How to stop your kids from ruining your Apple Music recommendations

In iOS 17.2, you can turn off your Apple Music Listening History with a new Focus filter, so if you allow someone else to use your device to listen to music, you can quickly activate the Focus with a tap and prevent their song choices from affecting your recommendations.

Have you ever regretted letting a friend or family member use ‌Apple Music‌ on your iPhone after their poor song choices negatively influenced your personal music recommendations? If you have very young kids, the chances are that at some point you’ve played their favorite preschooler ditty to avoid a meltdown, only to later cringe when Apple’s algorithms slip “Baby Shark” or some other infuriatingly repetitive song into your recently played/replay mixes.

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iOS 17: How to Use AirDrop Without Wi-Fi

In iOS 17, Apple has enhanced iPhone AirDrop in many ways, and with the release of iOS 17.1, it’s about to getter, because you will no longer need to be in the same immediate location as someone to wirelessly transfer files to them over AirDrop.

Since its introduction in iOS 7, AirDrop has become the favored means for iPhone users to instantly share photos, videos, documents, and more to nearby Apple devices with relative ease. With the AirDrop screen open, if you’re near to another user with a supported Apple device, they will show up on your screen and you can share files with them.

Up until recently, AirDrop required you to stay within close proximity to the other person’s device for any transfer to complete. If you left AirDrop range, the transfer failed and the content wouldn’t be shared. This is particularly frustrating when you’re sending or receiving several large files like video content.

That’s set to change in iOS 17.1, currently in beta, which allows wireless AirDrop file transfers to continue over a cellular connection outside of AirDrop range, so long as both your ‌iPhone‌ and the recipient’s ‌iPhone‌ are signed in to an iCloud account.

With the new cellular data option enabled, you can continue to send and receive content via AirDrop over a cellular network when Wi-Fi is not available. This can prevent the file transfer from failing to send due to loss of Wi-Fi. Here’s how to make sure the new option is enabled on your device.

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How to add custom artwork to Apple Music Playlists

In iOS 17.1, currently in beta, Apple has added the ability for users to customize playlist artwork in Apple Music using a selection of preset options. Keep reading to learn how it’s done.

Previously in iOS, when creating a custom playlist, you had to use a basic tiled image made up of track album artwork, or upload a custom image. Given that you custom graphics or relevant photos aren’t always readily available for playlists and the default tiled artwork is relatively simple, playlists could be difficult to identify and look fairly generic.

Thankfully, Apple in iOS 17.1, now provides eight different artwork styles to choose from, featuring geometric shapes and gradients, with the title of your playlist displayed in the top left corner. The colors used in the artwork are picked from the album artwork of whatever song is first in your playlist.

If you don’t choose a custom artwork style for your playlist, the default artwork will be the tiled album artwork of the first four songs in the playlist, but you do have the option to choose a custom image from your photo library or the Files app.

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How to import and Annotate PDFs in Apple Notes

In iOS 17 and MacOS Sonoma, Apple added the ability to open and annotate PDFs right in the Notes app. In the latest version of iOS and macOS, Apple has updated the Notes app to support inline PDFs, which means you can insert a PDF into Notes and then read, annotate, and collaborate on the document. This functionality also works for scanned documents, and it is available on both the iPhone and the iPad.

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iOS 17: How to clear Safari Web History for a specific profile

Whenever you browse the web in Safari, the browser stores website data so that it doesn’t have to download it again each time you revisit a site. In theory this should speed up your browsing experience, but there are some scenarios where you might want to clear the cache and start anew.

If a site you regularly frequent has elements that have stopped working, or if a site has stopped loading completely, there may be a conflict between an older version of it that Safari has cached and a newer one. Or perhaps you simply want to protect your privacy by wiping the slate clean and removing all the data associated with websites you’ve visited.

With ‌iOS 17‌, Apple doesn’t just let you clear Safari’s history and website data for a specific timeframe. You can also clear the cache for a specific Safari Profile. (Profiles are is designed to help separate your browsing sessions into things like Work, School, or Personal.

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iOS 17: How to Use iPhone as a FaceTime Camera on Apple TV

With ‌iOS 17‌ and tvOS 17, you can make ‌FaceTime‌ calls on ‌Apple TV‌ and use your iPhone or iPad as the front-facing camera.

In tvOS 17, there’s a new ‌FaceTime‌ app for ‌Apple TV‌, but to use it you need an ‌iPhone‌ running ‌iOS 17‌ or an ‌iPad‌ running iPadOS 17. That’s because the ‌Apple TV‌ doesn’t have a camera or microphone, so the ‌iPhone‌ or ‌iPad‌ connects wirelessly and serves as the video camera and mic during the ‌FaceTime‌ call.

What You Need
‌FaceTime‌ on ‌Apple TV‌ requires an ‌iPhone‌ XS, ‌iPhone‌ XR, and later, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation and later), ‌iPad Pro‌ 11-inch (1st generation and later), ‌iPad‌ (8th generation and later), iPad Air (3rd generation and later), and iPad mini (5th generation and later) with ‌Apple TV‌ 4K (2nd generation and later) running tvOS 17 or later.

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iOS 17: How to add Effects to Stickers in Messages

In iOS 17, Apple has added several new features to its Messages app to make communicating with other Apple users more creative and fun. One such feature is the ability to add effects to your stickers. Keep reading to learn how it works.

iMessage stickers arrived way back in iOS 10, allowing users to resize stickers, put them on top of chat bubbles, add them in photos, and stick them on top of other stickers, with simple controls for dragging.

Stickers have come a long way since then. In ‌‌iOS 17‌‌, for example, users are now able to create their own stickers from photo subjects, and even add neat little effects to individual stickers to change up their look.

There are a number of effects that can be added to stylize your stickers, including a white outline, comic-like shading, a puffy 3D look, and a shiny, holographic finish. The sticker effects will animate and reflect the light appropriately, making your self-created stickers look professionally done.

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How to Remove Tracking Information From URLs in Safari

Starting in iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma, Safari can remove tracking parameters from URLs in order to prevent cross-website tracking. Keep reading to learn how it works and how to control the setting for both Private and non-Private Browsing modes.

Apple has updated Safari in its latest operating systems so that now it can remove tracking parameters in web addresses. When a tracking parameter is detected while browsing or copying a link, Safari strips the identifying components of the URL, while leaving the rest intact. The links still work as expected, but no longer have unique identifiers.

Apple calls this new feature Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection, and it also works for links shared in Apple’s Messages and Mail apps. The following series of steps show you how to enable the feature for all browsing in Safari on iPhone, iPad, and ‌macOS Sonoma‌. Turning it on will ensure that all URLs opened will strip the additional tracking information that’s sometimes pasted on to the end of a URL.

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How to use Apple’s Live Listen feature with Beats Studio Pro

In iOS 14.3 and later, Live Listen supports Beats Studio Pro, Apple’s latest flagship Beats-branded earphones, making it possible to use your iOS device as a directional mic and have the audio relayed to your ears.

As an accessibility feature, the idea behind Live Listen is for it to be used by people who are hard of hearing or need extra help separating voices in a loud environment, but it can be useful in other ways, too.

If you’re on a family vacation, for instance, you could use your ‌‌iPhone‌‌ or ‌‌iPad‌‌ as a makeshift baby monitor for when the baby’s napping and you’re in another room with the TV on. All you’d need to do is put the iOS device near the baby’s crib and wear your Beats Studio Pro with Transparency mode turned on, and they should have a strong enough Bluetooth range to allow you to listen in from afar.

Live Listen will work even when other audio is being played on your ‌‌iPhone‌‌ or ‌‌iPad‌‌ – so you could listen to a podcast, say, and still be keeping tabs on the baby. Just note that whatever it is that you’re listening to will switch to mono output to match the Live Listen stream.

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