Luke is a senior writer at iMore and often describes himself as an "Apple user on a budget." When he isn't playing video games (Apple Arcade included), he's typically playing disc golf, taking photos, or fiddling with his favorite tech. Follow him at @LukeFilipowicz on Twitter.
What you see when you first glance at the iPhone or iPad keyboard are the regular letters, numbers, and symbols you're most likely to use in everyday communication. There's a whole lot more, however, lurking just beneath the surface, including accented (diacritic) characters, ligatures, extended punctuation, and special symbols. Accents include acute, grave, circumflex, caron/wedge,...
In addition to letting you buy and read ebooks, iBooks lets you make notes, highlight text, save bookmarks, and even organize your books and PDFs into collections. iBooks syncs all this data between all your iPhones, iPads, and Macs so you see the same thing across all your devices. However, if you find that iBooks isn't syncing your data like it should, here's how to enable it! How...
Action extensions, part of extensibility, let apps share their functionality with other apps installed on your iPhone or iPad, making your workflow much easier to manage! Here's how to setup and use action extensions on iPhone and iPad.
Apple Pay doesn't just make it easy to purchase items in-store and online, but also to keep track of your purchases. You can view recent transactions in Passbook, and, depending on whether or not your credit card and bank support it, a longer transactional history in Settings. Here's how! How to view recent Apple Pay transactions with Passbook Launch the Passbook app on your iPhone...
Apple makes it easy to add any and all of your supported credit and debit cards to Apple Pay. If, however, you lose, cancel, or change a card for any reason, you'll need to remove it. Luckily, Apple makes it just as easy to to that. How to delete a card from Apple Pay on iPhone and iPad Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad that contains the Apple Pay card you need to...
Part of what makes Apple Pay so fast and easy for online purchases is that it knows exactly where to bill your and where to send your purchases. That saves you the effort of having to type them out each and every time you buy something. But it also means you need to keep them accurate and up to date. That way, when you buy all the things, they'll know just where to send them. How to...
Apple makes it incredibly easy to get started with Apple Pay by letting you quickly link it to your existing iTunes credit or debit card. Your bank still has to support Apple Pay, of course but, if they do, you can setup both online and in-store mobile payments with just a few taps. How to link your iTunes payment method to Apple Pay in just a few taps Launch the Passbook app on an...
Apple Pay lets you use multiple credit and debit cards, so you can easily switch between them when you want to make a transaction. The default credit or debit card, however, is always the fastest and easiest to use. So, you'll want to make that card the default. Luckily, Apple Pay makes that fast and easy to do as well. How to choose a default credit card for use with Apple Pay...
Apple Pay lets you make in-store purchases with your iPhone, and online purchases with your iPhone or iPad, with just a touch of the Home button or the tapping out of a passcode. It makes it easy to start ditching your wallet for your device. All you have to do is add your credit or debit cards. How to set up your existing iTunes credit or debit card with Apple Pay Assuming it's...
iOS 8 brings with it the ability to use custom third party keyboards on your iPhone or iPad. Whether you prefer swiping over typing or just feel like the built-in keyboard holds you back, you now have an option! All you've got to do is download some keyboards from the App Store, activate them, and you've got a customized iOS experience! How to download and activate third party...
iOS 8 brings with it a brand new way to type on your iPhone and iPad. QuickType is a new type of predictive keyboard that gets smarter as you use it. Not only that, since QuickType is contextually aware of your conversation, it can even present you with an answer to a question someone asked so you spend even less time typing out responses. And depending on who you're corresponding with...
One of the most popular new features of iOS 8 is the ability to use custom third party keyboards on your iPhone and iPad. Once you find the perfect keyboard for you, odds are you'll want it to be your go-to default for everything. Luckily, there's an easy way to set it as your default so you don't have to toggle back and forth each time you want to use it. How to set a custom...
iCloud Drive is Apple's solution to document and file management across iOS and Mac. If you have an iCloud account, you can use iCloud Drive. Subscriptions range from free all the way to $19.99 a month, depending on your storage needs. If you aren't sure where to start, we can walk you through the set up process and how to start using iCloud Drive! How to enable iCloud Drive...
Calendar subscriptions let you stay up to date on everything from your team schedule to national holidays to network programming. The iPhone and iPad let you subscribe to any calendar that provides a compatible URL. As long as you have the link for the subscription, you're good to go. How to add calendar subscriptions to your iPhone or iPad Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or...
The Calendar app for iPhone and iPad offers several different ways to view your events and appointments. If you have a busy day ahead of you, list or day view may be best. If you're trying to get a good idea of what your next several weeks are going to be like, month view on the iPad lets you view everything in a glance. However, there are slight differences in how Calendars for iPhone...
The Calendar app on the iPhone and iPad can keep track of all your events and appointments, all in one place. But it doesn't have to keep them all in the same calendar. If you prefer to keep your work life and personal life separate, or to have a specific calendar for kids activities, or a special vacation, or for anything else, you can easily do so. Since each calendar gets its own...
Tired of typing out long words, names, email addresses, web addresses, or entire sentences over and over again? Well then, save yourself some time and effort and set up iOS keyboard shortcuts for any and all of the text you type regularly. By default, the iPhone and iPad ship with "omw" as a shortcut for "On my way!" but you can create and customize any shortcut you want. What's more,...
If you don't want to use Touch ID to unlock your iPhone 5s you can always go back to using a numeric or alphanumeric passcode whenever you'd like. Perhaps Touch ID just doesn't work that well for you, or you don't trust it, whatever the reason, here's how to go back to using a regular passcode again:
Touch ID is a super convenient way to unlock your iPhone 5s while keeping it secure at the same time. You can also use it to make App Store and iTunes purchases by default. However, if you've registered other family member's prints and you don't want them to be able to buy things on your account, or if you're just not comfortable with Touch ID purchases, you turn off iTunes purchases...
You can defeat the blackguards without spending a bunch of money!