Apple's codec for photos and videos in iOS 11, HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding), as well as the container, HEIF (High-Efficiency Image File Format), result in a reduction in size for pictures and movies without sacrificing quality. Seems like a win-win situation, but Window ...more
Apple's iOS 11 release promises many improvements and fresh ideas. One of those new ideas is an image codec called HEIF (similar to HEVC for videos), designed to reduce the space photos take up on your iPhone. But it's so new that it's already causing issues with compatibility ...more
You take a photo or video, send it to a friend, and they say, "Hey, I can't open this." More often than not, your friend won't be using an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac. Instead, they're likely trying to open the file with a non-Apple device. But this problem can be avoided ...more
Every iPhone Apple currently sells, including the brand new iPhone SE, ships with Portrait mode, injecting DSLR-like depth effects into your Camera app. If that's the shooting mode you use more than any other, it may feel tedious having to switch to "Portrait" from "Photo" eve ...more
Even though your iPhone's Camera app is fast and easy to use, its default settings prevent you from immediately accessing any other shooting mode aside from "Photo" with "Live Photo" on and no filter applied. But there is a way to make the Camera app remember what you prefer t ...more
With Touch ID enabled, your iPhone needs to scan your fingerprint before you can access your home screen or last app used. Before it unlocks, your iPhone might request that you press the Home button, adding an unnecessary step between you and your data. However, you can turn t ...more
With Apple's newest iOS software update, you can turn your iPhone into a smart display that's always on when you're not actively using it. So your iPhone can quickly transform into a bedside clock, digital photo frame, miniature HomePod, Live Activities tracker, widget-monitor ...more
While clicking random links on the internet probably isn't the best idea to begin with, now you can rest easy knowing that your iPhone won't repeatedly dial 911 after tapping a malicious link in Twitter, Facebook, or other apps that use iOS's WebView. The links in question, w ...more
While iOS has many strengths, in-app settings are not among them. Sure, third-party apps often come with a settings gear, but stock apps? No way. To change settings in Music, Photos, Camera, and other Apple apps, you'll need to leave the app. But there's a hidden trick to quic ...more
We might never truly know all of the colors behind old and classic black-and-white photos, but thanks to technology, we can get a pretty accurate colorization. Although Photoshop is a popular way to colorize these images, you can now use your iPhone, along with a nifty shortcu ...more
Without realizing it, you may be giving away the GPS coordinates of your home, workplace, school, and other important or secret locations. Unless you've blocked the feature on your iPhone, location data is stored in almost every photo and video you take, and anyone you share t ...more
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 background ...more
In most cases, when you create a movie project in iMovie for iPhone, you're starting with just a few media clips. There's no reason to select every photo or video at once, and that's likely a hard task anyway. Adding additional media footage to your movie project couldn't be a ...more
All of your partially written, unsent emails live in your "Drafts" folders, in limbo until the day they are sent off or deleted. In Apple's Mail for iPhone, you can access all drafts from all accounts in a combined "All Drafts" folder from the app's main Mailboxes list — but o ...more
The camera on models in the iPhone 11 series includes an ultra-wide lens to take wider images, Night mode for taking better-looking photos in low-light environments, and a 16:9 frame for shooting. With these new features comes a slightly redesigned interface in the Camera app, ...more
Gestures are a big deal on an iPhone X, XS, XS Max, XR, 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max. Without a Home button on Apple's super-premium smartphones, several actions had to be mapped to gestures instead, which impacts other areas of the system such as the Control Center. One exampl ...more
Apple is widely known for keeping a tight grip on iOS, disallowing open-source and third-party downloads. While there are many reasons for this, the three most frequently referenced are quality control, malware prevention, and of course—money. The number one reason why Apple ...more
Apple's own Photos app received some pretty amazing updates in iOS 11, but does iOS 12 have what it takes to one-up last year's Photos improvements? We think so. While there were eight new features revealed for the Photos app in iOS 11, including many Live Photos improvements ...more
Apple just upped its sticker game on iPhone and iPad. We've already had stickers available for Memoji, Fitness activities, and third-party iMessage apps, but only some could be used outside the Messages app. Now we can use stickers practically anywhere from the new stickers dr ...more
A new hack has reopened an 8-year-old iPhone security loophole that Apple thought it had fixed back with iPhone OS 2.2. This is not one of those times when a theoretical attack gets identified and blocked quickly by Apple. On the contrary, it's a hack that actually exists righ ...more
This video tells us the method to transfer photos from your iPhone to your Mac. In the first step, launch the image capture. Connect your iPhone to Mac via a USB cable. 'Download To' option is used for specifying the folder in which you want the downloaded files. 'Automatic Ta ...more
Thanks to iCloud and AirDrop, it's really easy to sync photos between an iPhone and a Mac. But if you have an Apple phone and a Windows computer, this process isn't quite as simple. Thankfully, Microsoft has just released a new iPhone app that makes it a breeze to move photos ...more
While the notch on Apple's newer iPhones started a wave of notches across the smartphone market, there are still plenty of users who don't like screen-obstructing zone up top, and you may be one of them. While it may soon disappear in future iPhone models, or at least get smal ...more
Google Images, TinEye, and other reverse image search engines can help you find where images appear on the internet. You can discover what TV show or movie an image comes from, who took a photo, and if the profile picture of someone you're talking to online is really them, amo ...more
In recent years, accessibility features on the iPhone have been given more attention by Apple, which means more people with disabilities can take advantage of everything iOS has to offer. These features are also beneficial for non-disabled users, and iOS 14 has an exciting one ...more
The default Camera app on your iPhone can take some pretty incredible photos during the day. Newer iPhone models can even make nighttime shots look good. But you can't just point and shoot if you want to capture some pretty spectacular fireworks photos on July 4th, New Year's ...more
There are some important new features in the Photos app on iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 that will streamline editing, give your pets more recognition, help you learn about the world you've captured, and even add a bit of fun to your day. There are even a few hidden tricks that may sur ...more
You can take a photo on your iPhone with just one tap or press, but you can also use the Camera app hands-free for more impressive images. Doing so lets you take more detailed selfies, include your whole group in the frame, or get steadier results in Night mode — and it's easy ...more
Apple's iOS 14 introduced a new world of iPhone customization thanks to its updated widgets that can live on both the home screen and Today View. While they're incredibly useful, they're not very interactive, they restrict what's shown, and you can't resize them afterward. How ...more
When you tap on a URL link in a text, email, or wherever, your iPhone's default reaction will be to open it up in Safari, and there's no way to change this in the settings. However, there is a way you can work around this to open up links in Chrome instead. Even if you acciden ...more
If you've ever wanted to turn your favorite GIF into a live wallpaper for your iPhone or even just make it a 3D Touch-friendly Live Photo that you can share, there's a super simple way to do so. Using the Giphy app for iOS, you can convert any GIF found on Giphy's website int ...more
The iPhone has included a real-world magnifying glass called "Magnifier" since iOS 10. Still, it remained relatively obscure until iOS 14 when it received significant upgrades such as a new interface, hideable controls, a customizable toolbar, improved filters management, mult ...more
You don't need to take screenshots or make screen recordings to save photos and videos from other users on Instagram. While Instagram doesn't offer an official way to download others' posted content, dozens of shortcuts are available for iPhone that can do just that. But which ...more
Live Photos are a fun way to relive memories, but there's a problem: unless you're only friends with Apple users, sharing Live Photos isn't quite as fun. Without a third-party converter, you can't share your Live Photo in all its moving glory. That is, until iOS 13, where you ...more
Love them or hate them, Live Photos have their place. The problem is, they're always on, requiring you to disable the feature every single time you open the Camera app. At least, that's how Apple has things set by default — but you can change that with just a few taps. To sta ...more
Your iPhone's Camera app isn't the only place you can use Portrait mode for selfies. An easy-to-miss feature built right into iOS lets app developers leverage Apple's powerful Portrait mode effect in their own apps, so you can add a shallow focus effect to photos and videos wh ...more
I've been using the Photo Sphere Camera from Google on all of my Android devices ever since it came out on Jelly Bean 4.2, which lets me create riveting 360° panoramic images. Apple has its own built-in panoramic mode, but it only takes 240° images, and I've never found any s ...more
Cropping images and videos on your iPhone has always been kind of clunky in the Photos app, but Apple just made the process better with the iOS 17 update. And it also works for iPad on iPadOS 17. Before, you would open the image or video in Photos, hit "Edit" from the toolbar ...more
Social media apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok have plenty of editing tools that go beyond the basics, but there are still a lot of things they can't do. So if you want to apply interesting, unique effects to your photos and videos for social media, you'll need to add ...more
I have over 400 photos on my iPhone, and I don't even know where half of them came from. Scrolling through all of those pictures is a pain in the ass, but it's not nearly as bad as trying to actually find an old image. Organization is not my strong suit, so I'm definitely not ...more
There are a ton of cool things you can do with your iPhone's camera in iOS 7, from taking burst photos to bouncing the camera open and taking nice parallax-friendly wallpapers. However, nothing tops the camera's super secret hidden feature—turning you into a spy photographer. ...more
Live Photos capture the seconds before and after you take a photo, creating a fuller and also unique moment to share with friends and family. Unfortunately, it has been nearly impossible to share Live Photos with non-iPhone users — until now. Thanks to iOS 13, you can easily c ...more
Snapchat is great for sharing and receiving pictures that we don't want "living" for too long, but sometimes we'd like to hold onto those memories, whether the other party wants us to or not. Previously, we've shown a way to taking screenshots of incoming Snapchats in iOS 7 w ...more
Whether it becomes mandatory or not to show your COVID-19 vaccination card at events, restaurants, bars, hotels, airports, and other public places, it's a good idea to digitize the paper card on your smartphone so that it's always with you. It's also wise to give yourself quic ...more
When you want to post a breathtaking landscape or picture-perfect portrait that you just took with your DSLR camera to Instagram, Facebook, or some other social platform, there's an easy way to do so — even if you don't have a computer handy, which is typical when you're out a ...more
There's a quick way to see who you or somebody else has been chatting with the most in the Messages app for iOS and iPadOS. More specifically, it shows which conversations have the most attachments, such as photos and videos, giving you an idea of which chats are the most acti ...more
We're pumped for iOS 13 and all of the fresh features and changes that come with it. Developer beta 3 came with new features in the double digits, including AR eye contact in FaceTime and mouse cursor size customization. Developer beta 4, released today, has a few more additio ...more
Have you ever taken a photo to share with a friend, only to realize it was actually a Live Photo? Maybe you said something embarrassing in the background, or perhaps you moved the camera out of frame onto a subject you don't want your friend to see. Luckily, making a Live Phot ...more
With so many wireless iOS networking apps for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch available, there’s very little reason to connect any of these devices to iTunes, except to update the software. Besides, importing and exporting photos using iTunes has never been one of the best fe ...more
While it may not be an obvious feature, Apple actually built a way into iOS that lets you hide specific pictures and videos in the Photos app that you want to keep on the down-low, for your eyes only. If you show off your photos a lot or stream slideshows to your TV, this is a ...more
The "Albums" tab in Photos is great for sorting through the images and videos on your iPhone since you can narrow things down by your recent pics and recordings, apps used, media types, people, places, and so on. If you never look at all of those folders, however, it could fee ...more
If you've got a MacBook, I'm sure you've spent some time messing around with the Photo Booth app. Who would have thought that adding simple effects like Comic Book or Stretch could make a selfie look so hilarious. Photo Booth is available for all Mac OS X computers running 10. ...more
One of the more interesting improvements to the Photos app in iOS 11 includes a way to drag and drop a photo from one album into another album. In fact, you could even drag and drop multiple photos at the same time. And this is not an iPad-only feature — it works just as well ...more
There are tons of different ways to download videos and GIFs from Twitter onto your iPhone for offline viewing, but frankly, they all kinda suck. You might have to download a third-party app or copy a link and paste it into a random website — and while they work, there are bet ...more
Your iPhone's Photos app just got a major new feature that lets you edit multiple photos and videos simultaneously. That means you no longer have to try and remember all the adjustments made in one image or video to try and get the same look in another photo or video. This ma ...more
Learn how to delete photos from an iPod Touch, iPod, iPhone, or any kind of iTouch. The trick is to hook it up to your Windows PC or Mac and use iTunes to sync with it. You'll then be able to go to the photos tab to remove specific photos from your iPod/iTouch device. On on i ...more
If you have a ton of photos and videos on your iPhone, backing up to iCloud is probably a no-go since it only provides 5 GB of free storage. Yes, you can buy more storage, but who wants to do that? And what happens if you run out of storage, stop backing up, and your phone get ...more
When a photo or video is just too sensitive to leave laying around in your Photos app, you'll want to either delete it for good or hide it away in safe, secure location on your iPhone. As for the latter, Apple actually has a few tools available to make photos and videos hidden ...more
It's time to step up your selfie game, especially if all of your selfies tend to have the same vapid look and feel. There are plenty of techniques for better selfie-taking, and I've already shown you a few iPhone tricks, like making yourself look thinner and using hand gesture ...more
Hours after iOS 11.4.1 beta 4 was released on Monday, June 25, Apple's webpage for its public beta software programs was unavailable because of an "update." Sure enough, that meant the public beta for iOS 12 was being prepped to drop shortly thereafter, which is exactly what h ...more