Jacob’s Quick.Tips

iPhone

How to use iCloud Private Relay

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If you pay for iCloud storage on your iOS device there’s a brand new feature called iCloud Private Relay.

Here’s how it works.

Private Relay is designed to keep your web browsing private and safe, and the way it does this is quite clever.

At the moment when you go to a website, the website owner can track your IP Address which, in turn, can kind of connect you and the websites you visit together.

Private Relay breaks that connection by sharing the IP Address as far as Apple which then gets changed into a different IP Address to go to the website.

Essentially this means that the website has no idea who’s browsing it and Apple has no idea what websites you’re browsing.

So there’s a little disconnect between your device and the website you’re going to, which makes your browsing safer.

At the moment if I go onto a website that tracks my IP Address I can find out whereabouts in the world I am.

I’m very close to Truro in Cornwall (a few miles down the road in fact), but if I go into Settings and then tap on my iCloud Account I can go onto iCloud Private Relay.

If I turn on the Private Relay (which is currently in beta but won’t be forever) and then go back to that same website and reload, you’ll now notice that it’s got a different location for me.

In fact it now thinks I’m in Croydon which is over 200 miles away!

I can even go back to settings and make this location even more vague so I can go to a country-wide level.

So that means any website that I go to will only know that I’ve come from the United Kingdom rather than coming from Truro in Cornwall.

This sort of feature is particularly good when you want to keep your browsing safe or when you’re perhaps using a Wi-Fi network that you don’t necessarily trust that much – maybe in a hotel Wi-Fi situation or maybe you’ve gone to a restaurant and you’re connected to their network.

It’s a nice little feature to have but it’s only available if you’ve got an iCloud subscription – even if you’re paying 99p a month it will get you covered for this.

That’s it for this #QuickTip, but there are loads more iOS and iPadOS 15 ones on my Channel so please click the name below and Subscribe so you won’t miss any tips in the future.

How to use Live Text to Search Photos Contents

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For a few years now the Photos App has been able to work out key objects and locations from your pictures.

But now it can search text as well.

You can browse Photos by searching for keywords.

Here’s how it works.

First of all I’m going to bring up Spotlight search by just pulling down on my Home Screen icons slightly.

From here I can type in anything I like and it will search my entire phone – now including the content of Photos as well.

I’m just going to search for ‘chocolate’ because I’m feeling a bit hungry at the moment.

And then as well as a few different films and things that come up, if you scroll down, you should see Photos.

Now at the moment these are photographs of chocolate because the machine learning in my phone has worked out which pictures contain that particular item – but if I tap Show More it will then give me two distinct sections.

Text Found in Photos and just Photos.

Amazingly in the time it’s taken to do that search, iOS has scanned my entire photo library and has found all these pictures with the word chocolate in there somewhere.

Let’s have a look!

As you can see it’s found a bottle of gin which, for some reason, is chocolate Churro flavour.

Not sure I fancy that.

It’s found some 7-inch vinyl singles including the song Chocolate by The 1975.

And it’s even amazingly found the words Hot Chocolate on a menu in the background of a photo of a very nice breakfast I had a while ago.

And the great thing is that this recognises handwritten text as well – as you can see in these labels for a science experiment I did for school.

In fact we can even browse more Photos that have been found by pressing Show More and then you can tap on the icon in the bottom corner to jump to that photo in the Photos app.

It’s really simple but it’s a really, really handy feature.

I hope you found this video helpful – if so please do subscribe to my YouTube Channel down below where there are loads more #QuickTips for iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 waiting for you there.

I’ll see you next time!

How to Safely Erase your iPhone

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There comes a time in an iPhone’s life where it’s time to remove all of your data.

Whether that’s because you want to sell it, or pass it on to someone else, or maybe it’s going into the shop to be repaired – whatever the reason you don’t want your personal data on your iPhone when it leaves your hands.

Here’s how to completely and safely wipe all of your data from your iPhone.

It’s not a hugely complicated process but sometimes it’s reassuring to have someone walk you through it so you know you’re doing the right thing.

Jump onto the Settings App and then you’re going to scroll down to General.

On General go to the very bottom of that list where you have an option there that says Transfer or Reset iPhone.

Now on this screen if you’re preparing to get a new iPhone you can do an iCloud Backup of your current device (even if you aren’t paying for iCloud storage!).

This temporary backup will then let you restore all of your data on your new device really quickly and really easily.

Tap on Get Started at the top if you want to do that first.

But I’m going to wipe my iPhone completely to get rid of all of my data, all of my passwords, all of my Settings – everything!

And to do that I’m going to press the button at the bottom of my screen which says ‘Erase All Content and Settings’.

On this screen you’ll get an overview of everything that will be taken off of your device, just to give you that peace of mind.

So for me I’ve got over 150GB of Documents and Data that’ll be wiped.

I’ve got my Apple ID that will be removed safely.

I’ve got my Find My Activation Lock which will be disabled so the phone can go to someone else safely.

And it’s going to get rid of all of my cards and ID in the Wallet App as well.

If you want to get any more information about any of these different categories you can press the down arrow to get some more detail, but when you’re ready press that blue button at the bottom to go onto the next screen.

From here it’s going to want to confirm that you want to re-erase your iPhone and that will involve putting in your phone Passcode.

If your iPhone is in the middle of an iCloud backup at this stage it will warn you so you can wait for that to finish first, just to ensure all your data is backed up.

Then if you’ve got activation lock installed you’re going to put in your Apple ID password to remove that as well.

And then it will start erasing your iPhone.

After this your screen will go black and there’ll be little progress bar with the Apple logo showing you what’s going on.

When that progress bar has filled and the device has restarted you’ll come back to the hello screen at the beginning and at this point your iPhone has been completely wiped.

It’s as if you’ve taken out the box for the first time.

None of your data will be on that device anymore.

You can safely give that to a friend or family member, you can sell it if you want to – whatever’s happening next that iPhone is ready to go.

I hope you found this #QuickTip helpful and maybe reassuring as well.

There are loads more #QuickTips on my channel for iPhone and iPad so please do click there now and Subscribe.

How to use Photos Visual Lookup

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A clever new feature in the Photos app will now let you use Siri Knowledge to get more information about what’s in your Photos.

Here’s how it works…

When you open up a photo in the Photos app there is a little information button at the bottom that looks like an ‘I’ in a circle.

Now, if there are some little stars on that icon that means that Siri has found something in your picture that it can give you extra information about.

So I’ve got a picture here of Cologne Cathedral and if I press that ‘I’ button that now has stars on it you’ll get an information tab sliding up with more details about that photo as well as useful information like when and where the picture was taken.

There’s now a section at the top called Look Up and if I tap on there it will look up the landmark in that photo.

And there, just like that, I can get loads more information on Cologne Cathedral.

I could get directions there, I could find similar pictures, or I could use a Wikipedia article to learn more about the Cathedral and its origins.

If I come off there and go onto a new picture and press the ‘I’ again I’ll get a different set of results.

So here i’ve got a nice photo of a forest that I explored just outside of London and if I press that ‘I’ with a little star button on it I can then do a look up on the plants in this picture.

This works great if you’ve got an unknown plant in your garden or if you’re out on a walk and you want to identify something.

But here it’s telling me these are Pine trees and the woods are called Pinewood so that does make sense.

This feature also works for pets like dogs and cats.

So I’ve got a lovely photo here of my Mum’s puppy Poppy and if I tap on that ‘I’ button and do a look up on the pet you’ll see a little paw print on Poppy’s nose.

If I tap on that it will give me information about what breed of dog Siri thinks that might be and it is indeed a Labrador so it’s got it right for me this time.

This works on quite a few different objects in your Photos whether it be a plant, or an animal, a landmark, a book, or even a piece of artwork that you photographed and of course yes it works on iPad too.

So on the iPad I’ve got the information button in the top right corner but when I tap on there I get the same information sheet coming up and just like on the iPhone it will identify all of those things.

So I can get more information about my Bird of Paradise plant straight from within the Photos app.

It’s quite good fun digging down multiple layers to find more information and related pictures about the one that you’ve captured.

That’s it for this #QuickTip but there are loads more iOS and iPadOS 15 ones on my channel so please click the name below and Subscribe so you won’t miss any tips in the future.

How to use Background Rain Sounds

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With the iOS 15 update, Apple has brought a new secret feature to your iPhone and your iPad and it’s called Background Noise.

Here’s how it works,

There are two ways to activate Background Noise – the quick way is to use Control Centre and we’ll set that up in a moment.

Before we get started we’re going to jump into the Settings App and go to Accessibility.

From here, under the Hearing options, we’re going to choose Audio/Visual.

On this screen we can turn on our background sound to get a preview of what it’s going to be like, and we can customise the sound itself.

At the moment, by default, it will start with Raindrops.

Of course we’ve got a few different options to customise the sound as well, so we can have an Ocean or a stream or some white noise or some dark noise.

You might notice that it’s downloading that as well, that’s so it can work offline, when you’re using your phone anywhere.

When you’ve chosen your sound you can then choose the volume it’s going to play at as well.

I don’t want mine quite as loud as it is at the moment, so I’ll pull that volume slider down a little bit.

And then you’ve got another option to decide what your background noise is going to do when you’re playing other audio on your phone.

For example in the Music App or on a YouTube Video you can choose to pause your background noise completely when you’re using media, or you can turn the volume down a little bit so it will duck in and out around the songs or videos that you’re enjoying.

You can hear what that sounds like by pressing the Play Sample button just like this.

Yeah I think that’s a good volume!

You can also choose to have that background noise going when you lock your phone which means you could be studying or focusing and this will play in the background even when you’re not using your device.

Okay now we’ve got our background noise configured, we’re going to go back into the Settings homepage and this time we’re going to choose Control Centre.

From here you want to scroll down and enable the Hearing option.

Now no matter where you are on your iPhone or your iPad if you pull down into Control Centre you can now press that new Hearing button that I’m pointing to now.

From here you’ve got a very simple toggle at the bottom to turn background noise on or off and you can customise what sound you get here as well.

So if perhaps you don’t fancy the Raindrops anymore you can go for the Stream or the Ocean or something else instead.

This has been a really quick guide to using background noise on your iPhone and iPad, I hope you found it helpful.

If you have please do Subscribe down below there are loads more #QuickTip videos for iPhone and iPad on my Channel.

See you next time!

How to Automatically Switch Home Screens with Focus

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With Focus on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 you can customise the Home Screens of your devices based on where you are at that current time.

So here’s how it works.

On my iPhone I’ve made a new page of Apps and on here I’ve put a few Widgets there already.

And this is going to be the screen that I want on my phone when I arrive at work.

I don’t want all of my Social Media Apps on there or my games because that’s going to be distracting, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to add some Apps to this new Home Screen.

And the great thing in iOS 15 is that you can have multiple versions of Apps on your Home Screen.

That means you could have the App for Twitter on three different screens and show them at different times and places.

I can add an App by simply pulling down in the middle of my Home Screen and using the Spotlight Search to find the App I want.

So I’m going to add Showbie because that’s one I use all the time at school.

When I’ve found that App icon I’m going to use one finger to tap and hold it and with the other finger I’m going to press Cancel on my search in the corner.

Then I can drag-and-drop that App icon and put it on my new Home Screen.

I’ll do this again for another App that I use quite regularly.

But the really clever thing is you can drag-and-drop App icons from other places as well – like the App Library.

So if I swipe sideways to get the App Library and then find another App that I want to use at school (for example my school email client) I can then drag-and-drop the App straight from the App library onto that new Home Screen.

Okay let’s whizz forward a minute or two.

Now I’ve now got a completed Home Screen that looks like this – and you can see at the moment I’ve got three different pages of Apps on my iPhone.

I can swipe between them just like I would do normally, but I don’t want those first two pages to be there when I get to school – I just want that third page.

So I’m going to go into Settings and I’m going to go on to Focus.

From here I’m going to go into my work Focus and then I’m going to choose the option for my Home Screen.

There’s a handy toggle here to actually hide the Notification Dadges on the Apps (which is good if you’re trying to Focus on something in particular and you don’t want distractions).

I’m going to turn that on but then I’m also going to choose some custom Home Screens.

From here you’re going to get a new window coming up with all of your different Home Screens on there – and you’ll notice I’ve got more than three because I’ve set this up already for different Focus Modes.

So I’ll locate the Home Screen that I want to use and then I’ll tap on the Tick in the corner to select that as my Home Screen.

You can choose as many or as few as you want here.

Then let’s come out to the Settings App and go back to my iPhone Home Screen.

Now at the moment I’m not in Work Mode so I can see all of my Home Screens, but if I pull down to Control Centre and then tap and hold on Focus to activate Work Mode you’ll then see that I’ve only got that one page of Apps.

I can swipe sideways but there’s no more Apps there!

If I’ve set my Focus to change automatically at a location then this will happen as soon as I arrive at school, and it will change back when I leave after work.

However if I go to Control Centre now and switch that Focus Mode off you’ll notice that I’ve still got three pages of Apps – my two main pages and that third page.

Well really I don’t want that third page at home so I’m going to tap and hold to go into Jiggle Mode, and I’m going to press the Page Indicator dots at the bottom above the dock.

From here I have the option to show or hide any of the Home Screens that I’ve made already.

So I’m going to un-tick that last work Home Screen.

Then my phone looks just like I did before with my two Home Screens for use at home and, when I go to work and change that Focus Mode, I should get my new work Home Screen.

I think this is a really great feature and it will really help me stay more Focused and more organised whether I’m at work, at home making videos, or out traveling.

Check out my other video on using Focus Modes and maybe as well you might like to check out my video on changing your Wallpaper when you get to a certain location – because imagine combining Focus Modes with custom Home Screens and a custom Wallpaper when you arrive somewhere!

There’s so much customisation you can do on your iPhone with iOS 15.

Don’t forget there are loads more iOS and iPadOS 15 videos just waiting for you on my Channel, so make sure you Subscribe and you won’t miss anything!

 

 

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