Moving email around between inboxes in the iOS Mail app is easy, and perhaps sometimes itâs too easy, because accidentally moving or archiving mail messages seems to be an ongoing issue for many. In fact, one of the most frequently asked questions I get from newcomers to the iPhone or iPad is âwhere did my email go? It disappeared from my inbox, I think I pressed something accidentally and deleted it!â Iâve even accidentally done this myself in a half-daze of sleep at the wee hours of the night, only to return to my Mail inbox in the morning to not be able to find the email message I was looking for.
Not to worry, your archived emails arenât missing â well, unless you deleted them, but even in that case if you move fast enough you can usually recover them from the âTrashâ folder using the same method weâll discuss below. Whether that email move was accidental or not doesnât really matter because the process will be the same to get your mailbox in order again.
In this tutorial we will discuss how to locate and move archived emails back into the primary inbox of Mail app on iPhone and iPad.
Your iPhone is a smartphone, and if it isnât making you smarter as well then you just arenât using the devices included features to itâs full potential. Here are three super simple tips that let your iPhone make you smarter, these will be perfect for educators, learners, students, or really, just about anyone â unless youâre a human dictionary and encyclopedia, that is. Thereâs no need to download any new apps or do anything thatâs not included in stock iOS. Read more »
Have you ever gotten a new album or podcast, synced it over to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, then when you went to play the songs you discovered they were grayed out in the Music app? The album is there, the song title is there, but because the song is grey you can tap it all you want and nothing happens, the music wonât play. This is fairly common, and if youâve run into it before itâs almost certainly nothing wrong with your music, iOS device, or iTunes, itâs probably just a transfer error. This usually means they songs are either not done transferring, or they havenât transferred at all because the iOS device was disconnected from the computer before the transfer could complete. As a result, this is really easy to resolve:
Relaunch iTunes on the Mac or PC and make sure the iOS device is connected either by USB cable or by wi-fi, then do either option 1 or option 2:
1: Resync the entire device completely
2: Selectively transfer the greyed songs only without syncing everything else by dragging and dropping them from the iTunes playlist to the iOS device
Wait for the device to finish syncing before disconnecting again, as indicated by the disappearance of the spinning sync/transfer icons
Sometimes just reconnecting the device to a computer alone will restart the transfer too, this will be made obvious by the little spinning circle in the black iOS title bar and the same logo appearing alongside the device in iTunes. You can also open the Music app on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod and look at the grey songs, when they are transferring over again there will be an indicator showing you the progress of the song, when it reaches a full circle the song should appear black and be playable as usual.
It seems the grayed song issue is particularly prone to happen with syncing over wi-fi, and automatic syncing, both incredibly useful features that can have some hiccups if the wireless connection isnât stable, there is heavy interference, a weak signal, or there are wifi or connection troubles in general.
There is always a possibility that songs arenât transferring for other reasons, or that there is something else wrong. Here are some other possible problems and situations where youâll end up with greyed out songs in the Music app:
If connecting via physical cable, check if the device is fraying or torn, this could be impacting the sync and transfer. If so, you may need a new USB cable
Update: Adobe apparently made some sort of error, and is not actually giving away any CS2 software for free. Here is what they have to say on their Community Forums:
On behalf of Adobe Systems Incorporated âŠ
You have heard wrong! Adobe is absolutely not providing free copies of CS2!
What is true is that Adobe is terminating the activation servers for CS2 and that for existing licensed users of CS2 who need to reinstall their software, copies of CS2 that donât require activation but do require valid serial numbers are available. (Special serial numbers are provided on the page for each product download.)
If you have an older Mac youâre in luck, because the entire Adobe Creative Suite 2 is available for free, including Acrobat, GoLive, InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premier. Keep in mind that Adobe Creative Suite 2 (CS2) is dated from 2005, but if you have an older Mac (or Windows PC) that can support the old versions theyâre actually very capable apps and for the most part arenât too different from the gazillion dollar versions offered today. Here is all you need to do to download the apps:
Log into your Adobe account to get the serial number
Note this only works for older versions of Mac OS X that have Rosetta PPC support, meaning OS X 10.6.8 or earlier. Adobe is more specific is suggesting they only work for later versions of 10.2 to 10.4 but they will run in any version of OS X with Rosetta installed. Unfortunately that means OS X Lion and Mountain Lion users arenât so lucky to get CS2 for free.
Update: Adobeâs site is getting hammered by all the attention this is getting and is often down, check back and refresh their download page from time to time and you should get through ok. The impatient can also check out a Slickdeals page which has direct download links to all of the disk images and installers.
iTunes Home Sharing is a great way to share music libraries and playlists with others, but if you donât want everyone to be able to sort through the shared library, you can easily require a password in order to access the shared playlists. This is perfect for situations where some content may be explicit and not appropriate for everyone to hear or see in your iTunes library, and itâs also excellent for when you only want to share and stream music with yourself from one computer to another, but you remain on the same network with others. Even for more mundane playlists it can still be a good idea to implement the password in multi-Mac households, offices, or schools, plus, you can combine it with sharing only specific playlists to hide that terribly embarrassing early 90âs music collection from everyone else in the office.
Requiring a password to access shared iTunes media can either be mandated during the initial Home Sharing setup, or it can be added after the fact to either the entire library or specific playlists, hereâs how to do that:
From iTunes, open Preferences and click on the âSharingâ tab
Be sure Sharing is enabled, then either specify to share either the entire library, or only selected playlists
To add password protection, check the box for âRequire Passwordâ, then enter a password that others will need to access the lists â if you intend to share the password with anyone else, do not use the same password here as you do with your administrator account or anything else
Close out of iTunes Preferences
The next time someone goes to connect to the iTunes share, they will need to enter that set password to see and access the playlists or library. This applies to everyone, whether they are connecting from another Mac or PC running iTunes, or an iPad, iPod touch, or iPhone on the same network.
Find My iPhone and Find My iPad are security features that make it simple to locate lost iOS devices by tracking them on maps through GPS. A potential problem is that after a device has been lost, or perhaps more accurately, after a device has been stolen, GPS or Find My iPhone can be turned off which thereby disables the Find My iPhone serviceâs ability to track the missing device. A great fix for that is to use iOS Restrictions to prevent Location Services from being turned off at all, which basically forces GPS and Find My iPhone to stay on all the time. This means that as long as the device is turned on, GPS will be on, making it trackable the entire time.
Find âRestrictionsâ and tap on it, entering the password if itâs already enabled. If Restrictions it not yet enabled, at the next screen tap on âEnable Restrictionsâ and enter a password to access the feature
Now scroll down to âPrivacyâ and tap on âLocation Servicesâ
Make sure Location Services are turned ON, then scroll to the very bottom to verify that Find My iPhone is also turned ON
Now go back to the very top (tap the titlebar to jump there), and choose âDonât Allow Changesâ
Exit out of Settings
With this configured, there is now an additional layer of protection for the device with GPS and Find My iPhone forcibly left on. And yes, this works the same on an iPad or iPod touch too, though the accuracy of the Find My service is not going to be as reliable on a wi-fi only device, and thus weâre focusing on the iPhone here.
Itâs a good idea to use a different password for accessing Restrictions than you do for your lock screen password, and if youâre traveling, prone to losing devices, or in a high risk theft area, consider placing a lock screen message on the device with your ownership information on it, which makes it particularly easy to return should a nice person get ahold of the phone.
G-Form, the makers of extreme protective cases for iPads, MacBooks, and iPhones, is demonstrating the effectiveness of their latest iPhone 5 case by sending a device 100,000âČ into the atmosphere with a weather balloon, and then letting it free fall and crash land back to Earth. As you probably guessed, the device survives just fine, thanks to the impact absorbing shell of the Extreme case line, but even knowing that makes the video embedded below fun to watch:
The ability to block incoming calls on the iPhone is missing on older versions of iOS, and though new versions of iOS can block calls, older devices are left withthe Do Not Disturb feature. Do Not Disturb is excellent, but itâs not really blocking unwanted calls, it just sets a time period where any calls wonât bother you.
So what can you do if you want to actually block a phone call on the iPhone? You have a few options. You can attempt to contact your cellular carrier and request a specific number be blocked, but not all carriers support that option and youâll be spending plenty of time on hold and bouncing around tech support menus to even find out if itâs possible. Thatâs not really viable for evryone though, which leaves a few iOS features as the next best thing, allowing you to create your very own do-it-yourself âblockâ list of sorts that is centralized and configured to be easily ignorable and also easy to add to.
1: Create an âIgnoreâ Contact for Numbers & People to Block
Though it may seem completely counterintuitive to create a contact for the people or numbers you donât want to accept calls from, itâs necessary if you want to ignore those numbers by way of software.
Open Contacts and tap the [+] button to add a new contact
Name it âIgnoreâ or something similar, and tap on the number field, add every phone number you wish to ignore to this newly created contact
2: Turn Off Alerts, Vibrates, & Use Silent Ringtones for the Call List
Now that you have the âIgnoreâ contact created, weâll disable every alert sound, tone, and vibration for the contact, causing each number within that list to fall silent.
From the newly crafted âIgnoreâ contact, navigate down to the ringtone section, tap on it, and choose a silent ringtone. If you donât have a silent ringtone handy, creating one takes just a moment or two with QuickTime Player
Next, tap on âVibrationâ under Ringtone and choose âNothingâ
Now move on to text tones, and as the alert tone choose âNoneâ
Finally, go to âVibrationâ under Text Tone and choose âNothingâ
3: Adding New Numbers to the Blocked List
Got a phone call from a new number you want to âblockâ and not be notified of again? No problem
When the call is no longer active or ringing, tap the blue (>) arrow button next to the number in the Recents list
Scroll down and choose âAdd to Existing Contactâ, locate the âIgnoreâ contact and add the number to that list, causing all texts, calls, and alerts to be nonexistent for the caller
Having a centralized âblockâ contact like this is also far more preferable to creating a bunch of different contacts for all numbers you want to ignore, because it will keep your address book clean and you only have to adjust the alert settings once. Keep in mind that inbound calls and texts from these numbers are still going to come through to the phone, they just wonât alert you or bother you in any way, making them easy to ignore.
This is very much a workaround obviously, but until a true block feature is either implemented at the iOS level or universally allowed from cell providers, itâs really the only choice we have.
Retrieving a list of preferred wireless networks can be helpful when troubleshooting wi-fi problems, amongst other reasons too. If youâre looking to print out a list of wi-fi networks the Mac has used as preferred and connected to before, the following trick will do just that!
Managing slews of email can be one of the most challenging and time consuming parts of ones day, but with the help of VIP lists in iOS and OS X you can help to weed through some of the nonsense by simply having defined persons get precedent over others. On the desktop side of things, weâve discussed using VIP in OS Xâs Mail app before, including having the new mail notification and alert only notify you when a VIP email has come through, and you can do something quite similar on the mobile side of things too with iOS. By setting a custom Alert tone for VIP lists, youâll know by sound alone if a message is important enough to warrant a quick response, before you even look at your inbox. Read more »
A new iPhone TV commercial titled âDreamâ is running that focuses on the excellent Do Not Disturb feature of iOS, which allows you to block out certain hours where notifications, sounds, and alerts wonât bother you unless theyâre from a pre-selected important list. The advertisement features the professional tennis player Williams sisters, playing table tennis against the narrator, which as other recent iPhone commercials, is Jeff Daniels voice, who says the following:
âEver had a really cool dream? Iâm having one right now. I donât want to be disturbed, and I wonât, because before I went to sleep, I set this. Now my iPhone knows not to ring unless its important. Because disturbing this would just be⊠wrong.â
The ad is embedded below to view, and is airing on primetime TV now.
Ironically, the âDreamâ commercial started airing right at the same time that a prominent Do Not Disturb bug came to light, whereby the feature wasnât turning itself off automatically as scheduled to. That bug has been acknowledged by Apple and it resolves itself on January 7.
Ever wondered what maintenance is truly essential for a Mac? Maybe youâre wondering what the best backup solution is? Or maybe you just want to secure your Mac a bit more? Take the time for these simple digital resolutions to make your Mac perform better, be safer and more secure, plus give you some added peace of mind. Weâve broken these tips into three simple sections; system maintenance, file backups, and security measures, so follow along and your Mac will thank you for years to come.
2012 is at itâs end, and just like with our favorite Mac tip collections of the year, OSXDaily.com is looking back and gathering some of the most useful multi-trick collection posts for iOS, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch too. Again, we are aiming to give you the absolute most bang for your reading buck here by focusing on our favorite multiple tip roundup posts and so weâre skipping the single walkthroughs and guides that we post every day. Read through them all and youâll be mastering iOS with must-know tips, typing tricks, genuinely useful Siri commands, better iPhone macro photography, faster website access, and much more.
6 Tips for Freeing Up Storage Space in iOS
Because of their smaller storage capacity, itâs easy to run out of storage on an iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Spend a few minutes with these tips though and youâll be freeing up tons of space in iOS in no time at all.
8 Typing Tips for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch
Typing on the touch screen keyboards can be challenging, but you can type faster by using a variety of smart tricks for the iOS virtual keyboards
6 Tips to Improve Typing on the iPad
Speaking of typing in iOS, this a collection of ways that should improve your typing specifically for the iPad
7 Genuinely Great Uses for Siri
Siri is incredibly useful and can perform a lot more tasks than you may realize. If you arenât using the iOS virtual voice assistant there is no better time to get started, youâll be making hands-free phone calls, checking and replying to emails, getting movie times, and much more.
10 Tips to Reduce iPhone & iPad Personal Hotspot Data Use
The iPhone and iPad can both share their cellular internet connections and serve as a personal wi-fi router, but before you setup Personal Hotspot, consider these tips that can help you reduce your data usage so you can avoid costly overage fees.
3 Best Places to Sell Your Old iPhone
Did you get a new iPhone this year? If you have an old iPhone laying about, here are the three best places to sell it, letting you get the most cash for your old device. This is geared for iPhones, but itâll pertain to iPads and iPods tooâŠ
2 Ways to Listen to Podcasts with Music App Again
The iOS Music app is often a better choice for listening to podcasts because itâs faster on many devices, and here are some simple ways to do that again after iOS 6.
2 Super Simple Tips to Get to Websites Faster in iOS
Sometimes the simplest tips are the most used, and these two are as easy as pie while letting you jump to websites faster than ever on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
With 2012 coming to an end, OSXDaily.com is looking back and gathering some of the most useful Mac multi-tip and trick collection posts from the year past. Yes, we post individual tips and walkthroughs every day, but weâre aiming to give you the most bang for your reading buck here by focusing on our favorite roundups, so take the time to read them all and youâll be mastering a wide range of Mac topics. From general OS X tips that improve Mac productivity, little known keyboard shortcuts, to some more advanced tips for the command line, weâve got something for everyone at every skill level, so read on and learn some new tricks for the new year! (Donât miss our favorite iOS, iPhone, and iPad tip roundups too!)
4 Simple Mac Maintenance Tips
Maintaining your Mac is critical for optimal performance, but it shouldnât be complicated. Here are a few super simple tips to follow to keep a Mac in tip-top shape.
9 Command Line Tricks for OS X You Should Know
Whether youâre an advanced user or just want to learn more about the command line that sits underneath OS Xâs GUI layer, these terminal tricks are essential.
5 Quick Tips to Free Up Disk Space on a Mac
Everyone runs out of disk space sooner or later, but you may be surprised to find out where all your storage capacity has gone. Run through these quick tips and youâll be freeing up tons of drive space on a Mac in no time.
9 Reasons a Mac is Running Slow, and What To Do About It
If your Mac feels like itâs running slower than it should, there are usually reasons why that is. We cover the 9 most common reasons Macs start to run slow, and more importantly, we tell you what to do about it so you can be back to normal again.
8 Tips to Protect a Mac from Viruses, Trojans, and Malware
Macs are much more resilient to viruses, trojans, and malware than Windows PCâs, but theyâre not completely impervious. The good news is, Macs are extremely easy to protect against such baddies, and with some simple tips you can protect any Mac from almost all known threats.
11 Must-Have Free Apps for Macs
Whether you just got a brand new Mac or you just want to get some new apps, these 11 apps are essentials for any OS X user, and best of all, theyâre completely free!
5 Tips to Make iTunes Look Normal Again
iTunes 11 completely changed the interface of Appleâs desktop media player and store, and while some people are OK with those interface changes, others would rather iTunes look familiar again. These tips will make iTunes 11 look normal again, so you wonât be fumbling around looking for podcasts, media, iOS devices, and that ever-useful sidebar.
21 iTunes Keyboard Shorcuts
Master iTunes with keystrokes for just about everything, from accessing libraries to controlling your media library and playing music.
8 Shortcuts to Navigate the Mac OS X Dock
Did you know the OS X Dock can be navigated with just the keyboard? Forget the cursor, you can launch and switch apps easily without ever lifting your hands from the keys.
If youâve sent emails out with Siri before, you have probably noticed that Siri will often respond to the initial email request with an inquiry about what the mail subject or body should contain, making you respond with another phrase and continue a back-and-forth dialog with Siri until the to, subject, and message fields are completed. Thereâs certainly nothing wrong with that approach, but you can write complete emails with Siri much faster by using certain keywords in your speech commands.
The important keywords to use for complete mail messages are: âtoâ, âaboutâ, and âand sayâ, and they must be used in a command format like so:
send email to [recipient] about [subject] and say [email body]
For example, to send a complete email addressed to âDanny DeVitoâ with the subject of âTaco Cartsâ and the body message of âI found the best taco cart everâ you would use a complete phrase with Siri like that shown below. The important keywords have been placed in bold to emphasize their placement in relation to the command:
Send an email to Danny Devito about Taco Carts, and say I found the best taco cart ever
Siri will write out the email as usual, but rather than requesting a body or subject from you again, it will fill everything in automatically, with the mail message immediately ready to send out. Siri will finish by asking if the message is ready to send, you can simply say âYesâ or tap the âSendâ command on screen yourself.
This is significantly faster than the question and answer method that goes along with the standard âemail nameâ command, give it a try with Siri yourself.
Siri is impressively useful in more ways than you may initially realize, donât miss our other Siri tips to get more use out of the virtual voice assistant.
Finding the black MacBook is a bit like playing Whereâs Waldo, itâs barely visible under the MacBook Pro stand. The photo was taken with an iPhone 5 32GB.
Send us your Mac & Apple setup shots! Email a good picture or two, along with a brief description of hardware and what the hardware is used for to osxdailycom@gmail.com
Minimally styled clock screen savers are fairly popular and weâve shared a variety of them here before, but itâs hard to get more minimal than a binary clock. The aptly named BinaryClock is just that, a free and simple binary clock screen saver for OS X that has some nice color effects that change with the time. Binary clocks are also fun because the average person may look at it with utter confusion, while youâll be able to read the time (and donât worry, if you donât know how to read binary clocks, we explain it simply below).
To install the quartz file as a screen saver, download the âBinaryClock.qtzâ file from GitHub and save it to ~/Downloads or the desktop. Now launch System Preferences from the ïŁż Apple menu and choose Desktop & Screen Saver. Locate the BinaryClock.qtz file and then drag and drop it into the preview pane of the Screen Saver preference panel to install it. Alternatively, but perhaps better for most advanced users, you can just toss the .qtz file into ~/Library/Screen Savers/ to install it manually.
BinaryClock has a few configuration options regarding the screen savers color schemes, and you can choose to hide or show the numbers on the clock itself. Speaking of showing numbers, if youâre new to reading binary clocks itâs best to keep them shown until you get the hang of reading the time.
How Do I Read a Binary Clock Anyway?
Though it may look foreign, itâs actually easier to read than you may think at first glance. This screen saver makes it even more simple because it doesnât include the time in seconds as well, but the basic idea is just a matter of adding the highlighted numbers in the top row to get the hour, and adding the highlighted numbers in the bottom row to get the minutes. The screenshot below demonstrates this with the numbers shown, and once you remember the positions of the numbers you can hide them and the method remains the same.
Youâll find that not all binary clocks are positioned exactly the same way, but the method of telling the time is the same whether the numbers are shown in columns or rows.
Update: Right after publishing this, we discovered a minor albeit important typo in the BinaryClock screen saver, where in the minutes the 4 is duplicated twice, the 2nd of which should be the number 2. Basically, if you show the numbers but donât correct that in your head, then the time will be off by two minutes. Presumably that bug will be fixed by the developer quickly, but anyone with knowledge of Quartz Composer can also do it themselves easily.
Update 2: The aforementioned typo has been fixed, that was quick!
Did someone send an Emoji to your iPhone, iPod, or iPad and you have not the faintest of clues as to what itâs supposed to mean? With the vast array of emoji icons out there, youâre not alone, but thereâs an excellent little-known feature that uses iOS text-to-speech to give a precise definition of the emoji icon in question, spoken right to you. Weâll show you exactly how to use the Speak function to define any Emoji character on iOS.