# Maccast Members #181  - iOS 8 Tips & Tricks

Health App

• Set up a medical ID
  • Open the Health App
  • Tap on ‘Medical ID’ and tap ‘Create Medical ID’
  • Set ‘Show When Locked’
    • If on any emergency contacts will be visible and callable from the Lock Screen
  • Fill out the info
    • Name, birthdate, medications, medical conditions, blood type
    • Add emergency contacts by picking names and numbers from Contacts
  • Displays from Emergency area of Lock screen
  • To view ID from Lock screen
    • Swipe to Unlock
    • Tap ‘Emergency’
    • Tap ‘Medical ID’

Photos

• Editing controls
  • Open Photos
  • Browse and select photo you want to edit
  • Tap ‘Edit’
  • Buttons for ‘Crop & Rotate’, ‘Filters’, and ‘Adjustments’
  • Adjustments now offer a lot more control
    • Light, Color, B&W
• Hide Photos & Videos in Photo app
  • In the ‘Moments’ or ‘Photo’ view
  • Tap and hold the image and in the pop-up tap ‘Hide’
  • Hidden images will not appear in Years, Collections, or Moments
  • They will still appear in Albums and also in the special ‘Hidden’ album
• Using 3rd Party Photo & Video extensions
  • Install an app with Photo Extension support
    • Litely
    • Halftone 2
    • Camera+
  • Enable the extension
    1. Open Photos.
    2. Tap on the photo or video you’d like to edit.
    3. Tap on Edit in the top right.
    4. Tap on the More button (Looks like a circle with 3 dots in it) Depending on your device this may be in the bottom menu or in the top navigation.
    5. You will now see any extensions that are already available. Tap on the ‘More…’ icon.
    6. If there are available extension you’ll see a list. Toggle ‘On’ the app extensions you’d like to show up in the more menu. Use the handles to reorder them.
    7. Tap Done (upper right hand corner)
  • To use an extension
    1. Open Photos.
    2. Tap on the photo or video you’d like to edit.
    3. Tap on Edit in the top right.
    4. Tap on the More button
    5. Tap the App extension you’d like to use.
    6. Make any edits you’d like and tap Done (upper right)
    7. You can repeat the steps if you want to use multiple extensions

Camera

• Can access editing right from the Camera app
  • After snapping a photo tap on it
  • Tap the ‘Edit’ button and you have all the same control you have in the Photo app.
• Adjust the exposure dynamically in Camera
  • When you tap to focus you now see a “sun” icon
  • Slide your finger up or down to adjust the exposure before you snap the picture
• Self timer
  • Tap the ‘clock’
  • You can set a 3s or 10s timer
  • Once set when you press the shutter it will count down and flash the LED flash before taking the photo
• Slo-motion & Time Lapse
  • If you have a iPhone 6 or 6 Plus you can tap the FPS to toggle between 120 and 240 FPS
  • Studio Neat wrote a great post on how this feature works
    • There are no setting or options to control how frequently you’ll get a frame
    • It uses dynamically selected intervals, but what does that mean?
    • They are doubling the speed of the time-lapse and taking half as many pictures per second as the recording duration doubles.
    • Starts with 2 frames every second for time lapse up to 10 mins long. With real time being effectively sped up 15x in the resulting video.
    • After that each time the recording length doubles (i.e. 10 to 20 mins) it halves the capture rate which effectively doubles the speed relative to real time in the final video.
    • So a 10–20 minute time lapse will have 1 frame every second and play back a video that is 30x faster than real time. A20–40 minute video would have 1 frame every 2 seconds and be sped up 60 time relative to real time.
    • All the video are played back at 30 fps so resulting videos are between 20–40 seconds regardless of the recording length.
      • They likely make this limitation so that Time Lapses are easy to share and don’t fill up your device.
• Full ISO and Exposure control in 3rd party Apps (Camera+)

Siri

• “Hey Siri” feature.
  • Settings > General > Siri
  • Turn on “Allow Hey Siri”
  • Need to be connected to power for the feature to work.
• Identify music tracks
  • If Music is playing you can activate Siri and ask, “What song is this?”
  • Uses Shazam to listen and identify the track.
  • Offers a link to Buy on iTunes of course

Accessibility

• Grey-scale mode (Noir look)
  • Settings > General > Accessibility
  • Toggle on or off ‘Greyscale’
  • Would be a fun prank to do on someones phone, just don;t tell them I told you to.

Messages

• Send Audio messages
  • Tap and hold the Microphone button
  • Swipe up when done recording to send
  • Swipe left to the “X” to cancel.
  • Raise to Listen/Talk
• Send Photos & Video
  • Tap and hold the camera icon
  • Tap and hold the red video button to record video. When done you can tap play to preview or tap the “up” arrow to send
  • Tap the Camera icon to take a photo. This snaps and sends automatically.
  • If you prefer to take a photo and review it before sending, tap the camera icon to get the standard “Photo Library/ Take a Photo or Video” dialog
• Set photo and video messages to self destruct (on your device)
  • Saves storage, not for security
  • Settings > Messages
  • In the Audio Messages section you can set the “Expire” value to “After 2 minutes” or “After 1 Year”
  • In the Video Messages section you can set the “Expire” value to “After 2 minutes” or “After 1 Year”
• Detail view on threads
  • When reading a Message thread tap the ‘Details’ button (top right)
  • Shows contact info for all participants in a Message thread
  • Share your location
    • Current = map
    • Share My Location = Find My Friends
  • Set “Do Not Disturb” on a thread
  • Review all photos and videos in a thread
• Name group messages
  • Tap on ‘Details’ in the conversation.
  • Swipe down to add or change the conversation name
• Send and receive calls on iPads (Handoff)
  • Works with iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad (4th generation), iPad Air, iPad minis, and iPod touch (5th generation)
  • Requirements
    • Both devices must be on the same Wi-Fi network.
    • You must be signed into FaceTime on both devices: Settings > FaceTime
    • You must turn on “iPhone Cellular Calls” on both devices: Settings > FaceTime > iPhone Cellular Calls
    • You must be signed into iCloud on both devices with the same Apple ID: Settings > iCloud
  • Making a call or sending a Text
    • In Contacts find the person you want to call
    • Next to their phone number tap the Messages or Phone icon
    • When placing a call you should see “using your iPhone”
    • In Messages you should see the “green bubbles”, the text input field will also say “Text Messages”
  • Tapping phone numbers (data detectors) in Apps like Safari or Calendar can also initiate calls
  • If your carrier supports Wi-Fi calling you may need to disable on your iPhone it for this to work
    • Settings > Phone > Wi-Fi Calling

Notification Center

• App Widgets
  • Slide Down to access Notification Center
  • Make sure you’re in the ‘Today’ view
  • Scroll to the bottom
  • Tap the ‘Edit’ button
  • Tap the green “+” to add a widget or the red “-” to remove one
  • Drag to order
  • Most of the Widgets I’ve found to be pretty lame and useless
  • One that is worthwhile is pCalc
• Interactive notification
  • On the Lock screen and within Notification Center, you swipe from right to left to reveal actions.
  • When the notification banner appears swipe down on it to reveal actions

Settings

• Show App Battery usage
  • Settings > General > Usage > Battery Usage
  • Tabs for Last 24 hours and Last 7 days
• Enable custom Keyboards
  • Install an app that supports 3rd party keyboard
    • Swype
    • Swiftkey
    • Fleksy
    • TextExpander
  • Settings > General > Keyboards > Keyboard > Keyboards
  • Tap ‘Add New Keyboard…’
  • Any 3rd party ones will be listed near the top.
  • Tap the ones you want to enable them
  • Additional options on ‘Keyboards’ screen
    • Some require turning on ‘Allow Full Access’
    • Can tap ‘Edit’ at the top of the screen to reorder.
    • The one at the top of the list will be the default one.
  • To switch keyboards
    • While typing tap the “globe” icon (this can be changed by the keyboard)
    • Can also tap and hold to get a pop-up list
  • Why ‘Allow Full Access’

    • To communicate back to the host app this access is required

    • The trouble is once that is allowed it also opens up sending all presses back to the host app.

    *

    Mail

• Swipe gestures in Mail
  • Swipe right to left on a message
    • Opens the More/Flag/Archive (or trash)
    • swipe all the way and it triggers the Archive(Trash option)
  • Swipe left to right to get a ‘Mark as Unread’ option
• Notify Me… option (under More…)
  • This allows you to be notified on specific threads when someone has replied
  • You can get there from the ‘More…’ button
  • Also when composing a message.
    • When (and only when) entering the subject you’ll see a “bell” icon
    • Tap the ‘bell’ and then tap ‘Notify Me’
• New “Special” mailboxes
  • Today, VIP, Unread, Attachments, Thread Notifications
  • In the ‘Mailboxes’ view, tap ‘Edit’ (upper right)
  • You can tap the blue checkmark to add or remove boxes from the view
  • Grab the handles to re-order them.
• Add info to contacts
  • When reading a message if it detects contact information that is not in your contacts
  • You’ll see a “Contact” section with the missing content, say a new phone number.
  • You can tap ‘Ignore’ or ‘Add to Contacts’
  • Then ‘Create a new contact’ or ‘Add to Existing Contact’

Safari & App Extensions

• Enable App Extensions
  • Install apps that support extensions
    • These technically work in any app with the “Actions” button (formerly the Share button)
  • There are two different kinds of extensions (Activities)
    • Share (color icons on top) - Post to a sharing website or share content with others
    • Actions (grey & white on bottom) - Manipulate or view content originating in a host app
  • Pocket and Evernote have “Share” extensions
  • 1Password and PDF Converter (Readdle) have Action extensions
  • To enable Activities extensions
    1. Tap on the ‘Actions’ button (box with the up arrow)
    2. In the Share row or Actions row swipe to the right
    3. Tap the ‘More…’ button
    4. You’ll see a list of ‘Activity’ extensions available from install apps. Toggle on the ones you’d like to enable. Use the handles to change the order.
    5. Tap Done.
  • To use an Action
    • Tap the “Actions” button
    • Tap the action you’d like to use
• Show Desktop version of a mobile site
  • When you are on a site that is displaying a mobile version
  • Tap the URL bar once to bring up the ‘Favorites’ view
  • Swipe down anywhere below the URL bar to reveal the “Request Desktop Site” option (there’s also an Add to favorites link)
  • Tap “Request Desktop Site”
  • The change only remains in effect for that tab. To get back to the mobile view, close the tab, open a new one and reload the site.
• Close iCloud Tabs on any device
  • Tap the tabs button
  • Scroll down to the Safari tabs
  • Swipe right to left
  • Tap Delete.
  • Only works on desktops running OS X Yosemite.
• Private browsing tabs
  • Tap the tabs button
  • Tap ‘Private’
  • tap the “+” to add a new Private tab.
  • URL bar will be dark for private tabs
  • To go back, tap the tabs button again, tap private to go back to the standard browser tabs.
  • When you go back to private browsing any tabs you had open there will come back.
• Subscribe to RSS in ‘Links’
  • Go to the site that has the RSS feed you want to add
  • Tap the ‘Bookmarks’ button
  • Tap the ‘Shared Links’ tab (has the @ symbol)
  • Tap ‘Subscriptions’ (at the bottom right)
  • Tap ‘Add Current Site’ (at the bottom right)
  • Order the feeds how you’d like time to appear.
  • Tap ‘Done’
  • To view them, return to the Bookmarks > Shared Links tab and scroll down under ‘Twitter’ links if you have those enabled.
• Scan Credit Card number on forms
  • When you get to a credit card field in Safari
  • Tap on the field to get the keyboard (text entry)
  • Tap the ‘Scan Credit Card’ link
  • Position the card in the frame with the camera
  • It will find, scan, and enter the card number in the field.
  • May have to tilt the card a bit, but mine recognized a really worn out card
  • On mine it also read the expiration, but didn’t always fill it in.
• Duck Duck Go search engine
  • Doesn’t collect, track, or share your searches.
  • Settings > Safari
  • In the ‘Search’ section tap on ‘Search Engine’
  • Tap to select ‘Duck Duck Go’
  • This only changes the URL search in Safari, not Spotlight which uses ‘Bing’. Does change the ‘Search the web’ link in spotlight results.

Spotlight

• Now searches web and services as well as local
• Restaurants, Music, contacts
• Adjust the order and kinds of results
  • Settings > General > Spotlight Search
  • Toggle on or off options and reorder

Notes

• You can now add rich Text formatting and images to your notes
• Double tap to select a word or just make a selection
• In the pop-up tap on the ‘BIU’ option. Choose ’Bold, Italics, or Underline)
• To add a photo, tap once where you want to insert the photo. Tap ‘Insert Photo’. Choose your photo and tap ‘Choose’

Other Stuff

• In multitasking you’ll now see a row of recent contacts. Swipe right and you’ll see your list of Favorite contacts.
  • To add someone as a favorite find their entry in Contacts, swipe to the bottom, tap ‘Add to Favorites’. Choose which number or email, including FaceTime and FaceTime Audio
  • You can turn on or off recent contacts in the App Switcher
    • Settings > Mail, Contacts, & Calendar
    • In the ‘Contacts’ section the setting ‘Show in App Switcher’
    • Can toggle on or off the Phone Favorites and Recents