❤ Apple iPhone iOS 14

Widgets are beautifully redesigned in iOS 14, giving users timely information at a glance right on the Home Screen pages.

iOS 14 reimagines the iPhone experience, delivering a major update to the Home Screen with beautifully redesigned widgets and the App Library, new ways to use apps with App Clips, and powerful updates to Messages. iOS 14 is available today as a free software update.

“Together with iPhone, iOS is central to how we navigate our lives and stay connected, and we are making it even more powerful and easier to use in iOS 14, with the biggest update ever to the Home Screen,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “We are thrilled to see the incredible ways developers are taking advantage of widgets and App Clips to create new experiences that we think customers are going to love.”

Redesigned Home Screen Pages

New widgets present timely information at a glance and can be added in different sizes on any Home Screen page. Users can choose a Smart Stack of widgets, which uses on-device intelligence to surface the right widget based on time, location, and activity. For example, users might see the News widget in the morning, Calendar events during the day, and their Fitness summary in the evening. Home Screen pages can be customized to show apps and widgets for work, entertainment, sports, and other areas of interest.

At the end of the Home Screen pages is the App Library, a new space that automatically organizes all of a user’s apps into one simple, easy-to-navigate view, and intelligently surfaces apps that are helpful in the moment. Users can also hide Home Screen pages for quicker access to the App Library.

The App Library makes it easier for users to get to all of their apps with a simple, easy-to-navigate view at the end of the Home Screen pages.

All-New Compact Design for Incoming Calls and Siri

Incoming FaceTime and phone calls and Siri interactions take on an all-new compact design that enables users to stay in the context of what they are doing. With Picture-in-Picture support, iPhone users can now watch a video or take a FaceTime call while using another app.

iOS 14 delivers an all-new compact design that lets users multitask while receiving calls, asking Siri a question, or watching videos.

With Picture-in-Picture, users can watch a video or take a FaceTime call while using another app.

The Siri experience is redesigned to let users stay in the context of what they are doing.

App Clips Bring New Ways to Discover and Use Apps

An App Clip is a small part of an app that is designed to be discovered the moment it is needed. App Clips are associated with a particular product or business, and load within seconds to complete a specific task, such as ordering takeout or filling up the car with gas. They can be easily discovered and accessed by scanning a new Apple-designed App Clip code,¹or through NFC tags and QR codes, or shared in Messages or from Safari, all with the security and privacy expected from apps.

App Clips are fast and easy to discover and allow users to access part of an app the moment they need it.

Powerful Updates to Messages

Messages is central to communicating with friends and family, and now it’s easier to stay connected and quickly access important messages. Users can pin conversations to the top of their messages list, easily keep up with lively group threads through mentions and inline replies, and further customize conversations by setting a group photo using an image or emoji. New Memoji options in Messages are even more inclusive and diverse with additional hairstyles, headwear, face coverings, and more.

Favorite conversations can be pinned to the top of a Messages list, with recent messages, Tapbacks, and typing indicators featured right above the pin.

iOS 14 delivers new customization options including additional hairstyles, headwear, face coverings, and more.

Greener Ways to Explore and New Guides in Maps

Maps makes it easier than ever to navigate and explore with new cycling directions, electric vehicle routing, and curated Guides. Cycling directions take into account elevation, how busy a street is, and whether there are stairs along the route. Electric vehicle routing adds charging stops along a planned route based on current vehicle charge and charger types.² Guides provide a curated list of interesting places to visit in a city, created by a selection of trusted resources. Guides are a great way to find popular attractions, discover restaurants, and explore new recommendations from respected brands.

Maps offers cycling directions along bike lanes, bike paths, and bike-friendly roads.

Electric vehicle routing adds charging stops along a planned route based on current vehicle charge and charger types.

Guides make it easy to find things to do in a city, experience great new restaurants, or places to visit on vacation.

More Transparency and Control with Expanded Privacy Features

Now users can choose to share their approximate location with app developers rather than their precise location when granting an app location access, and get even more transparency into an app’s use of the microphone and camera. Developers can now offer users the option to upgrade their existing accounts to Sign in with Apple. Later this year, App Store product pages will feature summaries of developers’ self-reported privacy practices, displayed in a simple, easy-to-read format. Starting early next year, all apps will be required to obtain user permission before tracking.

App Store product pages feature a summary of the privacy practices of each app before downloading it.

Enhanced Listening Experience for AirPods

AirPods and AirPods Pro gain powerful capabilities with iOS 14. Spatial audio with dynamic head tracking brings a theater-like experience to AirPods Pro. By applying directional audio filters, and subtly adjusting the frequencies each ear receives, sounds can be placed virtually anywhere in a space to provide an immersive listening experience. Automatic device switching seamlessly switches AirPods and AirPods Pro audio between iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Headphone accommodations, a new accessibility feature, amplifies soft sounds and tunes audio to help music, movies, phone calls, and podcasts sound crisper and clearer.

Seamlessly switch AirPods or AirPods Pro audio between iPhone, iPad, and Mac with automatic device switching.

Additional iOS 14 Features

Translate is designed to be the best and easiest app for translating conversations, offering quick and natural translation of voice and text among 11 different languages.⁶ On-device mode allows users to experience the features of the app offline for private voice and text translation.

Siri expands its knowledge and answers complex questions with information sourced from across the internet. Keyboard dictation runs on device when dictating messages, notes, email, and more.⁷

The Home app makes smart home control even easier with new automation suggestions and expanded controls in Control Center for quicker access to accessories and scenes. Adaptive Lighting for compatible HomeKit-enabled lights automatically adjusts the color temperature throughout the day, and Face Recognition in compatible video doorbells and cameras uses on-device intelligence from Apple TV or HomePod to identify visitors. The Home app and HomeKit are built to be private and secure, so all information about a user’s home accessories is end-to-end encrypted.

Digital versions of car keys give users a secure way to use iPhone to unlock and start their car. Car keys can be easily shared using Messages, or disabled through iCloud if a device is lost, and are available today for compatible cars using NFC technology.⁸

Safari offers a Privacy Report so users can easily see which cross-site trackers have been blocked, secure password monitoring to help users detect saved passwords that may have been involved in a data breach, and built-in translation for entire webpages.⁹

Health has all-new experiences to manage sleep and better understand audio levels that may affect hearing health. A new Health Checklist that includes Emergency SOS, Medical ID, ECG, fall detection, and more offers users a centralized place to manage health and safety features.¹⁰ Health also adds support for new data types for mobility, Health Records, symptoms, and ECG.

The Weather app keeps users up to date on severe weather events, and a new next-hour precipitation chart shows minute-by-minute precipitation when rain is in the forecast.¹¹

Apple One is the easiest way to get many Apple subscription services at a great value, so customers can choose the one planthat is right for them or their whole family. Customers can sign up for Apple One starting this fall.

Accessibility features include Back Tap, which offers a quick new way to trigger gestures, tasks, and accessibility shortcuts, sign language detection in Group FaceTime, and Sound Recognition, which uses on-device intelligence to notify users when the sound of a fire alarm or doorbell is detected. VoiceOver, the industry’s leading screen reader for the blind community, now automatically recognizes what is displayed visually onscreen so more apps and web experiences are accessible to more people.

Translate helps users quickly and easily translate voice or text between supported languages, and can work completely offline to keep conversations private.

The Home app has a new visual status that provides an at-a-glance view of a user’s smart home accessories.

Digital car keys give users a way to securely unlock and start their car using just their iPhone, and can be easily shared using Messages.

Pricing and Availability

iOS 14 is available as a free software update starting today for iPhone 6s and later. For more information, visit apple.com/ios/ios-14. Some features may not be available in all regions or all languages.

– https://is.gd/NKb5aq

❤ iOS 14: How to set Google Chrome as your default browser on iPhone

iOS 14 allows for third-party web browsers and email clients to become the default, so if you really don’t like Safari and Apple Mail, you now have other options.

With the latest update to Google Chrome, now available on the App Store, you can change your default browser from Safari to Google Chrome, on iPhone and iPad. Here’s how to do it …

With iOS 14, Apple has added system support for third-party web browsers and email apps. In the future, they may open even more categories.

The default web browser will be used when tapping on a link in any application. Until iOS 14, you could have an alternative browser like Google Chrome but link actions would always open in Safari. Here’s how to change that on iPhone and iPad in iOS 14.

How to set Google Chrome as your default browser on iPhone

Download the latest version of Google Chrome from the App Store.
Open the Settings app and open the settings page for Google Chrome.
Tap ‘Default Browser App’.
Tap ‘Chrome’.

With this set, any app that triggers a standard open URL activity will now direct the system to open Google Chrome, rather than Safari.

If you ever change your mind, you can go back into Settings and change the Default Browser App back to Safari. If you want to use a different third-party browser that isn’t Chrome, you will have to wait for the developer to update their application. The same goes for changing email apps: so far, we haven’t seen any compatible email app expose this feature.

Obviously, this all requires iOS 14 or iPadOS 14 to be installed. Right now, we are at iOS 14 developer beta 8. Apple is expected to release iOS 14 publicly for all users later in September, with a release date likely announced as part of next week’s Apple Event.

– https://is.gd/YyBE7n

❤ What’s new in iOS 14 beta 5?

Apple has officially released iOS 14 beta 5 and iPadOS 14 beta 5 to developers. This week’s update brings a few small but notable changes to the iOS 14 experience, including the return of the scroll wheel for picking times and a new Apple News widget option.

iOS 14 beta 5 and iPadOS 14 beta 5 are fairly large updates in terms of download size, coming in at nearly 2GB and nearly 4GB respectively for most users. The updates feature the build number 18A5351d.

In addition to the fifth developer betas of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, Apple also released watchOS 7 beta 5 to developers today. There is no new macOS 11 Big Sur developer beta quite yet, but it could come as soon as later this afternoon. Furthermore, we expect new public betas of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, macOS 11 Big Sur, and watchOS 7 later this week.

What’s new in iOS 14 beta 5?

One of the changes introduced in iOS 14 is the new time picker that ditches the iconic scrolling wheel. iOS 14 beta 5 brings the wheel back…kind of. Here’s how it looks in action:

There is also a new “Tall” widget for Apple News in iOS 14 beta 5. This widget is exclusively for the “Today” screen on the far-left of iOS or iPadOS. It can’t be added to your home screen. This widget increases the number of Apple News widgets to seven and it headlines for Top Stories, For You, and Best of Apple News+.

In the Settings app, you can now disable the Hidden Album in the Photos app. Open Settings, scroll down to Photos, and look for “Hidden Album.”
- Apple says: “When enabled, the Hidden album will appear in the Albums tab, under Utilities. The Hidden album is always available in the image picker.”

New “Availability Alerts” for COVID-19 Exposure Notifications
- Apple says: “Receive a notification if Exposure Notifications are available in your current region. Your region is determined by your iPhone and does not leave your device.”
New on-boarding process for COVID-19 Exposure Notifications in the Settings app:

New App Clip testing options for developers in Settings
New location access request for widgets:

Shortcuts app has a new “What’s new?” splash screen upon first launch:

Widgets are now blocked when a parent app is blocked with Screen Time

– https://is.gd/pzf7wC

❤ iOS 14: How to use the new iPhone alarms

Among the more modest tweaks to the iPhone’s UI with iOS 14 is a redesigned Clock app. While it is nice to see the rotating dial replaced with a more efficient number pad, there are some confusing aspects to the new interface. Read along for how to use the new iPhone alarms in iOS 14 and where the Bedtime tab has moved.

The Clock app on iPhone with iOS 14 is simpler in some ways but also a bit counterintuitive in others. Below we’ll look at how to best use iPhone alarms as well where the Bedtime tab now lives and more.

Note: iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 are available as free public betas as well as developer betas for iPhone and iPad.

How to use new iPhone alarms in iOS 14

Open the Clock app
Tap the Alarm tab at the bottom
Tap the orange “+” icon in the top right corner or hit Edit in the top left corner and tap an existing one to modify it
Use the number keypad at the bottom of the screen to enter your full alarm time (don’t tap the small orange time near the top, if you do, you’ll just be editing the hour)
You can leave out the 0 for hours between 1-9 (e.g. type 730 instead of 0730)
Don’t forget to check the AM/PM toggle (light gray box signals what is selected)
One way to opt-out of the interface is to use Siri to set your alarms

Here’s how the new UI looks and works with some more details and tips:

After you tap to add a new alarm or edit an existing one, make sure to start with the on-screen number keypad at the bottom.

Don’t forget to check the AM/PM toggle. Unfortunately, it defaults to whatever the current time is. So if you’re adding or editing alarms 12 PM or later, make sure to switch it to AM for morning alarms.

What happens when you tap the orange time

The new UI becomes confusing if you start by tapping the orange alarm time at the top of the edit/new alarm screen as it selects just the hour to be editable or just the minutes as shown below. That leads to a counterintuitive and clunky experience.

However, with the default that displays the entire time in orange (showing the current time) you can use the number pad at the bottom of your screen to quickly enter the hour and minutes for your alarm. So make sure to head straight for the number pad at the bottom.

Where’s the Bedtime tab?

You probably also noticed that the Bedtime tab that used to be in the clock app is gone. You’ll still see the Sleep | Wake Up alarm that is scheduled in the Alarm tab of the clock app but you’ll find that what used to be the Bedtime settings now live in the Health app.

Here’s what it looks like to edit your sleep schedule in iOS 14:

– https://is.gd/VbPjRO

❤ iPadOS 14: How to use the new widgets on iPad

A big change that arrived with iOS 14 is an all-new home screen experience. This marks arguably the biggest UI update for iOS since it was first introduced. However, iPad isn’t getting all the same new features and changes as iPhone, but there are new widgets to take advantage of. Follow along for how to use the new iPad widgets in iPadOS 14.

iOS 14 on iPhone includes the ability to use the new widgets anywhere on the home screen as well as other app pages. There’s also the new App Library feature.

iPad sees a different experience in iPadOS 14 with the new widgets arriving for use only in the Today View portion of the home screen (can’t be mixed in with apps) and the new App Library feature is absent. In any case, the new widgets still offer some useful new functionality.

Note: iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 are available as free public betas as well as developer betas for iPhone and iPad.

How to use new iPad widgets in iOS 14

If it’s not turned on permanently, swipe from left to right on your iPad home screen to see the Today View
Long press on a black space of your home screen to enter Edit mode (jiggle mode)
You can tap the Keep on Home Screen toggle at the top to keep widgets available all the time
Tap, hold, and drag the existing widgets around to organize them
You can stack widgets of the same size on top of each other for swipeable widgets
Swipe to the bottom of the widgets and tap Customize to add new ones
Tap the green “+” icon to add available widgets, tap Done when finished
When not in Edit mode, you can long press a widget from your home screen to get the edit or remove option (e.g. removing stacked widgets, modify smart suggestions, etc.)

Here’s how all this looks:

Now you’ll be able to edit your widgets.

Tap the “—” icon to remove widgets or tap-hold-drag them to reorganize the layout. Swipe to the bottom to add more widgets, tap Customize.

You can add new widgets by tapping the green “+” icons and then order them by dragging the three-line icons as shown below.

Don’t forget you can stack widgets of the same size on top of each other to maximize your use of space.

And from the home screen you can long press on a widget to get edit and customization options:

What do you think of the new widgets in iPadOS 14? Are you hoping to see the same implementation as iOS 14 in the future? Share your thoughts in the comments below! – https://is.gd/56dRdX

❤How to find NEOWISE with your iPhone before the comet disappears for 6,800 years

Have you spotted this comet that’s been making headlines this month? If you’re in the northern hemisphere and want to catch the photogenic comet in the night sky before it disappears, read on as we explain the best way to hunt down NEOWISE with your iPhone.

NASA describes the comet as a “fuzzy star with a bit of a tail” so you have an idea of what to chase.

For those hoping to catch a glimpse of Comet NEOWISE before it’s gone, there are several observing opportunities over the coming days when it will become increasingly visible shortly after sunset in the northwest sky. If you’re looking at the sky without the help of observation tools, Comet NEOWISE will likely look like a fuzzy star with a bit of a tail, so using binoculars or a small telescope is recommended to get the best views of this object.

Have an iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro? You may also try your luck at capturing the comet using Night Mode on iPhone 11. Just hold your phone firmly or use a tripod for best results, and don’t expect professional results like those produced by multiple images stacked from astronomical photographers. An iPhone shot still makes for a neat souvenir, of course!

What’s NEOWISE?

Comets are icy bodies from deep in the Solar System that create a trail called a coma when they near the Sun. This is caused when the comet warms and gasses are released in what’s called an outgassing phase.

Comet C/2020 F3 was discovered on March 27 through infrared images from the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope, thus its common name NEOWISE.

The NEOWISE project was founded by NASA’s Planetary Science Division to measure and catalog asteroids and comets. Over 980,000 infrared measurements of 37,009 solar system objects have been made so far — and now the C/2020 F3 comet is one of them.

Observers in the Northern Hemisphere have been able to see the NEOWISE comet with the naked eye this month, and you still have a chance to see it if you can find a clear night sky.

With the help of neowise.whatsupin.space, an online resource developed by Tony Rice, you can enter your city or ZIP code to find the right range of hours when the the NEOWISE comet will be visible in the sky. The tool shows upcoming days and the estimated local times when the C/2020 F3 comet can best be seen.

Comet NEOWISE is seen, upper left, before sunrise over Washington, Sunday, July 12, 2020. Source: NASA

iPhone apps

There are also fantastic iPhone apps that can guide you to find the comet using location and augmented reality to show you where to look. These apps have topped the free and paid App Store charts because of NEOWISE.

Free

Paid

Sky Guide — #1 on the App Store Paid Apps Top Charts
SkyView — #3
Star Walk 2 — #8

Other high-ranking apps climbing the charts because of the the C/2020 F3 comet include Stellarium PLUS (#13) for viewing a realistic night sky and NightCap Camera (#14) for night photography on the iPhone.

Weather apps including Dark Sky (recently acquired by Apple) are also useful for determining weather conditions before heading out to a viewing site with a clear view of the sky.

Source: NASA

Viewing tips

NASA has also shared recommendations for those who want to see the Comet NEOWISE before disappears for 6,800 years. This includes finding a location away from lights and looking to the northwest sky:

Find a spot away from city lights with an unobstructed view of the sky
Just after sunset, look below the Big Dipper in the northwest sky
If you have them, bring binoculars or a small telescope to get the best views of this dazzling display

– https://is.gd/csdPKd

❤ iPhone 12 dummy models give a near-final look at Apple’s first 5G phones

When you think of Apple iPhone dummies, you think of Sonny Dickson. The Australian burst onto the scene as a teen back in 2013 sharing images of iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c mock-up units and has passed along reliable information since. Today, Dickson tweeted the first dummy models of the three iPhone 12 screen sizes (5.4-inches, 6.1-inches, and 6.7-inches). Of course, we still expect Apple to launch four 5G phones in September including the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Plus, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. We get four phones out of three screen sizes because the iPhone 12 Plus and iPhone 12 Pro will both have 6.1-inch displays. The difference between the two will probably be the camera setups and perhaps a larger battery, more memory, and a better battery life on the iPhone 12 Pro.

Dickson’s iPhone 12 dummies “confirm” the throwback design for the iPhone 12 series

The dummies show off the flat sides that the new iPhones will reportedly sport giving the 2020 models a throwback look that resembles the iPhone 4. With the edge-to-edge screen and the notch, the iPhone 12 line will have a higher screen-to-body ratio than the iPhone 4 giving the upcoming handsets a sleeker and more modern look. We should point out that Dickson himself isn’t 100% sure about the rear cameras and the size and look of the notch, but is confident about the chassis of the dummy models

Apple iPhone 12 series dummy models tweeted by Sonny Dickson

WWDC 2020 is about to kick off in less than 24 hours and while Apple is expected to make big waves this week, the iPhones that some might be waiting for are still months away. Of course, if Apple is to meet its self-imposed deadlines, the design of its first batch of 5G iPhones should now be set in stone. Or in this case, metal and plastic models that will give accessory makers as well as the public a preview of what to expect come September’s event.

We’ve already seen the molds that would be used to print out dummy models and now we’re seeing those dummies courtesy of Sonny Dickson. The leaker warns that the notches (not seen here) and cameras might not be their final design which is probably not relevant for these dummies anyway. The molds, after all, are used to inform case makers about the external design of the phone.

To that extent, the chassis that we’re seeing now may be close to final, including the size and shape of the camera bumps which are thankfully still not obscenely thick. The dummies also give the three sizes of the four phones (two 6.1-inch models in the middle) to get a better idea of how they will compare with each other, at least by their appearance.

The locations of the buttons and holes at the very flat edges should also be final, given those are critical parts of a case’s design. The show the volume rocker buttons on the same left (facing the screen) edge as the ringer switch and SIM card tray on the larger iPhone 12 while the opposite edge gets the lone power button. Curiously, there is also another indentation on that side on the 6.7-inch iPhone, perhaps for the mmWave 5G antenna that’s unique to it.

That leaves just the question of the cameras, which some point out are depicted wrong in dummies. Only the largest of the four iPhones is expected to have three cameras, though it isn’t yet certain whether it will indeed be a LIDAR sensor similar to this year’s iPad Pro.

All four phones should be powered by the 5nm A14 Bionic chipset with 15 billion transistors in each chip. The A13 Bionic, the component currently used by Apple on the iPhone 11 series, is produced by TSMC using its 7nm process and contains 8.5 billion transistors. The more transistors inside a chip, the more powerful and energy-efficient they are. The two Pro models should feature the ProMotion display with a 120Hz refresh rate. This means that the screen will update 120 times in a second delivering smoother scrolling and enhanced video game animation.

The Pro models are also believed to come with 50% more memory (6GB of LPDDR5 RAM) than the standard handsets and for the first time, the basic configuration of the iPhone will include 128GB of storage. Rumors pertaining to the rear cameras have been unsettled with some tipsters calling for the inclusion of the time-of-flight based LiDAR depth sensor on all four phones. Others point to a recently leaked CAD image to prove that only the iPhone 12 Pro Max will offer the additional sensor. Introduced on the 2020 iPad Pro tablets, the LiDAR sensor computes the time it takes for an infrared beam to bounce off the subject and return to the sensor. Armed with this data, the sensor can offer users enhanced AR capabilities and improved bokeh blurs on portrait shots.

The new iPhones will supposedly feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon X60 5G modem; the chip supports both sub-6GHz and mmWave 5G signals. However, some analysts believe that only the Pro models will work with the faster 5G mmWave signals. This means that T-Mobile subscribers who want a 5G iPhone this year might be limited to buying the lower-priced standard models. That’s because only a small part of T-Mobile’s 5G network is using mmWave spectrum at this time. And only a small part of the country can use Verizon’s 5G network right now. While there will always be consumers who have to own the latest and greatest iPhone models, and faster 5G speeds are impressive, not too many 5G iPhone users will get the opportunity to download a video in the blink of an eye this year.

The combination of 5G and the ProMotion 120Hz refresh rate is sure to be a battery killer. Apple will reportedly hike the battery capacities on the 2020 iPhones with the iPhone 12 Pro Max rumored to sport a 4400mAh battery. That would be a 10.8% hike over the battery in the iPhone 11 Pro Max; the latter has already delighted users with its remarkable longevity.

– https://is.gd/6bnz90

❤ How to apply for Apple Card on iPhone and iPad

Whether you want to take advantage of the 0% interest offers for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and more or have been wanting to get Apple’s credit card for while for another reason, follow along for how to apply for Apple Card on iPhone and iPad.

Apple Card offers a variety of compelling features like its Daily Cash program, strong focus on security and privacy, no fees, a clean, optional Titanium physical card, and a great software experience to track spending and more on iPhone.

While Apple has offered free iPhone financing to Apple Card users for some time, a new addition is the ability to get 0% interest financing for iPad, Mac, AirPods, and more. The interest-free period ranges from 6-12 months depending on the product you’re buying. There’s also a $50 sign up bonus promotion through 7/31/2020.

Here are some of the requirements for Apple Card eligibility:

Be 18 years or older, depending on where you live
Be a U.S. citizen or a lawful U.S. resident with a valid, physical U.S. address that is not a P.O. Box. You can also use a military address
Have a compatible iPhone with the latest iOS version (iPhone 6 or later)
Using two-factor authentication with your Apple ID and be signed in to iCloud with your Apple ID

Apple works with Goldman Sachs to provide the financial end of Apple Card.

How to apply for Apple Card on iPhone and iPad

On iPhone open the Wallet app (on iPad head to Settings > Wallet & Apple Pay > Add Card)
You might see an offer at the top to apply for Apple Card (if not tap the + icon in the top right corner)
Choose Apply for Apple Card
Read the terms and conditions, tap Continue
Confirm your Apple ID, name, date of birth, and phone number, tap Next
Enter your address (no P.O. boxes)
Enter the last four digits of your social security number
Enter your total annual income (required by Goldman Sachs)
Agree to the terms and conditions
It will just take a few moments and you’ll see if you’re immediately approved or not

In some cases, Apple/Goldman Sachs may ask for you to share a photo of your driver’s license or State ID.

Here’s how the process looks:

Once your application is submitted, you should see a screen that lets you know if you’re approved or not. Check out our previous hands-on coverage of using Apple Card, tracking spending, and more with iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

For more details on the application process, see Apple’s support document here. – https://is.gd/reSzr2

❤ How to share HomeKit access on iPhone

Whether you’re just getting going with Apple’s smart home platform or have been using it for a while but never needed to let others have access to it, follow along for how to share HomeKit access on iPhone.

HomeKit is a secure and handy smart home platform but it can be inconvenient for frequent friends and family that visit to control things like lights, fans, locks, and more if they don’t have access to the digital controls through their iPhone or your HomePod.

Keep in mind when you’re about to give someone else HomeKit access that it’s all or nothing, so they’ll be able to “control accessories, see when they are used, and receive notifications about them.” You can always remove someone as you see fit but especially if you have HomeKit accessories like locks and garage doors hooked up, knowing they’ll have total access may be an important consideration.

How to share HomeKit access on iPhone

On iPhone (or iPad) head to the Home app
Tap the Home icon in the top left corner
Under the People section, tap Invite
Enter a contact or someone’s phone number or email, then tap Send Invite in the top right corner

How to accept a HomeKit invitation on iPhone

Tap the notification that HomeKit access was shared with you
Tap Accept
If there is a HomePod in the home, you can choose to enable it to recognize your voice
You can also choose to enable personal requests

– https://is.gd/ttVdvl

❤ A viral text string with an Italian flag and Sindhi characters will crash your iPhone

Every so often, a bug in iOS emerges where a certain string of text will cause your iPhone or iPad to crash. This week, another such string of text is going viral, and a fix from Apple is not yet publicly available.

The string of text, which we aren’t going to share here, includes the Italian flag emoji and characters in the Sindhi language. When an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch receives a notification with this text string, things get wonky. Sometimes, your device will crash, while other times it completely stops responding to touch input, and much more.

Details of where this text string originated are somewhat unclear, but the original source seems to have been a Telegram group. It’s now going viral on Twitter and other social media platforms, though, so it’s worth being aware of. It can spread through theoretically any application, including Twitter, Messages, and more

These sort of bugs have surfaced at various times over the last few years. For instance, back in 2015 the “effective power” text string went viral. Essentially, when you sent the string to another iPhone user, it would cause their Messages app, and sometimes iOS as a whole, to crash.

What’s usually most important about these text string bugs, including today’s, is that it’s almost completely out of the end user’s control. What this means is that someone can send the text to you, and immediately crash your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch.