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Articles by iPad tips
How to set up your new iPad the right way
Congratulations — you got a new iPad! Whether it’s the entry-level iPad that brings the essential features to an affordable price, the iPad Air with the powerful M1, the pocketable iPad mini or the top-of-the-line iPad Pro, you’ll want to set up your new device with the least amount of fuss. We’re here to help you do just that with a ton of little tips and tweaks that will make sure you’re off and using that new iPad as quickly as possible.
How to set up your new iPad the right way
Congratulations — you got a new iPad! Whether it’s the entry-level iPad that brings the essential features to an affordable price, the iPad Air with the powerful M1, the pocketable iPad mini or the top-of-the-line iPad Pro, you’ll want to set up your new device with the least amount of fuss. We’re here to help you do just that with a ton of little tips and tweaks that will make sure you’re off and using that new iPad as quickly as possible.
How to force iPhone or iPad reboot with simple Siri command
If your iPhone or iPad locks up, often you can get out of it by rebooting the device with a simple Siri command. It’s the easiest method I’ve found to get the handset or tablet going again when there’s a problem with the touchscreen, or the device is just misbehaving. Here’s all you have to do. iPhone reboot 101 Even the best computers lock up sometimes, and that includes iPhone and iPad. Fortunately, there are multiple options to force one of these devices to reboot.
The Best iPadOS Multitasking Tips and Tricks to Use Your iPad Like a Pro
Although its nowhere near as powerful as macOS, Apple has put considerable effort into improving multitasking on iPadOS. Let’s glance over the best tips and tricks that help you use the iPad like a pro. The company added quite a few elements to iron out multitasking woes on the iPad. One of the most effective such addition is the Shelf. Let’s start the list with it. 1. Use Shelf Shelf is essentially multi-window support for an app on iPad.
Top 15 Privacy and Security Settings iPhone and iPad Users Must Know
Everybody should be able to know how to be in full control of their privacy and security, especially in this day and age. While iPhone and iPad users should have a bit more peace of mind than Android users, developers, websites and even Apple still all collect personal information from your devices. To understand this in greater detail and learn ways to enhance your privacy and security even further on iOS, we’ve compiled plenty of options.
Pro Tip: How to reveal the Files sidebar in portrait view
Pro Tip: How to reveal the Files sidebar in portrait view Files may be clunky, but it's better than this. Photo: Phil Roeder/Flickr CC This is a simple tip, but until I worked it out it was driving me crazy. In landscape orientation, the iPad Files app’s sidebar is always present, making it easy to get to any favorite folder, location or label, pretty much instantly. In portrait, though, the sidebar disappears.
How to Access Control Center on iPad in iOS 12
iOS 12 brings all new gestures to the iPad. And this is just a year since we saw a big overhaul of iPad features. Basically, Apple has now brought gesture parity between the latest X-style iPhones and the iPad. Presumably, this is a preamble to the Face ID equipped, home button less, edge-to-edge iPads. Right now, we’re caught in the transitionary time. This means, new gestures to go home, use the Dock and of course, the Control Center.
How to Undo & Redo typing on your iPhone or iPad
While many of you already know how to undo and redo typing on your iOS device, I still keep coming across people who haven’t discovered this yet. Here’s how to undo or redo typing on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. To undo or redo something you’ve typed, copied, deleted, just shake your iPhone, and you’ll get a popup saying Undo Typing, with an Undo and a Cancel button. If you paste text and then shake your device, the alert will say Undo Paste.
iOS 12 brings trackpad mode to every iPhone and iPad
How-To Top stories Trackpads -- not just for the Mac any more. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac Users of 3-D Touch-capable iPhones, and of iPads in general, have long been able to use the devices’ fantastic trackpad mode. It’s a great way to quickly move the keyboard’s insert point (aka cursor) precisely where you want it — and it just got even better. In iOS 12, this neat trick comes to all iPhones, even those without 3-D Touch.
How to add sound to your iPhone or iPad screen recordings
iOS 11 added screen recording to the iPhone and iPad, letting you make movies from whatever is running on then screen. I use it to make video clips for how-tos, or to capture video and then create animated GIFs. But did you know that you can also use screen recording to copy a YouTube video? Or to make a screencast complete with a live voiceover? Here’s how. Screen Recording is built into iOS now, and is accessed from the Control Center.
Pro Tip: How to control the iPad video player with keyboard commands
The iOS video player is pretty full-featured, although most of its advanced tracks are hidden. Today we’ll take a quick look at what it can do, including how to control the entire app from a hardware keyboard. If all you do is play videos in full screen, then you’re probably missing out on some of the iOS video player’s neatest tricks.
How to add extra filter packs to the iPhone's Photos app
One lesser known ability of the Photos app on your iPhone is that is can use third-party filter packs. If you install a photo-editing app that supports them, then you can apply that apps filters without ever leaving the Photos app. This makes it super quick to add sophisticated effects to your pictures, and you can revert to the original photo at any time in the future. Today we’ll see how to use these filter packs, and look at a couple of great apps that have them.
Remove annoying clutter from iPad Spotlight searches
If you use Spotlight to find stuff on your iPhone or iPad, you’ll be familiar with the mess of results you get when you search. Maybe you’re searching for a note or an email about that really important thing, only the actual results you want are buried under a heap of nonsense from twitter, from YouTube, from all the Ebay classifieds you’ve viewed, and so on. The good news is, you can trim these results, eliminating the noise you don’t need.
How to really use bookmarks on iPhone and iPad
You probably already know how to save a bookmark on your iPhone or iPad, but you might not know just how many neat things you can do with them. You can customize your Safari home screen to show the bookmarks you want, but that’s just the beginning. Let’s find out how to really use bookmarks on your iPhone. This is the basic unit of bookmarking, so we’ll cover it first. To bookmark a web page, just tap the share arrow in Safari, then scroll along the bottom row of buttons until you find Add Bookmark.
How to really use bookmarks on iPhone and iPad
You probably already know how to save a bookmark on your iPhone or iPad, but you might not know just how many neat things you can do with them. You can customize your Safari home screen to show the bookmarks you want, but that’s just the beginning. Let’s find out how to really use bookmarks on your iPhone. This is the basic unit of bookmarking, so we’ll cover it first. To bookmark a web page, just tap the share arrow in Safari, then scroll along the bottom row of buttons until you find Add Bookmark.
How to use Split Screen on iPad
Ever since iOS 11, the iPad has had an amazing split-screen mode. It’s called Split View, and it lets you use two apps side-by-side. On certain iPads you can even float a third app over the top. Split View lets you drag and drop text, pictures, links, and almost anything else, between apps, just like on a Mac or PC. It’s also super easy to use. Let’s see how. First, let’s check the difference between Slide Over and Split Screen, or Split View. In Split View, two apps share the screen.
Musicians: Here's how to lock down your iPad to prevent accidents on stage
Apple’s iOS accessibility features might be hidden away in the Settings app, but they are useful for everyone. For instance, Guided Access lets you lock your iPhone or iPad so it can use only one app, and you can even disable parts of the screen just by drawing on them. If you’re looking for a feature similar to iPad guest mode, Guided Access can be a great way to limit app access for kids or individuals with specific needs.
Musicians: Here's how to lock down your iPad to prevent accidents on stage
Apple’s iOS accessibility features might be hidden away in the Settings app, but they are useful for everyone. For instance, Guided Access lets you lock your iPhone or iPad so it can use only one app, and you can even disable parts of the screen just by drawing on them. This is handy for giving the iPad to kids, or to people with impaired motor skills, but it is also fantastic for stage performers. A musician, for instance, might be using the iPad to produce or process their sound.
Pro Tip: Drag-and-drop text between apps on iPad
Do you want to grab a chunk of text from Safari and put it into your Notes app? Do you want to clip sections from a long Word document and comment on them in email? Do you just want to collect snippets of text for research? Then you should try drag-and-drop text on iPad. It’s so easy and useful to put two apps side-by-side on one screen, and drag text between them, that you’ll wonder how you got by without it.
Fine-tune your music with Visual EQ in GarageBand for iPad | Cult of Mac
One great recent addition to GarageBand for iOS is the Visual EQ, an equalizer that is about as far away from the 1980s-style bank of sliders as it’s possible to get. The Visual EQ also shows you a waveform of the actual sound you’re adjusting, so you can see as well as hear the effects immediately. This visual element, combined with a clever three-“band” EQ, makes this a very powerful tool for shaping your music.
Emergency Bypass lets selected contacts punch through Do Not Disturb | Cult of Mac
The iPhone’s Do Not Disturb feature really is great. It silences your phone on a daily schedule, so you never need to worry about being woken up by a Facebook alert, or some other useless beep. But maybe you want to be disturbed by certain people. Maybe your teenage kids are out late, or your better half is away on a trip. Is there a way to let their calls and texts punch through the Do Not Disturb shield? Well, yes, there is! It’s called Emergency Bypass, and here’s how to enable it.
AudioStretch slows down songs and videos to make learning music easier | Cult of Mac
AudioStretch is a “music transcription tool.” It’s a universal iOS app that slows down music, and/or changes its pitch, so you can learn to play songs. We’ve covered another of these, Capo Touch, before on Cult of Mac, but AudioStretch is both easier to use, and — in a recent update — added the ability to do its stuff with video. The very best way to learn to play a song is to transcribe it. This forces you to listen, and to work out not only the notes in the song, but how and where to play them.
How to use iOS 11's Files with (some) unsupported apps | Cult of Mac
iOS’ Files app is one of the best new features in iOS. It lets you move files from app to app almost as easily as in the Mac’s Finder. The problem is, not all apps support it. To use an app with Files, that app needs to either accept files dragged onto it via drag-and-drop, or it needs to integrate the Files picker.
How to squeeze the longest life from your iPhone battery | Cult of Mac
Thanks to batterygate, the good news is that Apple will now switch out the battery in your old iPhone for $29 instead of $79, a price so cheap it would be crazy not to do it. But how do you take care of that new battery to stop it going bad? The truth is, the lithium ion batteries in phones and notebook computers have a finite life. But you can prolong that life with a few easy tricks. Before you do anything else, you should check the health of your iPhone’s battery.
Slow iPhone? Here's how to check the health of your battery | Cult of Mac
With all the fuss about old, depleted batteries slowing down your iPhones, it might be a good idea to at least check the health of your iPhone’s battery. To do this, you can use a free tool called coconutBattery, an app that digs into your iOS and Mac devices to tell you how old they are, and how strong your battery is compared to when it was new.
These are all the things Spotlight can find on your iPhone and iPad | Cult of Mac
Spotlight is Apple’s search technology for Mac and iOS, and it can help you find almost anything. Not just stuff on your iPhone, either. Spotlight can also help you find nearby places, look up words in a dictionary, and even do currency and unit conversions, all from one search box. Let’s take a look at everything Spotlight can do on your iPhone or iPad.
How to search in a page or website in Mobile Safari | Cult of Mac
Ever since iOS 9, iOS has had a dedicated share extension to search the current web page in Safari. You just hit the sharing arrow, then choose Find in Page on the bottom row of options, and then you can type in your query. It works, and it works well, but it’s a very clunky method for doing something that requires a single keystroke (Command-F) on the Mac. Mobile Safari has two ways to get to the same page search. I mentioned one above, and it’s the most obvious.
How to make a killer Drummer track in GarageBand for iPad | Cult of Mac
Drummer is one of GarageBand’s best features. It’s a virtual drummer that comes up with entire drum parts for your song. Or rather, it’s 15 drummers, each of whom has a different style, from hard rock to Latin rhythms, to trap and dubstep, to the hippie Finn, with his cajon and hand claps. Let’s start with a new song, and add a Drummer track. Open up GarageBand, and tap the plus sign at top right to create a new song. Then, swipe left or right until you get to the Drummer, and tap one of the options.
How to quickly trim video on Mac and iOS | Cult of Mac
The secret of a good movie is in the editing. Well, the script, the lightning, the directing, the photography, and the acting are all important, but for home movies, you have little control over those. So it’s down to the edit. And the most basic of edits is to lop the ends off a clip, to trim video and make it shorter. Watching too-long clips is the equivalent of a conversation with someone who can’t ever get to the point. “Let me tell you about that time I fell out of the plane. It was a Tuesday.
5 ways to quickly switch apps on iPad with iOS 11 | Cult of Mac
In iOS 11, there are four ways to switch apps on the iPad. Five, if you count the old-school way: hitting the home button to return to the home screen, and tapping an icon to launch a different app. Some of these methods have been around a while, and have changed drastically in iOS 11. Others are brand new, and exclusive to the iPad. Today, we’re going to look at them all. This one has been around for a while, and is still super-useful.
How to zip files in iOS 11's Files app | Cult of Mac
Zipping files just got a whole lot easier on the iPad thanks to iOS 11’s new Files app. Now, instead of having to fire up a third party app and somehow get your files in there, you can use drag-and-drop, or other methods, from right inside Files, and then save the results back to Files. Today we’ll take a look at two zipping apps which work with Files to zip files in iOS 11, both with different approaches: Kpressor, and Zipped.
How to find your custom ringtones after iTunes dumped them
The latest version of iTunes — 12.7 — removes the App Store. That’s bad news for folks who like to keep backups of old iOS apps around, but good news for people who have bloat and clutter. But the update also removes all your custom ringtones, so you can’t manage them from your Mac. Don’t despair. You can still download purchased ringtones, and copy your own tones across from the Mac. It’s just not obvious how to do it any more.
How to find your custom ringtones after iTunes dumped them | Cult of Mac
The latest version of iTunes — 12.7 — removes the App Store. That’s bad news for folks who like to keep backups of old iOS apps around, but good news for people who have bloat and clutter. But the update also removes all your custom ringtones, so you can’t manage them from your Mac. Don’t despair. You can still download purchased ringtones, and copy your own tones across from the Mac. It’s just not obvious how to do it any more.
How to switch off Auto Brightness in iOS 11 | Cult of Mac
You’ve all been there. You’re sitting near a window or a lamp, reading an excellent article on your iPad — perhaps a well-written How-To from Cult of Mac — and your iPad’s screen Auto Brightness is going haywire. You slide open Control Center, and set it back where you want it, and continue reading. Then, you turn the iPad a little too far towards the light, and the screen brightness creeps up again.
How to see which apps are wasting your iPhone battery | Cult of Mac
Sometimes an app will get out of control, and eat up your battery even while it doesn’t seem to be active. Once, I had an iPad drained almost completely by a runaway instance of Skype. Or you may have an app that is supposed to run in the background, a synthesizer, or another music app, for example, and you just forgot you left it running, draining your iPhone battery. Or perhaps you just want to see how much battery your various apps use.
Audiobus keeps your music creations in perfect time | Cult of Mac
Audiobus, the iOS app that lets you route audio between apps on your iPad or iPhone, just got an update. The version number is 3.0.5, which belies the fact that Audiobus 3 just got one huge new feature: support for Ableton Link, which means that it will now keep tempo with all the other music apps on your iDevice. On the Mac, one tends to use one big DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to record and edit music. Apple’s own GarageBand or Logic are good examples.
How to zip and unzip files on iOS | Cult of Mac
Zipping files is easy on the Mac. You right-click on one or more selected files in the Finder, and click Create Archive. The files are turned into an easy-to-handle .zip file. On iOS it’s a bit trickier. Even in iOS 11’s new Files app there is no built-in support for zipping files up into a single package, or unpacking them again. To zip files in iOS, I use Readdle’s excellent Documents app.
How to find your purchased apps in iOS 11 | Cult of Mac
The Purchased tab in the iOS App Store may seem to have disappeared in iOS 11, but don’t worry — it has only moved. And got a little less useful. Whereas in iOS 10 and prior, your previously purchased apps were found in their own dedicated App Store tab (iPad) or above the list of app updates (iPhone), now they’re accessed by tapping the little silhouette of a head in a circle, which indicates your user account. The Purchases/Purchased section of the App Store is useful for several things.
How Apple made the Photos app even more private in iOS 11 | Cult of Mac
In iOS 11, developers have a new way to access your Photos library: write-only access. Instead of granting permission for an app to read and write to your Photos library, just so it can save the odd image, an app can now only be allowed to write — or save — images, without getting to poke around inside your library to see what else is there. It’s much more private, It’s a small change, but shows that Apple is slowly locking down more and more of your information to make it safer.
How to use the Universal Clipboard on iOS | Cult of Mac
Since last fall, your Mac and your iOS devices have shared a Universal Clipboard. That is, you can copy on one device and paste on another. It’s seamless, and incredibly useful. For instance, you could copy a shipment tracking number in Mail on your Mac, then paste it into the tracking app on your iPhone. Or you could take a screenshot on your iPhone, then paste it into a blog post you’re writing on your iPad. Universal Clipboard is so easy to use, you might have already used it without realizing.
How to share documents from the Files app in iOS 11 | Cult of Mac
We’ve been able to share and collaborate on iWork documents for a while, but in iOS 11 (and macOS High Sierra) you’ll be able to collaborate on any document, just by sharing it through iCloud Drive. To begin with, this will only work with Apple’s own apps, but third-party developers may add real-time collaboration features to their own apps. Here’s how to get started. Sharing is centered around iOS 11’s new Files app, the iOS version of the Mac’s Finder.
How to share your iCloud storage plan with family members | Cult of Mac
In iOS 11, you can share your iCloud storage with family members. This is a big deal, thanks to the new supersize iCloud plans, which make it a lot cheaper to buy a single 2TB plan and share it among all your family members. With all that storage available, you can keep a huge iCloud Photo Library, and take full advantage of the new Files app in iOS 11. Never again will you run out of storage on your iPhone, iPad or the MacBook you foolishly specced at just 128GB of storage space.
How to fix the iPhone No Service error while roaming | Cult of Mac
If you ever traveled to a foreign country with your iPhone or iPad, you may have come across the dreaded No Service error. This happens when you get off the plane, switch on your iPhone, and instead of connecting to a cellular network, your iPhone just spins its wheels and refuses to connect. Apple has a support page to help out, and there are a zillion forum pages offering advice, but none of them cover this one particular tip, which I discovered after hours of painful futzing with settings.
Wizibel makes videos for your music, so you don't have to | Cult of Mac
The rumors say that SoundCloud is on its way out. The company is laying off staff, while burning through streaming bandwidth with no real way to make any money. If you’re a musician, this is a big deal, because SoundCloud is where you share music, and where you go to hear other musicians’ music. It’s a mixtape and an audition reel combined. The smart move is to take your music to YouTube, because a) it’s not going away, b) it’s free, and c) it’s where everyone goes for free music anyway. The problem?
Quick tip: Using the awesome new iOS 11 Timer widget | Cult of Mac
If you’re using iOS 10 in an iPhone with 3D Touch, you can press on the timer widget in Control Center and pick from one of the preset timer shortcuts. In iOS 11, on the other hand, you get a full-featured, interactive timer widget that you can adjust, pause, and resume, all without ever launching the actual clock app. Let’s see it in action. To get to the Timer widget in iOS 11, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to enter Control Center.
Everything new in Control Center in iOS 11 beta 3 | Cult of Mac
The new iOS 11 beta (developer v3) has a whole bunch of neat tweaks, but the best might be the changes made to Control Center. It has a new animation, a new way to kill running apps, and a big improvement to the interactive widgets, including brightness and volume. Let’s start with an easy one.
How to bulk select and delete photos the easy way on iPhone | Cult of Mac
You know how to share, and how to delete photos from your iPhone and iPad, and you have no trouble selecting a bunch of photos at once in the photos app. But what if you want to select a ton of images at a time? Tapping on each, one at a time, to enable the check mark, gets old pretty fast. What if I told you that you could just swipe across the photos you wanted to bulk select instead? That would be be pretty great, you say? Yes it would. Let’s see how to do that.
Seamlessly download and copy YouTube videos to iPad | Cult of Mac
If you ever need to get a video off YouTube and onto your iPad or iPhone, then Softorino’s YouTube Converter 3 should be an instal-buy. It’s a $20 Mac app that grabs YouTube videos, converts them to a mac or iOS-friendly format, and then sends those videos wirelessly to your device. I’ve tried it out quickly and it’s actually even easier than it sounds. Softorino YouTube Converter (or SYC) can be tried out for 24 hours by requesting a key (given in exchange for your email address).
All you need to know about Slide Over, Split View in iOS 11 | Cult of Mac
Slide Over and Split View have been overhauled in iOS 11, making them more powerful but also more complex. Both have been available since iOS 9, but — without drag-and-drop — they were little more than a convenient way to view two apps at once. Now, Slide Over and Split View are essential, allowing you to drag pictures, documents, text, and URLs between apps, as well as work with up to three apps on screen at once, along with a video playing picture-in-picture.
How to kill pesky sharing popups in Safari on Mac and iOS | Cult of Mac
You know those supper-annoying bars that so often hover over a web page on your iPhone? The ones that offer sharing popups for social media sites that you never use? The ones that cover up half the text you’re trying to read? The ones that you hate so much you’d rather just close the browser tab than try to read the page through this aggressive frame of junk? Well, there’s good news for you all, because software engineer Alisdair McDiarmid hates them too.
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