Tip, Tricks and Articles for iPad, iPhone, Mac
iCloud, Windows, Android, Office 365, Dropbox, Apps, and more

My 'twin' tech-lady in Los Angelos, Tech Wizard Judi Jacobs, sent a lovely email this week with thoughts about using the iPhone or iPad to improve your mental and physical well-being.  ​

One of the apps she mentioned really took my fancy, and is especially topical at the moment because I am running a series of sessions for parents at various schools in Melbourne, about kids on technology. The topic of how to get kids off technology always comes up at these sessions.

The app is called Forest.

​Here's what Judi said about this app:

"You "plant" a tree and can't use your phone until the tree is fully grown. You can decide the limits in set up. If you try to use your phone the app asks you "do you really want to kill this tree?" which is a ridiculously effective motivator to get through the time you are forcing yourself to unplug. (If there is an actual need to use your phone you merely click the home button.) Planting enough trees earns coins. With 2500 coins you can plant up to 5 real trees with the tree-planting organization Trees for the Future."

As someone who is forever attached to their technology, this might be a good one for me to try!

Continuing the Back-to-School theme of recent articles ...

If you, like me, are going to very soon be filling out the student public transport concession application, you may well be thinking about getting new ID photos for each child needing this travel concession.

These days, instead of paying a small fortune for ID photos printed by the post office, chemist or camera shop, I use an app on my iPhone and to take the photos, and print them on our home printer.

This year, I have found that my previously trusty ID Photo app is no longer available after the upgrade to iOS 11 - so have had to go in search of a new one for this year's photos.

The app that I have landed on is Biometric Passport Photo - to check it out, just tap/click on the link. It is free if you just want to print single photos.

Does anyone have a different Photo ID app that they prefer?

Yes, there is an app for everything!

If you are holding a sweep on Melbourne Cup Day, there is an app that can help with that.

It's called Melbourne Cup Sweep, and is free.

Here's the link for those of you who are interested!

iTandCoffee ran another two 'Keeping Kids Safe on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch' sessions at local primary schools this week, at St Rochs in Glen Iris and at Ashburton Primary.

A question asked at one of these session was about whether there is an app that allows kids to hide apps that they don't want parents to see.  One of the parents had heard about an app that looks like a calculator, but that  actually hides things the child doesn't want parents to see.

Apps that can hide photos and videos

There are apps available in the App Store that do allow for the hiding of photos and videos that the device owner doesn't want others to see.

Here is an article about such apps:

• Vault Apps - Apps that can look & function like a Calculator

​
Method for hiding Apps

However, these apps do not allow for hiding of other apps - and there is no such app available in the App Store.  (On Android, it is possible to get an app that locks other apps - but this is not possible on Apple devices.)

Instead, anyone wanting to 'hide' apps on an Apple i-Device can use 'app groups'.  

By getting apps into the 'wiggle' mode (holding your finger on an app until it wiggles), one app can be dragged on top of another app to create an app group.

Apps within that group can then be 'hidden' on second and third screens of that app group, so that the App does not appear as a little icon in the group that is on the Home Screen.

Need further information on this?

For those who need to understand this area better - just how one would achieve this 'hiding' in groups, we have recorded a short tutorial and made it available to iTandCoffee Club members, and added it to our library of iPad and iPhone Handy Hints.

Not yet a member of our iTandCoffee Club?  Find out more here » 

Do you have a document in hard-copy format, but not in digital format?  

If you want to edit that document, you might think that the only way is to start from scratch - re-type the document into something like Word or Pages, and then apply your edits.

There is an easier, time-saving way to get your hard-copy document into an editable format.

In this situation, I would now use an app that I have on my iPhone, an app that can scan a hard-copy document and turn it into an editable document, including both the text and the images.

The app is called Office Lens.  

​It is a FREE app that is part of the Microsoft suite of apps that are available for iPad and iPhone.  Your scans can be saved to OneDrive, OneNote (or any other 'cloud'), and can be opened in Word or Powerpoint for editing.

While I would always stick with my favourite app Scannable by Evernote for my day-to-day scanning using my iPhone, I now have Office Lens 'waiting in the wings' for the occasion where a need a hardcopy document turned into a Word document. 

Handy Hints (for Club members)

• Multi-tasking - switching from one app to another, then back.   
• How do I quickly fix a mis-behaving app on my iPad and iPhone, or a device that is mis-behaving in general?
• Send an iTunes gift from your iPhone or iPad
• Stopping Facebook from autoplaying videos - and wasting your mobile data
• Some great tips for using Maps
• How do I stop all my kids games from appearing on my iPad and iPhone?
• Have you discovered this great feature of the TripAdvisor App?
• Stopping Facebook from autoplaying videos - and wasting your mobile data
• Turning your favourite web page into an 'app' on your Home Screen​​ ​​

Blog Articles

• A great app for tracking data usage on your iPad and iPhone
• Here's an app that allows you to save YouTube videos to your iPhone!
• Library Books On Your iPad?
• A couple of apps I love (an alternative Calendar app and a Photo Transfer app)
• Great news about Microsoft Office for iPad and iPhone
• Is it possible to sort notes in Evernote in alphabetical order?
• Some recent App additions to my iPad and iPhone 
• Recommendation on a good personal finance app
• Have you discovered 'app extensions'?  Here are some really great extensions for the Photos app.
• What about some iPad board games for Christmas?
• What to do when your iPhone is getting someone else's Instagram notifications
• Apparently, my gadgets are keeping my middle-aged brain young!
• Scan business cards into your iPhone or iPad to automatically create Contacts
• How do I get Pages, Keynote and Numbers for free on my new iPad or iPhone?
• How can I print several photos on a single page from my iPad or iPhone
• Getting ready for the school year - a great little app for those ID photos
• A really handy app for reporting a problem in your neighbourhood
• How your iPad and iPhone can help keep you organised
• A really useful iPhone and iPad app that fills a big gap on these devices

Have you been told by a helpful family member or friend that it is ESSENTIAL that you regularly 'close' your apps on your iPad or iPhone, to avoid draining your battery or over-using your internet data?

Every week, I see clients who, while they may know only a limited amount about their iPad or iPhone, will show me this key 'trick' that their kids or grandkids have shown them.

They show me how the kids have told them to double-press the Home button, then 'swiping up' any 'open' apps to close them - and that they MUST do this regularly.

Well, here's one you can tell those kids and grandkids!  

​It is NOT necessary to do this.

While it is definitely necessary to keep the number of 'open' apps under control on a computer, iPads and iPhones (and other mobile devices) are quite different in how they manage your Apps.

When an app is not in use, it goes into a 'suspended' state, and is not consuming data or battery.

Here is an article that featured online recently, about this very topic.

• You don't need to close apps on your iPhone to save battery (Business Insider)

Instead, the kids and grandkids should be telling you to check that other more important settings, to ensure that you don't unexpected consume battery and data.

Find out what settings you CAN adjust to conserve data and battery in these past iTandCoffee articles.  You will see, this topic features regularly in this blog!

• The myth about closing your iPad and iPhone apps regularly ..
• That regular article about how to improve your iPhone battery life!
• A change I made on my iPhone that has made a massive difference to my battery life             
• Apps that drain the life out of your iPhone and iPad battery ...             
• Yet another tip for how to improve your battery life      
• View your battery usage by App     

While assisting a client to set up Parental Controls on her 12yo child's new iPhone this week, discussion turned to the topic of the 'Ask to Buy' setting  in the Family setup of iCloud.  

This setting allows a parent to remotely authorise (or not) a request from a child who is a member of their iCloud Family, to purchase/download content (even free apps).

In this particular client's case, her child was very keen to get onto the social media platforms that her friends were already on.  

This mum was considering allowing her child on Instagram (as a Private account of course), so we installed it and set up the app so that it is a Private account.  

She was happy that she had control over what other social media Apps her child could download, through the Ask to Buy setting.

But there is a catch to this setting that meant her child could have downloaded Apps or other content without having to ask for permission.  

All parents need to be aware of this 'back door'.

How your child can bypass 'Ask to Buy'

If another member of your iCloud Family has already purchased/downloaded an app, any member of the family (even a child who normally has to Ask to Buy) can also download that same app - without the usual parent authorisation.

This means that, if you as parent have already downloaded Facebook, Instagram or any other app, your children can download the same apps without your permission.  If your older teenager uses Snapchat, the younger members of the family could also download that app without your permission.

How to prevent downloads of apps purchased by others in family

You can prevent your kids from downloading apps purchased by others in the family by 'hiding' those apps in the Purchased area of the App Store.  The person who purchased/downloaded the app must do this 'hiding'.

If you are a club member, you will find further instructions on how 'hide' apps here.

• Hiding purchased apps in your App Store purchases - so that kids can't bypass 'Ask to Buy'

Preventing kids from downloading/viewing iBooks purchased/downloaded by others in family

Annoyingly, it is not possible to do the same sort of 'hiding' of iBooks just using your iPad or iPhone.  

This means that, if you have a heap of trashy romantic novels in your own iBooks library, the kids can see these books in the 'Purchased' area of iBooks. They can even download them without you being 'asked to buy'.

The only way to 'hide' iBooks that you don't want others to see is using the iBooks app on a Mac, or iTunes on Windows.   

See the above handy hint (for iTandCoffee Club members) for details of how to do this.

Not yet a member of our iTandCoffee Club?

The iTandCoffee Club is a paid subscription service that unlocks access to all sorts of handy hints, videos, guides, special offers, free sessions and more.    

Find out more about The iTandCoffee Club here »