Gallery: How to Use iOS 7
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Apple's latest mobile operating system is almost here. But iOS 7 isn't an incremental upgrade from iOS 6. Things not only look starkly different, but in many cases, the familiar commands, gestures, and navigation elements have changed or have been replaced. So sit back, take out your freshly updated iPhone, and let's master Apple's latest.  The 3 Most Important Swipes --------------------------- These are the gestures for accessing the three most important system-wide tools. Swiping upwards from the bottom of the screen anywhere in the OS brings up the new __Control Center__. Inside are the settings Apple believes you will use the most, and it's probably right. Screen brightness can be adjusted from here. You can toggle Airplane mode, turn Wi-Fi on and off, turn Bluetooth on and off, toggle Do Not Disturb, and turn Orientation lock on or off. At the bottom, there's instant access to the timer, the calculator, and the camera app. When you're in range, AirPlay and AirDrop also appear in the Control Center. There's even a flashlight switch that turns your phone's camera flash on. One other thing you'll see is play controls for the current song in the Music app. Tap on the song title, band, or album name and the Music app will launch. If you're listening to iTunes Radio, tap the star to bring up options to hear more songs like the current one. The new Control Center is great -- it's pretty much a one stop shop for the things you need to change quickly. The __Notification Center__ is largely the same as iOS 6, though it looks different and is organized more cleanly. Instead of just a single stream of information, three views are available. "Today" gives you a quick look at your daily plans, including the weather. "All" resembles the Notification center of iOS 6 with all your notifications assembled in one spot organized by app. "Missed" is populated with all the notifications you have missed crammed into a single list. Just like the last iOS, "Notifications" can also be accessed from anywhere in the OS by swiping down from the top of the display. __Spotlight Search__ used to live on the hidden screen to the left of your home screen. Now, to access Spotlight Search, just swipe down from anywhere on any one of your Home Screens. Start your swipe anywhere below the status bar that lives at the top of the screen (that's the slim bar at the top that shows the clock and battery status). Inside Spotlight, you can search your phone for apps, emails, and contacts. The big bummer is that you can no longer search Wikipedia and the internet from Spotlight. *Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED*
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Blocking Unwanted Calls and Messages ------------------------------------ New to iOS 7 is the ability to block voice calls, SMS messages, iMessages, and FaceTime calls from anyone. This is a great feature, and it should have been included in the original iOS when the iPhone first launched. To block somebody in your contact list, open their contact card and scroll to the bottom. You'll see the option to block them. To block somebody who's been texting you, just tap on Contact button at the top of a message they recently sent you, then the tap the "i" (information) icon. To block somebody who called you recently, tap on the "i" in recent calls and scroll to the bottom of the contact info. Tap "Block this Caller." The feature does have a few quirks, like not stopping messages from landing on your computer even after you've blocked somebody on your phone. For more details, check out our deep dive into the feature.
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Using the App Switcher ---------------------- The App Switcher can still be accessed by double-tapping the home button. But instead of a drawer popping up from the bottom of the display, the app switcher takes over the entire screen with thumbnails showing open apps. Swipe left and right to find the app you want. The switcher also works in landscape mode, but most of your apps will be sideways. To kill apps in iOS 7, you go into the App Switcher and swipe up on the app thumbnail you want to kill. In iOS 6, you needed to tap and hold on an icon until they all started to jiggle then tap the tiny X in the corner of the icon. This is quicker -- just swipe up and you're done.
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Turning Off Parallax -------------------- Apple's iOS 7 has a new, subtle animation that shows the background images on your Home and Lock screens swaying and moving as you move your phone. If you're not a fan of seeing things moving slightly as you move your phone, you can switch it off. Head to Settings > General > Accessibility and tap on Reduce Motion. Unfortunately, the Apple-supplied dynamic wall paper that sits behind your app icons will continue to move even with Movement turned off.
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Using the New Camera -------------------- There are some new basic controls inside the Camera on iOS 7. To switch from snapping stills to shooting video, swipe right from anywhere inside the app. To shoot a panorama or an Instagram-ready square photo, swipe left. There are also new "live filters" which can be applied before you take a picture. In both square and normal mode inside the Camera, tap on the three colored balls in the right corner to turn on live filter shooting.  If you shot a photo with a filter and regret getting all artsy, you can remove the effect. Open the photo in the Photos app. Select Edit, then tap the three balls in the center bottom. Swipe right until you see None. Tap that and the filter is gone.  Navigating the Photos app can be confusing as Apple automatically tries to arrange your photos into date and location based groups. Inside the app, tapping on photos drops you into "Moments," with the above mentioned organization scheme. Tap Collections and the groups become larger, with locations and multiple consecutive dates associated with that location. Tap Years and it pulls out even further to, you guessed it, the entire year. To drill back in from Years, tap on any photo and you'll be dropped back into Collections. Tap again on any photo to get back to Moments. All of your photos are geotagged, and it's easier to access this location data in iOS 7. Tap on the headline of either a Moment, Collection, or Year to see on a map where every photo was taken. As you zoom in, the exact locations of the photos will become apparent.  Once you find the photo you're looking for, sharing it or setting it as your wallpaper is now all done through the "Share" button. In the Photos app, select a photo and tap the blue square with the forward arrow pointing up. Then tap Next in the top right corner. From here, the photo can be shared via email, via a message, and by way of various social networks. You can also push the photo through AirPlay and throw it to a second screen, assign it to a contact as their avatar, or set it as a wallpaper -- all through the same sharing button.
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Using the New Music Player and iTunes Radio ------------------------------------------- The Music app got a major overhaul. Beyond the new red and white color scheme, there's the inclusion of iTunes Radio. The new service offers up Pandora-like radio stations that have either been curated or assembled algorithmically. Or, like Pandora, you can fire up your own stations based on songs or artists you like. To activate iTunes Radio while a song in your library is playing, you can press "Create" inside the player and a menu pops up to create a playlist or create a station from the artist or song. While playing a song from a station, tap the information icon (the "i") at the top of the screen to create new stations based on the song or artist currently playing. You can also "tune" each station, telling it to stick to well-known hits, or setting it to "Discovery" to hear more obscure gems. More importantly, you can turn on explicit tracks from here.
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Managing Your Email ------------------- To delete individual emails, swipe from the right to left and tap the Trash button. A great addition to email management is that you can send spam to the junk folder. Swipe from right to left and tap More, then tap Move to Junk. To leave an inbox and return to the Mailboxes area, just swipe right. You can also tap the blue arrow in the top left-hand corner.
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Using Messages -------------- Messages are largely the same, but there are some new features. One of our favorites: You can get a time stamp for every message sent in iMessages. From within a messages window, swipe to the left to see the timestamps for all messages. In iOS 6, timestamps only popped up every few messages. Deleting messages is easier too. Find the "Edit" button at the top of iMessage chats. To delete a text, tap and hold on the offending message. Tap "More..." and you can trash the selected message, select more messages to delete, or delete the entire conversation. It's also easier to call somebody from within the messages app. Tap the Contact button at the top of every message to quickly call or FaceTime the person your texting with. In iOS 6 you had to scroll all the way to the top of conversation to see a person's contact information, call, or FaceTime with them. This is much better.
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Managing Your Folders and Apps ------------------------------ There are no longer any limitations on how many apps you can put in a folder. So go ahead and put all your games in a single folder. The folders span multiple pages, just like the OS' home screens. Apps can also be set to auto-update. When you launch the App Store and tap Updates for the first time, you'll be presented with the ability to automatically update apps in the background. If you select "Turn On," you never have to think about it again. If you do think about it again and you change your mind, head to Settings > iTunes & App Store and scroll down to Automatic Downloads. You can toggle automatic downloads for music, apps, books, and app updates.
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Calendar List View ------------------ The Calendar app got a nice visual update. But to simplify the visual style, List view, one of the more important layouts, can be confusing to find. To get to the List view of your appointments from any other view of the Calendar app, just tap on the magnifying glass in the top right hand corner.
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Do Not Disturb Gets Smarter --------------------------- Accessing the Do Not Disturb settings on iOS 6 was a chore (it was in Settings > Notifications > Do Not Disturb). Now, in addition to its placement inside the Control Center, it also gets top-level billing in the Settings app. One new addition: You can set it to allow sounds if the iPhone is unlocked. This is perfect if you're waiting for a text message reply or an incoming call. Head to Settings > Do Not Disturb and scroll down to the bottom to adjust the Silence setting.
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Make Your Fonts Larger or Smaller --------------------------------- Enlarge the fonts in Phone, Messages, Email, Contacts (but not individual contacts), FaceTime, and Newsstand by heading to Settings > General > Text Size and moving the font slider to your size of choice.
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Make Web Pages More Readable in Safari -------------------------------------- Safari's Reader feature has been improved in iOS 7. This strips away all the junk on web pages and just gives you an easy-to-read page of text. Once the page loads in Safari, tap on the lines that resemble a paragraph in the URL field in the top left hand corner. Now you have access to better reading experience on your phone.
