Our favorite tricks and hacks for
iPad and iPhone
Perhaps you are already an iOS master. Or
maybe you consider yourself a novice. Either way, we feel confident that at
least some of the tips for iOS 6 that we present here will be new to you. And
we hope you love them and benefit from them as much as we do.
Spread the word
1.
Let your device read aloud Enabling the Speak option makes it possible for your iOS device to
read aloud any selectable text. Launch the Settings app, tap General,
and then choose Accessibility. Scroll down to Speak Selection,
and tap to turn it on.
Now, go into any app
where you can highlight text. You options include Mail, Notes, Safari, and many
others. Select some text, and you’ll see a new option appear in the contextual
menu (you may have to tap the right arrow to view more options). Just tap the Speak
command, and your iOS device will start reading the text aloud to you.
The
Emoji keyboard lets you insert fun symbols
2.
Enable the Emoji keyboard Perhaps you have seen the iconographic Emoji symbols in email
messages, iMessages, and tweets, and wondered how the heck people managed to
type them. Maybe you’ve mistakenly assumed that you need to purchase a
third-party app to gain access to those special symbols.
You don’t: Apple
treats the Emoji symbols as an international keyboard. Launch Settings, and
navigate to General ª Keyboard ª International Keyboards. Then tap Add
New Keyboard and find Emoji. Now open an app where you can type some txt.
Next to the spacebar, you’ll see a
little globe icon. Tap it to switch between your regular keyboard and the Emoji
one, which contains many tabs full of different characters. Tap those
characters to insert them wherever you would like. (If you have many
international keyboards, tap and hold the globe to bring up a menu of all your
options.)
3.
Make Emoji speak
For real fun, type in a bunch of Emoji symbols, select them all, and then tap
the Speak button. You’ll hear the often-entertaining names of each symbol read
in sequence.
Picture perfect
Set
yourself free from the confines of left-to-right-only panoramas
4.
Snap photos while shooting videos You’re using your iPhone 5 to capture a video of a magical moment,
and you wish that you could snap a photo at the same time. Don’t stop
recording! Just tap the camera button, which appears on the screen in addition
to the shutter button as you film. This function uses the iPhone’s slightly
less impressive video sensors instead of its true photo sensor, but the photos
should still turn out pretty nicely. Note that this tip doesn’t work on older
iPhones.
5.
Use reverse panorama Speaking of tips that work only with certain iPhones, here’s one
that will matter just to folks who have the iPhone 4S or newer in other words,
an iPhone that supports taking panoramic photos.
Normally, the Camera
app prompts you to take such photos from left to right. To reverse that
direction, just tap once on the panorama guide to flip it to the opposite side
of your screen.
Siri’s here to help
6.
Use the ‘in transit’ cue Ask Siri to help you find an address with a couple of extra words
at the end, as in: “Give me directions to San Francisco International Airport
via transit.” In response, iOS will open the Maps app and display the routing
pane, which lets you choose which third-party app you’d like to sue to supply
your directions. Attentive readers will know that Google Maps is included among
these routing apps, which means that you can actually use this trick to get
directions via Google Maps from Siri.
7.
Choose Siri’s audio options If your automobile has a built-in speakerphone, or if you carry a
Bluetooth accessory that has a microphone and speakers, you can choose which
one Siri listens to fro commands. When you click and hold the iPhone’s Home
button, you’ll see a speaker icon to the right of the main Siri button. Tap it,
and you’ll get a menu of the various sound inputs that your iPhone can sue;
select the one you want, and Siri will listen using that microphone and, if
possible, give feedback via those speakers.
Siri
can help you find answers to all of your movie trivia questions
8.
Make Siri your own IMDb You probably already know that you can ask Siri what’s playing at
movie theaters near you. But Siri is also an expert on movies. You can ask
about your favorite films, and you can make Siri do more of the legwork for you
when, say, you’re curious about which films specific actors have appeared in
together. You might ask. “What movies start both Susan Sarandon and Tim Curry?”
And Siri will reply with The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Rugrats In
Paris.
9.
Get movie reviews
Not sure if a given movie is worth your time? Just ask Siri: “Is Rugrats In
Paris any good?” Siri will reply with a review from Rotten Tomatoes.
10.
Correct Siri Sometimes
Siri doesn’t understand you quite accurately. Maybe you told it to call your
friend “Aaron,” but it thought you said “Erin”. Fortunately, you can correct
Siri’s mistake; after Siri reports that it doesn’t know what you’re talking
about, scroll up and find the speech bubble where Siri records what it thinks
you said. Tap that bubble, and you’ll find that you can edit what Siri heard
and resubmit your request.
if you don’t want to
type out a long correction, you can use iOS’s built-in dictation feature to
enter your corrected text. Just tap the microphone in the keyboard, and speak
your text aloud.
11. Post to social network If you use
Facebook or Twitter, Siri offers many helpful posting options. You can say
“Post to Facebook, I love reading Lex and Dan’s stuff at Macworld.com” or say
“Write on my Wall, I love Siri.” With Twitter, you can say “Tweet, I’m eating
breakfast,” along with other, similar variations.
