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- From: "Dominique Farrell" <hollyandopal@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "barry Farrell" <bazfarrell@xxxxxxxxxxx>, "catherine Leacy" <cleacy@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2015 17:27:04 +0100
The iPhone is a fine phone, but, like all fine phones, itâs not flawless.
Many of the default settings of the iPhone can be worrisome, imperfect, or
downright annoying. Here are eight settings that I would change first thing to
make your iPhone experience a bit more pleasant:
1. Stop telling people your email is âSent from my iPhone.â
By default, any email you send from Appleâs Mail app will come with the
signature âSent from my iPhoneâ below your message. Maybe you want to
signal your phone of choice in every email you send; if not, you can wipe this
setting out.Go into Settings, then Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and then scroll
down until you see Signature. Tap that, tap the white box, and then delete
those words until the box is blank.
Or you can write your own signature
Impress friends, strangers, and colleagues with an ironic email signature!
2. Give yourself a distinctive ringtone.
In a perfect world, Apple would assign a random ringtone and new text message
tone to each phone. Instead, everyone has the exact same notification sounds,
which means that whenever you hear that Apple âDing!â anywhere within a
40-foot radius, you go rummaging through your purse and pockets as though you
just won the lottery and want to share the good news.
If youâre like me, however, the message is never for you. It was someone
elseâs phone. Boo.
Give yourself a distinctive notification sound so that you know when you, and
not the hunky dude next to you on the bus, is receiving a message. Go to
Settings, then Sounds, and then open up each important sound under Sounds and
Vibration Patterns and choose something that is not âOpeningâ or âNoteâ
for your sound effects.
3. Put all your Apple apps into their own folder.
There are certain apps on your iPhone that you canât delete. Donât invest
in the market? Well, thereâs nothing you can do about the Stocks app. Donât
play games? Youâre stuck with Game Center. More of an Amazon Kindle person?
Sorry; iBooks is here to stay.
While you canât make these apps disappear, you can stash them away in a
folder to reduce clutter on your home screen. Hold your finger down on one of
the apps you want to hide until it starts shaking. Then drag it on top of
another app you want to hide. This will form a folder, which you can name
whatever you want. Drag all the apps you donât care for, but canât delete,
into that folder.
Now you have even more room for your mandatory Facebook Messenger app!
Theyâll still be taking up space in your storage, but at least youâve
removed them from your immediate line of vision, making it easier to find the
apps you really need.
4. Make sure those apps donât eat your data.
Another side effect of these permanent apps: They can eat up some of your
precious monthly data.
Now, none of these are MB hogs. But why take the chance? You can choose to
disable data usage over cellular networks for certain apps, meaning that
theyâll connect to the Internet only over WiFi, where they wonât use your
data.
Go into Settings â Cellular, and then flick the green switch off for any app
you donât want to use over your 3G or 4G. That could mean Passbook, Tips,
Weather, or Music â or it could mean data-hungry Spotify, Foursquare, or even
Facebook, if youâre trying to kick the habit.
You can also further tailor which of your apps automatically update on the
background of your phone by going to Settings â General â Background App
Refresh.
5. Cancel your credit cards.
iOS comes with an option to save usernames and passwords for websites youâve
visited, as well as credit card information.
By default, this is turned on; youâll get a pop-up notification whenever you
fill out an order form or a log-in field asking if you want to save that
information.
This can save time, but it also might make you a little uneasy. And with good
reason, some would say!
Good news: You can make the iPhone stop asking. Go to Settings, and then scroll
down and find Safari (thatâs your Web browser). Head into Passwords &
Autofill and flick the green switches off for Names and Passwords and Credit
Cards.
And voilà ! Your little one will never purchase a race car on eBay again.
6. Do Not Track.
Websites, as you probably know, can track you around the Internet with cookies,
even after you bounce off their page. They do this mostly to learn your habits
and to serve more targeted advertisements.
Safari, your default browser, supports a privacy feature called Do Not Track,
which stops this snooping behavior. (The Do Not Track setting is actually part
of a mini privacy movement, which you can read about here.) By default,
however, Do Not Track is turned off, which means that websites, well, Do Track.
To stop them from tracking, go to Settings â Safari, and then turn on Do Not
Track.
Farewell prying eyes!
You can also go ahead and block cookies while youâre there, if youâre
feeling extra privacy-conscious.
7. Protect your texts.
When you receive a text on your lock screen, the first few lines of the message
are displayed under the recipientâs name. Sometimes texts are private and
shouldnât be displayed for anyone who glances at your phone to see. To change
this, go to Settings â Notifications â Messages. Scroll down to Messages
Options and toggle the Show Previews option off. Now, when you get a push
notification, just the name of the person texting you will show up, along with
the note âNew message.â
8. Keep your battery juiced.
One of the major battery drainers in iOS 8 is the softwareâs parallax
feature, which creates a foreground and background motion as you move the phone
around. Itâs pretty, but not worth losing your phone over while youâre out
on the town. Turn it off by going to Settings â General â Accessibility.
Scroll down until you see Reduce Motion, and turn it on.
*
Thatâs about it! For more on how to set up that iPhone the right way, make
sure you read my colleague Alyssa Bereznakâs authoritative guide, as well as
Yahoo Techâs list of the 25 best apps for the iPhone.
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