These Shortcuts iPhone 13 2021
These Shortcuts Can Help You Clean Out Your IPhone Or IPad
“Spring cleaning” usually conjures up images of tedious housework, but it’s worth thinking about tidying up your smartphone and tablet, too — and I don’t mean physically, though that might also be a good idea. If you’re anything like us, your devices are full of old photos, files and apps taking up valuable storage space. Now is as good a time as any to start cleaning things out. And if you’re an iPhone or an iPad user, Apple’s Shortcuts feature just might be able to help.
In a nutshell, Shortcuts let you quickly perform a specific task, or a more complex sequence of tasks, with a single tap or voice command. This idea isn’t unique to Apple — if you’re a geek of a certain age, you probably know these as strings of actions better as “macros.”
Building your first Shortcut can seem daunting at first, but relax: You don’t need to be a coder to create a truly useful setup. All it really takes is a little time to put all the pieces together. More than anything, I’ve come to think of these things as little logic puzzles. You know the result you’re looking for — it’s just a matter of thinking through the steps and finding the right sequence of actions to get you there.
There are, of course, limits to what Apple will let you do. Let’s say you’re like me, and you’re just awful at remembering to clear out your notifications regularly. I would love to create a Shortcut that would automatically dismiss notifications generated more than a day or two ago, but Apple doesn’t make information about a notification’s age available to Shortcuts. Similarly, there doesn’t appear to be a way — for now, at least — to figure out the last time you used certain apps, so there’s no way to build a Shortcut that highlights apps you could delete without missing them. As you’ll see later, Apple also has a fairly limited set of tools for interacting with files stored directly on your iOS device.
Granted, there are a handful of third-party apps, like Toolbox Pro, Data Jar and JellyCuts, that dramatically expand on the Shortcut tools that ship in iOS, but the thing to remember is that there are some tasks you can’t pull off with Shortcuts yet.
Oh, and for the sake of your sanity, it’s best to start piecing together Shortcuts on as big a screen as possible. Since there’s no Shortcuts functionality available on Apple’s Macs — even the new ones running the iPhone-inspired M1 chipset — that means use an iPad if you have one. Don’t worry: As long as your iPad and iPhone are signed into the same Apple ID, any Shortcut you create on one will be visible in the other.
How to create a Shortcut
Piecing together complex actions to help clean out our devices involves a lot of trial and error at first, so let’s work through a basic example. Meet BackupNotes: It’s the first half-decent Shortcut I ever made, and as the name implies, it’s meant to help you quickly save your old notes in the cloud before you go through and start cleaning house.
The logic here is pretty straightforward. First, we check today’s date and dial it back 30 days to make sure nothing relatively new and necessary gets caught in the net. And right off the bat, you have a few different ways to pull this off. At first, I actually created a separate shortcut called “MonthAgo” that takes the current date and subtracts 30 days from it. From there, I could add an instruction to the BackNotes workflow to run the MonthAgo shortcut first, then pass that adjusted date into the Find Notes action. Turns out, that whole rigmarole wasn’t actually necessary. After a little Googling, I could just define the date and adjust it directly inside this shortcut. This new approach is a whole lot cleaner, but I’m still grateful I took the long way around first since it opened my eyes to the possibility of linking multiple shortcuts together.
It’s pretty much smooth sailing from there. Searching for actions related to the Notes app in the Shortcuts sidebar reveals a handful of options, including just the one we need to select notes older than the date we defined earlier. Then, just add an action for compressing those notes into a single ZIP file — you can’t see it in the image above, but there’s also a text field to give the new compressed file a name — and cap things off with a save action.
I should note that while those last few steps sound like the easiest, they took a little more time to figure out than I care to admit. Originally, I had wanted my iOS devices to open the share sheet so you could more easily get that new ZIP file to contacts, or into the cloud storage app of your choice. You can do that, but there’s a caveat. If you use a Shortcut to give a file a name and try to send it via the share sheet, the name doesn’t actually stick; it winds up with whatever generic name Gmail or Telegram or Google Drive decides to give it.
Naturally, the Shortcuts apps’ flexibility means there’s a fairly easy workaround, if you’re game. It just takes a couple extra steps right at the end. You could, for instance, close things out with an action to send that same file via the share sheet, plus one more to delete it after you’ve moved it where you want it. It’s functional when run, but it requires one final tap to confirm you want to delete the ZIP file, which feels a little inelegant. Thankfully, the solution I landed on does just fine for my purposes. By saving the notes backup through iCloud Drive, you can manually choose a third-party storage service (Google Drive, in my case) that you’ve already connected to the iOS Files app.
Tweaking the formula
Now that your notes are all safely stored elsewhere, you can now scrub through them all and delete as needed. But what could we do if we put a twist on that basic formula? Well, how about this: Let’s back up other files you’ve stored on your iOS device before you go on a cleaning spree.
As you can see, the last two steps here are the same as in the previous example, but the lead-in is a little different. Because I want to be able to choose the backup’s file name rather than just tag it with the date as we did before, things start with an “Ask for text” action. The user then punches in whatever file name they want, which gets saved as a variable in the following step. (Pro tip: Once you find actions you suspect you’ll use frequently, you can save them as favorites for easy access.)
With the beginning and the end sorted, it’s all a matter of getting to the files we need. That’s easier than it sounds. Rather than use the “Find Notes” action from last time, “Get File” is what we need to dig into your iOS device’s file structure. Once that action is in place, it’s important to make sure the options for showing the document picker and selecting multiple files are ticked. That way, once you actually run the Shortcut, you’ll be able to navigate through the folders on your device and pick the ones you’d like to package up and offload in the final two actions. Once again, you can store that new compressed file in almost any cloud storage service that’s connected to your Files app. (I say “almost” because Dropbox can be added to your Files app, but you can’t navigate to it when it’s time to save the file. If your life lives in Dropbox, you have to use a different, similarly straightforward action to store your backup in there.)
As useful as this Shortcut can be, Apple’s limitations mean it’s not as automated as one might prefer. There’s no way that I know of to use the “Get File” action to collect all files in a specific folder, like the one all your Safari file downloads get saved to. Being able to automatically select those files, bundle them up and save them somewhere would be really helpful, but the app just doesn’t offer that kind of granularity.
Adding more actions
I don’t know about you, but the screenshots album on my phone is a disaster — it’s all fleetingly funny tweets, images of my homescreen I captured by accident and a screen grab of this beautiful nightmare. If your iOS device is starting to run low on storage, clearing up every little bit can help, so let’s take a stab at a Shortcut that automatically deletes some of those old images.
Right off the bat, there are two new actions to dig into. The first does exactly what it says on the tin — feed it a snippet of text and the Shortcut will read it aloud. (This obviously isn’t necessary, but what’s life if you can’t goof around a little?) The second, meanwhile, is one you’ll probably find yourself returning to pretty frequently. It gives you the ability to define and display multiple options in a notification that slides down from the top of the screen. In this case, we want to be able to delete screenshots we consider old, or delete all screenshots in one fell swoop. It also introduces us to the idea of carrying out multiple tasks in a single Shortcut. This will definitely come in handy as you continue to build your own.
Granted, these are pretty simple tasks — one of them does the now very familiar date adjustment trick, and uses the Find Photos action to select all of the screenshots created more than a month ago. (You can tweak this pretty easily if you’d rather, say, select screenshots that were last modified before a specific date.) Once that action applies those criteria to find the right images, it’s just a matter of adding a Delete Photos action to get rid of them. By default, you’re prompted to confirm you want to erase those files, so there’s always a chance to back out if you think better of it.
As for the next task, deleting all screenshots instead of a selection of them? That's easy: Just recreate the previous task, but without specifying how old the screenshots should be. As with the other examples we’ve worked through, there’s plenty of room for experimentation and customization depending on exactly how you’d like things to work, but for now, we have a dead-simple tool for clearing out some of your old, unneeded files
What next?
So, we’ve created a few helpful Shortcuts — now what? Well, you should probably try them out. All the Shortcuts you make are accessible from inside the app, but there are situations where you might need quicker access to them. For those cases, you can put the appropriate Shortcuts right on your home screen, and as usual, there are a few ways to do this.
The simplest way to go is by adding a Shortcut widget. On an iPhone, long-press an app icon and tap the plus sign that appears in the top-left corner. From there, you can pick out exactly the widget layout that feels right, and plop it in the middle of all your apps. If that looks a little too big for your liking, you can also create app icons on your home screen that directly execute your Shortcut of choice:
Engadget
Alternatively, you could always just use Siri — it can recognize all of your Shortcuts by name, and executes them (almost) the same way as if you had just poked at your screen. The only real difference is that if any of your Shortcuts require text input, like the file name prompts we built above, you’ll have to respond out loud rather than punch text in manually.
This is just a crash course for Shortcut creation. If you’re interested in learning more about crafting these clever utilities, there’s no shortage of places to turn — I’ve mostly relied on the excellent r/Shortcuts subreddit and Chris Lawley’s YouTube channel to get a sense of what was and wasn’t possible early on. But, the best way to figure out how to make better Shortcuts is by pulling some apart.
Pop into your iOS device’s settings and allow “untrusted” shortcuts. This allows you to install shortcuts created by other people, and looking at how their logic unfolds can be extremely informative. Just make sure you take a few moments to look at how those third-party shortcuts actually work before you run them!
The Best IPhone Keyboard Tips And Tricks
Typing on a tiny iPhone keyboard is always a challenge. But while it may not qualify as the world’s most optimal experience, you can make your messages, emails, captions, and tweets more accurate by using your phone’s native software keyboard to its best advantage. While there are plenty of third-party keyboards that promise to make keyboarding more enjoyable, Apple’s own default keyboard offers some nifty moves of its own. Here are some tips on where to find them.
Custom fonts
With iOS 13, you can download and install custom fonts to further control the look and tone of your messages. You can now dress up your documents with vintage, modern, formal, or playful fonts directly from your keypad. For both iOS and iPadOS, you can install custom fonts by downloading specific font apps like Fonteer and Font Diner from the App Store, applying them to the compatible apps on your phone, and managing them in settings. These new fonts work through the app you plan to use them with — they are not compatible with all the apps on your device.
Smiley face shortcut
You can access a host of special functions for the iPhone keyboard via the Smiley Emoji icon on the bottom-left corner of the screen. Tap and hold, and it brings up a menu with quick access to the keyboard settings. You will see a list of all the keyboards that are installed on your phone, saving you a trip to the settings app. Most people have their native language keyboard and the emoji keyboard only. The iPhone app lets you add a different language keyboard or even load a third-party keyboard from the App Store. You will also see keyboards of installed apps that install their own keyboards. If you have third-party keyboards installed, you may see a globe icon instead of the smiley icon.
Smart punctuation
If you want your text to look more word-processed and easy to read, smart punctuation — like curly quote marks and long (em) dashes — are easy to create. Smart quotes know which end to curl into the quoted material, and that’s why they’re smart. When you type a double-dash, the keyboard knows that it’s supposed to be a single long dash and places it automatically. One more thing: If you switch on the period shortcut, when you finish typing a sentence, you can tap the space bar twice, and instead of two spaces, you get a period and a space.
Tap and hold for alternates
If you tap and hold on certain letters, it will bring up a series of alternate characters — for instance, accent marks, where you just have to slide your finger to select the right one. Not every key has an alternate. Alternates also work for punctuation and even emoji. In the emoji keyboard, if you tap and hold an emoji, you get various skin tone options, for example, and you can choose one for the default skin tone.
Emoji hunt
Sometimes it’s hard to find just the right emoji you’re looking for to express just the right emotion for your message. Whereas on a Mac, you can use a search term to locate a specific emoji, on the iPhone, there is no text search box. However, if you just type the word in the message, iOS automatically suggests the closest emoji. You can use the word, the emoji, or both together. When you see one of the suggestions come up, hit the space bar first. The suggestions stay there, and then you can tap one to have both the word and the emoji in your message. You do not have to know the exact name of the emoji. For this to work, you must enable the predictive keyboard to see which emoji the keyboard comes up with in response to your word.
Tap and slide
Say you want to just add a single number or bit of punctuation. You don’t have to point and tap each key individually. You can just tap on the Number key (123) and slide your finger to place commas, colons, ampersands, dollar signs, and any number without having to lift your finger off the keyboard. When you’re done, the keyboard automatically reverts to its original state. This swiping gesture saves time and effort, as you don’t have to readjust the keyboard or manually switch back and forth. Similarly, to add a capital letter, tap the Shift key, swipe to the letter you want to add, and then release your finger.
Left- and right-hand keyboards
As you tap and hold for quick access to the keyboard settings, you’ll see two little keyboard icons on either side of the middle, with tiny arrows pointing in opposite directions. Choose one of these to change how you type, opting to use one hand or the other. These icons only appear in vertical mode, and choosing either one shifts the whole keyboard over to one side. You can tap the Arrow on either side to revert to the full-size keyboard. This is especially handy for larger-screen iPhones, helping you to better operate with your thumb.
Period as a domain name
You can use the period key on your keyboard to automatically insert a domain address. Launch your mobile web browser or search engine, and tap on the Address Bar to access the keyboard. Type the name of the site, and then tap and hold the Period key. You will see a menu with options like .Com, .Edu, and org. Swipe to select the right one.
Keyboard as trackpad
You can transform your keyboard into a trackpad by tapping and holding your finger on the Space Bar. That will let you drag your finger to move the cursor through your text. If you have a device that supports 3D touch, you can tap and hold anywhere on the Keyboard to invoke trackpad action, and the keys will go blank. Aside from letting you move the cursor more easily, this feature makes it easier for you to select text.
Check definitions
You can tap and hold on any word in your text document to evoke a series of actions concerning a word or phrase, such as cut, copy, paste, replace, bold, italic, underline, look up, share, and indent in or out.
Text replacement
Text replacement is an iOS native keyboard feature, and you can set it up in the keyboard settings. Go to Settings > General > Keyboards > Text Replacement to type in short text substitutes for phrases you use all the time. So, instead of typing, “On my way,” you can type, “omw,” and the keyboard will type out the whole phrase for you. If you sign your personal letters with, “Peace and love,” you can type in, “pl,” and the keyboard knows what you want to say.
QuickPath Swipe
With the iOS13 update, Apple widely shared the QuickPath feature. This motioned-typing tool allows users to swipe from letter to letter in a single continuous movement instead of directly typing each letter. Siri and general machine learning combine together to predict what you’re spelling out. To enable or disable this feature, use the options Delete Slide-to-Type and Slide-to-Type on the standard iOS QuickType keyboard. Before this software was available, users had to recreate this experience with a third-party keyboard like Microsoft Swype, SwiftKey, or Google Gboard. To activate either options, navigate to Settings > General > Keyboard. Then, easily use the swipe to type tool in iPadOS 13 or the iOS 13. Simply tap the first letter and then slide your finger to each following letter. The keyboard will anticipate and reflect your word.
Dictation
If you’re in a bind and unable to type out on your keyboard, writing a note or sending an email is still possible. Opt for the dictation option in Settings > General > Keyboard and toggle Dictation on. A confirmation alert will pop up on your screen. At that point, whenever you open or start a new document, you can press the microphone icon and begin talking. After you start speaking, your voice will immediately record as text. If you need to execute a formatting rule, like adding a period or using the tab key, simply say, “Tab key,” and the tool will automatically perform the tab function, add a period, or whatever you command it to do.
Hide that keyboard
We know— the software keyboard seems to take up quite a bit of screen space. If you’re in the middle of a file, or you’re trying to read over a text, the keyboard can be distracting and get in the way. If you just slide the keyboard to mid-screen, it can move it from your center of vision. Then tap on it again to return it to its standard position.
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IOS 14 Hidden Features: 13 Awesome IPhone Tricks We Found So Far
iOS 14 is full of hidden gems; you just have to know where to look.
Óscar Gutiérrez/CNET
With each update Apple releases for the iPhone, iOS gains new features in addition to bug fixes and performance improvements. The release of iOS 14 and iPadOS late last year has been bolstered by subsequent updates, and the current beta of iOS 14.5 looks like it's full of new features, including the ability to unlock your iPhone while wearing a face mask using your Apple Watch.
While we wait for iOS 14.5 to be officially released, there's still a lot to discover in iOS 14.4, the official version. That update didn't include much, adding a new Fitness Plus workout that gets you outside, and several security fixes. But there's so much more to iOS 14 as a whole. For starters, Apple completely changed how iPhone owners interact with their home screens, including the ability to add widgets, an app drawer of sorts and the option to create your own app icons.
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These welcome enhancements will surely enrich your experience, but my favorite tricks in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 are the ones you have to work to find. For instance, you can now fully ditch Apple Mail and Safari with a new default app setting.
Below, I'll walk you through how to use 13 of the best hidden features I've uncovered in iOS 14.4. This list will surely continue to grow, so check back for more gems.
It's true, you can set some default apps on iOS 14.
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET Set your default email or web browser
It's true, Apple is finally giving up some control over your default apps. Right now the feature is limited to email apps and web browsers. So, for example, you can assign Chrome to be your go-to browser or Outlook as your email app of choice.
App developers will need to update their apps for iOS 14 in order for the new default assignment option to appear, so you may need to be patient if your favorite app isn't ready.
To get started, open your iPhone or iPad's Settings app and then scroll down to the bottom where it lists all of your installed apps. Find the mail or browser app you're looking for and tap on it. If it's been updated for iOS 14, you'll see either Default Browser App or Default Email App; tap it and then select your preferred app.
Right now, I know Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Outlook and Hey email have updated to include this new "default" toggle.
Ever wonder how many websites track you? Now you can know.
Screenshots by Jason Cipriani/CNET Get a privacy report for every webpage you visit
Have you ever wondered how many ad trackers you come across on any given webpage, or during all of your browsing activity? Well, now Safari can tell you that.
Open Safari on your iPhone or iPad and visit a website. Any site will do. Tap on the Aa button in the address field at the top of your screen. At the bottom of the options list is a new Privacy Report. Just below the label you'll see the number of trackers that are actively being blocked by Safari from tracking you. Tap the Privacy Report button to view a more detailed 30-day log of ad trackers that Safari has blocked or kept from keeping tabs on your browsing habits.
If nothing else, you'll be more aware of just how prominent ad trackers are online, with nearly every website and service using them.
The home screen on your iPhone is now a lot more customizable.
Screenshots by Jason Cipriani/CNET Quickly get rid of app home screens
iOS 14's new App Library acts like an app drawer, allowing you to ditch countless home screens full of apps you rarely, if ever, use. Instead of going through each app one by one and sending them to the App Library, you can hide entire home screen panels with just a few taps.
Long-press on an empty area of your home screen to trigger edit mode. Next, tap on the page indicator, then tap the check mark below each panel you want to remove. This won't delete those apps, but will instead move them solely to the App Library, where they're more or less hidden in an app drawer that you can access at any time.
Now playing: Watch this: iOS 14 iPhone tips and tricks
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Banish newly downloaded apps from your home screen iPhone
You just took all that time to curate your home screens, adding widgets and keeping just your most important apps, only to have all of your hard work ruined by a new app you just downloaded. Instead of letting your iPhone put apps on your home screen when you install them, send them directly to the App Library until they prove they're worthy.
Open Settings > Home Screen and select App Library Only in the top section. You can easily find recently downloaded apps in the App Library's Recently Added category, which should be the top-right folder when you view it.
This was taken with the main camera as a ProRaw photo. Notice the lights on the tree, compared to the green hue of the street lighting and blue and pink tones in the sky.
Patrick Holland/CNET Take better photos on iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max
Apple added a new ProRaw picture format in iOS 14.3 to the 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max. The new raw photo format is specific, for now, to those two iPhone models, with the ability to edit and improve the overall look of your pictures in the Photos app. We've taken the new feature for a spin and found it to make a huge difference.
After installing iOS 14.3 you need to turn on ProRaw in the Camera app's settings. Go to Settings > Camera > Formats and slide the switch next to Apple ProRAW to the On position. Going forward, you'll see a toggle labeled "RAW" in the Camera app near the top of the screen. If it has a line through it, your camera will capture a normal jpg file. If it doesn't, then you're capturing photos in ProRaw format.
Can't find that emoji you need? Search for it.
Jason Cipriani/CNET Search the emoji keyboard
Finally -- yes, this one deserves a very loud "FINALLY! "-- you can search the emoji picker for exactly what you want. Launch the emoji keyboard just like you always do and now you'll find a search bar at the top of the keyboard.
Privacy nutrition labels give you a look into how much data an app is collecting.
Screenshots by Jason Cipriani/CNET View what data an app collects about you
If you go into the App Store and look at the listing for any app, you'll now find an app privacy section where each developer is required, by Apple, to list out all of the data they track and use to serve you ads. Some apps collect more data than others, and it's eye-opening to see just how much information an app developer can collect about its users. Don't believe me? Check out the app privacy label for Facebook Messenger. Make sure to tap or click See Details and then start scrolling. And keep scrolling.
Starting with iOS 14.5, you'll be asked by each app if you want to allow them to collect this data and use it to serve better ads to you. However, you can start making decisions right now on whether or not you want to even have apps that collect an abundance of information installed on your phone.
Your hidden photo album can actually be hidden now. Cool, right?
Screenshots by Jason Cipriani/CNET Hidden photos are now actually hidden
The ability to hide specific photos or videos has been in iOS and iPadOS for a while now, but there was a big problem -- these photos you didn't want to see anymore were stored in a Hidden Album in the Photos app that was far too easy to find. With iOS 14, Apple has added the option to hide the hidden album, letting you truly cloak those photos and videos you want to keep, but don't want anyone else to see.
Turn it on by going to Settings > Photos and making sure the Hidden Album switch is turned off. (Yes, off: Enabling the setting means the Hidden Album will show in the Albums tab.) Anything you hide in your camera roll will still be saved on your device and in your iCloud Photos library, but you won't have a way to get to it unless you go back to this setting and turn the Hidden Album feature on.
Picture-in-picture is one of our favorite iOS 14 features.
Óscar Gutiérrez/CNET Watch YouTube videos in Picture in Picture mode
The iPhone now has one of my favorite iPad features: Picture in Picture (PiP) mode for watching videos or using during FaceTime calls. Here's how it works. Instead of having to stay in an app, for example if you're watching your favorite game streamer in Twitch, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to leave the app and the video will automatically shrink down to a floating window. You can move this thumbnail video around, or even hide it off the edge of the screen if you just want to listen to the audio.
The YouTube app doesn't support PiP right now, but you can get around that by starting to watch a YouTube video in Safari in full-screen mode, then swiping up to go back to your home screen. The key is you have to put the video in full-screen mode before leaving the app. If that's not working for you, try requesting the desktop version of the site before you start watching the video. This workaround can be hit or miss, so if it doesn't work for one video, don't get discouraged. Try it the next time you find yourself binging a YouTube playlist and need to use your phone.
If you'd rather not trigger PiP when you leave an app, turn off automatic activation by going to Settings > General > Picture in Picture and turn it off. After which, the only time PiP will be used is when you tap on the icon in a playing video.
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Fake eye contact in FaceTime
We first saw FaceTime's eye contact feature show up in the iOS 13 beta last year, but ultimately it was never released. Well, it's back in iOS 14. Essentially your iPhone or iPad will make it look as if your eyes are looking directly into the camera, even if you're staring at the screen.
It's a subtle feature, but one that should make the person on the other end of the call feel as if you're fully paying attention instead.
Turn it on by going to Settings > FaceTime > Eye Contact.
Tap on the back of your phone to do all kinds of fancy tricks.
Screenshots by Jason Cipriani/CNET Double- or triple-tap on the back of the phone to trigger actions
A new accessibility feature called Back Tap makes it possible to trigger system features, like multitasking or Control Center, or launch a Shortcut just by tapping on the back of your iPhone two or three times.
Find the feature in Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. Pick the number of taps you want to use, and then you'll see a list of actions you can initiate.
For example, you can triple-tap on the back of your phone to take a screenshot or launch Siri.
When I first read about this feature, I thought it would be all too easy to prompt it just by putting my iPhone in my pocket or placing it on my desk. But that hasn't been the case at all -- the phone seems good at identifying the tap pattern before it activates.
Long-press and bam you have a quick list of places you can go.
Screenshots by Jason Cipriani/CNET An easier way to go back inside an app
The next time you find yourself deep within the settings app, wondering how you get there or how many taps it will take to get back to the main page, remember to use this new trick.
Instead of tapping on the back button in the top-left corner, long-press on it to view a list of pages you can quickly and easily go back to. Once the popup shows up, tap the page you want to go to. Pretty easy, right?
You can use the Apple Pencil to write in any text field.
Scott Stein/CNET Scribble in any text field on your iPad with Apple Pencil
The iPad has a new feature called Scribble. It basically converts any text field into a box that you can write in using an Apple Pencil, and your iPad will convert your handwriting to typed text automatically.
If you're in the middle of jotting notes and you get a new iMessage, you can pull down the alert and use the quick-reply field to write out your response and go back to writing notes, all without ever putting down the Pencil or activating the keyboard.
For heavy Apple Pencil users, Scribble should speed up a lot of tasks that normally would have been slowed down by having to switch between stylus and keyboard.
There's so much more to these updated operating systems. iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 are available as free updates and don't take long to install. Just make sure to do some housekeeping on your device before installing to make sure the process goes smoothly.
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