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iOS 15 Tips, Tricks, How-Tos & News

How To: Apple's New Cutout Tool Magically Isolates Subjects and Removes Backgrounds from Images on Your iPhone or iPad

Apple's upcoming iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 software updates bring an exciting new feature that lets you instantly lift the subject out of a photo, separating it from the background. Once extracted, you can paste, save, or drop the cutout wherever you want as a new image, and you can even make it a sticker in messaging apps.

How To: 20 Things You Can Do in Your Photos App in iOS 16 That You Couldn't Do Before

There are many great things about Apple's Photos app for iPhone and iPad that we know and love, and the new iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 software updates bring even more features that are about to become your favorites. There's one big change you may have already heard about and several minor improvements that make the app more useful and enjoyable.

How To: Get Rid of Frequently Visited Websites in Safari on Your iPhone, iPad, or Mac

Safari has a helpful feature that shows your most frequently visited webpages whenever you open a new tab or window, but it's not for everyone. If you never use it, would rather have a minimalist start page, or want to prevent other people with access to Safari on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac from seeing the websites you frequent the most, you can get rid of it.

How To: Use This Trick to Fake Dropped Calls on Your iPhone When You Don't Want to Talk Anymore

You see it in the movies all the time. A character on the phone doesn't like what the other person is saying or telling them to do, or they just don't want to talk to them anymore, so they fake bad reception and cut the call off. In real life, it's pretty easy to tell when someone is doing it, and there are better ways to end a call abruptly so that it looks like you didn't hang up on them.

How To: Downgrade iOS 16 Beta to iOS 15 or Revert iPadOS 16 Beta to iPadOS 15

Beta software can be exciting because you get to experience cool new features before most other people. But it can have unwanted consequences such as bugs, UI glitches, and horrible battery life that'll make you wish you never installed it. If that sounds like you with iOS 16 beta or iPadOS 16 beta, you can downgrade to iOS 15.5 or iPadOS 15.5 for a more stable user experience.

How To: 27 Must-Know Features in Apple's Shortcuts App for iOS 16 and iPadOS 16

Apple made significant improvements to its Shortcuts app in iOS 16 and iPadOS 16, so you can do even more with custom task shortcuts on your iPhone or iPad. The big story is "App Shortcuts," which takes all the work out of building shortcuts, giving you immediate access to premade ones that developers include with their apps. But that's definitely not all you'll find that's new.

How To: 20 Things Your iPhone's Volume Buttons Can Do Besides Volume Adjustments

The volume buttons on the side of your iPhone are for more than just adjusting volume levels for media, ringers, alerts, Siri, and other sounds and voices. You can use them to perform different actions inside certain apps, and you can even create custom actions using the Shortcuts app. It's not exactly button mapping, but it's as close as you'll get without jailbreaking iOS 15.

How To: These Hidden Gestures Can Instantly Undelete Emails for You on Your iPhone or iPad

It's easy to start panicking when you delete an important email, but it's even easier to undo the mistake on your iPhone or iPad. You can retrieve an accidentally deleted email instantly on iOS and iPadOS with the help of a hidden gesture, and you'll be much more efficient with the Mail app once you learn how to use it.

How To: Snap Photos on Your iPhone Hands-Free for Better Selfies, Group Shots, and Low-Light Pictures

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 to accomplish. Spoiler alert: using "Hey Siri" is not enough.

How To: Scroll Through TikTok Hands-Free on Your iPhone or iPad Using Simple Voice Commands

If you can't curb your TikTok obsession, at least make it more efficient by taking your hands out of the equation. So when you're eating breakfast, working on your computer, or using your hands for another non-TikTok task, you don't even have to touch your iPhone or iPad to scroll through all of those videos in your feed. Instead, you can just tell it what to do, and it'll listen.

How To: Remember These Popular App Store Games? They're Still Alive to Play Today

The App Store has been around for almost 14 years now, and during that time, we must have seen over a million games come and go and stay and expand. But only a tiny fraction of those games have become blockbuster sensations because of the mighty App Store's reach on iPhone and iPad, and many of the first big hits are still alive today for you to relive the good ol' days of mobile gaming.

How To: The Easiest Way to Secretly Record Someone's Conversation with Your iPhone

Your iPhone's built-in Voice Memos app is a great way to record the audio around you, whether it be conversations, lectures, meetings, interviews, discussions, chitchat, gossip, or other kinds of talks. But if your goal is to record audio on the down-low without being noticed, you'll need to know the hidden shortcut.

How To: 15 Important Features and Changes in the iOS 15.5 and iPadOS 15.5 Updates

Apple's latest iPhone and iPad software, iOS 15.5 and iPadOS 15.5, became available on May 16, so you can download and install it right now if you haven't already. While there aren't as many new features as iOS 15.4 and iPadOS 15.4 had, there are a few big ones in the U.S. you'll want to know beyond Apple's minuscule "About this Update" information in the "Software Update" menu.

How To: The Trick to Managing iCloud Contact Groups Right from Your iPhone (Since Apple's Contacts App Won't Let You)

You can view and hide iCloud contact groups on your iPhone, but Apple won't let you create or delete groups or add or delete contacts from any groups unless you're on a tablet or computer. Why Apple refuses to add a group management tool to Contacts on iOS is anybody's guess, but there is a workaround you can use instead.

How To: Use a Custom Gesture to Clear All Apps from Your iPhone's App Switcher in Seconds

After just a few hours, your iPhone's app switcher can become cluttered and even chaotic enough that you won't even want to use it. If you like your app switcher clean and tidy, with only your current session's apps accessible, there's a trick to force-quitting all apps simultaneously rather than one by one.

How To: 10 Ways to Show the Battery Percentage Indicator on Your iPhone

When you look at your status bar on your iPhone, you'll almost always see the battery icon, which gives you an estimate of how much battery life you have left before you need to charge the device. What you won't always see is the exact battery percentage, but there are multiple ways to force it out of hiding.

How To: Keep Your Night Vision Sharp with the iPhone's Hidden Red Screen

Night Shift, Dark Mode, Reduce White Point, and Zoom's Low Light Filter all help reduce the harmful effects on your body's clock that bright iPhone and iPad screens have at night. But there's another option on iOS and iPadOS that turns your entire display red, and it's useful for so much more than just late-night browsing in bed.

How To: Use LED Flash Alerts on Your iPhone So You Never Miss Another Notification Again

I find ringtones and text tones fairly annoying, so my iPhone is almost always set to vibrate on silent mode. Unfortunately, that causes me to miss phone calls and text messages when the device isn't in my hands or pockets. While I hate missing alerts, I'm still reluctant to switch to ring mode — and that's where another iOS and iPadOS feature helps out.

How To: Quickly Break Down Any Article Online into Short, Accurate Summaries to Save Time Reading

If you're like me, you don't have time to sit down and leisurely read an entire article from start to finish — but you still want to be informed throughout the day. Instead of just browsing the daily headlines, there's a free service that will summarize any article you throw at it, giving you a better idea of what's going on without committing to reading an entire article.

How To: Get Water Out of Your iPhone's Speaker with a Simple App

Whether you drop your iPhone into a toilet or your dog's water bowl or regularly take it into the shower or pool, water will likely become nestled inside its speaker grilles. Water exposure causes audio playback through the speakers to soften and sound muffled, and getting that water out is no easy task. Luckily, there's an app for that.

How To: Find the Version Number for Any App on Your iPhone or iPad — Even Stock Apple Apps

From time to time, you may need to locate the version and build number for a particular app on your iPhone or iPad, but it's not at all obvious where you can find the information. Well, there's more than one place to look on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, but none are perfect solutions. Knowing each method will ensure you can always find any app's real version number.

How To: The Simplest Way to Remove the Background from Photos on iOS, iPadOS, and Android

It's super easy to add filters, adjust levels, and crop images using the default photo editor on your smartphone, but you won't find any built-in tools for removing the background in a photo. To isolate people and objects in your pictures, you'll need a third-party app, and we've found a free one that's easy to use, works with high-resolution images, and is available for Android, iOS, and the web.

How To: The Trick That Lets You Link to Specific Start Times in YouTube Videos Right from Your Phone

You can add a timestamp to any YouTube video in just a few clicks from the desktop website on your computer but not from YouTube's iOS or Android app. Until YouTube adds a "start time" when sharing videos from the mobile app, you'll have to use one of these workarounds on your phone or tablet.

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