Updated: iOS 9

Listed below are some common commands which can be used with Siri in iOS 9.

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.

Everything will work the same on an iPod touch.

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.

The Mail App

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.

For iOS 18

Intro

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.

Introduction

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 quick tip podcast, Tyler demonstrates how to create and use text replacements, short snippets of text which are substituted with frequently used words or phrases when typed, and which synchronise across all your Apple devices.

For more information, see:
Replace text and punctuation in documents on Mac
Save keystrokes with text replacements on iPhone

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, Scott Davert walks us through the process of updating to a newer version of iOS directly on your iOS device.

In this podcast, Jonathan Simeone shows us how to access and use the diverse emoji icon set on iOS and iPadOS

In this podcast, Graham Langford gives us a quick tip of how to customize contact labels in iOS.

In this episode, Tyler demonstrates how to disable contact suggestions in the iOS Share Sheet, which can help declutter the view.

To do this, go to Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri, and toggle the "Show when sharing" switch under the "suggestions from Apple" heading off.

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.

In this podcast, Thomas Domville walks us through a new accessibility enhancement in iOS 16 that allows you to increase ‌Siri's pause time, which causes the voice assistant to wait a longer period for you to finish speaking.

In this podcast, Thomas Domville walks us through where to find and enable the iOS setting that prevents the side or lock button from ending calls.

Note that some in our community have recently reported issues with the side button not behaving as expected in regard to ending calls.

In this podcast, Thomas Domville demonstrates how in iOS 16 you are now able to recover deleted conversations in the native iOS Messages app. Note that this will only be possible for up to approximately 30 days after the conversation was deleted.

1. Open the Messages app and double-tap the Edit button.
2. From the menu that appears, double-tap Show Recently Deleted.
3. Select at least one conversation.
4. Double-tap the Recover button.
5. Double-tap Recover Messages from the confirmation dialog.
6. Double-tap the Done button.

Alternatively, the VoiceOver rotor can be used to recover or permanently delete a conversation.