Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Tech Tips and Tricks : iPad


1. Create folders

iOS now supports folders. To create a folder all you need to do is tap and hold on an app until they all start to jiggle, then drag the app over another icon and release.  Your iPad will create a folder with both the apps in. The folder will be named according to the category of the apps it contains, but you can rename it as you like.

2. Access all running apps

Double-clicking the Home button shows you all the apps that are running on your iPad in a bar along the bottom of the screen. To switch to a running app just tap on it here in this bar. Just swipe the screen downwards to remove this bar.

3. Orientation Lock or Mute?

The internet got mightily upset when Orientation Lock was replaced with Mute on the iPad during the last iOS update. Apple listened, and now you can head to Settings > General to choose between Lock Rotation and Mute.

4. Control iPad notifications

By going to Settings > Notifications, you can decide which apps can pop up alerts, which have notifications at the top of the screen, and which appear in Notification Center. This means you can make sure that noisy apps don't clog things up for you, and you notice the important things.

5. Quick volume mute

When the iPad first launched, there was no dedicated mute button anywhere on the device. However, with iOS 4.3 Apple has given you the choice of using the lock switch to mute the sound or lock the iPad's orientation. Either way, a good tip for quickly muting your iPad is to press and hold the Volume-down button.

6. Use an Apple keyboard

Any Apple Wireless Keyboard will work with the iPad. In fact, your iPad will work with any Bluetooth keyboard. Some iPad cases have a keyboard built in.

7. Take an iPad screenshot

You can take a screenshot on your iPad by pressing Home and then the Sleep/Wake button. The screen will flash and you'll hear a click, indicating that a photo has been taken. Your screen shots are saved automatically in your Photos gallery. Here, you can view or email them as you see fit.

8. Avoid underpowered USB docks

The iPad does not charge when you connect it to some USB docks or even certain ports on some notebooks. Instead, plug in to a high power USB port (check your computer's specs, or use a powered USB dock). On some PCs, USB ports on the front of the computer are lower power, so you will need to plug into one on the back.

9. Restrict your Spotlight searches

Swipe left on the Home screen to reveal the Spotlight search. By default it searches everything including songs in your iPod, podcasts, apps and events. To restrict the areas it searches, since you may not want all these categories included, look in Settings > General > Spotlight Search.

10. Share from Pages

Transferring Pages documents from your iPad by syncing with iTunes on your Mac or PC is a real hassle. It's much quicker to use the Share menu to email the finished document to wherever you need it to be. Also, you can email it as a Word or PDF document if you like.

11. Turn iPad caps lock on

To type a capital letter on the onscreen keyboard you first tap the left or right shift key, then the letter.  Save time typing in caps by turning the caps lock on. To do this, double tap on either shift key.

12. Copy and paste

You can quickly copy and paste text by tapping and holding down, and then choosing Select to select the exact portion of text you'd like the copy. Next tap Copy, then go to a different app, and tap and hold down again, then tap Paste from the menu that appears. Top tip: To select an entire paragraph of text you need to tap four times.

13. Replace a word

When you hold down on a word to copy it, choose Select, then you will see a new option: Replace. Tap this and, you can see suggestions for alternative words that have similar spellings. It's a good way of quickly correcting typos.

14. Hidden apostrophe key on the keyboard and Quick Quotes

This is a great tip for any app, such as Notes, Pages or Mail, that you type into using the iPad's virtual keyboard. Rather than having to go to the second screen of the keyboard every time you want to type an apostrophe (which is a real pain) just tap and hold on the ! key and a hidden apostrophe option will appear - then just slide your finger up to access it.  You don't have to move the iPad's second keyboard screen to enter a quotation mark either. Simply tap and hold over the ? key and a quotation symbol appears, which you can select by moving your finger upwards.

15. Display PDFs

There are two ways to display PDFs on your iPad: you can either email them to your iPad, in which case you get an Open in iBooks button appear, or you can sync PDFs from your Mac or PC via the Books tab in iTunes.  To do this just drag and drop the PDF into iTunes, then when you sync your iPad click on the Books tab and select the PDFs you'd like to sync. In iBooks you click on PDFs in your library to see the PDFs you have ready to display.

16. Camera focus and meter

In the Camera app, tap on your subject to both focus on and meter the light properly.

17. Quicker websites

Save time typing web addresses in Safari by using the iPad's ".com" key when typing in a URL. A little-known timesaver is that if you hold down the .com key you get access to a menu that offers a .co.uk and other options too.

18. Quick Safari scroll

You can jump up to the top of any web site - indeed any list - by tapping on the top of the title window. It's much faster than scrolling by hand.

19. Find text on a page

You can search for a particular word on an open page in Safari. Type your word into the Google search box. You'll see a list of suggestions appear, and near the bottom you'll see "On This Page", showing how many times that word appears on the page. Tap the Find option to go to the first instance of the word.

20. iPad is flat and won't charge

If your iPad battery is completely flat then it can take a while for the red battery symbol to appear when you plug it in to charge, indicating that it is charging. Don't panic, just leave it plugged in and wait - the charging symbol will appear eventually.

No comments:

Post a Comment