Go pro with your iPad
We love our iPads, and from time to time we’ll discover a new thing that makes us love them even more. From Siri’s skewed sense of humor to the smart multitasking of the most recent models, every iPad has something to excite and delight its users.
In fact, there’s so much good stuff in iOS that many of us don’t know about some of the most useful, clever or entertaining things our devices can do.
That’s why we’ve put together this guide, covering everything from simple tweaks to really clever computing. Do you have a favorite we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments.
1. Create folders
You can create a new folder by clicking on an app, holding your finger down and then dragging it over another app. Let go and the two apps will now appear in a folder. Rather brilliantly you can put folders in the Dock for fast access to your favorite apps.
2. See what’s running
Double-clicking the home button shows you everything that’s currently running. To close an app that’s misbehaving or that you no longer need, just flick it upwards to get rid of it.
3. Use Control Center
Swiping up from the very bottom of the screen brings up Control Center, which gives you easy access to key features such as mute, orientation lock, Airplane Mode and so on. When iOS 11 drops, Control Center will get a simpler design and the ability to customize what it offers.
4. Booby-trap your data
Worried about your personal data falling into the wrong hands? In Settings > Touch ID & Passcode you can get your iPad to erase everything if there are 10 consecutive failures to enter the correct passcode.
5. Use the secret trackpad
If you touch the on-screen keyboard with two fingers in an app such as Mail, it becomes a trackpad: as your fingers move so does the cursor. It’s a real boon for editing documents.
6. Control what notifications you get
It’s easy to let notifications get out of control: it seems that every app wants to notify you about everything it notices.
If it all gets a bit too much you can go into Settings > Notifications and turn off the ones you don’t want. You can also change how specific notifications are delivered and whether they should make a sound.
7. Connect to a VPN
If you have access to a virtual private network, your iPad can connect to it. Just go into Settings > General > VPN and enter the relevant details. Unlike VPN apps, which may only protect data from within those apps, this setting applies system-wide.
8. Silence Wi-Fi network prompts
Are you troubled by endless offers of Wi-Fi networks you don’t want to connect to? Go into Settings > Wi-Fi > Ask to Join Networks and toggle the switch off. That’s better.
9. Explore your battery
Settings > Battery enables you to turn off the percentage display if you don’t want it, but it also does something more useful: it shows you which apps have been using the most energy, and it offers power-saving tips too.
10. Use text shortcuts
If you tend to use the same blocks of text again and again, set them up as Text Replacement items in Settings > General > Keyboards. This enables you to create shortcuts, so for example we’ve got a semicolon followed by “sorryno” to automate polite replies to product pitches.
11. Use emoji
11. Use emoji
To use emoji, just tap on the smiley face key at the bottom left of your iPad’s on-screen keyboard; to return to normal, tap ABC. No smileys? Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Add New Keyboard and select Emoji from the list.
12. Split the keyboard
Apple’s keyboard can do some clever things, such as splitting in two so you can use it with your thumbs. To split the keyboard just drag it apart (to the left and right) with two fingers; to put it back again just drag it back together.
13. Stream via AirPlay
If you have an AirPlay compatible device - an Apple TV, an AirPlay speaker - you can stream movies and music from your iPad by tapping the AirPlay icon in Control Center. If your device isn’t AirPlay-enabled look for an app such as Tubio, which streams to all kinds of things in pristine HD.
14. Take a screenshot
This works on the iPhone too: press the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons simultaneously and you’ll hear a click. The screenshot is automatically added to your Photos library.
15. See two apps at once
Slide Over works with iPads from theiPad Air / iPad mini 2 onwards, and enables you to quickly use another app without leaving the current one. With one finger, slide from the middle right of the screen towards the middle and you should see the Slide Over panel.
Choose the app you want to use and it’ll slide over the current app until you slide it back again. To change the app that appears next time you use Slide Over, open the panel and then drag from the top downwards to see the available apps.
16. Use gestures for multitasking
You can quickly access the home screen by pinching with four or five fingers, bring up the app switcher by swiping up with those fingers or switch between apps by swiping left or right. If you keep triggering these swipes by mistake you can turn them off in Settings > General > Multitasking.
17. Use two apps at once
You’ll need a recent iPad for this one: Split View, which allows you to run two apps side by side or two sites in Safari, only works on the iPad Air 2, the iPad Mini 4 and newer devices. To use it, drag as if you were using Slide Over and then drag the app divider to the middle of the screen.
18. Use Google
Apple would like you to use iCloud for everything, of course, but many of us prefer Gmail and Google Calendar. No worries: Settings > Calendar > Accounts takes you step by step through the process of adding Google Calendar, while Settings > Mail does the same for Gmail.
19. Watch videos while doing something else
Here’s another one for recent iPads: Picture in Picture is not available for iPads older than the iPad Air or iPad Mini 2.
When you’re watching a film or having a FaceTime video call you’ll see a little icon of a screen with an arrow in it. Tap it and the video scales down, tap it again and the video returns to normal size.
20. Use AirPrint
Printing wirelessly is easy if you’ve got an AirPrint printer: assuming your printer and iPad are both on the same Wi-Fi network it’s just a matter of tapping the Share menu in your app and choosing Print. Your iPad should automatically find the printer.
21. Control what apps do in the dark
Some apps like to do things in the background, which can be useful: it’s handy to have your newspaper ready to read when you turn on your iPad in the morning for example.
But background refresh could also mean apps using bandwidth for no good reason, which isn’t ideal if you’re on a cellular connection. And as ever, Facebook tends to demand more resources than it really needs.
You can control which apps can use background refresh in Settings > General > Background App Refresh.
22. Change the Share menu
The Share button in apps is a brilliant thing, allowing you to send data to printers, email or other apps.
And you can customize it: if you tap on it, scroll right and choose More, you’ll see which features can be turned on or off. One of our favorites is Send to Paprika, which we use to automatically download recipes to the recipe app.
23. Enable caps lock
THIS ONE’S EASY! JUST DOUBLE-TAP THE SHIFT KEY! TAP AGAIN to turn it off.
24. Manage your storage
It doesn’t take long to fill up even the biggest iPad, and until iOS 11 drops you’ll often find you need to manually free up space for your apps.
Your iPad can help. Go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage and you can see what’s taking up space, and delete it if you don’t want it.
25. Attach things in Mail
To insert things into Mail messages, press and hold in an empty bit of the message and a toolbar appears. To add photo or video from your Photos library, choose Insert Photo or Video; to add files from iCloud Drive, Dropbox or other installed storage apps tap on Add Attachment.
Go pro with your iPad
26. Punctuate without stopping
You don’t need to switch the keyboard to symbols when you need a punctuation mark. Swipe up on the comma/exclamation mark key to get an apostrophe and on the full stop/question mark key for a quotation mark.
Press and hold any letter to see accented versions, such as é. Double-tapping the space bar at the end of a sentence adds a full stop and a space.
27. Make VIPs for mail
Mail offers a useful feature to tame unnecessary notifications: you can ask it to notify you only when a message comes from a Very Important Person. To make someone a VIP you need to add them to Contacts first. You’ll then see an Add to VIP option when you tap their name in Mail.
28. Control the kids
iPads don’t have multiple user accounts, and that means a shared iPad can give the kids access to things you don’t want them anywhere near. Use Settings > General > Restrictions to pin code-protect your iPad, add age restrictions for media or disable specific apps and/or in-app purchases.
29. Lock down an app
Guided Access mode is another handy feature if you’re letting kids use the iPad: it locks down the current app and even enables you to disable specific bits of the screen, such as the settings button or the upgrade banner.
Enable it in Settings > General > Accessibility > Guided Access and then start it by triple-tapping the Home button.
30. Use iCloud tabs
In Safari on your Mac, iPhone or iPad you can share open tabs with your other devices. To do it from a Mac go into System Preferences > iCloud and make sure Safari is switched on; on iOS go into Settings > Your name > iCloud and again, check Safari is switched on.
Now in Safari clicking on the tabs icon - it looks like one square on top of another - brings up not just the tabs on your current device, but on your other device(s) too.
31. Catch the bus with Maps
Maps offers real-time public transport information: when you search for a location in the app, tap on the Transit icon at the bottom right of the panel.
It’ll tell you the best way to get to a particular place from where you are, and it knows about buses, trains and undergrounds too. There’s live traffic information as well, so congested roads appear as red.
32. Find a place to stay or eat
Apple has been beefing up Maps’ capabilities over the years, and it can offer a lot of useful information about places: photos, contact details and TripAdvisor reviews of hotels, whether retailers accept Apple Pay and whether dentists are sadists.
33. Create PDFs
If you’ve found something you’d like to save or share as a PDF, all you need to do is bring up the Share menu in Safari: it includes a Save PDF to iBooks option. It’s handy for online articles that might not stay available, such as things you’re reading as part of a subscription.
34. Control the camera
Is the camera focusing on the wrong thing or metering light from the wrong bit? No problem: just tap the correct object or area and the camera will refocus and re-meter.
You can also switch HDR mode on or off for high dynamic range shots: they’re good for dramatic shots such as foul weather on bright days.
35. Stick the shutter button
By default, the iPad re-orients the screen when you turn it from portrait to landscape, and that means the camera app shutter button moves if you tilt the iPad too far.
You can lock it in place by swiping up Control Center and turning on orientation lock, or you can just use the volume buttons as shutter controls instead.
36. Fix the FaceTime window
You don’t have to leave FaceTime’s picture-in-picture window in its default location. Just tap and drag with your finger to put it wherever you prefer.
37. Take a panorama
Panoramas aren’t just for iPhones. In the camera app tap on the Pano option and you can use your iPad to create a huge panoramic image.
38. Get photos from your camera
The iPad doesn’t have an SD card slot, but you can use a Lightning Camera Connection Kit to transfer images directly from your digital camera. A USB-equipped Lightning cable can be used to connect other things, such as USB musical instruments or physical keyboards.
39. Finish web addresses instantly
If you’re typing a web address in Safari, press and hold the space bar to see a selection of domain options including .com, .co.uk and so on. It’s a little touch, we know, but it saves valuable milliseconds you might need later.
40. Jump back to the top
Tap the title bar of Safari to return to the top of the current page. This method works in all kinds of list-based apps too, such as Twitter clients, eBay listings, ecommerce apps and so on.
41. Save articles to read later
In addition to browser Favorites, Safari also offers a Reading List where you can pin articles you’d like to read later. If you’ve enabled iCloud for Safari this is synced between your devices, so you might save an article from your work Mac to read on your iPad when you get home.
42. Get subscriptions in Safari
Many sites publish content via RSS, which provides plain versions of articles. You can subscribe to such feeds in Safari so you never miss an update.
To do it, visit a site that offers an RSS feed - blogs almost always do it, and many news sites do too - and then bring up Safari’s Bookmarks panel. Tap on the @ symbol to open Shared Links and then tap Subscriptions > Add Current Site. Articles from that feed will now appear in the Shared Links panel.
43. Clear your browsing history
You can cover your tracks with Safari in two ways: by bringing up a new private browsing window to surf privately, or by going into Settings > Safari and clearing your browser history.
It’s important to stress that both of these things only affect what’s recorded on your iPad: the sites you visit and their advertising trackers will still know you were there and what you were looking at. If you’re a spy you might need more serious privacy protection.
44. Use Split View in Safari
On older iPads if you want to open a new tab without closing the current one it’s a matter of pressing and holding a link and then selecting Open in New Tab.
But on the various iPad Pro models, new iPad, iPad Air 2 or iPad Mini 4 you get another option (as long as you’re in landscape orientation): open in Split View. This gives half of the screen to each tab, and goes back to normal if you close one of them.
45. Search without Siri
On the home screen, slide down with two fingers to bring up the Siri suggestions screen and search box. The search will look at Wikipedia, iTunes, websites and online video, and you can simply tap on a search result to open it in the appropriate app.
46. Give Siri an accent
You don’t have to stick with Siri’s default voice if you don’t want to. Depending on where you live you can choose between multiple options, so for example in the UK we have a choice of male and female voices with US, Australian or British accents. You’ll find the options in Settings > Siri.
47. Make your iPad quieter
Some apps are awfully keen on playing sounds whenever you do anything, but you don’t have to put up with that if you don’t want to. Go into Settings > Sounds to turn off specific sounds such as posting a tweet or a Facebook post, and use Settings > Notifications to make app-specific changes.
48. Make the iPad more accessible
Some features are a problem for some users. For example, animation can make some people feel ill, while other users may have motion difficulties or vision issues.
There are stacks of options in Settings > General > Accessibility to make the iPad more usable, including changes to the way it displays text and its support for assistive devices.
49. Use punctuation in Siri and dictation
Apple’s voice recognition can understand punctuation, which can make your dictated texts and emails much easier to read. It’s just a matter of saying what mark you want, such as “Send David a message hi exclamation mark what’s up question mark”.
50. Get Siri to sing
Bring up Siri and tell him or her: “I see a little silhouetto of a man”, or ask what zero divided by zero is. There are stacks of Siri Easter eggs like these.
Post a Comment