iOS Tip 156 - Hide Widgets & Notifications

With iOS 10 came the removal of Slide to Unlock, which now if the slide right gesture is repeated sends you to the Today view Widgets screen complete with weather, calendar events, tabloids and news, Siri app suggestions, stocks, maps, and whatever optional widgets you have enabled on the iPhone or iPad. This Widget screen is accessible from the lock screen by default on any iOS 10 device.

If you don’t want widgets available on the lock screen - you’d prefer to maintain more privacy and not reveal anything about the device itself let alone the calendar or app suggestions, or notifications. For any reason, you can disable and hide the widget section of the lock screen completely

This works to disable the Today view, widgets, and Notification view with any iPhone or iPad running iOS 10 or newer:

1. Open the “Settings” app on iPhone or iPad and then go to ‘Touch ID & Passcode’
2. Under the “Allow Access When Locked” section, toggle the switches next to “Today View” and “Notifications View” to the OFF position
3 . Exit out of Settings and lock the device again, swiping over will now do nothing

Note that you will still have access to widgets, Today view, and notifications from an unlocked iPhone or iPad, just not from the lock screen.

iOS Tip 155 - Prepare for iOS 10

iOS 10 releases Tuesday September 13th. Are your ready?

BEFORE you download and install the update: BACKUP YOUR DATA and then do a “spring” cleaning. Wait a couple of days after the release to ensure there aren’t any issues with the new iOS.

Before you do anything major such as upgrading your device you need to make sure that you have a backup just in case things don't go smoothly. You can either back up your data to iCloud, or if you don't have enough space you can take the old-school road and connect your iPhone or iPad to your computer and do the backup through iTunes.

Details on how to carry out a backup can be found here.

SPRING CLEAN YOUR DEVICE
Chances are good that your iPhone or iPad has accumulated a lot of junk over the months and years, so what better time to get rid of it than now. While iOS 10 doesn't need as much free space to install as earlier releases, getting rid of apps that you no longer use -- or perhaps have never used -- makes good sense.

iOS Tip 154 -Free up Space on iOS device

Delete the App to clear out caches, data etc.

There are two types of “Documents & Data” stored on iPhone and iPad, both of which can take up space on a device. One is usually app specific caches and other related app data, and the other is iCloud related files for an app. The fact they share the same name but have different functions, and are references in different sections of iOS Settings, is a little confusing, but they are different.

The “Documents & Data” associated with an iOS app include things like caches, app data, preferences, login details, and assorted other app-specific information. Most of this data is expendable and in many situations for many apps that have large Documents & Data storage consumption, the data tends to be very heavy on caches. This is typically the type of Documents and Data on an iPhone or iPad that users want to remove to free up some space.
The simplest way to delete Documents & Data on an iPhone or iPad is by removing the app and then re-downloading it again. That may not make a lot of sense, but for the time being Apple offers no method in iOS to manually delete caches and app data, so instead if you want to delete that app data, you have to delete the app entirely.
Keep in mind that when you delete an app, and then re-download it, you will likely lose whatever data (game levels), logins, and other saved details from that app. Do not do this if you don’t have login information saved elsewhere, and do not delete an app or its documents and data caches if you have important data stored within that app. You should back up your iOS device before beginning so that you can restore in the event you mess something up.
1 Open the “Settings” app in iOS
2 Go to “General” and then go to “Storage & iCloud Usage”
3 Go to “Manage Storage” under the ‘Storage’ section
4 Find the application(s) that have the ‘Documents & Data’ you want to delete (for example, Twitter is a 64MB app but can often take up several hundred MB with its Documents and Data), then tap on that app and choose “Delete App”
5 Now go to the “App Store” and search for and re-download the app you just deleted
6 After the app has finished re-downloading, if you return to the same Storage screen you will find it now consumes much less space because the documents and data has been cleared out

(keep in mind that deleting and redownloading an app also will update it to the latest version available, so don’t do this if you want to keep using an older version of an iOS app)

iOS Tip 153 - What Your Phone Knows About You

Discover what your phone knows about you:

Your iPhone is always gathering data on you in the background —be it the apps you're using the most, how much data you're churning through...or even where you are/were. To see what we mean,head toSettings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Frequent Locations. Here you can see not just where you've been, but how long you've spent in each place

iOS Tip 152 - Share Audio Messages

The visual voicemail area of the Phone app now has a share button! You can send the audio of the message to a ton of apps—Email, Notes, Messages or Facebook Messenger (to send to others!), Voice Memos (to edit), even biz apps like Basecamp and Slack. Or shoot it to Dropbox to save in the cloud and on your desktop as an .m4a (MPEG 4) audio file—we call that a "forever blackmail." It's also a quick way to make voice memos to yourself when you can't access your phone; simply transfer your own message to other apps.

Open Voicemail on your iPhone, tap on the caller, tap on the Share icon, then tap to Share on the App of your choice.

iOS Tip 151 - Drift Off to Music or Lectures

iBooks in iOS has a built-in sleep timer that can automatically pause playback after a specified amount of time, which is great for listening to an audiobook as you go to sleep (tap the Moon button below the volume slider). What if you prefer listening to content that’s not in iBooks, like music or a college lecture? To set a sleep timer that works for Music, iTunes U, or any other app that plays audio, open the Clock app and tap the Timer button. Next, tap When Timer Ends (iPhone) or the selected sound (iPad), scroll to the end of the list of sounds, and select Stop Playing. When you’re ready to listen as you drift off to sleep, start the timer just before or right after you press Play in your audio app.

Watch the Rio Olympics Live on iPhone or iPad

You can easily watch any of the 2016 Rio Olympic games and competitions live right from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch (or Android too, but we’re obviously focusing in iOS), meaning you can watch any game and any country and any sport you want, you don’t have to wait for the evening highlights. You don’t even need a cable TV package, any iOS device will do.

All you need to do to watch live footage of any current Rio Olympic games is to download the NBC Sports app. Anyone can then watch live footage of the 2016 Olympics from within the app, it’s that easy.
• Get the NBC Sports app here from the iOS App Store
Just launch the NBC Sports app, go to the “Live and Upcoming” tab, and browse through the currently active games. Tap on what you want to see live, and away it goes, the live stream of the event will start immediately. It’s that easy.

You’ll also want to login to a local authorized TV or cable provider, which extends the length of time you can watch live coverage for beyond the 30 minutes. Just about every general TV provider in the USA is included, so whether you’re a member of a cable monopoly or a smaller provider it’s likely going to be in the provider list.