Category Archives: iOS

Driving in my car

Android, Blog, iOS, Software, Telephony, Travel

More and more we hear of the dangers of using a hand-held phone in the car. Some modern cars have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto that connect your phone to the car’s systems. These let you use the system on the car display screen or by voice.

But what if you don’t have either of these? There are some great apps out there that can help.

Smart Dash Cam uses your phone camera to record a continuos loop. It detects a collision and saves the recording.

Drive Mode Dashboard is mainly aimed at two wheels but works for cars as well. It presents a simplified screen with maps, speed, direction and other stats.

If your main need is navigation, then Google Maps is very good but have a look at Here WeGo on the app stores. It warns you of speeding and also provides offline navigation for when you are abroad.

Unlimited iPhone and iPad storage

Blog, iOS, Mobiles, NAS

A lot of people ask me how to get more storage space on their iOS device. You can’t expand storage on the device itself, but you can link to external storage with iOS13.

If you have an NAS drive connected to your router, then the Files app can link to it just as simply as you can link to Dropbox or iCloud without the bottleneck of the internet.

In the Files app, click browse and then tap the three dots at the top. Now ‘connect to server’ and enter the IP address or name of the NAS unit (e.g. ‘mycloud’). Once it has found the NAS, enter your user name and password if required.

Now you can move items from the iPhone/iPad to the NAS and have them at your fingertips whenever you are on your home network.

Sharing your ETA

Blog, iOS, Travel

Unusually, this is for iPhone users only.

If you are driving to an appointment and want to let the others know when you will get there, it’s time wasting to stop the car and engine in order to send a text. However, you can automate this with Apple Maps (but not other mapping services).

Plan a route and select car as your method of transport. Start the directions and swipe up from the bottom of the screen to tap ‘Share ETA’. Now select the contacts to share your arrival time with.

Those contacts who are using Apple Maps will see updates. Others will get text messages.

You can also set places you go to frequently as favourites. When you start moving thatw ay, they will get updates.

Moving photos from Ipad or iPhone to computer

Connections, iOS, Tablets

It might seem that iCloud is the only way, but it can be painfully slow for getting lots of photos down to your machine.

You might try connecting it by a USB cable to your computer, but then you often have lots of fun trying to find the photos.

Well, there is a free tool from Easeus called Mobimover free which helps. Download and run it. Now connect your iPad or iPhone, click the middle icon to transfer to PC, find and select the files you want. Finally transfer them.

iPhone and iPad photos

Blog, Graphics, iOS

If your device is running iOS11, your photos are now automatically saved in HEIC format. Which is great, as it is more efficient, and which is dreadful as hardly anything else can open them. There some apps which will convert to the more common jpeg format, but you may find it easier to go to settings-camera-formats and select ‘most compatible’. You may no longer be at the leading edge of phone storage but other people can see your creations!

iOS automatically updates your contact list

Blog, email, iOS, OS X

Recent versions of iOS (used on iPhones and iPad) have a feature that scans your mailboxes for contacts and contact information. So if someone sends you an email saying that they have moved, their new address will be added.

It’s quite handy for keeping your contact list up to date and auto-populated. You can see where this feature has added data by the “found in mail” tag added.

iOS will also scan your emails when someone rings you to see if they can match the number with a name in an email signature, etc.

However, it sometimes does weird things and if you want to turn it off, go to settings, mail contacts calendars and move the ‘contacts found in mail’ slider to off.