Remove Old-Style Today View Widgets from Your iPhone

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In iOS 14, Apple overhauled widgets, allowing you to add them to your Home screen in addition to the Today View accessible by swiping right on the Home screen. App developers responded with a slew of new widgets, but old-style widgets that are limited to Today View remain available. If you no longer want these older widgets cluttering the bottom of your Today View, here’s how to remove them. Swipe right on the Home screen to enter Today View. At the bottom of Today View, tap the Edit button, and at the bottom of the collection of old-style widgets (new-style widgets wiggle), tap Customize. In the Add Widgets screen, tap the red ⊖ button next to each widget you want to delete and confirm by tapping Remove.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Don’t Trust an App Fully? Hide Your Precise Location from It

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Most of the time, having your iPhone know precisely where you are is good. You want Maps to tell you exactly when to turn, not after you’ve passed an intersection. But too many apps abuse their users’ privacy. We strongly encourage you to stop using such apps entirely, but we acknowledge that it can be hard to give up apps that seem necessary for modern life. Barring that, you could prevent such apps from seeing your location at all, but even that isn’t always feasible. Since iOS 14, Apple has provided another compromise—you can prevent an app from seeing your precise location while still giving it your approximate whereabouts. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services, scroll down and tap the app in question, and disable Precise Location.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Melpomenem)

When Should You Upgrade to macOS 13 Ventura, iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9, and tvOS 16?

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September is here, which means that Apple will soon start releasing major upgrades for all its operating systems. Note that we say “start.” Apple will release iOS 16 and watchOS 9 alongside new iPhones and Apple Watch models in September. However, Apple has now acknowledged that iPadOS 16 will ship later in the fall—perhaps in October—as version 16.1, likely in conjunction with iOS 16.1 and possibly alongside macOS 13 Ventura. tvOS 16 isn’t interesting enough to worry about much either way.

Apple previewed these releases at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, and many people have been testing the public betas since. Once Apple judges each of its operating systems to be ready for public consumption, the question arises—when should you upgrade?

Note that we say when and not if. There’s no harm in delaying a major operating system upgrade until Apple has sanded off rough edges that slipped through testing. But waiting too long puts you at risk from security vulnerabilities, increases compatibility annoyances, and prevents you from taking advantage of new features. Plus, when you buy a new Mac, iPhone, or iPad after these operating systems have shipped, you’ll get the latest version, which could pose problems for your existing apps or compatibility with older hardware or workflows. It’s best to be prepared if you have to replace a device unexpectedly.

Given that we don’t know precisely when each operating system will come out, here’s our recommendation for the general upgrade order that we anticipate and how long we suggest waiting after the release appears. Remember, always make a backup before upgrading a Mac, iPhone, or iPad so you can revert if necessary.

iOS 16

It’s usually safe to upgrade iOS fairly quickly because Apple puts significant effort into ensuring that the new iOS version is a good experience for those who buy the new iPhones that come with it. However, because iPhones are so crucial to our everyday lives, it’s worth delaying the upgrade to iOS 16 for a few weeks, just in case. After that, you can install it and enjoy the new features.

You’ll likely enjoy iOS 16’s customizable Lock screen, which lets you specify the font, color, and placement of various options, all of which appear with photos that can shuffle throughout the day. Widgets can now appear on the Lock screen too, providing at-a-glance weather and other info even without unlocking your iPhone. The new dictation capabilities that let you talk, select, and type without switching modes may also be game-changing for some, and dictation will even add punctuation automatically and let you enter emojis with voice commands.

However, some features may not be fully available at the start due to Apple’s tight integration of operating systems. Messages will finally let you edit messages after sending, undo sending, and mark messages as unread—but editing and unsending won’t work for messages sent to people running anything earlier than iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and Ventura. We’re unsure if Apple will enable iCloud Shared Photo Library, which lets you automatically share an entire library of photos with family members or friends, until iPadOS 16 and Ventura are out as well. Similarly, the Continuity Camera feature of iOS 16, which lets you use your iPhone as a webcam for your Mac’s videoconferencing apps, won’t be available until Ventura ships.

watchOS 9

Once you upgrade your iPhone to iOS 16, there’s no reason to delay upgrading your Apple Watch to watchOS 9. You may not even notice the difference since none of the changes are likely to force changes in your usage patterns.

New features include new views and more metrics in the Workout app, including a display of heart rate zones and pace feedback. You can customize workout and recovery intervals, race against previous routes, get running form metrics, and see your running power. Also new is a Medications app that helps you remember to take medications and log them from reminders. And, of course, there are more watch faces.

tvOS 16

We don’t know when Apple will release tvOS 16, but the changes are so minimal that it doesn’t matter much. tvOS 16 will support more Bluetooth gaming controllers, provide full support of the Matter smart home standard, and offer more integration with your other Apple devices, such as with workouts in Apple Fitness+.

Unless something in that list encourages you to upgrade as soon as it’s out, we suggest letting your Apple TV (the fourth-generation model and later) upgrade itself when it gets around to it, assuming you have automatic updates turned on in Settings > Software Updates.

iPadOS 16

iPadOS 16 may not be available until October, but once it ships, our general advice is that it’s fine to update. For the most part, iPadOS is a superset of iOS, so if anything, Apple should have had some time to fix any early bugs that cropped up in iOS 16 before releasing iPadOS 16.

The big new feature in iPadOS 16—if you have an M1-equipped iPad like the latest iPad Air or iPad Pro—is Stage Manager, which brings a structured windowing system to the iPad and Mac. Stage Manager lets you stack up to four apps in an overlapping view, providing additional sets of apps off to the side in a sort of secondary Dock. If you connect your iPad to an external display (along with a keyboard and pointing device), it offers another separate workspace, so you can work more fluidly in multiple apps at once.

If you want to see more on screen, a new display scaling mode shrinks interface elements and content. It may make Stage Manager and Split View more helpful. You’ll also likely enjoy a better search in Mail, plus options to undo sending, schedule sending, follow up on sent messages, and add rich links. (These Mail features are shared with iOS 16 and Ventura.) Last but not least, the iPad finally gets its own Weather app.

macOS 13 Ventura

The hardest upgrade decision revolves around upgrading your Mac to macOS 13 Ventura, and that assumes you can upgrade at all, given that Apple has dropped support for all Macs released before 2017. The main new feature that you might find compelling is Stage Manager, although most longtime Mac users probably already feel comfortable with their window management skills. If you spend a lot of time in video calls, the new Continuity Camera feature that lets you use your iPhone (running iOS 16, natch) as a high-quality webcam with support for Center Stage—which enables the camera to follow you as you move around—may also be attractive. And, of course, you’ll get the new Messages, Mail, and iCloud Shared Photo Library features that Apple added to iOS 16 and iPadOS 16.

We always encourage caution when upgrading to a new version of macOS. Wait at least a few months before upgrading your primary Mac to Ventura. App compatibility isn’t usually a long-term problem with iOS and iPadOS, but many people rely on older Mac apps that may not work in the latest version of macOS. Even once you’re confident that your apps will work properly in Ventura, there may be workflow or intra-office compatibility concerns if some people upgrade and others don’t. And, of course, unanticipated bugs could crop up at inconvenient times—important work takes place on Macs! Please, do not upgrade to Ventura without checking with us first. With luck, the start of the new year will have brought both the bug fixes and app updates necessary to give the green light.

(Featured image by Apple)

Use Your iPhone to Identify Plants, Wildlife, and Birds with Seek and Merlin

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Now and then, we run across iPhone apps that feel magical, and we want to share two of them: Seek and Merlin. They both use machine learning to help you identify something from the natural world using your iPhone. If you’re at all curious about the plants, wildlife, and birds you encounter outside, you’ll want to download these free apps.

Seek from iNaturalist

You’re out for a walk and see a particularly pretty flower or a tree with an unusual leaf shape. In the past, you’d probably wonder what it was and move on, or if you were really motivated to identify it, you might take a photo and consult a master gardener or arborist.

Instead, download the Seek app, created by the team behind iNaturalist, a social network that encourages members to share their photographs of living things to document organisms in time and space. iNaturalist is a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society, and it maintains a massive database of identified images of plants and wildlife.

To start using Seek, which doesn’t require an account, tap the green camera button on any screen. Then point the camera at something you want to identify and watch as the ID meter at the top of the screen works its way through the taxonomic ranks: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Once Seek fills all seven dots—indicating that it knows the species—you can tap the camera button again to take a photo and add the organism to your observations. Seek then presents a page with additional information about the organism.

Beyond plants, Seek can identify amphibians, fungi, fish, reptiles, arachnids, birds, insects, mollusks, and mammals. It can be more difficult to get a spider or rodent to hold still while you point the camera at it, but you can also take a regular photo and have Seek identify it instead—just tap Photos at the bottom of the camera screen to select a photo from your library. If Seek recognizes the organism, it lets you add it to your observations, but it often has more trouble getting to the species level with a photo.

If you’re a parent, Seek’s challenges and badges might make the app especially fun to use with your child. A new challenge appears each month and asks you to identify a set of species near your location. You can also try past challenges, though you’ll have the most luck with ones from a similar season.

Merlin from Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology

Although Seek can identify birds using its camera, if you’re intrigued to learn more about birds in particular, check out the Merlin app, created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It can identify over 8500 species of birds using images or 685 species by listening to bird songs. Since birds can be difficult to see, much less photograph, Merlin’s capability to identify birds by listening to songs around you is hugely helpful.

To get started with Merlin, tap the Sound ID button on the main screen and then tap the microphone button. The app starts recording, and as it identifies bird songs nearby, it adds them to a list. It’s likely that you’ll hear multiple birds, and as Merlin continues to hear their songs, it highlights the species singing. After you tap the red stop button, Merlin saves your recording. You can then compare Merlin’s recordings with the one you made, and if they match, tap a button to add the bird to your list.

Merlin is also happy to identify a bird from a photo, which you can take from within the app or pull out of your Photos library. (Tip: When viewing your library from within Merlin, search for “bird” to find just the photos you might want to identify.) After you use a two-finger pinch-out gesture to zoom the photo to fit in the box, tap the Next button and confirm the photo’s location and date to see details about the bird. Again, if it’s right, tap the This Is My Bird button to add it to your list.

Just as Seek connects to iNaturalist for additional online capabilities, Merlin can connect to an online eBird account where you can manage your sightings and more. There’s also an eBird app that makes sightings public, provides rankings, and incorporates sightings into cutting-edge research projects.

Whether you’re a parent looking for something to do with your child outdoors, an environmentalist with an abiding interest in the natural world, or just someone who would like to identify a pretty flower or unusual visitor to your birdfeeder, Seek and Merlin are well worth downloading. Both are easy to use and require no upfront commitment, but be warned that you may find them surprisingly addictive!

(Featured image by iStock.com/mbolina)

Wi-Fi Calling and Wi-Fi Assist: What Are They and How Are They Different?

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Two similar-sounding iOS features generate quite a bit of confusion. Wi-Fi Calling and Wi-Fi Assist both aim to improve your connectivity by using the best network available, but they achieve that goal in diametrically opposed ways. Wi-Fi Calling leverages your Wi-Fi connectivity to replace weak or nonexistent cellular coverage, whereas Wi-Fi Assist uses your cellular data connection when the Wi-Fi connection is poor. Here’s what you need to know.

Wi-Fi Calling

Of the two technologies, Wi-Fi Calling is more commonly used and more helpful. It enables you to make or receive a phone call if you have a Wi-Fi connection in an area with little or no cellular coverage. That’s a huge win—cellular coverage in cities often doesn’t work below ground and can be blocked by thick walls in old buildings too. And in rural areas, weak coverage is a common problem. Your wireless carrier must support Wi-Fi Calling for it to work, but most do—check the full list for your carrier.

To enable Wi-Fi Calling, go to Settings > Phone > Wi-Fi Calling, and enable the Wi-Fi Calling On This Phone switch. You’ll likely need to enter or confirm your address for emergency services. Normally when you call emergency services, your iPhone provides the dispatcher with your location based on cell tower triangulation; using Wi-Fi prevents that, so the system falls back to your address. For this reason, the iPhone tries to use the cellular network for emergency calls whenever possible. When Wi-Fi Calling is active, you’ll see “Wi-Fi” after the carrier name in the status bar.

The other utility of Wi-Fi Calling is that it lets you take and make phone calls on iPads and Macs that lack cellular capabilities, even when your iPhone isn’t nearby. It’s a little more complicated to enable, requiring the following settings:

  • In Settings > Phone > Wi-Fi Calling, turn on Add Wi-Fi Calling For Other Devices.
  • In Settings > Phone > Calls on Other Devices, turn on Allow Calls on Other Devices.
  • Still on that screen, turn on each device you want to use with Wi-Fi Calling. (Each device must be signed in to the same Apple ID.)
  • On your iPad or iPod touch, go to Settings > FaceTime and turn on Calls from iPhone. On your Mac, open the FaceTime app, choose FaceTime > Preferences, then enable Calls from iPhone and click Upgrade to Wi-Fi Calling. You’ll need to approve the action or enter a code on the iPhone to confirm.

Once you have everything set up, calls should come through to all the devices you’ve added, and you can start new calls from the FaceTime app by entering a contact or phone number and using the phone button. The only downside? Multiple nearby devices can announce incoming calls, which may be annoying.

Wi-Fi Assist

Wi-Fi Assist solves a less common problem than Wi-Fi Calling, but it’s such a useful fix that Apple turns it on by default. In short, when you have a poor Wi-Fi connection to the Internet, Wi-Fi Assist automatically switches your connection to cellular. So, if a Web page doesn’t load or a search in Maps isn’t getting results, Wi-Fi Assist kicks in to ensure the task completes over your cellular connection.

The only downside to Wi-Fi Assist is that you could end up using more cellular data than you expect. That’s likely a problem only if your plan provides extremely limited cellular data or charges significant amounts for additional usage, as might be the case with a pre-paid SIM while traveling. To ensure that doesn’t happen, go to Settings > Cellular, scroll all the way to the bottom, and turn Wi-Fi Assist off. (That screen also tells you how much cellular data Wi-Fi Assist has used; even when it’s on, it’s unlikely to consume much.)

There are a few caveats:

  • Wi-Fi Assist won’t automatically switch to cellular if you’re data roaming (using a carrier other than your main one for cellular data).
  • Wi-Fi Assist works only with foreground apps, not those that download in the background.
  • Wi-Fi Assist doesn’t work with some apps that stream audio or video, or that download significant amounts of data.

In short, Wi-Fi Calling and Wi-Fi Assist are helpful features that attempt to enable your iPhone to work normally for phone calls and Internet-related tasks by switching between Wi-Fi and cellular as necessary to ensure solid connectivity.

Of course, if you have neither cellular coverage nor Wi-Fi connectivity, you’re just stuck and will have to amuse yourself offline for a while!

(Featured image by iStock.com/ipopba)