How to silence unknown callers in WhatsApp

Unsolicited phone calls are a regular annoyance and even a cause of stress for many smartphone users these days. Thankfully, iOS includes an option to automatically silence calls to your iPhone from unknown numbers, and now you can do the same for calls you receive via WhatsApp, too.

WhatsApp announced a new Silence Unknown Callers feature for the encrypted messaging platform in June 2023. The company says it is designed to automatically screen out spam, scams, and calls from unknown people for increased protection.

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How to lock individual and Group Conversations in whatsapp with chat lock

Millions of users rely on WhatsApp as a means of privately and securely communicating with others, which is why the company’s developers are continually seeking new ways to improve the encrypted messaging service with these core principles in mind.

WhatsApp’s latest privacy feature is Chat Lock, which lets you protect your most intimate conversations behind one more layer of security. When you lock a conversation, it is automatically separated from the regular chat list and hidden in a locked folder that requires your passcode, fingerprint, or ‌Face ID‌ authentication to open.

What’s more, notification previews for any locked chats don’t show sender or message content, and any media shared in locked chats are not auto-saved to your phone’s photo library, altogether keeping the conversations more private.

The feature should prove handy if you occasionally share your phone with a family member, or in cases when someone else is looking at your phone’s screen at the exact moment an extra-sensitive chat arrives. The following steps show you how to lock a WhatsApp conversation.

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How to Listen to YouTube for free when your iPhone is locked

On iPhone, listening to YouTube audio in the background usually requires paying for a YouTube Premium subscription, but there is a workaround that allows you to keep listening to a video when your ‌iPhone‌ is locked. As YouTube has grown in popularity, Google has opted to park several features of the video hosting service behind a paywall, such as ad-free viewing, SharePlay on iOS, and the ability to listen to YouTube audio on your ‌iPhone‌ when the app is closed.

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How to Get an Alert From Your HomePod If a Smoke Alarm Goes Off

Thanks to Apple’s Sound Recognition feature, the HomePod mini and second-generation HomePod can send you notifications when they recognize smoke or carbon monoxide alarm sounds.

With Sound Recognition, ‌HomePod‌ can detect the sound of a smoke or carbon monoxide alarm in your home, and alert you by sending a notification to your iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch.

It’s a neat addition if you don’t own a smart detector, although Apple warns that the feature should not be relied upon “in circumstances where users may be harmed or injured,” or in “high-risk or emergency situations.” The Sound Recognition feature is accessible in the Home app. If your Home system is connected to a smart camera, it will also display live video of your home, so you can see what’s happening in real time.

Here’s how to enable the feature. Note that Sound Recognition on HomePods requires Apple’s updated Home app architecture that was introduced in iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4.

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How to Use the Photos Repair Library Tool in MacOS

If your Photos library won’t open or the ‌Photos‌ app is exhibiting odd behavior on your Mac, the ‌Photos‌ Repair Library tool may fix the issue.

The Repair Library tool is a hidden utility in macOS that analyses your photo library’s database and repairs any inconsistencies it detects. The tool isn’t guaranteed to fix all problems that can arise with photo libraries, but it is worth giving it a go before contacting Apple Support.

Before you use the ‌Photos‌ Repair Library tool, make sure you have a local backup of your photo library, either by using Time Machine or a third-party backup solution, ideally with an external drive. By default, your photo library is stored in the Pictures folder within your home folder.

If you’re repairing a library that’s used with iCloud Photos, iCloud will check the library after the repair process has completed to ensure everything has synced correctly.

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How to Turn a Video into a GIF on iPhone and iPad

Animated GIFs have become a staple of the internet. Invented in 1987, the looping, soundless video clips can be found everywhere online, from social media networks to messaging platforms, and are often used to express emotions, communicate ideas, or just make people laugh.
Because they are so short, GIF files are quick to load and they play automatically, so they communicate what you want pretty instantaneously and without effort on the viewer’s part. What’s more, thanks to Apple’s Shortcuts app, you can turn video clips into GIFs quickly and easily on your iPhone and iPad without even having to download anything.

The following steps show you how it’s done.

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How to Capture PC VR App Screenshots in Oculus Dash

Want to take screenshots of your VR PC games? Here’s how you can by using Oculus Dash.
Users who hook up their Quest 2 headsets with their Windows desktops or laptops can play some great PC VR (virtual reality) games from the Oculus Rift Store. Some players also like to capture screenshots when they play VR games. However, users can’t capture screenshots from PC VR apps with the Oculus/trigger button method.

Oculus Dash is the home environment for launching PC VR apps in Quest 2 headsets. That home environment includes two different tools with which you can capture snapshots. This is how you can capture screenshots from PC VR apps in Quest 2 within Oculus Dash. You can capture PC VR game screenshots with that tool like this:

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