A little over 3 months since the original version of the iOS 9 has come out and I still find myself discovering new things you can do on it every other day. While the “initiation” guide that you normally get with any new version only walks you through major changes before you decide to exit it and never return, there are just so many new, small things that get added with every following version. A great number of them you probably will never use or are too situational to bother with. However, you never know when the situation arises that one or two of them might just save you some time.
And just earlier this month the latest version of the operating system – iOS 9.2 hit our software menus, bringing even more fixes to previous issues such as syncing bugs and also added a few more neat tricks to pave our way even further into what real technological assistance is supposed to do. Now keep in mind that some of the iOS 9 Tips and Tricks we will be listing here are only available for users of multiple Apple devices (e.g. iPhone and iPad or iPhone and Mac PCs) while others may only be available on the latest iPhone 6 models.
Considering there’s a lot of information to take in and shockingly diverse categories of them too, we’ll be dividing them in chapters so you can find your particular point of interest faster.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Ease of Access
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Switching from Android to iOS
Switching carriers is one thing. Upgrading your iPhone has been made amazingly easy over the years. But if you find yourself in the position where you’re switching from an Android to an Apple phone, the transition may feel downright confusing and difficult to pull off without a serious time investment.
Luckily, with the iOS 9, a nifty app made its way on Google Play. Once you download it on your Android device you can choose to save your photos, contacts, messages and such. When you set up your new iPhone – more specifically, during the setup phase itself – all you need to do is tap the Move Data from Android option.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Making good use of the SD Lightning Adapter
What better way to transfer photos from your SD card or camera than directly, by using the SD Lightning Adapter. Once iOS 9 hit, it has been made possible for you to use the SD to Lightning and USB to Lightning adapters together in order for such transfers to be possible.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – View the state of your battery of your other Apple products from a single device
I’m not going to scramble my mind out to figure out when you would use something like this, but it’s always good to know it’s a possibility. Basically, you can view the battery life of any of your synced Apple devices from any of them. By pulling down your notification center when the phone is unlocked, you can scroll all the way to the bottom, hit Edit and tap the + button next to Batteries.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Handoff, now just a tap away
Handoff is not new to the iOS but can easily be listed as one of the most useful things you can have if you own more than just one Apple device. In case you haven’t used it yet, it allows you to pick up where you left off if you’re writing an email, a document and even a message and continue it on a completely different device.
iOS 9 makes it all even easier by adding a fast access option to Handoff straight from your multitasking screen. Double tap your home button and you’ll find the shortcut at the bottom of your screen, right below all of the currently open apps.
iPad’s own Selection of iOS 9 Tips and Tricks
There is a bunch of things that the iOS 9 update brought to the latest iPads only – meaning you won’t be able to enjoy them on your phone or iPod. For the few lucky iPad users out there, here’s what we gathered.
- Text selection made easy (finally). I kind of wish this had been made available for the iPhone as well as selecting text is a handful and I will most likely just give up unless it’s vital for me to copy paste fragments somewhere. On the iPad however, iOS 9 allows you to use multitouch and mimic the way you would usually use a trackpad on a laptop. That way you can use two fingers to select the entire body of text you wish with a minimal amount of struggle.
- Pop-out videos. You know how the YouTube app has the capability of minimizing your currently watching video while you browse for other ones? That is now possible on your iPad, regardless of the source of the video, as long as it’s an Apple app or Hulu. The way you do it is via the button that you can see on the bottom right of the screen when you’re playing a video or by using the video button, alternatively.
- Multitasking at its best. You can now run two apps at the same time on your iPad Air 2 via the Split View app. The only downside of it is that not all the applications out there support it. However, the way you get that going is by swiping from the right after you’ve opened your first app of choice, select the second you want to open from the grid then drag the slider to the middle of the screen.
- The new iPad Keyboard. While the keyboard has definitely been improved on the mobile phone version of the iOS 9 as well, the iPad received a fair amount of extra attention. The on-screen iPad keyboard has added some new options to cut, copy and paste as well as easy to access shortcuts to various apps.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Interface and Notifications
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Improved Passcodes
Not much to mention here other than the fact that the iOS 9 now supports passcodes as long as 6 digits. All you need to do is proceed to change it from the Settings > Touch ID & Passcode submenu.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – A Back Button is a Good Button
No more constant double tapping the home button to get from one app to another and get lost in the process when you’re trying to multitask. The iOS 9 added a very simple, very useful back button in the top left of your screen so you can easily return to the previous application you were using.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Notification Grouping
While there’s only one more option added to the iOS 9 other than the default sort by date and time, it’s something. By going to Settings > Notifications and turn on the Group by App setting, you can now view them sorted by each separate application instead.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Low Power Mode
If left on default options, your phone has probably already started notifying you that its battery is running low when it reached 20% and 10% respectively. But in case you haven’t found it yet, you can actually turn this mode on manually via Settings > Battery and enabling or disabling it at the very top of the screen.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Searching Improvements
I can’t say that the iOS settings menu is the most intuitive of them all and you may also always realize that you spend a long amount of time to find specific settings in all the submenus that is has. The search function of the iOS 9 is now featured in the Settings App as a standalone spin-off. You can find it when you’re scrolled up all the way to the top.
In addition, iOS 9 also allows you to comb out the apps that you don’t want showing up as results on your searches to maintain a higher level of relevance and faster search times. You can do this via Settings > General > Spotlight Search.
iOS Tips and Tricks – Calling & Texting
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – App & Contacts Suggestions
Depending on how you choose to access your search menu in the new iOS 9, your iPhone will offer you suggestions for various things. If you swipe from the top in the home screen, you will get a selection of 4 apps that the operating system registered you use most. Swipe from the left to right from the first page of the home screen and you’ll be granted an additional row of suggestions – this time contacts; by tapping on a suggested contact, you’re prompted to choose whether you want to Call, Text or just view that contact’s profile.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Keep better track of your voicemail
The iOS 9 allows you to not only save your voicemail but also share it if need be. By sharing it, I mean anything between sending it to someone as a message, sharing it on social media and sharing it to your other devices. The way you do it is by saving it from the Phone app and tapping on it if you wish to share it.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Unknown callers?
This is one piece of information that truly falls into the second category of the iOS 9 Tips and Tricks selection. Sadly, it’s not 100% reliable but a decent attempt an uncovering the identity of an unknown caller that you haven’t saved into your contacts. It requires you to link your e-mail app or apps of choice to your Apple Mail. If the caller has his or her phone number attached to their e-mail, it will display as a suggestion while that person is calling you.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Texting Emojis and Optimizing Your Options
Very small chance that you haven’t used or at least seen the huge amount of emoticons that pop up when you attempt to change the keyboard language layout via the button that is in the bottom left of the screen in the Messages app.
If you feel that the shake to undo is more of an annoyance than something you find yourself actually using, you can turn it off now from the Settings > General > Accessibility > Shake to Undo option.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Siri
Siri seems to be taking turns with either being amazingly useful or an absolute danger to new operating system builds (remember the security flaw where people were able to access private information off of a locked phone via Siri back in September?). Regardless, now that all of these issues have been fixed, we can actually enjoy all the upgrades Siri received.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Siri Reminders
You can now tell Siri to remind you of more than just the time you have to wake up. You can make her remember things such as specific web pages or things you’re looking at and also have her set up a reminder for a specific date, time or location. That way you can easily pop up the TV guide for the evening as soon as you come home for example.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Siri almost knows it all
While Siri has been able to find locations for you before, she can now even gather more specific details such as the working hours of markets and restaurants. As a side note, I’ve found most of these utilities of Siri by just fiddling with it and experimenting with asking various things, you should try it too!
Along with the iOS 9’s smart way of categorizing your photos, varying from selfies, location-specific albums, date-specific folders and so on, you can ask Siri to pull up a particular set of pictures such as the ones you took on the 31st of December or the photos you took last summer in Italy.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Make Siri discreet
In order to not have her shout out her results of whatever you have her do when the situation calls for, you can set Siri up to not speak out loud if your phone is turned on Silent. That can be done via Settings > General > Siri > Voice Feedback > Control with Ring Switch.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Settings
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – WiFi Assist
There was a feature added with the iPhone generations starting at iPhone 5 and above that made your phone choose and juggle between available connections to ensure you get the best and fastest internet browsing you could. By that meaning that your phone would automatically switch to 4G when your WiFi connection faltered or became slow and choppy. Sadly, you couldn’t turn that off nor did the phone tell you it was happening which could result in painful amounts of extra charges or an entire month worth of your data plan gone out the window.
Thankfully, you can now prohibit the phone from making that call by itself by going to Settings > Cellular > WiFi Assist and turn it off.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Improved Battery Usage Information
If you feel like your battery life is slower than usual and aren’t sure why, the iOS 9 offers you a detailed history of how much of your power certain apps have been using either over the past 24 hours or past 7 days. You can access the list via Settings > Batteries, all the way at the bottom.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Touchscreen Assistance
There are a few things you can change about your display’s responsiveness to touch. By turning the core option on from Settings > General > Accessibility > Touch Accommodations (third group of options), you can adjust things such as hold duration and tapping assistance.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Notes
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Doodling in Notes
Sadly only available in the newer Apple products such as the iPhone 6 and above, you can now pull out an entire arsenal of colors and drawing tools and doodle inside the Notes App. Ok, so maybe it’s not an arsenal, but you’ll be given a market, pen or a pencil as well as a few colors to use. Some people may find this more useful than having to type things down.
To make things even more interesting, you can also add photos to your notes now. Additionally, you can share photos you find in your browser directly into your notes for easy access.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – To-Do Lists
iPhone 6 and above also allows you to make entire to-do lists in your notes that automatically add check icons which you can tap next to every row. You’ll find the to-do list option when you open a new note, the first icon on the left right above the keyboard.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Safari
Safari has had its fair share of improvements too, while I can’t call them all groundbreaking. There is an option that you can make use of to turn off frequently visited websites so they don’t show up when someone else may be using your phone. You can disable displaying this information by going to Settings > Safari > Frequently Visited Websites and uncheck the option.
The more relevant change that Safari has seen is a decent amount of customization that was brought to reading webpages. Those revolve around font size, background colors and more. It’s a nifty little thing that you can use when reading blocks of text that can quickly tire your eyes out, especially when the display’s brightness is set to high.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – E-mail
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – More Doodles!
Not exactly considered doodling per se, but the latest iOS 9 allows you to take notes and draw directly onto email attachments. What better way to make your point and quickly reply to the sender of the email than to quickly mark the content you’re referring to? In order to make use of this feature, all you need to do is to open the email with the attachment in question, tap and hold on the image or document in question then select Markup and Reply and a selection of options at the bottom of your screen will appear.
iOS 9 Tips and Tricks – Working with your emails easily
There’s a quick and fast method of keeping your mail attachments safe and accessible from any Apple device you are logged on. Similarly to how you can do to import photos in Notes, you can tap and hold the attachment in question and you get an option to save the attachment directly to your iCloud (it doesn’t say it will save it to the iCloud, but you can quickly recognize it thanks to the trademark iCloud logo).
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