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iOS 18 Tips, Tricks, How-Tos, News

How To: Edit Your Sent iMessages to Fix Spelling Errors and Other Mistakes

Apple finally lets us fix sent iMessages, and I can honestly say it's a game-changer. Editing messages after sending them can prevent miscommunication and allow you to fix embarrassing mistakes before the other person notices them. It's one of the Messages app's coolest new features, but there are some important things for you to know about how it works.

How To: Use Live Captions on Your iPhone for Real-Time Transcriptions of Any Audio — Calls, Videos, Podcasts, and More

With Apple's latest accessibility feature, you can get live transcriptions of anything you're listening to on or around your iPhone. Real-time captions work for phone calls, video conferences, FaceTime, music, podcasts, streaming media, movies, games, and more — even someone sitting right next to you talking.

How To: Stop Your iPhone's Side Button from Accidentally Ending Audio Calls Early

Whenever you're on an audio call in the Phone or FaceTime app and accidentally press your iPhone's Side button, the call ends immediately. It's a helpful feature for those who like to terminate calls that way, but it's flat-out annoying for everyone else who inadvertently ends calls prematurely. Now, everybody wins because you can choose what happens during calls when you lock your device.

How To: Apple Photos Has 20 New Features for iPhone That Make Your Life Easier

Apple gave its Photos app some serious muscle in a new update, and it's time to start flexing. Photos has so much power now that it may finally be time to ditch all your iPhone's other photo and video editing apps. You won't even need any third-party apps to remove backgrounds or lock private content from prying eyes because it's all included in the latest Photos upgrade.

How To: Apple's New Cutout Tool Magically Isolates Subjects and Removes Backgrounds from Images on Your iPhone

One of the most useful new features Apple included on iOS 16 lets you instantly lift the subject out of a photo, separating it from the background. Once extracted, you can paste, save, or drop the cutout wherever you want as a new image, and you can even make it a sticker in messaging apps.

How To: Tame Your iPhone's Lock Screen Notifications with iOS 16's Different Display Styles

You probably receive an overwhelming number of notifications on your iPhone every day — maybe even every hour — which can quickly clutter your lock screen. With Apple's focus on lock screen customization in iOS 16, there are now options that can reduce the screen space that lock screen notifications take up, giving you more room to enjoy all your different wallpapers.

How To: Major iPhone Update Finally Lets You Manage Past Wi-Fi Networks and Even View Their Passwords

For years, Android has provided easy ways to view all the Wi-Fi networks you connected to in the past, and you can even see the saved passwords in plain text. With iOS 16, Apple finally gave us a similar way to view saved Wi-Fi hotspots, copy their passwords, and remove old ones without being near their access points.

How To: These Auto-Redial Apps Can Call Busy Phone Lines Over and Over Again Until You Get Through

Some phone lines make it nearly impossible to get past the busy tone, whether it's a viral call-in giveaway, your state's unemployment office, your local post office during the holidays, or the repair office for a broken warrantied product you have. Thankfully, there are apps you can use to help break through the noise.

How To: Make Your iPhone Automatically Close Old Tabs So Safari Doesn't Become a Hot Mess

It's easy to accumulate hundreds of Safari tabs on your iPhone, which makes hunting for specific tabs more difficult, especially when they're spread across different groups. Having too many tabs can even slow down Safari itself. You can close all tabs in a group quickly, but not if you want to save some. To prevent this mess, Safari can automatically weed out the tabs it thinks you don't need.

How To: Assign Each App on Your iPhone a Background Sound to Set the Mood

You can play background sounds on your iPhone to help you focus, stay calm, or fall asleep, giving you a personal sound machine wherever you go. Even better, there's a way to set each of your apps to play one of Apple's six ambient soundscapes automatically. When you open the app, its assigned sound plays, then it stops when you exit or switch to another app.

How To: Safari Now Lets You Sync and Manage All Your Web Extensions Across Your iPhone, iPad, and Mac

We've had access to real Safari extensions on iPhone and iPad for a year, and they've been available on Mac for a lot longer than that. To install the same one on all your devices, you always had to find the app in the App Store, install it, and enable the extension on each device. Now, Apple is streamlining the process, making it easier to install and manage extensions across devices.

How To: Make Spoofed Calls Using Any Phone Number You Want Right from Your Smartphone

Spoofed phone calls originate from one source that's disguising its phone number as a different one, and you probably get these calls all the time. Maybe they're numbers from your local area code or for prominent businesses, but the callers are just hijacking those digits to fool you into picking up. Turns out, making a spoofed call is something anybody can do — even you.

How To: Protect Your Private Tabs with Face ID or Touch ID So Others Can't Snoop Through Your Browsing Secrets

Safari's private browsing mode on your iPhone won't sync to other Apple devices or remember your search history, AutoFill data, or visited webpages. Still, it doesn't stop anyone who accesses your iPhone from opening your private tabs. If you don't want anyone snooping through your private tabs, use Chrome instead so you can lock the tabs behind biometric authentication.

How To: There's an Easy Way to Type Fractions as Single Characters on Your iPhone's Keyboard

Whenever you need to type out a fraction on your iPhone, whether in a message, word document, presentation, math problem, recipe, or wherever else you need it, it's easy to use numbers and slashes. But there's a way to make fractions look more professional and easier to read straight from your keyboard.

How To: This Little-Known Gesture Will Change How You Use Maps on Your iPhone

You can double-tap most maps on your iPhone to zoom in, and tap once with two fingers to zoom out. And I'm sure you're more than familiar with the pinch gesture for zooming. But there's an even better way to zoom in and out on maps, and you can do it with one hand tied behind your back.

How To: This Is What Happens to Your iPhone Every Time You Turn On Low Power Mode

When you enable Low Power Mode on your iPhone, it's not always clear what measures it's taking to reduce battery drain and conserve power. Changes to energy-hungry features you use daily may be immediately noticeable, but some things you frequently use may be disabled or reduced without any apparent indicators.