Listed below is a selection of posts from across the AppleVis website which have been especially selected to help you setup and get to know your first iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
For the most part, you can both answer and end a phone or FaceTime call with one gesture: the two-finger double tap, also known as the "magic tap". Tap two fingers on the screen, then tap them again quickly. When you are receiving a call, this gesture will answer; when you are in a call, this gesture will end it. When ending a call, though, please note that you must remove the phone from your ear if you're talking on it that way. When an iPhone is held to your ear, its touch screen is deactivated. As you'd expect, the keyboard command that does the same as a magic tap (vo-hyphen by default) will work to answer/end calls.
Probably. If you have an iPhone or a cellular-capable iPad, then you can start using GPS apps right away. Owners of wifi-only iPads or all iPod Touch models do not have this luxury.
However, external GPS receivers do exist. Some connect via bluetooth, while others can plug into the Lightning port on your device. We have no direct experience with any of these systems, so the best we can do is tell you that our research shows they are out there. You could use one of these to allow your wifi-only device to track your location, or to increase the accuracy of a GPS-enabled iOS device.
In this episode, Thomas Domville dives into the powerful long press functionality on iOS. He explains what long press is, how to use it, and provides several examples of how it can be used to be more productive and efficient on your iOS device. Whether you're looking to move and delete apps or access quick actions, the long press feature is a versatile tool that can help you get more done.
To use long press, simply perform either a triple tap or double tap and hold down on an app icon, a link, a message, or any other item on your screen. After a few seconds, a menu will pop up with different options. Depending on the app or item you're working with, the options may be different. For example, if you long press on a message in your inbox, you may see options to delete it, mark it as unread, or move it to a different folder.
If you have any tips or tricks for using long press, feel free to share them with us int the comments section.
In this guide, I'm going to explain how you can visualise the layout of iOS apps using voiceOver, or VO for short. even though you may be totally blind. This can be done quite easily, even without using a ScreenDots protector, or relying on a bluetooth keyboard for navigation purposes.
I understand that everyone is different, so if you do find these accessories essential, then by all means continue to use them. However, if you master the below techniques, I believe you'll be able to use your iDevice as efficiently as your sighted peers.
I am totally blind myself, and have had an iPhone since 2009. So I thought I'd share what I've found works best for me, in the hope that you might find it useful too.
What I'm about to teach you is also applicable on the iPad, but their may be slight differences, due to most apps having a split screen layout.
In this podcast, Thomas Domville walks us through Apple's Podcast app for iOS, which has gained some significant changes and new features with the release of iOS 14.5. These include:
Podcasts Show Pages are redesigned to make it easier to start listening.
Option to save and download episodes, automatically adding them to your Library for quick access.
Download behavior and notification settings can be customized on a show-by-show basis.
Top Charts and popular categories in Search help you discover new shows.
There are plenty of alternative email apps for iOS and iPadOS these days, but most people will use the default app at some point. It's a solid choice, too, with plenty of useful features. While it's accessible and (mostly) easy to use, it's worth going over how it works and what to expect.
Basic Layout
Once you've added your email account(s) in Settings, and you open the Mail app, you'll find yourself in a list of your email folders. By default, you'll have things like inbox, outbox, drafts, and the like. There are also automatically-generated folders, such as a folder where emails from your VIPs will appear, or a folder for all flagged messages.
If you’re like most people, you likely have many online accounts with usernames and passwords. In this guide, I will describe how Apple Passwords, the password manager built into iOS, iPadOS, and other Apple platforms, can help you create, use, and manage strong credentials for your online accounts.
While Apple Passwords is also available on macOS, as well as Chromium-based browsers on other operating systems, this guide will focus primarily on how to use it with iOS and iPadOS, in an effort to limit information overload. However, once you become familiar with Apple Passwords on iOS and iPadOS, you’ll likely find that it works similarly on other platforms.
A common question I receive as a power user of braille devices on iOS who works with the deaf-blind population is what apps do I find most helpful, and which are most accessible to braille only users?With over 150 apps on my iDevices, I certainly can't or won't try to list them all. It should be noted that these are my personal picks and do not necessarily mean there aren't other apps I use, or which will not serve an individual better based on personal preference. There are also other apps I use which aren't quite as user friendly as the ones listed.
Hello, everyone. Two years and literally thousands of changes later, the second edition of Personal Power is now available. It's an ebook which I wrote and am giving away freely. Basically, the book takes people from setting up their iPhones to thriving in the iOS environment. It teaches how to use VoiceOver, the various parts of iOS, and a whole lot of apps.
In fact, one of my major goals with this book was to point newcomers to a large collection of accessible apps. Many people get discouraged when they purchase apps that don't turn out to be accessible. I hope that this book helps their initial experience be much better than my own was back when I got my iPhone 4.
In this episode, Thomas Domville demonstrates how to enable or disable predictive text and inline predictive text on iOS. Predictive text allows you to write entire sentences with just a few taps. As you type, suggested words, emoji, and information appear above the onscreen keyboard. You can double tap a suggestion to apply it. Inline predictions complete the word or phrase you’re currently typing, appearing in gray text. To accept an inline prediction, double tap the Space bar; to reject it, keep typing. You can manage predictive text settings in Keyboard settings on your iPhone 12 or newer models running iOS 17 or later versions.
Earlier this year Apple came under some criticism after a report by the Guardian on how Apple hired contractors to listen to a small percentage of anonymized Siri recordings to evaluate the responses with the purpose of improving accuracy and reliability.
In response, Apple promised that it would introduce options in a forthcoming update that would allow users to opt out of sharing their audio recordings.
Those options arrived with the releases of iOS 13.2, iPadOS 13.2, and macOS 10.15.1.
In this podcast, Tyler walks us through how to access and change these new options.
In this short AppleVis episode, host Scott Davert walks through how to bind a custom braille display command that instantly announces and brailles the current date and time on an iPhone. The motivation is simple: while the lock screen shows the time, that isn’t always convenient; a dedicated braille command lets you check the time anywhere without leaving what you’re doing.
In this podcast, Thomas Domville shows us how to customize the email signature that appears automatically at the bottom of every email you send from your iPhone.
In this podcast from his series looking at some of what's new and notable in iOS 15, Thomas Domville Shows us how haptic feedback is now given to VoiceOver users when “No Item Discovered,” and tells us how it can be disabled.
On iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, Apple has replaced the ‘notch’ that's been a feature of Face ID-equipped iPhones since the iPhone X with what it calls the Dynamic Island. The Dynamic Island is a small area of display pixels surrounding the pill-shaped cutout. It appears whenever your iPhone is unlocked, and changes size and shape to accommodate various types of alerts, notifications, and interactions such as music that’s playing, your timer, an AirDrop connection, and directions from Maps.
In this podcast, Thomas Domville shows us how VoiceOver users locate the Dynamic Island and its contents.