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iOS 7 video tip: Organizing Notification Center
iOS 7's Notification Center can be a great way to see notifications at a glance, but when every app on your device suddenly decides to join the party, things can get a little hectic. In today's iOS 7 video tip, we'll show you how to turn off notifications from specific apps or delete them from your Today screen. The video, as always, can be expanded to full-screen for clarity.
iOS 7 video tip: Deleting Messages
Did you know that in the Messages app in iOS 7 you can delete single or multiple texts from a conversation with a friend? The same gesture that enables this editing capability can also be used to forward a message to someone else. To see how it's done, check out the short video tip below and remember that you can watch it in full-screen mode for more detail.
iOS 7 video tip: See which apps use the most cellular data
Today's iOS 7 video tip comes by way of Macworld's Lex Friedman, who pointed out that the new mobile operating system includes a way of finding out just how much cellular data each app uses. This tip extends to system service data usage, and provides a way to disable specific apps from using cellular data. Here's our short video tip, which you can expand to full-screen for easier viewing:
iOS 7 video tip: How to reduce motion effects
Those parallax and motion effects in iOS 7 are great, but they have already taken their toll on some folks who suffer from motion sickness. In addition, those effects take a little bit of processor power to generate, so your battery life can also suffer. This short video tip shows how to reduce those motion effects to save your stomach and your battery.
iOS 7 video tip: Making text more readable
One of the biggest complaints I've heard from people who have made the upgrade to iOS 7 is that they can't read Apple's new favorite typeface -- Helvetica Neue Ultra Light. There's a simple way to make almost everything on your iOS device more readable, and that is to use the Accessibility settings to enable bold text. The result? Well, see for yourself. The image at top left is the "normal" text setting, while the one at right has bold text enabled. Enabling this readability trick is quite easy: just use Settings > General > Accessibility and toggle Bold Text on. Your device will restart, and once that's done you'll be able to actually read text without straining your eyes. Here's a video showing how to enable bold text in iOS 7 (note that you can go full-screen for full effect). Enjoy!
iOS 7 video tip: How to shut down running apps
One of the big questions we're hearing from people who are making the jump to iOS 7 is "How the heck do I shut down apps that are running in the background?" In the past, you'd double-tap the home button and get a display of app icons on your screen, then tap the red "X" on those icons to shut them down. With iOS 7, it's done with a swipe. Double-tap the home button and you see all of the apps that are currently chugging away on your device. To shut one of them down, just swipe it up and off of your screen. Want to do two of them at once? Flick 'em both off the screen with a two-finger gesture. Since a video is worth a thousand words, here's a short clip showing you exactly how to do it -- note that you can resize this video to full-screen to see it more clearly. Be sure to send this to all of your friends who are asking the same question, OK?
iOS 7 video tip: How to view list mode in Calendar
Earlier today while Doc Rock and I were rockin' the TUAW TV Live show, I noticed a post by our editor-in-chief Victor Agreda, Jr. in which he bemoaned the fact that he could no longer get into list view for his calendar. Doc and I both figured that there had to be a way to do that, so we quickly started punching buttons on our iPhones to see where the list view was hiding. Doc suggested buying Readdle's Calendars5 app to get a list view, but I found the free answer before we told Victor to spend five bucks. The answer? Click on the search icon in the Calendar app, AKA The Magnifying Glass. It does a "search all" of your calendars and displays the results in a long list. You can also, of course, narrow down the list results by typing in a search criteria like "TUAW TV". The short video below (which can be expanded to full screen), demonstrates how the calendar list mode appears with a simple tap.
iOS 7: Searching for apps and info with Spotlight (video tutorials)
In previous versions of iOS, Spotlight -- Apple's search utility -- has always been available by going to the first home screen, then swiping right. In iOS 7, Spotlight is now available on every home screen. Here are two short videos to show you how to use Spotlight in iOS 7, and also how to change the order of search results. To access Spotlight, simply swipe down on your home screen. Some sites have been mentioning that you need to be in the top row of apps or folders before beginning the swipe -- that's untrue, as you can be anywhere on the screen to begin the swipe. Here's the video (which can be resized to full screen, by the way): Once you've swiped, Spotlight quickly fades into view. Type in your search phrase, and Spotlight provides a list of all eligible apps, contacts, music, podcasts, mail, events, messages, videos, audiobooks, notes, voice memos and reminders that contain the search phrase and are stored on your device. I like to use Spotlight as an app launcher, so I wasn't initially happy to find that applications were showing up in the search results after contacts. A quick look at Settings > General > Spotlight Search revealed a way to order the search results so that applications were first in the list -- you just tap on the "hamburger" (three horizontal lines) next to the search item, and drag the item up or down on the list. Individual items can also be unchecked with a tap to remove them from the Spotlight search results.
