Category: iPhone

Tip: Make the iPhone’s Spotlight Search More Useful By Preventing Emails, Contacts, Etc, From Showing Up

Spotlight Search iPhone

If there was one tip I’d give to new iPhone users, it’s to teach themselves to use the iPhone’s Spotlight Search to find and launch apps. It really is the quickest way to launch an app buried somewhere in the various home screens and folders on the iPhone. If you’re new to the iPhone, you can access Spotlight Search by swiping to the right on the iPhone’s first home screen.

The only problem with Spotlight Search is that search results oftentimes can be cluttered. Emails, contacts, music, etc, can show up as well, making it difficult to find what you’re looking for. Thankfully, you can prevent the unwanted clutter. Below are step-by-step instructions on preventing certain types of items from showing up in Spotlight Search:

How to Clean Up Spotlight Search:

1. Open Settings:

2. Tap General:

General in iPhone Settings

3. Tap Spotlight Search:

4. Add or remove items by tapping them (a checkmark indicates it will be included in search results):

I only want apps to appear in my search results, so I’ve only selected Applications (aka, apps).

Notes:

  • If you’ve add a website bookmark to the iPhone’s home screen, it will be considered an app and will show alongside App Store apps in search results.
  • You can also set the order that items show in search results. For example, you can make Apps show first, Contacts second, Emails third, etc. Simply go to Settings–>General–>Spotlight Search, then tap, hold, and drag the three white lines next to an app to reorder the search results.

10 Tips for Better Voice Dictation on the iPhone With Siri (VIDEO)


One of the more powerful features of Siri on the iPhone is voice dictation—the ability to turn your speech into text. While the basics of voice dictation are easy enough, just speak and let Siri take care of the rest, there is, unfortunately, a learning curve to improve the accuracy. For example, you’ll need to say “cap” before words that aren’t typically capitalized, like bacon, to capitalize them (“Bacon”).

But what if you want to dictate the title of a movie, like Gone With the Wind, and have each of the word’s capitalized? You tell Siri “caps on” before saying gone with the wind, which will turn into Gone With the Wind (Siri even knows not to capitalize the word “the” as per title capitalization style). The video above contains 10 advanced tips for Sir’s voice dictation from Snazzy Labs.

Tip: How to Turn Off the Unread Badge for the Mail App on iPhone/iPad

One of past annoyances of the iPhone’s Mail app was a little red badge that told you hundreds of unread emails were waiting for you. Well, suffer no longer, as you can now turn off that ugly little red badge. Here’s how:

1. Open the Settings app:

2. Tap Notifications:

3. Scroll down the list of apps until you see the Mail app. Tap it:

4. Slide Badge App Icon to Off:

And that’s it. You’ll never see that annoying red badge again. Note that this also works for turning off badges for any app. You can use this same method to turn off badges for any app, not just the Mail app. Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.

Tip: How to Change the Order of Alerts in Notification Center for iPhone/iPad

You don’t have to settle for the default order of alerts in the iPhone and iPad’s Notification Center. You can rearrange them how you like. Below are step-by-step instructions on changing the order that alerts appear in the Notification Center.

1. Open the Settings app:

2. Tap Notifications:

3. Under Sort Apps, tap Manually:

See the Notes section at the bottom of this post for the difference between sorting your alerts Manually and By Time

4. Tap Edit in the top right corner:

5. Tap and hold the three lines next to each app in the list, then drag it to your desired position:

6. Tap Done when finished:

That’s it. You’ve now manually changed the order in which alerts will appear in the Notification Center.

Notes:

  • The Notification Center’s settings give you two options for sorting alerts:
    1. Manually gives you the ability to rearrange the order how you like (see instructions above)
    2. By Time will automatically sort alerts by the time in which they appeared, showing the most recent at the top of Notification Center. However, alerts will display clumped together by app. Meaning, if your most-recent alert was a text-message alert, all of your text-message alerts will show at the top, then all of the alerts from the app with the next most-recent alert.
  • If you choose to sort apps By Time, the stock widget and weather widgets will likely always display first, as they are constantly updated by the iPhone. You can turn them off in the iPhone’s Settings under Notifications.

Tip: Wi-Fi Syncing Taking Too Long? You Can Switch to the USB Cable Without Pausing Your Sync

The new Wi-Fi syncing capability for the iPhone and iPad is convenient, but it also can be much slower than using the USB cable to sync. If you have begun the syncing process over Wi-Fi and discover it’s taking too long, you can speed things up a bit by plugging your iPhone/iPad into the computer without stopping the sync. That’s right, there’s no need to stop the syncing process, just plug in your device and the sync will continue to chug along without starting over.

However, please note that the reverse is not true, meaning, you can’t start a sync using the USB cable, unplug the iPhone in mid sync, and continue over Wi-Fi. Doing so will end the sync.

Tip: The iPhone’s Alarm Clock Will Still Play Sound, Even If Ringer Switch Is in Silent Mode

The iPhone’s Clock app has an alarm clock function that can wake you up in the morning by playing a ringtone or alert tone. But did you know, that even if you set the iPhone’s ringer switch to silent mode, the alarm will still go off and play its sound? It will.

So if you want the alarm to make noise and wake you in the morning, lay your sweet head to rest tonight without worrying about where the iPhone’s ringer switch is set. If you don’t want the alarm to go off, you’ll need to turn the alarm off in the Clock app.

Tip: How a CDMA iPhone Can Do Voice and Data Simultaneously, Just Like an AT&T iPhone

One of the advantages of using the iPhone on AT&T’s GSM network is that it can do voice and data at the same time. CDMA networks like Verizon and Sprint don’t offer this capability, a fact that AT&T likes to use in its commercials (see below). However, did you know that a CDMA iPhone is, in fact, capable of simultaneous voice and data? It is, if the iPhone is connected to a WiFi network. This means if a CDMA iPhone owner has a WiFi network at home, at an airport, etc, they can, in fact talk and browse the Internet at the same time. That’s why I find AT&T’s commercial below a little misleading.

Does this guy not have a WiFi network in his home? He probably does, and he’s probably not using AT&T’s network to connect to the Internet.

Tip: How to Discover the Specific App Using the iPhone’s GPS (ie, Location Services)

We’ve all experienced that mysterious arrow icon appearing at the top of the iPhone screen that shows an app is accessing your location. But which app is it?! If you’re paranoid like me, you’ll want to know. Here’s how:

1. Open the Settings app:

2. Tap Location Services:

3. Scroll through the list of apps. A purple icon means the app is currently using your location. A gray icon means it has used your location in the past 24 hours:

4. That’s it. If you want the app to stop accessing your location, simply move the slider to Off.

Notes and Tips:

  • Besides third-party apps, Apple has several system-wide services (labeled System Services in the settings) that can access your location at various times. To view all of these system services, scroll down to the very bottom of the list of apps in Location Services and tap System Services. If you don’t want any of these services to access your location, like say Apple’s iAd service, you can turn off iAd’s access (but not iAd itself).
  • Even deeper in the Location Services menu is buried an option labeled Status Bar Icon (it’s at the bottom of the System Services menu, see bullet above). You can slide this to off to prevent the arrow from appearing at the top of the iPhone’s screen when any of the System Services (but not third-party apps) accesses your location.

Tip: List of Siri Voice-Dictation Commands

Developer Crush Apps has posted a useful list of commands for Siri’s voice-dictation capabilities that should help users solve tricky punctuation problems like how to add ellipses “…” (you can saying “dot dot dot” or “ellipsis”) and how to combine two words into one (you say “no space on,” then the words you want to combine together, then “no space off,” which creates a word like crazycool).

Check out the entire list over on Crush Apps’ blog. A must read if you’re planning on having Siri do a lot of typing for you.

Download the iPhone User Guide & iPad User Guide as PDF or as an iBook

Apple has made available for download their user guides for the iPhone and iPad as iBooks and in the traditional PDF format (links below). They are free downloads. They may take a while to download as they are each around 18MB in size. Check’em out below.

If you are new to the iPhone/iPad, these user guides can be indispensable. Even for advanced users, there are plenty of “I forgot the iPhone could do that” moments buried inside. And every year, the guide grows bigger and is quite the tome now.