as Instagram. Interestingly, there is even an integrated postcard maker so you can send a postcard…

App used: Runtastic Push Ups Trainer Pro Price: £1.49/$1.9 Keeping fit is one of life’s challenges and going to the gym isn’t always possible if you lead a busy lifestyle. Mind you, even with a gym, without a motivational incentive you are likely to slack off your fitness regime. One of the simplest and costeffective means to combat this is to utilise the Runtastic Push Ups Trainer Pro app, as for a small fee it provides a rep-style training plan and various motivational features (voice and achievements, similar to those on the Xbox games consoles) to keep you going. The voice – thankfully – is kept to a minimum, but the clever part is how it logs your push-ups in the first place. One method is to use a proximity…

App used: HopStop Transit Directions Price: Free Covering the USA, UK, Canada, much of Europe and Australia, HopStop is a brilliant way to find out if there are problems on the routes you are set to use. It relies on crowd-sourcing, with many users letting others know if trains are delayed or stations are closed. You can read these updates, make comments and add your own information, allowing for reliable real-time updates. As well as live information, the app dishes out directions. Simply input where you are going from and where you are heading to in the menu under the Directions tab and it will give you detailed step-bystep instructions. Best of all, these contain service updates from users at each stage if necessary and it’s a brilliant way to…

App used: OneDrive Price: Free Formerly known as SkyDrive, OneDrive is Microsoft’s equivalent of iCloud, essentially a hard drive up in the sky – or rather the internet – that can be used to access, store and back up your files. Much like how iCloud is built into OS X, OneDrive is built into Windows 8 and 10, so it’s particularly handy if you use any of Microsoft’s desktop office apps such as Word, Excel or PowerPoint. The OneDrive iOS app, then, is likely to appeal to those who use a Windows PC at work but have an iPhone at home. It’s free to set up and use, and you get 10GB of storage space on your OneDrive to begin with. What’s not immediately obvious when you first install OneDrive…

App used: Lookout Price: Free With so many of us now keeping so much precious data on our iPhones, the thought of it being lost or stolen doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s not just the physical loss of the device itself, but all the personal data it contains that would be hardest to bear. For this reason, with something as personal and valuable as an iPhone, it makes sense to adopt a ‘belt and braces’ approach to security. While Apple’s Find My iPhone function provides the ability to locate a lost device via GPS, and iCloud Backup can automatically back up your Camera Roll, accounts, documents and settings, Lookout offers a combination of several useful security features in one app – if you lose your iPhone, you can log into…

App used: iMovie Price: £3.99/$4.99 Being able to not only shoot, edit and export movies on your iPhone, but also upload them to popular video streaming sites such as YouTube or Vimeo, means that you can quickly distribute your videos online for your friends, family and followers to see. All of this can be done within the iMovie app. With the app’s handy Share function, your video will be exported and uploaded to the internet in a quality of your choosing. Of course, if you’d rather, you can export a MOV file and then transfer it to your computer, where it can then be uploaded manually. iMovie connects directly to YouTube, allowing you to sign in with your YouTube account login details. Once you are signed in, you can add…

App used: Numbers Price: £7.99/$9.99 Numbers lets you input data quickly and easily using keyboards that adapt for the kind of info you’re adding. You can form this info into eye-catching graphs and charts that help you visualise your statistics, using the selection of pre-made templates and styles. You can use this info and graphs in Pages and Keynote, but should format it first to make it a little more interesting. Numbers contains all kinds of formatting options, allowing you to quickly change styles with a tap or completely customise individual areas with your own selection of colours or gradients. You can even pull out specific areas of your graphs that you want to pay particular attention to, and recolour them using a series of preset styles Alternatively, switch your…

What does jailbreaking accomplish? Make your iPhone more flexible with a jailbreak It’s true to say that jailbreaking has diminished slightly in popularity in recent times thanks to Apple’s hard line on security updates and the fact that third party apps are increasingly able to take advantage of specific areas of the operating system. However, the ability to dive under the hood of iOS remains and if you take the plunge, you will be rewarded and be able make your iPhone work in almost any way you want. From amending every file on the phone to changing the visualsand removing annoying features that bug you, jailbreaking an iPhone is still the way to go for those who understand how everything works and who want the benefits of the Apple hardware…

App used: Daily Dash Price: Free Jailbreaking brings with it a variety of tweaks and additions to the iOS experience. Some of these are focused on providing a practical function to your device that may have been previously unavailable. Other tweaks are more about making your iPhone do something ‘cool’. Daily Dash is a Cydia app that falls somewhere between both of these ideals. Its sole function is to provide a list of the top three trending Twitter topics in your area and place them directly on your Lock screen. The app will make occasional updates with regard to the listed topics and will also use your iPhone’s location data to pull in the relevant Twitter trends. At the moment, the app will only display the top three trends; this…

App used: FlipControlCenter Price: Free The Control Center, activated by pulling up from off the bottom of the screen, is one of those great ideas that Apple finally implemented after similar features had been available in the jailbreak world for years. As usual, though, it isn’t customisable; you can’t change the look or what toggles are used and what order they are in. So, back to renowned jailbreak programmer Ryan Petrich to save the day with a free tweak that lets you change things to how you want them to be. This kind of tweak is also available in a couple of other packages, but the one used here is Ryan’s FlipControlCenter which you can get for free from Cydia. The first thing to note is that there are a…

App used: BytaFont 2 Price: Free While iOS 9 actually has quite a range of fonts available for developers to use, what you as the consumer get is a lot more limited. It’s not just that it’s down to individual apps as to what fonts they use – you can’t change the system fonts at all. Of course, that’s part of the attraction of jailbreaking and using custom themes. Apply a new theme, get a different look and a new system font. However, suppose you like the iOS 9 icons and simply want some new system fonts? Well, you’re scuppered, unless you turn to a jailbreak app like BytaFont 2. With this you have access to a huge range of new fonts on Cydia and can then install them as…

There’s always a certain sense of excitement in the air whenever a new OS update is made available to the millions of iOS users around the world. While iOS 9 perhaps doesn’t introduce the plethora of new features we saw in iOS 8, it does provide numerous enhancements that make it by far the most important iOS update yet. At its core, the update looks predominantly the same as its predecessor, minus a few subtle changes to animation speeds that are hard to pick out with the naked eye, and a new abstract blue wallpaper that’s set by default. However, it’s when you take the time really explore the core processes of either your iPhone that you really start to see where the changes have been made. iOS 9 trims…

Make calculations Accessing the calculator The need to make quick calculations is something that all of us require from time to time. Whether you are using a bank app or simply need to work out some quick figures, the Control Center offers the fastest way to get started. Swipe up to enable the Control Center and you will see the calculator icon in the bottom row. Tap it and the Calculator app will immediately open ready for you to start adding and subtracting. Don’t forget that entering landscape mode enhances the available functions and will give you scientific capabilities as well. Once you have finished what you need to do, double-tap the home button to go back to the previous app that you were using. It’s a handy feature that…

Wipe conversations Delete with a swipe All of your messages are automatically organised by conversation and when you tap any item in the list, you will see the entire chat with a contact. If you want to delete a single comment you can tap and hold any entry and then tap the trash can that appears at the bottom of the screen, but remember that this will obviously disrupt the flow of what has been said. You can, however, delete entire conversations from the main list by swiping from right to left and tapping the red Delete option. Be careful when doing this because no archive is held on the phone itself and if you want to retrieve it, the steps are quite time consuming and involved. So always proceed…

Composing drafts Save emails for later The compose button is always in the bottom right-hand corner when viewing your email list or the account list. Tap it and you will immediately see a new window appear in which you can start composing an email. If you tap the Cancel option in the top-left, you will then be given the opportunity to save it as a draft. If you now navigate back to the main folder list for your email account, you will see a Drafts section which will hold any email that you have not yet completed. Try to keep the number of drafts you create to a minimum to avoid forgetting about important ones. If the list is long, you probably need to find some time to organise them…

Location reminder Receive reminders on arrival Ever gone somewhere and then, on your way home, realised there was something you needed to do there but had completely forgotten about? With the ‘Remind me at a location’ service, you can make sure that as soon as you are close to a location, your iPhone will remind you of a certain task. Add a reminder in the usual way and tap on the blue ‘i’ icon. Slide the ‘Remind me at a location option’ to green and tap Location. Search for a location or choose the current location. Select the ‘When I arrive’ option. A map displays the address and you can alter the circumference of the circle to dictate the distance from the location you need to be before the reminder…

Dictate notes Write messages using your voice Built into iOS is a brilliant voice recognition system that can be used via the Notes app. Create a new note within Notes by tapping New and call up the keyboard by tapping in the main writing area. Tap the microphone key and start to talk. When you have finished, tap Done and your words will be processed. They will be placed within your note. You can complete the note and save it by tapping Done in the top right-hand corner. For an even faster way of doing this, hold down on the Home button to activate Siri. Now say “write note” and dictate whatever you want to write in the note. Siri will then create the note on your behalf and save…

Apps for kids View children-friendly apps When iOS 7 was launched, it brought with it so many great visual flourishes as well as a host of new features and one of those was the introduction of a Kids App Store within the main App Store app, which is still present in iOS 9. In order to view it, you need to open the App Store app and choose Categories>Kids. You will see four sub-sections. One will show you apps for all kids, and the others are broken down for ages five and under, between six and eight and between nine and 11. By tapping on each of these categories, you are able to view a whole host of amazing apps that are completely appropriate for that age range. However, the…

Challenge friends Can your friends beat you? Playing games is fun, of course, but it is much more entertaining when you include your friends – and any game that supports Game Center enables you to set challenges for your chums. A challenge varies from game to game and most apps have multiple challenges too, so it could be anything, like a high score, completing a level, beating a time and so on. Either press Games and select a game in the Game Center app, or find the Game Center option in the game and select the Achievements tab. This lists the achievements that are possible in the game and tapping one enables you to then challenge friends to perform it too. Tap Challenge Friends, select the friends to challenge, enter…

Master the playback options Use the video, audio and other controls When a movie starts playing, the iPhone automatically switches to landscape mode and there are controls at the top and bottom of the screen. Tap the screen to hide or show the controls. The Done button in the top-left corner stops the video and goes back to the menu. Starting the video again carries on where you left off. The video duration is shown at the top and dragging the small circle along the bar enables you to jump to any part. The audio volume is bottom left while the bottom middle contains video play/pause, start and end buttons. “Dragging the small circle along the bar enables you to jump to any part” Show/hide iCloud videos Do you want…

Add your data Manually input your data points Although Health relies to a great extent on pulling in data from other thirdparty apps, it’s important to remember that you can also add data yourself from within the app. Tap on the Health Data tab located at the bottom of the screen and choose a category such as Nutrition. Then choose one of the subcategories which appears, such as Protein. If an app is sending data to Health, the graph will be filled in automatically. But if you need to supplement the information, you will need to tap Add Data Point. You can now indicate a date and time and insert the data you wish to add to the app. That data can then be shared with a number of other…

App used: Tumblr Price: Free These days you have a plethora of social platforms through which you can post your innermost thoughts and opinions. There’s Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and WordPressbased sites, to name a few. All of these have their own pros and cons, however. Facebook is more of a friends-only affair, unless you create a page to go alongside this, but then you have the hassle of managing your private and public posts. Twitter is limited to only 140 characters per post, whereas WordPress sites can be time-consuming to manage. Fortunately, Tumblr offers a best-of-both-worlds scenario, in that it sort of acts like Facebook/Twitter, so you can follow other users and get updates in real-time, but you also get more characters to play with when posting your thoughts. As…

App used: Pocket Casts Price: £2.49/$3.99 While vlogs from YouTube are starting to eat away at the popularity of audio podcasts, they still have a large following. Listening to your favourite podcast on the way home or to relax after a busy day is one of the most rewarding experiences, as there are some genuinely brilliant podcasters out there. Podcasts are also a way to catch up on your favourite radio shows without the distraction of music. In recent versions of iOS, Apple opted to move the podcasts away from the main iTunes app, underlining their importance. Mind you, the default app is not perfect by any means and this is where third-party alternatives can come in handy. One example is the focus of our tutorial, an app called Pocket…

App used: Figure Price: £0.69/$0.99 The iPhone is not only an ideal platform for listening to music, it’s also great for making your own. However, while many of its third-party music-making apps offer a vast range of sounds, effects and creative options, they can often be a bit daunting to get to grips with. Figure, on the other hand, is incredibly intuitive to use and yet enables you to record some impressive electronic tracks made up of three simple layers: Drum, Bass and Lead. It’s hard to explain fully here just how much fun Figure is to play around with – even for nonmusicians – but with a little practice you can use it to create some superb sounds. Indeed, you can listen to other users’ creations that have been…

App used: News Price: Free Arguably one of the biggest and most welcome additions to the iOS 9 update has been the launch of the News app. As the name suggests, News is an all-encompassing news app, which collates the latest headlines and stories from hundreds of outlets from around the world. Due to the vast library of articles and sources available, you’ll want to make your first port of call to be the task of curating your own personalised news feed. Thankfully, the News app makes the process easy for beginners and seasoned iPhone users alike, even if it can take a little while to complete the initial process. Once finished, you’ll have your own list of sources to enjoy, with a steady stream of articles appearing each day…

App used: Evernote Food Price: Free Every amateur cook worth their salt is on the lookout for recipe ideas and will no doubt eventually amass a personal collection of recipes, either handed down through generations or culled and adapted from friends. More often than not, these form a scrapbook of scribbled notes, maybe the odd Polaroid and perhaps a crumpled printout or two from the internet. Evernote Food has been designed to counter this problem. Intended for use alongside Evernote’s note-taking and syncing service, which allows notes to be clipped and viewed from multiple devices, it acts as a kind of recipe aggregator, using Evernote’s tagging system to pull in recipes from multiple sources: the app’s own recipe database, the internet and whichever Evernote notebooks you set it to include.…

App used: Iconical Price: £1.49/$1.99 Your iPhone is a wonderful device. It’s arguably the finest piece of tech in the world, the trailblazer for the intensely competitive smartphone market today. It lets you do a massive range of tasks with simplicity that you don’t get elsewhere. However, where the iPhone loses points is in the lack of freedom for users to be able to customise their device – unlike open source Android smartphones But iPhone users need not fear. Iconical from app developer DAP Logic sets out to let you personalise certain parts of your iOS experience – namely app icons. It’s true that Apple doesn’t allow you to do this, but Iconical finds a handy workaround without needing to jailbreak your device and void your warranty. Creating your own…

App used: Settings Price: Free Security is one of the most important things you need to factor in when setting up and using your smartphone. While there are many options already available, iOS 9 introduces a few more key options for your to explore – one being Two-Factor Authentication. The main purpose of Two-Factor Authentication is to add an additional layer of security to your Apple ID, preventing unauthorised access to your account. Whenever a new device looks to sign in with your Apple ID, it’ll be prompted to enter a verification code that will be sent to your primary device. It’s an easy enough system to use, but be warned that you’ll need to wait three days for the verification to be enabled before use. We’ll outline all of…

App used: GarageBand Price: £3.99/$4.99 The Tracks view in GarageBand is essentially your mobile musical post-production suite. You’ll probably be in the numerous Instrument views while you’re actually recording your music but, when it comes to the editing portion of your project, the Tracks view is where you’ll be spending most of your time. It’s the perfect place to make changes to your tracks; a simple double-tap on the screen will open up a wide range of options. You can do everything from going inside your keyboard recordings and changing the length or pitch of each individual note to looping recordings so that they form a full-length track. However, even if you get all your takes right first time, the Tracks view is still a great way to tune your…

App used: Keynote Price: £7.99/$9.99 A huge part of giving any presentation is how you come across as you go through the slides of your beautifully crafted Keynote file Using just your Mac can feel a little restrictive, though, as you have to keep stepping back and forward to it in order to move along to the next slide in your keynote. Thanks to the addition of the new Remote feature, you can now use your iOS device to control your presentation, moving through slides as it suits you. Remote uses either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to enable you to connect Keynote on both Mac and iOS while you’re giving your presentation. This is the perfect solution if you don’t have access to an Apple TV, with its AirPlay mirroring features.…

App used: Appellancy Price: £1.19/$1.99 Appellancy is an app that showcases one of the core benefits of jailbreaking. In this instance it takes a feature that is normally associated with other handset models and makes it available on your iPhone. By installing the Appellancy app, you can use face recognition as a way of unlocking your device. The app works by storing photos of your face taken at a variety of angles in varying lighting conditions. These are then used to recognise your face when the Lock screen is displayed on your iPhone. You can create profiles of face galleries for other people as well as yourself. As a result, Appellancy can be trained to accept multiple users on the one device. There are also further options that allow you…

App used: Springtomize 3 Price: £1.77/$2.99 One of the main pleasures in jailbreaking is being able to customise the interface to work the way you want it, or to add new features before Apple gets round to including them in iOS. The only fly in the ointment is that the more tweaks you install, the greater the chance of some of them not getting on with the others. That was surely at the back of the minds of the developers of Springtomize, now up to version 3 and offering more customisations than any other single app. In fact, this one app can easily replace three or four other jailbreak tweaks. It is a paid-for app, which means going through the usual Cydia store process of confirming your identity before getting…

App used: BetrFoldr Price: Free In previous versions of iOS there has been a limit to the number of apps that could be placed in a folder. Luckily for us, iOS 9 has no such limit. Despite this, it was inevitable that the jailbreak community would crave more flexibility. BetrFoldr is a tweak that offers a number of simple but effective additions to what can be achieved with folders. With the app installed you can now close a folder by applying a pinch-to-close gesture on the display. From a visual perspective you can also remove the frosted background from each folder making the background more visible. This can be applied to the Home screen, the zoomed-in folder view or both. With the right background in place this can make for…

Move and delete Manage all of your Home screen apps It’s easy to manage all of your apps on the iPhone Home screens. To move between screens, simply slide your finger left and right or tap any folder to bring up a new selection of apps. If you can manage to keep all of your apps and games to a maximum of two screens, you will be able to navigate a lot easier. The use of folders will also help to keep the amount of gestures you need to use to a minimum. To delete an app, tap and hold your finger on the icon and wait for the ‘x’ to appear. Tap it and you’ll see a new box to confirm the deletion at which point the app will…

Closed captions Enable subtitles quickly There are two ways to enable closed captions on an iPhone; one is for all movies that support it and the other is to use them when you feel the need. If you take a trip over to Settings>General>Accessibility and scroll down to the Hearing section you will see an option called Subtitles & Captioning. Select this and then switch the top icon to green. You can now spend some time choosing the exact style you prefer for your captions. When in the Videos app, you can also tap the closed caption icon, which looks like a speech bubble at the bottom. This will offer the ability to turn it on and off as you wish. It is likely that you will need this all…

Import contacts Every contact you need FaceTime contacts are no different to normal contacts and when you set up synchronisation with an online service, they will be available within the app. Go to Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars and tap on Add Account. Work through the instructions to add any account, which includes your contacts, and they will be available in the main Contacts app and the FaceTime app for calling immediately. The contact entry will need at least an email address or mobile number to be recognised as capable of using FaceTime and also remember that the other party will need an iPhone, Mac or iPad to use FaceTime. Not all contacts will be able to use FaceTime by default, so check before calling. Mute FaceTime calls Add some privacy to…

Define any word Understand unknown words You can discover the meaning of a word in a web page by simply tapping and holding it. You will see a pop-up box appear with two options; Copy and Define. Tap on Define and a new page will appear with a full dictionary definition, along with as much information as possible. There are also two more options which are available to help you gain more detail. Search Web lets you find more links about the word and Manage will show a list of dictionaries that can be downloaded for many different languages. The entire process from defining a word to arming your iPhone with even more sources of useful information can be done in seconds and will prove to be useful time and…

Swipe around Using many swipe gestures Open up the Calendar app and you will see a glimpse of your schedule ahead. You can swipe to the left or right to show the previous or next day or you can swipe up and down to see more of any particular day. When you double tap an event to view it, you can swipe left to go back to the calendar view. Swiping is also useful when you are not actually in the Calendar app. You can swipe down from the top of the screen to call up the Notifications panel on your iPhone and then look for the Calendar section (make sure it is enabled by going to Settings>Notification Centre and turning the button next to Calendar Day View to green).…

Tilt map window Rotate and tilt the view You can use a host of gestures to better interact with the Maps app. While zooming in by pinching the screen is likely to be familiar to you, it is also possible to use two fingers on the screen to rotate the map window so that you are able get a 360-degree view. Another neat trick is being able to place two fingers on the screen and drag when you are in the 3D or Flyover view. It gives the feeling that you are looking down and over at the map. In order to use both the two-finger rotate and the two-finger drag, you need to have the map in Overview but it works in both landscape and portrait mode. You can,…

Share listings Pass on song descriptions If you really enjoy a song or other entertainment item on iTunes, you can let the world know about it by sharing the description listing with other people. Navigate to the song’s page within iTunes on your iPhone and select the share option in the top right-hand corner of the screen. You can share a direct link to the page via a message or email by tapping the corresponding apps or you can link to it on Twitter or Facebook. This is a great way of referencing a song on social media since it inserts the cover of the song or movie into your tweet or post. You can add your own message alongside the pre-written one created by iTunes and then send it…

Keep everything straight Use a grid to straighten your photos Sometimes, there can’t be anything worse than taking a great snap and having it be annoyingly wonky. To combat this, you can turn on the grid of thirds. Go to Settings>Photos & Camera and then scroll down to find the ‘Grid’ option. Once activated you will see it active in the Camera app all of the time and our advice would be to leave it on all of the time if you are happy with it. Whenever you take a photo in the future you will be able to align the image correctly and also ensure that your subject is positioned in the right place. The end result will be photos that need less editing and you can also quickly…

Add your favourites Create your own feed Replacing the Newsstand app after the iOS 9 update, News is a handy one-stop news digest that saves you the time and effort of accessing your daily news via Safari websites and other apps. By tapping on the Explore icon you will be presented with all of the available news sources across a vast range of topics which you can then add to your feed by tapping on the ‘+’ icon next to a source. Once you have finished compiling your sources, tap on the ‘For You’ icon and a neat news digest will be packaged up and presented in a continuous feed. In your news feed the main headlines and the source will be listed and tapping on a story will allow…

Service used: iCloud Drive Price: Free The iCloud Drive service gives you a sizable amount of cloud-based data storage on which you can save files and images – not only from iOS devices but El Capitanpowered Macs, and PCs running Windows 7, 8 or 8.1. Although similar to Dropbox and Google Drive, there isn’t an iCloud Drive app available on your iOS device. Instead, iCloud Drive is accessible from within a growing number of apps that support it. In order to save files from your iOS device to iCloud Drive, you need to use a compatible app to create documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, images and presentations. The files are then stored automatically in iCloud Drive. If the file is compatible with another app, it can be imported. As more apps come…

Service used: Apple Music Price: £9.99/$9.99 Apple Music, as we all know, is an online subscription service from Apple providing cloud access to all of your favourite, familiar tunes and a whole load of new ones too. By its very nature, to experience the latest tracks or benefit from the live radio broadcasts, you need to be connected to the internet via Wi-Fi or a cellular network. However, there is a workaround if you don’t have or can’t find a connection, because with iCloud Music Library enabled, users are able to save tracks for offline enjoyment. This is particularly useful on iOS devices (including iPads, if you have one) when you’re away from your Wi-Fi connection, when cellular networks are unavailable or you simply wish to conserve data caps. The…

Service used: DO Camera Price: Free DO Camera is part of a suite of apps by developer IFTTT for reimagining some of the key features on your iPhone (it works for the iPad too). This one specifically targets your camera so you can effortlessly share snaps instantly to all of your favourite social services. With support for Facebook, Twitter, Google, Flickr, Tumblr and many more, the app uses simple rules or ‘recipes’ for invoking popular actions. Posting photos to albums, tweets, Dropbox storage or even Google Drive are just a few of the one-tap benefits that the DO Camera app brings to your photography arsenal. But this isn’t all that’s on offer from DO Camera; you can also customise photos with filters and messages before sharing them with the world.…

App used: Adobe Ideas Price: Free One of the main benefits of the iPhone’s touch screen is that it makes it easy to draw with your finger. There are plenty of third-party apps that can help you unlock your hidden artistic talents, but none from a more prestigious developer than Adobe, which is well known for its range of specialist programs aimed at pro artists and designers. Adobe Ideas is its free offering for the iPhone and it does incorporate plenty of features for those who want to draw vectorbased illustrations on the fly (including the ability to add layers, which we will cover in the boxout section on the next page). In a nutshell, layers are an advanced tool that can help you to be really inventive with your…

App used: Eurosport Price: Free Eurosport is without doubt one of the biggest sports broadcasters on the planet. So when you need a source to turn to for up-to-the minute bulletins, news and clips of what your sporting heroes have been up to while you’re on the move, the Eurosport iOS app can readily be considered a safe pair of hands. And we’re not just talking football either: Eurosport’s pantechnicon of content also includes tennis, golf, cricket, F1, rugby, cycling, superbikes, Moto GP, boxing, snooker, swimming, athletics, basketball – in fact practically any sport you can think of. The app is free to download and no subscription is required to view the content, which is updated daily with over 100 news stories and 30 video clips. There’s also a live…

App used: Codecademy: Hour of Code Price: Free Have you ever wanted to learn the basics of coding but either never had the time or were put off by the complexity? Coding can be intimidating at first, as it’s essentially learning a whole new language and set of processes, which for many people is just too much to tackle via conventional means. Enter Codecademy’s Hour of Code app, which aims to introduce you to the basics of the black art of coding in just under 60 minutes through a system of easy-to-follow guided walkthroughs. The app is tied into the Codecademy.com website, where you can take online courses in JavaScript, HTML/CSS, PHP, Python and Ruby, among others, and reap the benefits of its thriving online community to help your progress.…

App used: Mailbox Price: Free With the amount of junk mail coming into your inbox every single day – newsletters, notifications and suspicious pleas for financial partnership – you need an app that helps you to sort the wheat from the chaff in seconds. In short, you need Mailbox, a third-party alternative to the default Mail app. Proving that ‘inbox zero’ isn’t a myth, Mailbox will help you archive all of the messages in your inbox so that you only see the new arrivals. It also helps you action those emails by choosing to archive or delete them immediately, or to move them into separate lists or even snooze them so that they pop up again when you’re ready for them – all through simple swipe actions. It’s a clean,…

App used: iMovie Price: £3.99/$4.99 Making your own movies using just your iPhone is great. But how much greater would they be if you could add your own sounds? Using iMovie for iOS, you can do just that. We’re going to take a look at two of the most common uses of audio in video projects – recording voiceovers and adding sound effects. Voiceovers are the perfect addition to documentary-style movies and movie trailers, and the great news is that you can create your own using the built-in mic on your iOS device, giving your movie project a professional edge to really make it stand out of the crowd. It’s incredibly simple, too, with a few quick taps giving you the perfect commentary for your clip. The biggest budget Hollywood…

App used: Pages Price: £7.99/$9.99 In order to keep someone’s attention when reading a document these days, black ink on a white page doesn’t always cut it. Luckily, Pages for iOS has become an impressive hub for creativity thanks to the templates, styles and other aspects that can be dropped in to bring documents to life. In this tutorial we will focus on how you can add new levels of style and excitement to your text, in order to make your documents all the more appealing. Whether it be a school report or board meeting preparation, there are settings and options built into Pages that can help you do a lot more to your text than you realised. From simple upgrades like changing the text’s font, colour and size, to…

App used: Move to iOS Price: Free Moving to a new operating system can be a daunting prospect, whether you use Windows, Android or iOS . Not only do you have to find a secure way of moving all of your files, you also need to deal with porting your number and switching tariffs. To help those moving across to iOS from Android, Apple has released a new Move to iOS Android app on Android’s Google Play Store. The app itself looks to port over files, contact information and other important data directly from your Android device to your new Apple iPhone. It’s important to note that the app doesn’t cater for every single file type, so it’s advised to make use of the various cloud storage options that are…

App used: CleverPin Price: £1.19/$1.99 iPhone users in general tend to carry around all kinds of important data on their devices. Having a passcode is something of a necessary precaution, especially with regard to theft. There are times, however, when a passcode can be surplus to requirements – where you know that no threat is present. At these times, the passcode can become a niggling annoyance, especially if you’re repeatedly performing quick tasks on your device. CleverPin is an app that presents a solution to this by making your iPhone request for your passcode intelligently. You can have the app automatically disable the passcode whenever you’re on a trusted Wi-Fi network (ie at home). It can also switch off the passcode when you’re listening to music or when your iPhone…

App used: Badger 7 Price: £0.99/$1.49 If you’ve ever used the notifications system and thought to yourself, ‘well that could be better’, then pay heed to one of the latest jailbreak tweaks to be updated. It might be that Badger 7 isn’t actually any better than what you get from Apple, it’s just different, but that might make all the difference. Currently a notification arrives and is either dealt with as a banner that fades away or a message that stays on the screen demanding your attention. This is dealt with in Settings. Then a badge counter is incremented on the icon of the related app so you can see something has happened, which is useful if you missed it in the first place. Where Badger comes in is that…

App used: Lockdown Pro 7 Price: £1.19/$1.99 The problem with password and biometric locks is that they make accessing your iPhone more cumbersome than it needs to be. What you really want is something that balances security with speed of access and the best way to get this is to use a system that only locks the things you want kept secure. Got a folder full of important documents, but don’t want to lock up the rest of the phone? Want to keep all those photos from the weekend private for definite? Well now you can with the Lockdown Pro jailbreak tweak. This also has the advantage that you can do something even more sneaky – hide apps from view and use an Activator gesture to launch them. If an…