Getting Started With iOS and iPadOS

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 February 8, 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.