572: iPhone & iPad Tips

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Great episode.

Slide-over on the ipad is great and I love how you could use the trackpad gesture to invoke it and dismiss it very quickly by swiping to the right on the right margin.

That said, I donā€™t have a Magic Keyboard on my iPad (tried that before by borrowing the trackpad from the macOS) and was looking for a way to do it faster when Iā€™m on a Smart Keyboard of no-keyboard.

I knew that I could use my finger and drag from the right left, what I didnā€™t realize is that:

  1. you can perform that sliding gesture anywhere on the right margin, so you grab your finger just above that grey autocorrection/keyboard bar and it still work;

  2. you can make the same gesture to the left and and then flick your finger to the right and it will dismiss. Thatā€™s the one I find to be very neat for those of us who donā€™t sport a Magic Keyboard.

Hereā€™s a GIF showing it:

Just beware of not letting your slide over window go to the right, that way youā€™ll definetily need to grab that higher dash, which is painfully far from the keyboard (even more on a 12.9!).

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Iā€™ve got a major issue with the timing of this episode. If youā€™re going to have a tip that a feature like ā€œSilence Unknown Callersā€ exists in the OS, please share it before election season and the associated torrent of robocalls.

Just kidding, but not really.

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Anyone else having trouble getting Overcast to download the ā€œMore Power Usersā€ version of this episode?

I had issues last night and again today, and Iā€™m not sure why. Other podcasts seem to be working OK. Could be gremlins in my iPhone.

Iā€™ve had that happen in Overcast with a couple other manually added feeds. I solved it by re-adding the feed with a URL parameter at the end, e.g. feed.xml becoming feed.xml?asdfg or feed.xml?id becoming feed.xml?id&asdfg. Overcast sees that as a unique new feed to crawl and pulls everything.

We have to be careful sharing photos via iMessage. https://youtu.be/FkXGOlmIlNs

Another thing - I use the triple click to reduce whites at night and also the battery saver. Sometimes I need to save battery even when is still high so I like the toggle accesible

Anyone else tried to use the Devonthink coupon? Itā€™s not working for me and the small print says that the promo offer expired in 2020.
Am I doing something wrong?
thanks!
@ismh and @MacSparky maybe the link is old? :slight_smile:

This offer ends on October 31st, 2020. The discount can be applied to upgrades by using the coupon code mpu-2020 in the cart but it cannot be combined with other offers such as the students & educators discount. See our Business Principles for more about on how we do promotions.

Enjoyed the episode ad was really pleased with myself that I knew and the majority of the tips discussed. The two finger swipe down to select multiple emails was brand new for me though!
Some other ones I find useful are the back tap and deleting an app from the device by swiping left in the App Store app under updates. I discovered that by accident

We are looking into this.

Using Remote App to control Apple TV volume. I couldnā€™t make this work until I went into Settings,Remotes and Devices, Remote App and Devices. I found my old, long gone iPhones in there, so I deleted them. Then stood next to Apple TV and pressed Menu to make sure I was paired, then pressed up and down volume controls on my current iPhone. Works great! Even from across the room.

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FWIW / FYI - it seems to be working fine today. ĀÆ\_(惄)_/ĀÆ

@macsparky and @ismh lamented the fact that Apple doesnā€™t allow you to assign Control Center tiles to alternative apps. There is a workaround for this: use the ā€œWhen App is openedā€ automation in Shortcuts (@RosemaryOrchard mentioned this on a recent podcast).

Set it so when the built-in Calculator app is opened, it will run the ā€œOpen Appā€ action to open the alternative calculator of your choice (say, PCalc). Combine this with turning off ā€œAsk Before Runningā€ and when you hit the Calculator tile in Control Center the stock Calculator app will show for just a moment before the automation kicks in and brings up PCalc.

image

Should also work with alternative camera apps, etc. One disadvantage is you effectively wonā€™t be able to use the stock app without disabling the automation ā€“ no matter what mechanism you use to launch the app ā€“ so it only works if you always want to use PCalc instead of Calculator. Thatā€™s not much of a sacrifice, but you may want to think twice before doing this with the camera app since the stock Camera app has some features that 3rd party apps donā€™t.

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I guess we should have mentioned this. But it is such a hack.

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Two thoughts:

  1. Slide over is the reason I want an iPad bigger than 12.9"
  2. Now you mention two-finger swipe down Iā€™m looking for it everywhere. (And not finding it in Airmail, for one.)
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Thanks!
The link is now updated on their website.

I used the MPU code and acquired the app. Let the tinkering begin. :nerd_face:

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Wow, how did I not know that. I always grabbed it with the cursor and flipped it off screen. Was wondering for a while how anyone could have thought that was a good solution.

About the document scanning in Notes, you can access the document scanner in Files as well by long pressing empty space!! Love that!

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I followed these steps, but couldnā€™t get my iPhone to control the volume. I thought it had to be controlled via IR on a remote, but since both Stephen and you manage to use your phones it should be possibleā€¦ Weird!

David,

Absolutely TERRIFIC episode! I REALLY appreciate it when you cover the iPads and the iPhones. Thanks! Unfortunately, I canā€™t afford a Mac.

Happen to listen to this one late. Funny thing though, I listened to it on the same day that Apple Stores (in the L.A. area) reopened.