iPhone For Dummies

Edward C. Baig is a technology writer whose work has appeared in numerous national publica­tions, including USA Today. Guy Hart-Davis is the author of various computer books, including macOS Ventura For Dummies and Teach Yourself VISUALLY iPhone 14.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 2

Beyond the Book 3

Where to Go from Here 3

Part 1: Meet Your iPhone 5

Chapter 1: Unveiling the iPhone 7

The Big Picture 8

The iPhone as a phone and a digital camera or camcorder 9

The iPhone as an iPod 10

The iPhone as an internet communications device 11

The iPhone as your lifeline 11

Technical specifications 12

A Quick Tour Outside 12

On the sides 13

On the bottom 14

On the front 15

On the back 16

Status bar 17

Home Sweet Home Screen 19

The first Home screen page 20

The second Home screen page 22

The dock (all Home screen pages) 23

Chapter 2: iPhone Basic Training 25

Activating the iPhone 26

Turning the iPhone On and Off 27

Pointing a finger at Touch ID 28

Facing up to Face ID 29

Continuing the setup 31

Locking the iPhone 32

Mastering the Multitouch Interface 33

Discovering the special-use keys 35

One-handed keyboard 36

The incredible, intelligent, and virtual iPhone keyboard 37

Anticipating what comes next 37

Correcting mistakes 40

Choosing an alternative keyboard 40

Cutting, copying, pasting, and replacing 41

Multitasking 42

Navigating beyond the Home Screen 44

Organizing Icons into Folders 45

Visiting App Library 46

Watching Widgets 47

Proactive Searching 48

Notifications and Today View 49

Customizing the Lock Screen 52

Chapter 3: Synchronicity: Getting Stuff to and from Your iPhone 53

A Brief iCloud Primer 54

The Kitchen Sync 57

First things first: About iPhone backups 57

Sync prep 101 59

Syncing Contacts and Calendars 65

Synchronizing Your Media 65

Music, movies, TV shows, and podcasts 66

Photos 68

Manual Syncing 69

Chapter 4: Understanding the Phone-damentals 71

Making a Call 72

Adding contacts 72

Setting up favorites 74

Viewing the Recents list 76

Dialing with the keypad 77

Accessing voicemail visually 77

Recording a greeting 80

Voice dialing 80

Receiving a Call 81

Accepting the call 81

Announcing the caller 81

Rejecting the call 82

Replying with a text message 82

Blocking callers 83

Silencing unknown callers 83

Avoiding disturbances 84

Choosing a ringtone 85

While on a Call 86

Juggling calls 87

Making conference calls 88

Handing off calls 89

Seeing Is Believing with FaceTime 89

Part 2: The PDA iPhone 95

Chapter 5: Taking Control of Your iPhone 97

Controlling Control Center 98

Summoning Siri 101

Figuring out what to ask 103

Siri shortcuts 104

Using dictation 105

Correcting mistakes 105

Making Siri smarter 105

Typing to Siri 106

Chapter 6: Texting 1, 2, 3: Messages and Notes 107

Getting the iMessage 107

You send me: Sending text messages 109

Alert: You’ve got messages 110

Being a golden receiver: Reading and replying to text messages 111

MMS: Like SMS with media 114

Massive multimedia effects 115

SharePlay via Messages 118

Group messaging has never been better 118

Send texts by emergency SOS via satellite 119

Taking Note of Notes 120

Chapter 7: Twelve Indispensable Apps and Utilities 123

Working with the Calendar 123

Year view 124

Month view 124

Day view 124

Week view 126

List view 126

Adding Calendar Entries 127

Displaying multiple calendars 130

Responding to meeting invitations 131

Subscribing to calendars 131

Sharing a family calendar 132

Calculate This 132

Punching the Clock 133

World clock 133

Alarm clock 134

Stopwatch 135

Timer 135

Voicing Memos 136

Making a recording 136

Listening to recordings 137

Trimming recordings 137

Adding a title to a recording 138

Reminding me 140

It’s a Wallet 144

Dropping in on AirDrop 145

Controlling Lights, Locks, and More 146

Using the iPhone in the Car 147

Unlocking the Car 148

Measuring Things 148

Translating Text or Speech 149

Keeping in Good Health 150

Part 3: The Multimedia iPhone 153

Chapter 8: Music to Your Ears: Audio on Your iPhone 155

Introducing Your iPhone’s Music Player 156

It’s music, just not your music 157

My Music Is Your Music 159

A library without library cards 160

Play it again, list 161

Share and share alike 163

Taking Control of Your Tunes 165

Customizing Your Audio Experience 167

Play all songs at the same volume level 167

Setting a sleep timer 168

Using your voice to control your music 169

Listening to Podcasts with the Podcasts App 170

Shopping with the iTunes Store App 172

Chapter 9: “Smile”: Taking Pictures with Your iPhone 173

Taking Your Best Shot 173

Making Photos Come to Life 176

Keeping Things in Focus 176

From the front to the rear — and back 178

Firing up the flash 178

Night mode 179

Using zoom 179

Two (or three) rear cameras are better than one 180

Shooting closeups (iPhone 13 Pros and 14 Pros only) 182

Applying filters 182

Binging on burst shooting 183

Using the self-timer 185

Tracking Down Your Pictures 185

Choosing albums 186

Viewing all your photos 187

Making memories 189

iCloud Shared Photo Library 191

Categorizing your pics 192

Adding captions and gathering information 194

Searching for pictures 194

Sharing albums 195

Admiring Your Pictures 197

Maneuvering and manipulating photos 197

Launching slideshows 198

Storing pictures in the (i)Cloud 200

Editing and Deleting Photos 201

Livening Up Live Photos 203

Leveraging Live Text 205

More (Not So) Stupid Picture Tricks 206

Chapter 10: Starring in a Blockbuster: Video on Your iPhone 211

Finding Stuff to Watch 212

Playing Video 213

Shooting Video 217

Going slow 222

Going fast 223

Going cinematic (iPhone 13s and 14s only) 223

Capturing stereo 224

Editing what you shot 224

Editing cinematic video 225

Sharing video 226

Watching video on TV 226

Augmented reality 227

Restricting video and other usage 227

Part 4: The Internet iPhone 229

Chapter 11: Going on a Mobile Safari 231

Surfin’ Dude 231

Exploring the browser 231

Blasting off into cyberspace 232

I Can See Clearly Now 234

Opening multiple web pages at a time 235

Starting up the start page 236

Keeping tabs of tabs 237

Looking at lovable links 239

Book(mark) ’em, Danno 240

Altering bookmarks 242

Viewing open pages on other devices 243

Letting history repeat itself 243

Launching a mobile search mission 244

Saving web pictures 244

Reading clutter-free web pages 245

Translate web pages 246

Private Browsing 246

Sign in with Apple 247

Smart Safari Settings 247

Chapter 12: The Email Must Get Through 251

Prep Work: Setting Up Your Accounts 252

Setting up your account 252

Setting up an email account with the big guys 252

Setting up an account with another provider 253

Setting up corporate email 254

See Me, Read Me, File Me, Delete Me: Working with Messages 256

Reading messages 256

Filtering mail 257

Managing messages 258

Threading messages 261

Searching emails 262

Darling, You Send Me (Email) 266

Makin’ messages 266

Settings for sending email 276

Setting your message and account settings 278

Chapter 13: Tracking with Maps, Compass, Stocks, Weather, and Files 283

Maps Are Where It’s At 283

Finding your current location with Maps 284

Finding a person, place, or thing 285

Views, zooms, and pans 286

Timesaving map tools: Contacts, Recents, Guides, and Favorites 288

Smart map tricks 290

Contemplating the Compass 295

Taking Stock with Stocks 295

Adding and deleting stocks, funds, and indexes 296

Details, details, details 297

Charting a course 297

Weather Watching 298

Keeping Track of Documents with Files 299

Part 5: The Undiscovered iPhone 301

Chapter 14: Setting You Straight on Settings 303

Sky-High Settings 304

All about you 304

Airplane mode 305

Wi-Fi 306

Bluetooth 307

Cellular 309

Emergency SOS 311

Report, Sound, and Appearance Settings 311

Notifications 311

Control Center 312

Focus/Do Not Disturb 313

Privacy 314

Sounds 316

Happy Home button (iPhone 7, 8, and SE models) 317

Brightening up your day 317

Auto-lock 318

Home Screen 318

Wallpaper 319

In General 319

About About 320

Software update 320

Storage 320

Background App Refresh 321

Siri & Search 321

AirPlay & Handoff 321

Picture-in-Picture 322

CarPlay 322

VPN & Device Management 322

Battery 323

Touch ID/Face ID & Passcode 324

App Store 325

Wallet & Apple Pay 325

Screen Time 326

Date & Time 327

Keyboard 328

Fonts 329

Language & Region 329

Dictionary 330

Accessibility 330

Reset 333

Phoning in More Settings 334

Promoting harmony through Family Sharing 334

Sorting and displaying contacts 334

Nothing phone-y about these settings 335

Find My 336

Chapter 15: Apps-O-Lutely! 339

Finding Apps 340

Browsing for apps 340

Finding more information about an app 341

Downloading an app 342

App Library 342

Updating an app 344

Deleting and Organizing Your Apps 344

Deleting an app 344

Organizing your apps 345

App clips 347

Apple’s Arcade 348

Books, Newspapers, and Magazines 348

Books app 349

Newspapers and magazines 350

Chapter 16: When Good iPhones Go Bad 353

iPhone Issues 354

But first 354

Recharge your iPhone 355

Restart your iPhone 356

Reset (force restart) your iPhone 356

Remove your content 357

Reset your settings and content 358

Restore your iPhone 358

Renew your iPhone with Recovery mode 359

Problems with Calling or Networks 360

Sync, Computer, or iTunes Issues 362

More Help on the Apple Website 363

If Nothing We Suggest Helps 364

Dude, Where’s My Stuff? 365

Part 6: The Part of Tens 367

Chapter 17: Ten Appetizing Apps 369

Shazam 369

ProCam 8 by Tinkerworks Apps 370

OmniFocus 370

Evernote 371

Noizio 372

IMDb 372

Libby 373

Waze Navigation 373

BeCasso 374

Clubhouse 374

Chapter 18: Ten Helpful Hints, Tips, and Shortcuts 375

Use QuickPath for Speed and Accuracy 375

Autocorrect Is Your Friend 376

Connect a Hardware Keyboard 377

Assault on Batteries 378

Tricks with Links and Phone Numbers 380

Share the Love and the Links 381

Choose a Home Page for Safari 381

Create Ringtones for Free in GarageBand 382

Getting Apps Out of App Switcher 384

Taking a Snapshot of the Screen 385

Index 387