iOS Tip 119 - Undo Slow Motion Video

Capturing a slow motion video with the iPhone camera is great, and it’s a wonderful effect for many events and scenes you’re recording, unless of course you didn’t mean to record the video in slow motion in the first place. Additionally, sometimes you may have changed your mind after recording a slow motion video and want to change the movie back to regular speed. Whatever the case, converting anything captured in slow motion back to a regular speed video on the iPhone is quite easy.

This works with all slow motion recorded video regardless of the capture speed. Once you have converted the video, if you share the newly regular speed movie it can not be made into a slow motion video again unless the original file is modified.

Using the same adjustment tool to change the portion of video that is maintained in slow motion you can also remove the slow motion effects, effectively converting a video back to regular speed:

Open the Photos app and locate and tap on the slow motion video you want to convert to regular speed

Tap on the “Edit” button

Use the two little sliders in the slow motion timeline to shrink the slow motion portion of the timeline until they join into one, eliminating all slow motion from the video

Tap on “Done” to save the changes and convert the video to regular speed

Now that the video is saved at regular speed you can share it, upload it to social media, or just keep it on your iPhone as a normal speed movie.

There are other ways of converting slow motion video as well, including using iMovie and uploading to various services, but using the built-in Photos app movie adjustment tool is by far the simplest way and it requires no additional apps or downloads. This does require a modern version of iOS however, and earlier versions of iPhone and iPad without the proper camera support won’t have the feature as part of iOS at all.

iOS Tip 118 - Sharing Notes

You can do a lot with the new Notes (see also Tip 104 Drawing Tools) app for iPhone and iPad. You can even send links, locations, photos, videos and much more to a new or existing note from a whole bunch of different places. This can be super convenient if you're brainstorming ideas and collecting information or inspiration for a new project.

The share feature works with a host of stock iOS apps such as Safari, Maps, Photos, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and can even link to content in Apple Music and Podcasts. It also appears to work seamlessly for Google Chrome, Google Maps and photo files on your Google Drive.

It works the same for each app once you get to the Share pop-up window. NOTE: You phone must be updated to iOS9 or later to use these features, and your Mac must be running OS X El Capitan or later to sync them. If you're using an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, you can use 3D Touch to preview the links in the Notes app.

Send a link from Safari to Notes:

1. Launch Safari from your Home screen
2. Browse to the page you intend to share.
3. Tap the Share icon. It's the box with the arrow pointing up on the bottom toolbar.
4. Tap the Notes icon.
5. Enter text you want to accompany the link.
6. Choose the note you want to send the link to, or choose to send it to a new note.
7. Tap Save.

The next time you open that note in the Notes app, the link will be added to the bottom of the document. When you click onthe link it, it will open in Safari. This is the same process you would use for Google Chrome or any other browser that supports sharing to Notes. Notes, however, will use Safari to load links by default.

iOS Tip 117 - Replace Frayed Cables

Just before the New Year, Fox News reported that an iPhone 6 Plus allegedly caught fire while it was charging. Now this isn't the first such report that I’ve heard of, but when I looked at the images something struck me - how ratty looking the charging cable was.

Here's a screen grab of the image in question:

Now before you all jump to tell me how bad Apple's cables are, save yourself the typing. I know I use and sell their products.

Once frayed they're potentially dangerous. An iPhone charger puts out 5 volts at 5 watts/1 amp (an iPad charger puts out 12 watts/2.1 amps), and while that doesn't sound like much, it's more than enough power to cause overheating and the beginnings of a fire. On top of that, a frayed cable can also cook the battery by causing a short circuit, which again can result in a fire.

Apple recommends that you charge its devices using genuine Apple chargers and cables. If you're going to replace old charger or cables, do so with either a genuine Apple part or a decent third-party product (preferably one featuring the "Made for iPhone" logo).

I can't comment on whether the cable had anything to do with the fire in the report, but I certainly would not use a cable in that state. I seen cables that have been repaired but that’s usually a temporary solution. The safest thing to do is to replace any damaged cables.

iOS Tip 116 - Remind Me Later Siri

Get Siri to Remind You About What You’re Looking At Right Now

1 Load a web page, article, email, or something similar onto the iOS screen that you wish to be reminded about
2 Summon Siri as usual by holding down the Home button (or using Hey Siri if you have the hands-free feature enabled)
3 Tell Siri “Remind me about this (when) at (time)”
4 Siri will confirm to remind you about the item or event, if the reminder is about a webpage, the webpage will be saved as the article, if it’s about an email, the email will be saved as the reminder, etc

That’s it, the reminder will be set as usual.

iOS Tip 115 - Mute Siri

Enable Siri Muting & Unmuting with the Hardware Switch on iPhone & iPad

Open Settings and go to “General” then to “Siri”. Choose “Voice Feedback” and select “Control with Ring Switch” (yes, the Mute switch on the side of the iPhone and iPad is referred to as the ‘Ring Switch’ here, but it’s the mute button you know and love)
Allow mute switch to silence Siri voice feedback

Leave Settings and activate Siri with the mute switch enabled, Siri will respond in text and on screen only, without blabbing the answer to the world
Siri works exactly the same as it did before, but you won’t hear any voice feedback if the mute switch is toggled on, even if you use the Hey Siri command handsfree from afar.

iOS Tip 114 - Add Websites to you Home Screen

With the new iOS one of the nicest features of the iPad and iPhone is the ability to bookmark frequently used websites directly to the Home Screen. FaceBook, LinkedIn and the mobile versions of Windows Live, Yahoo and the various Google sites are all useful to have as instant access shortcuts. These are just a few of the many sites you can add to your home screen. Sites without this feature you won't have the option to "Add To Home Screen".

Open Safari, navigate to the web site you're interested in adding, Tap on the Share icon, and in the 2nd row of icons (if available) will be the Add To Home Screen button.

iOS Tip 113 - Sign Documents Quickly

Sign Documents on iPhone & iPad from eMail Quickly

Have a contract, agreement, or service form emailed to your iPhone or iPad that you need to sign quickly? Perfect, because now you can digitally sign and return a document directly from the Mail app of iOS. The Mail signature feature lets you quickly sign a document attached to an email and send it back on it’s way without ever having to leave the mail app, the entire signing and returning process is very fast and easy thanks to the Markup feature set.

The Markup (see iOS Tip 112) feature requires iOS 9.0 or a later version installed on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. The rest is easy and handled in the email client. If you want to try it out email yourself a PDF file, an image, or some document that could be signed – we’re just testing so it doesn’t actually need to be an official contract or anything, the Markup feature works with nearly all mail attachments. And yes, this works not only with attachments sent to you, but also to attachments you want to send out.

1. Open the email containing the document to sign, tap on the document attachment as usual to preview it within the Mail app then tap the toolbox icon, lower right corner
2. Tap on the Signature button in the lower right corner of the Markup preview

3. Use a finger on the touch screen to sign the document as usual, then tap on “Done”

4. Place the digital signature into the appropriate location on the document to sign, you can resize the signature if necessary by using the blue buttons to grow or shrink the signature, then tap on “Done” when finished to insert the signed document back into the same email as a reply

5. Write the email reply as appropriate and tap the “Send” button to send the freshly signed document back on it’s way to the original sender

Is that easy or what? No need to print anything, no need to scan anything, and there’s no need to use the signature feature on the Mac either, the entire process can be handled in iOS. The document can be signed and returned in just a few seconds.

You can also attach a document to a fresh email, sign that, and send it on it’s way too, so you don’t have to just sign and return documents attached to existing emails. This means that if you have a PDF document attachment you saved to iCloud you could attach and sign that using the same markup feature as well.

Of course if you don’t have the latest versions of iOS, you can rely on the Mac to use a very similar feature and digitally sign documents using the Mac Trackpad in OS X. The Mac approach is just as effective, and much earlier versions of the Mac Preview app even support scanning a signature with the Mac camera, meaning no matter what era of Apple hardware you’re using, you should find a solution for signing documents electronically and then returning them quickly, without ever having to use a printer, fax machine, or scanner.