How to get Siri to set a wakeup alarm and a timer on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch

Siri is Apple’s personal assistant that was introduced with the iPhone 4S. You can ask Siri all kinds of things using normal sentences. There are a number of requests I make of Siri every day. Two of these are setting a wakeup alarm and a timer. 1. Wakeup Alarm Each night when I go to bed, I ask Siri to set an alarm for me. You can say, “Wake me up at 7am.” Or, you can say, “Set me an alarm for 7:30 in the morning.” Siri will respond by telling you that your alarm is set. You can also Continue Reading →

Quick Tip: Access Camera Roll directly from Camera App

This is a quick tip that comes in handy if you take pictures with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. To quickly jump over to your Camera Roll without leaving the Camera App, simply tap on the thumbnail icon in the lower-left of the screen that displays the last photo or video you took. This will give you immediate access to the photos in your Camera Roll. Hit the Done button in the top-right to jump back over to the Camera App. Pretty simple.           3D Touch Bonus Tip! – If you 3D Touch on the thumbnail instead of tapping, Continue Reading →

How to use Airdrop to transfer files between Apple devices

Airdrop allows you to easily send photos and videos, contacts, files, and pretty much anything else, between your devices running iOS and Mac OS X, and it’s one of my favorite and most used features. In this article, I’ll tell you why you should use Airdrop too and I’ll show you how to use it. Why use Airdrop? – First off, why would you use Airdrop when there are other options available? For example, it’s pretty easy to send photos, videos, and other types of files to other devices using iMessage or in an email. There are a few reasons I prefer Continue Reading →

Quick Tip: How to use accents on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch Keyboard

There are times when you need to use an accent on a word when you are typing on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. Thankfully, your iOS device has this capability built right into the keyboard. All you need to do is tap and hold on a letter on the keyboard to reveal the accent options for that letter. Then, slide your finger on the screen to select which accented letter to insert. Release and there you have it! Now you can spell résumé with the proper accents on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

Create typing shortcuts on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch

One of the lesser known, and  features in iOS is the ability to create keyboard shortcuts. You can choose a phrase that you type often and then create a shortcut made up of a few letters. For example, if you are in a lot of meetings, you may need to respond to texts telling people that you can’t talk at the moment. Another way you can use this feature is to create a shortcut to often-typed items, such as email addresses. You can create a 4 letter shortcut that will then be translated into an entire phrase response. Here is Continue Reading →

iOS 8.1 Quick Tip: How to send a video or audio message using the new Messages app

This is an iOS 8.1 quick tip on how to send a video or audio message using the new Messages app. With iOS 8, Apple introduced a new way to quickly and easily send audio and video messages to others who have an iOS device and the Messages app. It is fairly obvious how to send an audio message. All you need to do is open the Messages app and create a new message or tap on an existing one. You will notice a little Microphone symbol on the bottom left of the screen next to the area where you Continue Reading →

Quick Tip: How to set songs from your music library to be your iPhone, iPad (Mini), or iPod Touch Alarm Clock Sound

Quick Tip: How to set songs from your music library to be your iPhone, iPad (Mini), or iPod Touch Alarm Clock Sound

This is a Quick Tip on how to set songs from your music library to be your iPhone, iPad (Mini), or iPod Touch Alarm Clock Sound. In iOS 6, Apple enabled a feature in the Clock app that allows you to set a song from your music library as your alarm clock tone so you can wake up to beautiful music rather than the built in sounds. This works in iOS 6, iOS 7, and iOS 8 for the iPhone, iPad (Mini), and iPod Touch. It is quite easy to set this up. Here are the steps: 1. Launch the Clock Continue Reading →

How to quickly switch to and use 3D Flyover Mode in Apple Maps App

This is a quick and easy tip on how to switch to 3D Flyover Mode in the Maps App on your iPhone, iPad (Air, Mini), and iPod Touch. The Apple Maps app on iOS devices has greatly improved since it was announced a few years back. The Flyover feature is one of my favorites. Flyover allows you to zoom in on certain cities and get a photographic 3D view of the city. It is really fun to explore new cities this way or to get a 3D birds eye view of your own city. There are dozens of cities that Continue Reading →

Knock Review – Unlock your Mac using your iPhone

Knock lets you unlock your Mac by knocking on your iPhone, just like knocking on a door! Using it makes unlocking your Mac quick, easy, and fun. I use a pretty complex and long password to secure my Mac computers. While it’s true that entering my password is almost a reflex, I certainly don’t look forward to typing it in. Using Knock, though, makes unlocking my Mac a lot easier and more elegant. Let’s see how it works! Set Up – Knock consists of two different apps: one that runs on your iPhone and one that runs on your Mac. Both Continue Reading →

How to use airplane boarding passes in Passbook for iPhone

This post shows you how to add airplane boarding passes to the Passbook app and use them from your iPhone, letting you skip long airport check in lines! Recently, I took a flight from Portland to Dallas for work. I don’t fly very often so I was excited to try out my airline’s iPhone app and connect it with Apple’s Passbook. I was pretty impressed by the experience and it ended up saving me a lot of time in the airport. In this post, I’ll show you how to do this for yourself on your next trip! Step 1: Download Continue Reading →