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    Phone Screen Replacements Tips

    Apple Watch for kids: What to buy, how to set up, and best bands

    Apple Watch for kids: What to buy, how to set up, and best bands

    Apple Watch for kids is something parents are embracing more and more. The New York Times ran a story in September 2022 about Apple Watch adoption among children as young as five. Parents are finding the Apple Watch more appropriate for kids wanting smartphones. The Apple Watch gives kids a way to stay in touch with parents, share location, and build responsibility without the full cost and risk of a smartphone.

    Apple Watch for kids

    The Apple Watch gives kids a way to stay in touch with parents, share location, and build responsibility without the full cost and risk of a smartphone.

    With very limited access to the web and no social media apps, the watch can be a great starter device for kids if parents are looking for a manageable way to introduce technology early.

    Family Setup for Apple Watch

    Apple’s Family Setup feature allows parents to set up a cellular Apple Watch SE or Series 4 and higher from their iPhone. No iPhone required for the family member.

    While the monthly connection fee is typically around $10 plus fees, T-Mobile has a kid-friendly plan with unlimited calling and 500MB/month that’s half the price with auto-pay. This is convenient if you’re already a T-Mobile subscriber and want to save on a watch plan for your child.

    There’s even a special mode with Family Setup called Schooltime that restricts the Apple Watch during school hours. Parents can remotely manage this from their iPhone.

    Watch bands that fit kids

    I happen to have a five-year-old who owns my heart. While I don’t think he’s quite ready for an Apple Watch, I was curious about watch band compatibility with kid-sized wrists. He happily let me borrow his little wrist for testing.

    Any bands I already had weren’t fitting for a small wrist. Trying an Apple Watch band specifically made for kids worked great, though. For under $15, this Nike Sport style band with a buckle was a perfect fit.

    Best Apple Watch prices for kids

    As a trial introduction to the semi-smartphone world for kids, new Apple Watches can be a bit pricey. A new 40mm Apple Watch SE 2 with cellular goes for $299. That’s why hand-me-down watches with cellular are great for Family Setup.

    Another option is shopping for second-hand Apple Watches from places like eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Amazon’s refurbished inventory. I’ve found a 40mm cellular SE for $120 locally, and Amazon’s Renewed Store has very similar offers.

    Just be sure to look for GPS + Cellular if you want to use Family Setup. 40mm or 41mm sizes are also more kid-friendly than 44mm or 45mm.

    Also avoid Apple Watch Series 3 if you want to set up a watch for a child without an iPhone. You can find models with cellular for cheap, but they don’t receive software updates anymore. More importantly, they don’t work with Family Setup and require the wearer to have an iPhone.

    This hidden Apple Watch feature is stellar — try it now

    This hidden Apple Watch feature is stellar — try it now

    Just when I thought I discovered all the best Apple Watch hidden features, I found a stellar — and I literally mean stellar — tool while changing my Apple Watch face. I think those who are interested in the planets of our solar system will absolutely love this little hack.

    If you know how to use the Apple Watch, you probably have figured out how to change your Apple Watch face. Maybe you even know how to use a photo as an Apple Watch face. But have you explored the Astronomy watch face yet?

    Though the original Astronomy watch face debuted with the first-generation Apple Watch, it received a refresh with watchOS 9 alongside the Apple Watch Series 8 launch. All of the new watchOS 9 watch faces are interactive in some way or another, but the Astronomy watch face has a particularly cool feature.

    The default view of the Astronomy watch face displays Earth, pinpointing your current location along with live cloud coverage. When you edit the watch face, you'll also get the choice of Moon and Solar System views. You'll need to enable Solar System views to see this hidden feature.

    Once the Solar System view is saved as your watch face, simply turn the digital crown in either direction and you'll see alignment of all 8 planets in orbit with the sun at the center. You can scroll several years in the past or future to see how the planets were aligned in orbit before, or how they will be aligned one day.

    While this isn't really answer to see the next time Mercury will be in retrograde, it is a fun way to explore the solar system from your wrist. At the very least, it makes for a clever party trick, as I'm guessing most people don't know about this feature.

    How to get the Apple Watch Astronomy watch face

    1. Long press on your watch face.

    2. Swipe to the left until you see the plus (+) icon and tap the icon

    3. Scroll down to the Astronomy watch face and press add. The faces are listed in alphabetical order so it's towards the top.

    4. Swipe to the View option in the customization menu and scroll down to select Solar System.

    5. Press the digital crown twice see your new watch face in action.

    This feature looks awesome on the Apple Watch Ultra's large screen, but it works with any Apple Watch updated to watchOS 9, including the Apple Watch SE (2022) and select older watches.

     

     

     

    5 important iPhone security features you should know about

    5 important iPhone security features you should know about

    While iOS 16 fronts a snazzy redesigned lock screen, underneath, the latest operating system hosts a slew of new security and privacy features built to help protect you and your data. Here are five new features to better secure your iPhone from hackers and give you greater peace of mind.

    Rapid security response

    iOS, as well as macOS and iPadOS, now allow for automatic “rapid security responses.” This allows Apple to quickly patch software (i.e., zero-days or other critical vulnerabilities) and ship it to millions of devices without requiring a reboot or any end-user interaction.

    This is available under Settings > General > Software Updates > Automatic Updates

    Interestingly, even with this feature toggled off, Apple says “some system files” can still update automatically in the background.

    Lockdown Mode

    A feature initially created in response to spyware like NSO’s Pegasus, Lockdown Mode offers an extreme level of additional protection to device owners that may be at risk from highly sophisticated cyber attacks – such as journalists, politicians, activists, and government officials. It works by limiting the most-abused device features, like Messages and web browsing, to make it far more difficult for malware to break through.

    Or, as Apple explains it, Lockdown Mode is used “to reduce the attack surface that potentially could be exploited by highly targeted mercenary spyware, certain apps, websites, and features are strictly limited for security….”

    Most people will never be targeted by attacks of this nature, but if you want to try it out: Settings > Privacy & Security > Lockdown Mode and then Turn on Lockdown Mode.

    Passkeys

    For those unfamiliar, Passkeys is a new authentication method implemented with iOS 16 to replace the need for passwords. The feature comes in partnership with Apple, Google, and Microsoft – based on the FIDO Standard.

    The setup is pretty simple. Users who want to sign up through a website or app that uses Passkeys will be prompted to register an account as usual (this process hasn’t changed). Next, a window will appear asking to save a passkey. When the user returns to this website or app to sign in, they can select their passkey and validate using Face ID or Touch ID. No username, password, or other authentication is needed.

    Passkeys work across all Apple devices running iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura. Any keys created on one OS are synchronized between devices of the same user via iCloud Keychain. Plus, both local passkeys and those being exchanged with iCloud are end-to-end encrypted, so it’s unreadable.

    While this feature is still limited in its availability, it’s a valuable tool for making it more difficult for attackers to breach accounts.

    Secure and encrypt notes

    While the ability to lock or “secure” notes created in the Notes app isn’t all that new, it’s worth noting the feature exists. Secure notes are end-to-end encrypted and can be viewed using a user-provided passphrase or simply by authenticating with Face ID or Touch ID.

    There’s more than one way to secure a note, but the quickest way is to hold down on it from inside a folder, hit Lock Note, and voilà.

    Apple on how it encrypts secured notes:

    “When a user secures a note, a 16-byte key is derived from the user’s passphrase using PBKDF2 and SHA256. The note and all of its attachments are encrypted using AES with Galois/Counter Mode (AES-GCM).”

    AES-GCM is a secure cipher, and from a cryptography standpoint, provides more data integrity and is slightly faster than similar modes of encryption like CBC. While cracking this type of encryption could technically take billions of years using current computing technology, it’s important to note that no system is entirely secure.

    Safety Check

    Another important new security feature with iOS 16 is Safety Check. This new tool is designed for people experiencing or at risk of domestic abuse and lets users check whom they’re sharing information with, restrict any Messages and FaceTime, reset system privacy permissions, change any passcodes associated with their iPhone or Apple ID, and more.

    Here’s how Apple describes Safety Check for iPhone:

    “If your personal safety is at risk, you can use Safety Check on iPhone (running iOS 16 or later) to quickly stop sharing your information or to review and update sharing with individual people and apps.”

    Ultimately, this feature can act almost like a panic button if you find yourself in a situation where you want to cut off access entirely. You can find it by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Saftey Check

    As our devices increasingly become more integral, so does keeping our data and privacy safe. Even if none of the new iOS 16 security-focused features interest you, it’s essential to constantly update to the latest iOS version, which, more likely than not, adds critical patches to security flaws and removes bugs that will help improve your experience.

    You will now be able to message yourself on WhatsApp — here’s everything you need to know

    You will now be able to message yourself on WhatsApp — here’s everything you need to know

    Message yourself on WhatsApp to take notes or transfer files

    The Notes app on your phone could soon get a worthy competitor although an unlikely one. The Meta-owned and highly popular messaging app, WhatsApp, will soon let users message themselves.


    Several apps like Slack already have this feature which adds a personal space for users to jot down notes by sending messages to themselves. Now, WhatsApp is finally joining this list and the update is currently being rolled out to iOS and Android devices.

    The feature will be available to use in a similar manner to starting a chat with someone in your contact list. However, the option to message yourself will also be pinned to the top of your list of contacts and you can even add a shortcut to a chat with yourself to your home screen, if you want.

    WhatsApp has said that this chat will be end-to-end encrypted. Until now the only way to message yourself on WhatsApp was to create a group with someone, remove them and then use that space for your notes. But it's not just for quick notes though as users can also use this feature as a way to transfer files or images to themselves as well between phones or their laptop and a phone. 

    This ties in with another update that WhatsApp might roll out soon — companion mode. First spotted by WABetaInfo(opens in new tab), companion mode will let users use their WhatsApp account on upto four mobile devices and even one of the best Android tablets. This will be extremely useful for those who have to keep switching phones or for people who use multiple devices at the same time.

    This was already present on WhatsApp Desktop. Along the same lines, your primary phone doesn't have to be turned on or connected to the internet for WhatsApp to work on your companion device. This mode is only available to some beta testers on Android currently but it's expected to roll out to more users soon

    After many years of WhatsApp Desktop, Meta is finally expanding accessibility to more than one phone at the same time. This is a move that will have several advantages including having your messages, files, images and now even notes at your fingertips regardless of which device you use.

    How to put your face on your AirPods case with Apple’s free Memoji engraving

    How to put your face on your AirPods case with Apple’s free Memoji engraving

    Apple first launched free engraving with the 2nd-gen AirPods in 2019 and expanded the options to include emoji in early 2020. But did you know you can put your own face on AirPods with free Memoji engraving? Here’s where and how to access the option.

    If you head to Apple’s website to order a new pair of AirPods or AirPods Pro, you’ll see the option to personalize them with engraving. That includes being able to use over 40 emoji, the alphabet, or numbers.

    However, along with AirPods Pro 2, Apple added the ability to engrave AirPods with Memoji exclusively through the Apple Store app.

    Interestingly, Apple just highlighted the app’s exclusive Memoji engraving feature in the release notes of version 5.18 today. But it quietly made a mention of the option launching in the AirPods Pro 2 press release back in September.

    How to engrave AirPods with Memoji

    1.Open the Apple Store app (free download)
    2.Search for AirPods or AirPods Pro
    3.Near the top under “Personalize them for free,” tap Add Engraving
    4.Tap the text box > now tap the Memoji tab just above the emoji
    5.Choose Allow Access
    6.Now you can pick from your existing Memoji or create a new one
    7.Tap Save in the top right corner when you’ve decided
    8.Swipe down and buy your custom AirPods

    Here’s how the process looks:

    Apple allows you to use 29 different Memoji expressions. And you can also pick between the included animals, create a new one, or choose an existing custom Memoji.

    When you’re all set, just hit “Save” in the top right corner and buy your custom AirPods. Thanks for reading our guide on how to engrave AirPods with Memoji!