Jacob’s QuickTips

QuickTips

How to Automatically Change your Wallpaper with Focus Modes

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Here’s another #QuickTip to help you make the most out of Focus on iOS 15.

This is a quick guide to how you can set your Wallpaper to change automatically when your Focus mode goes on or off.

Right so there are two parts this tutorial – the first half is going to be in the Photos App where we’re going to choose the pictures we want to use as our Wallpaper then we’re going to jump into Shortcuts and create some automations to make those Wallpapers change when our Focus mode changes.

Don’t be scared by Shortcuts, it’s really simple and I’ll guide you through it step-by-step.

So first of all let’s go into the Photos App and here you’ll see I’ve got a few different images that I want to use as my Wallpapers.

You can probably see that I’ve got the iPhone 13 Wallpapers here, but you can use any images you want – Photos from your camera roll or Wallpapers you found online.

When you’ve chosen the first Wallpaper you want to use for a particular Focus mode you need to press the Share button and then press Add To Album create a new album.

Here you give it a name that you can find easily later, so for me with my Gym Wallpaper I’m calling the album Gym Focus.

When you’ve done this go onto the next Wallpaper you want to use and again you’re going to press Share, Add To Album and create New Album.

You may have Work Focus, or Personal Focus, or Driving Focus – whatever album name you want to use, create all the albums you need now so when we get into Shortcuts they’re ready to use.

I’m going to have three for now: Work, Personal and Gym.

And now let’s have a look at making those Wallpapers change automatically.

All right I’m going to open up the Shortcuts App on my iPhone and then we’ll go to the bottom to where it says Automation on that tab bar.

Now at this point, a little cheeky reminder that if you haven’t Subscribed to my Channel already maybe you might consider doing that to help me out.

I really want to grow and share my #QuickTips with as large an audience as possible so your Subscribe or your Like on this video could make all the difference.

Right. enough of that!

Let’s press the Plus button in the top corner to create a new Automation.

At this point we want to make a Personal Automation which means that that Automation will be triggered by something happening on your device.

In fact those triggers come up on the next screen, and if we scroll right down to the bottom you should see all of your different Focus modes are listed there as different triggers.

I’ll go onto the Gym one first.

When I’ve chosen that Gym Focus mode in Shortcuts I then have the option of enabling my Automation to run when the Focus mode is turned on or when the Focus mode is turned off.

With this you can add loads of customisation but to make it simple I’m going to go for when Gym is turned on.

Then on the next screen we can add the Actions we want to apply when Gym mode is enabled.

With Shortcuts you can add thousands of different actions here and your phone can do some really clever things as soon as you enable that Focus mode.

Let’s keep it simple for today and we’re going to find the photo that we saved in that album earlier.

So the first action you want is called Find Photos.

Type that in and then tap on it to add to your Shortcut.

From here you have a few different options, so we want to tap on to Add Filter and then rather than choosing all of our Photos in the Recents category we’re going to tap on there and we’re going to choose the album that we created earlier.

I’ve got lots of albums so I can search at the top for Gym Focus and then when I’ve selected that album Shortcuts will look for pictures in that album for me to use.

There’s only one there so it’s obvious what the Wallpaper choice will be.

Next up is our second and final action for this particular Shortcut.

Tap on the Add Action button and this time you’re looking for Set Wallpaper.

Now Set Wallpaper will automatically take the picture that you found in the action above and then we have a few options on how we’re going to display it as our Wallpaper.

For example I’m going to turn the Preview off so it won’t come up on the screen and I’m going to turn Perspective Zoom on to give it that slight depth effect.

I would definitely suggest you turn Show Preview off as well but Perspective Zoom is really up to your taste.

When you’ve added that Action press Next in the top corner.

On this screen you get a summary of your Shortcut and you’ll notice at the bottom there’s a new switch that says Ask Before Running.

Now if you have this on you’ll get a little banner notification each time you change Focus mode asking if you want to run this Shortcut.

I don’t want that – I want it to happen in the background seamlessly so I’ll turn that off and then I’ll confirm that choice.

Then when I press Done my Shortcut is saved and active.

We can check this immediately by returning to the Home Screen and then pulling down from the top right corner to Control Centre and turning on my Gym Focus.

And you’ll see even on the Control Centre that that Wallpaper has now changed to that yellow-y orange image.

But we haven’t set up Personal and Work yet!

So I’ll jump back into Shortcuts, go back onto the Automation tab, remind you once more to Subscribe, and then we’re going to create a New Action in the top corner.

Once again I’m going to create a Personal Automation that runs on the device, and as I scroll down my list of triggers and get the Focus modes I can choose Personal Focus.

From here again I can choose to have the trigger enabled when Focus is turned on or off and just like before I’ll make sure my Personal Focus is turned on.

This Shortcut will run our first action just like before – the one called Find Photos.

You’re going to tap onto Add Filter and you’re going to find the album for whatever Focus group you want next.

For me this is the Personal Focus, and that’s going to be the teal-blue Wallpaper.

Then when I’ve selected that picture I’m going to go to add a New Action and I’m going to choose Set Wallpaper.

Just like before I’ll turn off Show Preview and as per my taste I’ll turn on Perspective Zoom.

Then tap Next in the top corner and once more you want to turn off Ask Before Running.

When you press Done that automation will be saved and you’ll see it on the Automation screen.

And then guess what – we’re doing it a third time!

I won’t show you the process again (you can easily go back and re-watch the video if you need to) but what I will show you now is if I go up to the Home Screen by swiping up from the bottom and then pulling down Control Centre, every time I change my Focus Mode between Work, Personal and Gym the Wallpaper on my iPhone changes seamlessly, automatically in the background.

No notifications, no pop-ups, no confirmation – it just works!

And whilst I’m changing my Focus mode using Control Centre this will of course work just as well if you’re using a location based trigger or a time based trigger or however else you switch between your Focus modes.

Your Wallpaper will change when you’re in that mode no questions asked.

Okay, and that’s it for today’s #QuickTip!

I really hope you found this video helpful – there are dozens and dozens more iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 videos on my YouTube channel down below so please head there now check them out and maybe Subscribe too.

I’ll see you next time.

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.

Open Multiple Keynote Documents at the Same Time with App Shelf

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The Shelf is a new part of the multitasking experience on iPadOS 15 and it lets you quickly jump between different windows of an App you’ve got open.

Here’s how it works.

Okay you can see here that I’m in Keynote and I’ve got one of my #QuickLessons files open.

However I’ve actually got a few different files open in Keynote, and if I swipe up from the bottom to bring the old multitasking view up you’ll see that I’ve got Keynote open four or five times.

Now I can just jump between them here if I wanted to, but there’s a new slightly quicker way on iPadOS 15.

I’ll jump back into my original Keynote document a second and what I’m going to do is I’m going to press the new three dot button on the top toolbar.

That will then give me the option to resize the Keynote window, but also at the very bottom of my screen I now get what’s called the Shelf.

Now this will only appear if you’ve got multiple versions of the same App open at once, but for me with Keynote I’ve got five or six versions open and at the bottom you can see them all there.

I can tap and it will instantly jump between them without having to go in and out of the multitasking view each time.

When I’ve chosen the document I want to work on I can tap on it and then I can start working immediately.

There’s another way to bring the Shelf up as well, and that is by swiping up the toolbar at the bottom to bring the Dock, and then tapping on the App Icon you’re using.

For me if I tap on Keynote this will bring up the Shelf again and it will show me those windows just as before – but as well as jumping between them we can drag and drop those windows to create Split Screen views as easily as this.

I can even drag a new window on top of on the other half of the screen to change what’s in that Split View at the bottom.

On the Shelf there’s a New Window option on the right hand side and if I tap on there I can open up another Keynote document and again it will add it to the Shelf automatically.

And I can jump between it just like before.

But you may also notice on the Shelf that we’ve now got that new Split Screen view that I just created.

Tap onto here and that will take you right back to where you left it.

Finally if I decide I didn’t want that Split Screen view anymore all I need to do is drag that middle divider to one side and that will then split apart those two Keynote windows – and just like that they’re now back in the Shelf as separate apps.

This is a really quick way to navigate between different documents in the same App and as iOS 15 rolls out hopefully more and more apps will support this.

For now it’s limited mainly to theApple built-in apps.

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And while you’re here there are a couple more videos on the screen now that you might like about iOS and iPadOS 15.

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 the App Library

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A year after its launch on iPhone, the App Library is now on iPadOS.

Here’s a quick guide to how it works.

As you can see, this is what the App Library looks like on the iPad.

If I tap on an empty space to go back to my Home Screen you’ll also see a new button on the right hand side of the Dock.

Tapping on here brings up the App Library at any time.

However, just like on the iPhone, you can also swipe your Home Screens all the way to the right hand side and the very far right page will bring up that App Library for you as well.

For those unfamiliar with how App Library works, all of the Apps on the iPad are grouped automatically into categories such as Entertainment or Education or Productivity.

Some of the App Icons are full size and if you tap on them that will open the App straight away for you.

But other App Icons down in the bottom right hand corner of each folder are slightly smaller.

For example if I look at the Education category and then tap the four small Apps in the bottom corner I’ll get all of the Apps in the Education section.

Then I can tap onto one like Swift Playgrounds and it’ll open it normally for me.

The great thing about this is that it means you can free up a lot of space on your Home Screen and you haven’t got to have every single icon visible all the time.

Tap and hold on any App to enter Jiggle Mode and then at the bottom where you’ve got the little dots indicating the number of pages – tap onto there.

You now get this brand new screen where you can view and adjust your pages of your Home Screen really, really quickly.

At the moment you can see clearly I’ve got four pages of Apps on my Home Screen but if I untick the bottom two pages and then come out of Jiggle Mode, I’ve now only got two pages of Apps visible.

I’ve basically hidden those other two pages.

They’re still there and if I go back into Jiggle Mode I could re-enable them if I wanted to, or I could press Delete in the top left corner.

Don’t panic! We’re not actually going to delete all of those Apps from the iPad – instead we’re going to remove that page and then all of those Apps will still be accessible in the App Library.

When I come out of Jiggle Mode I’ve still got the two pages I’ve chosen to keep, but if I go into my App Library I can pull up any of those Apps really quickly and really easily.

My last piece of advice about using the App Library to tidy up your Home Screen is that you can do this on individual Apps.

You haven’t got to get rid of a whole page in one go, so choose an App you want to get rid of and tap and hold it and then press the Delete button in the top.

Now you’ve got a new option.

You can Delete the App (which will uninstall it and remove it completely) or you can remove it from your Home Screen.

This will delete the icon but keep it in the App Library.

And that’s it, you can now organise your Apps like you’ve never been able to before on the iPad and in my opinion it makes it so much more efficient to use.

You’re not scrolling through eight pages of Apps to find the one you want – you can jump straight into App Library and navigate to just a few taps.

If you’d like please do Subscribe to my Channel down below.

That will really help me grow and share my videos with more people. And while you’re here there are a couple more videos on the screen now that you might like about iOS and iPadOS 15.

How to Blur your Background in FaceTime Calls

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There are lots of great improvements to FaceTime on iOS15 and iPadOS15.

One of my favorites is the ability to blur your background. Here’s how it works.

When you’re in FaceTime (or in fact any messaging app that uses the camera) you’re gonna pull down from the top right corner of your screen to bring up Control Center.

This works on iPad and iPhone.

From here there are two new buttons at the top of your screen and one of them says ‘Video Effects’.

Tap onto here and turn on Portrait Video.

Just like a Portrait Mode photograph that will then blur your background but keep you in focus.

Now when I swipe away Control Center and go back into FaceTime even before I’ve made the call you’ll see my background is nicely blurred and we can turn it off in just the same way by swiping back to Control Center and disabling Portrait Video.

While you’re here as well you can change your audio settings to focus on just your voice or to include your background sounds as well.

From my testing, the Portrait Video in FaceTime works really quite nicely even if you get closer or further away from the camera or if you move your arms around a lot when you talk.

It’s a great little feature and it’s a nice addition to FaceTime.

I hope you found this video helpful. If you have please do give it a like and maybe consider subscribing to my channel as well where there are loads more iOS15 and iPadOS 15 #QuickTips to help you make the most out of your devices.

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!