In this episode, Thomas Domville teaches you how to use Screen Recording on iOS and iPadOS.

Screen Recording is a feature that allows you to capture what's happening on your screen. This can be useful for creating tutorials, demos, or simply sharing something interesting with your friends and family.

To set up this feature, go to Settings > Control Center and double-tap the "Insert Screen Recording" button under the "more controls" heading. To create a recording, open Control Center by placing your finger on the top edge of the device until you hear a tone, and sliding it straight down until you hear the second tone (devices without a Home button) or placing your finger on the status bar and swiping up with three fingers (devices with a Home button). Double-tap the Screen Recording button; there will be a three-second countdown before recording starts.

Seeing AI is a free app that narrates the world around you. Designed with and for the blind and low vision community, this ongoing research project harnesses the power of AI to open up the visual world by describing nearby people, text and objects.

Seeing AI provides tools to assist with a variety of daily tasks:

• Short Text - Speaks text as soon as it appears in front of the camera.

• Documents - Provides audio guidance to capture a printed page, and recognizes the text, along with its original formatting.

• Products - Scans barcodes, using audio beeps to guide you; hear the name, and package information when available.

• People - Saves people’s faces so you can recognize them, and get an estimate of their age, gender, and expression.

• Currency - Recognizes currency notes.

In this podcast, Dave Nason demonstrates setting up Face ID on the iPhone X with VoiceOver enabled.

In this episode, Thomas Domville walks through Apple’s new Adaptive Power mode in iOS, explaining what it does, which devices support it, what trade-offs to expect, and how to turn it on. You’ll learn how the system uses on-device intelligence to detect unusually power-hungry apps or tasks and gently throttle performance to extend battery life—plus how this differs from the traditional Low Power Mode.

In this episode, Thomas Domville delves into the seamless sharing of content from your iPhone screen via iMessage, thanks to Siri’s enhanced capabilities. Apple has equipped Siri with on-device processing, offline support, and advanced contextual awareness, which facilitates a smooth “Share This” feature.

Here’s the process:

When you’re in any supported application, such as Safari, Apple Music, or Photos, you can initiate sharing by saying, “Hey Siri, share this with [contact name].” Siri will grasp the context and ask for confirmation to share the particular content. Afterward, you have the option to append a personalized message before sending it off.

Should the content be unsharable directly, like a weather forecast, Siri cleverly captures a screenshot to share instead.

In this podcast, Scott Davert demonstrates using the Misspelled Words rotor option in iOS. He notes some of the limitations, what to do when a misspelled word does not have the replacement word you want, and proves to us he doesn't always know what he's talking about. Note that as of iOS 12.1, this rotor option appears in text fields with Safari, Mail, and Messages. At this time, it's not available in Notes, Pages, or Microsoft Word.

In this episode, Thomas Domville demonstrates a new iOS feature that lets you reset VoiceOver settings back to factory defaults—useful when settings have become confusing or inconsistent. He walks through where the option lives, how to activate it, and the consequences (you’ll lose all customizations).

Intro

If, like me, you have wanted to turn this new extra button into something non-camera related, such as the option to open Be My AI, or a 3rd party voice recording app, there is an easy way to do this.

In this episode, Thomas Domville explains how to stop the two-finger Magic Tap gesture from unexpectedly starting or pausing media playback. If you hang up a call or use Magic Tap in other contexts and your audiobook or music begins playing when you didn’t intend it to, this setting lets you turn that behavior off (and back on later if needed).

Introduction

In this podcast, Thomas Domville shares some tips on using emoji on iOS.

Topics covered include enabling, accessing and using the emoji keyboard; setting VoiceOver to announce when it reads an emoji in text; and using the VoiceOver rotor and suggestions to speed up emoji selection and entry.

Improving Battery

We love our technology when it works. But when it dies, it's very frustrating. You'll think things such as, "I literally just charged this an hour ago," or, "Why is my battery draining so fast?"

Usually, this is the result of battery aging. Your battery can only take so much before it starts getting old, and it needs to be replaced.

Other times, it can be software-related. This guide should hopefully help you get at least a bit more juice out of your battery, and hopefully keep it charged for a pretty long time.

Method One. Background App Refresh

Background App Refresh is exactly what the title says. It's the process where apps in the background refresh their content. While it is very useful, it can be a major drainer of your battery.

It's recommended you either disable certain apps you think are causing lots of drainage, or disable the whole thing altogether. Here's how to do so.

Do you need a way to easily turn off VoiceOver so a sighted friend can use your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone? Are you playing a gesture-based audio game that requires you to disable VoiceOver? If you need a way to easily turn VoiceOver off and on without sighted assistance or Siri, keep reading for instructions. This quick guide is for you.

Configuring the Accessibility Shortcut

The Accessibility Shortcut allows you to enable or disable accessibility features by pressing the Home button (or Side button if you're device doesn't have a Home button) three times in rapid succession. Apple does not enable this feature by default, so it must be configured before it can be used. We assume VoiceOver is enabled while following this guide, so VoiceOver gestures are used. If you are sighted, you may wish to turn off VoiceOver before proceeding. Follow these steps to configure the Accessibility Shortcut to toggle VoiceOver:

Last edited by Scott Davert on November 11, 2025

In this episode, David Woodbridge demonstrates the Universal Clipboard facility available on devices running iOS 10 or later, and macOS Sierra or later. If you now copy text, images, or video to the clipboard on one device, it should be automatically available to paste on any other device that uses the same Apple ID.

Note that for Universal Clipboard to work your device must support the Continuity feature and have Hand-off enabled. For more information, check out the Apple Support article "Use Continuity to connect your Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch."

Did you know that you can read the entire iPhone user manual through your browser online? This is also true for Mac, iPad, Apple watch and even the older iPod.
This quick guide though focuses on iPhone.
When you pull up the manual, the default is the current iOS, iOS 16 as of this writing. But a drop-down box lets you select an older version of the user guide. It will change to a newer iOS as the default when that is released.
One big advantage of reading the user guide on the web instead of in the Apple books app is that you can copy and paste any section you want to any format you can handle. For example, using a computer, you can easily grab sections and save them as text or Word processor files or even as individual web pages. You can paste portions of the user guides in to your notes or other favorite note-taking app.