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Learn how to use your iPhone’s safety and emergency features to quickly seek assistance and alert your loved ones in times of distress.
While most of the tips here focus on the iPhone, some are also available on the iPad and Apple Watch.
Additionally, we have dedicated tutorials covering these features in detail, and we’ve linked them here. If you need more information, be sure to check out those guides.
1. Text 911
If you are in a situation where calling 911 isn’t safe, you can send a text to 911 or your country’s local emergency service for help.
- Open the Messages app on your iPhone with a cellular connection and compose a new message. You can also use the Messages app on your Apple Watch that’s near your iPhone or has a cellular connection.
- Enter 911 in the To field.
- Type your emergency message and hit the green send button.
Note that texting 911 or other emergency services isn’t available in all regions and countries. You can learn more on Apple’s website and this FCC PDF.
2. Ask Siri to call 911 or your emergency contacts
If you can’t physically reach your phone to dial 911, you can say, “Hey Siri, call 911 on speakerphone,” and Apple’s voice assistant will connect you to emergency services. Additionally, Siri can call your emergency contacts if you ask.
3. Use Emergency SOS for help
SOS on iPhone lets you call emergency services, like 911, for help. In supported countries and regions, emergency services can request live video. You can then stream your video or upload photos and videos to help them assess the situation and provide better assistance.
Along with contacting emergency services, SOS on iPhone alerts your emergency contacts with a message and your current location. If your location changes, your emergency contacts will continue to receive updates about your new location for some time.
You can quickly call emergency services using one of these methods:
- Press and hold the side button along with either volume button until you go past the power off screen and the Emergency SOS countdown ends.
- Alternatively, you can slide the Emergency Call slider on the power-off screen.
- Or you can press the side button five times if “Call with 5 Button Presses” is active in Settings > Emergency SOS.
Once the emergency call ends, your emergency contacts will be alerted with a text message, provided you did not choose to cancel sending the text.
4. Add emergency contacts and keep them updated
After listing your parents, spouse, siblings, or other close people as emergency contacts, your iPhone can text them automatically when you trigger Emergency SOS.
Additionally, the names and phone numbers of your emergency contacts are displayed in your Medical ID (explained below) and used in features like Fall Detection.
You can add emergency contacts by editing your Medical ID in the iPhone Health app.
5. Use Medical ID to list helpful information
Medical ID is a useful screen that displays your name, age, primary language, organ donation status, allergies, blood type, weight, height, medications, health conditions, emergency contacts, and other notes.
If you’re in an accident or other unfortunate situation, a bystander can access your Medical ID from your iPhone Lock Screen. They can use it to contact your emergency contacts, and first responders can view your medical information to provide appropriate assistance. Additionally, you can share your Medical ID with emergency services during a call.
You can add and update your Medical ID through the Health app and access it from the “slide to power off” screen or by tapping Emergency > Medical ID on the Lock Screen.
6. Use emergency services via a satellite connection
If you are in a location with no Wi-Fi or cellular service, your iPhone 14 or newer can connect to a satellite, which will allow you to contact emergency services and text your family or friends. You can learn all about it here or watch the video below.
7. Get roadside assistance via satellite
If your car breaks down, runs out of fuel, gets a flat tire, or has other issues when you are in an area with no cellular or Wi-Fi service, your iPhone 14 and later can use a satellite connection to text for roadside assistance.
8. iPhone can get help during a car crash
The Crash Detection feature on iPhone 14 and newer, as well as Apple Watch Series 8 and newer, can detect severe car crashes, including front or side impacts, rear-end collisions, and rollovers. When a crash is detected, your iPhone triggers an alarm sound and displays an alert on the screen.
You can interact with the on-screen alert to call emergency services. If you’re unable to do so, your iPhone will automatically call emergency services after 20 seconds. If you remain unresponsive, your iPhone will also play a recorded audio message for first responders to hear.
Additionally, Car Detection can use a satellite connection if you are in an area with no cellular coverage.
Car Crash Detection should be on by default, and you can confirm this by going to iPhone Settings > Emergency SOS and enabling the Call After Severe Crash toggle.
9. Share your location via satellite
It’s easy to see the location of your family members and friends at all times by enabling location sharing. This works well over Wi-Fi and cellular connections.
However, even if you are in a place with no network coverage, you can report your location in Find My using a satellite connection. Those you are sharing your location with will be able to see where you are.
10. Use the Compass app if you are lost
11. Check in to let others know you’re safe
The Check In feature is baked into the iPhone Messages and Apple Watch Workout apps. You can use it to let a friend or family member know you have arrived safely at a location, or have finished working out without injuries.
12. Fall Detection
This isn’t a direct iPhone feature, but it’s important and worth knowing about.
When you’re wearing your Apple Watch and suffer a hard fall, your watch can detect it, then tap your wrist, sound an alarm, and show an Emergency Call slider on the screen. You can drag the Emergency Call slider to contact emergency services.
If your watch detects that you haven’t moved for a minute after the fall, it will automatically call emergency services and notify your emergency contacts.
If you fall in an area without Wi-Fi or cellular, your Apple Watch can even use the Emergency SOS via satellite system on your iPhone to contact emergency services.
Fall Detection is enabled automatically for people over 55 years of age. You can turn it on or check its status by going to the Emergency SOS section of the Watch app on your iPhone.
13. Call emergency services even from a locked phone
Imagine a situation where you can’t access your own phone or someone else’s. In this case, you can tap the Emergency button on the Enter Passcode screen to call emergency services.
14. Get government emergency alerts
Lastly, iPhone and other smartphones have the ability to receive emergency, Amber, and other alerts to stay safe and receive crucial information. Go to iPhone Settings > Notifications and make sure the toggles under the Government Alerts section are green.
On a related note: 15 built-in wellness features to keep track of your health on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/11/20/iphone-emergency-features/
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Fitenium: AI Workout & Gym Log ( $99.99 → Free ) FITENIUM S.L.
Fitenium helps you personalize a training program according to your goals, level, and available equipment. Customize each workout session to train exactly how you want to without wasting time or energy. Track your progress and analyze past history. You can even track your heart rate using Apple Health or Google Fit and manage your weight daily in your health profile.
Color Wheel ( $2.99 → Free ) Roman Sevastyanov
No matter the task, Color Wheel will help you find the right color. It includes eight different tools: Digital Color Wheel, Classic Color Wheel, Abstract Color Wheel, Color Picker, Color Mixing, Swatches, Gray Scale, and Golden Ratio. All of the tools include the ability to bookmark your favorite colors and combinations, which can be recalled and sorted in the Color Combinations section of the app.
Memorize: Learn GRE Vocabulary ( $6.99 → Free ) LIKECRAZY Inc. The GRE exam, also known as the Graduate Record Examinations, is a standardized test that is an admissions requirement for many graduate schools in the United States and Canada. The app includes over 4,000 flashcards that cover the most commonly used English words from a variety of different categories. It also has audio for each flashcard to practice listening and pronunciation, making it extremely useful for non-native English speakers.
Source link: http://appadvice.com/apps-gone-free
Apple has issued an advisory about older iPhone, iPad and Mac models losing the ability to sync Safari bookmarks through iCloud. Here’s what you need to know.
Apple’s support page says some iPhones, iPads, and Macs will be unable to sync bookmarks, and new bookmarks will not be uploaded from those devices starting December 18, 2024. The change will affect iPhones and iPads running the iOS 10 software and older and Macs powered by macOS Sierra 10.12.5 and older.
“You won’t lose any bookmarks already on your devices and you’ll still be able to create new bookmarks on those devices,” it reads. “However, new bookmarks won’t sync across devices with iOS 10 or earlier and macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or earlier. They also won’t be recoverable on iCloud.com.”
To continue syncing bookmarks after December 18, you can update your devices to iOS 11 or newer and macOS Sierra 10.12.6. If your devices are too old to run those operating systems, you’re advised to export your bookmarks.
Another feature that will stop working on older devices on December 18 is iCloud Backup. As we told you, iCloud backups will require at least iOS 9, which supports Apple’s CloudKit framework instead of the previous backup-specific system.
Safari bookmarks to stop syncing on older Apple devices
Apple is doing this because of recent changes in the technology powering iCloud infrastructure, which resulted in the updated minimum system requirements for iCloud. If you can update your devices to iOS 11, iPad 11, and macOS Sierra 10.12.6, be sure to turn on Safari in the iCloud settings on your devices to ensure iCloud Bookmarks keep your Safari bookmarks up to date across all your devices.
Then, be sure to open Safari on your devices so your bookmarks get synchronized with iCloud Bookmarks. Remember that iCloud Bookmarks might not sync unless all your devices have been updated to run the required software. In that case, you may want to copy or export your Safari bookmarks manually.
How to sync Safari bookmarks on iPhone, iPad and Mac
On your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings, hit your name at the top, select iCloud, hit Show All under Apps Using iCloud and turn on Safari.
On your Mac with macOS Ventura or later, click the Apple menu and choose System Settings, then hit your name and choose iCloud. Under Apps Using iCloud, tap Show All and make Safari is turned on. If your Mac runs macOS Monterey or earlier, click the Apple menu, choose System Preferences, and then click Apple ID. In the sidebar, select iCloud and make sure Safari is turned on.
PC owners can download the latest version of AApple’siCloud for Windows app from the Microsoft Store to use iCloud Bookmarks. The app requires Windows 11 or later.
How to export Safari bookmarks on iPhone, iPad and Mac
To export Safari bookmarks on an iPhone and iPad, hit the Bookmarks icon at the bottom, touch and hold an individual bookmark or a folder of bookmarks and choose Copy or Copy Contents from the menu. You can now paste copied bookmarks into a document like a note or another browser.
To export Safari bookmarks on a Mac, click File > Export > Bookmarks in Safari to export your bookmarks as an HTML file. Doing so will allow you to easily import your Safari bookmarks into another browser or back them up for safekeeping.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/11/20/apple-older-iphone-ipad-mac-sync-safari-bookmarks-cutoff-date/
Apple has announced that the Shazam music recognition service has surpassed over 100 billion song recognitions since its inception.
The company said the impressive figure is equivalent to 12 songs identified for every person on Earth. Shazam currently has over 300 million monthly active users.
The press release shares interesting facts about the milestone. “A person would need to use Shazam to identify a song every second for 3,168 years to reach 100 billion,” it reads. 100 billion song recognitions is more than 2,200x the number of identifications of Shazam’s top song ever, “Dance Monkey,” which has over 45 million tags.
“Shazam Predictions 2023 alum Benson Boone’s ‘Beautiful Things’ was the first track released this year to hit 10 million recognitions, and the fastest, doing so in 178 days,” Apple said. “At that pace, it would take more than 4,800 years for it to hit 100 billion.”
Shazam has hit 100 billion song recognitions since its launch
Shazam debuted as a UK-only text message service on August 19, 2002. You had to dial a special number and pay a fee to get the answer to your musical inquiry. “Shazam launched in 2002 as an SMS service in the UK, and back then, music fans would dial 2580, hold up their phones to identify music, and receive the song name and artist via text message,” the company explains.
Shazam first became an app in 2006, exclusively on the Amp’d Mobile cellular service. Shazam for iPhone debuted on July 10, 2008, and was among the initial launch apps for Apple’s App Store. “Shazam’s following and influence continued to grow in the years that followed, but it was the 2008 debut of the App Store and introduction of Shazam’s iOS app that brought its music recognition technology to millions of users,” it continues. “By the summer of 2011, Shazam had already recognized over 1 billion songs.”
In September 2018, Apple acquired Shazam for a reported $400 million. “When Shazam joined the Apple family in 2018, the service was propelled into a new era of tech advances and innovations, offering music fans more and faster ways to discover music than ever before,” Apple writes.
Even though Apple integrated the Shazam engine into its software platforms to power music recognition, it has continued evolving Shazam’s mobile apps and the website (still available to this day) with new features.
Apple has detailed how it uses the Shazam engine:
Recent innovations include Music Recognition on iOS and macOS, which allows users to quickly identify music around them or within apps—even while using headphones. The latest watchOS update goes a step further by adding Shazam as a widget to the Smart Stack, proactively suggesting music recognition whenever music is detected nearby.
And:
For users on the go, the integration of Shazam into the Action button on recent iPhone and Apple Watch models enables music recognition with a simple press-and-hold, making it even easier to name that song. Shazam also enhances the experience of its Android users, with the latest Wear OS update enabling song identification directly from a user’s watch. Plus, Shazam’s Quick Settings tile now offers direct access to users’ history.
You can download Shazam for free on the App Store or use the Shazam website to identify music. We have a dedicated Shazam tutorial detailing all the different ways to identify music playing around you. Apple also shared the Shazam’s Top 100 Songs of All Time playlist on Apple Music.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/11/20/apple-announces-shazam-just-zoomed-past-100-billion-song-recognitions/
Apple says iOS 18.1.1, iPadOS 18.1.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1.1 protect you against actively exploited vulnerabilities
Apple has released iOS 18.1.1, iPadOS 18.1.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1.1 with fixes for actively exploited vulnerabilities, so install them as soon as you can.
You can install the updates by navigating to General > Software Update in the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad or the System Settings app on your Mac.
Apple’s support page says the updates fix vulnerabilities that may have already been exploited in the wild, so please update your device to get the latest protections.
iOS 18.1.1, iPadOS 18.1.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1.1 address vulnerabilities in WebKit, the rendering engine used by Safari and all iOS browsers, and JavaScriptCore, the framework used to run JavaScript code on iOS, iPadOS and macOS.
iOS 18.1.1 protects your iPhone against actively exploited vulnerabilities
The support page says the WebKit vulnerability could allow maliciously crafted web content to open doors to a cross-site scripting attack. iOS and iPadOS 18.1.1 have patched this vulnerability with improved state management.
The JavaScriptCore bug also relies on maliciously crafted web content, but it could lead to arbitrary code execution, which could be much more dangerous than the WebKit vulnerability. The company resolved the issue with improved checks.
The support document states that Apple is aware of a report that both issues “may have been actively exploited on Intel-based Mac systems.” So, if you own an Apple silicon Mac, you’re in the clear, but you should still update your iPhone and iPad.
Older iPhone and iPad models get the same protections because Apple also released iOS and iPadOS 17.7.2 today. Vision Pro owners can protect against the above vulnerabilities by installing the just-released visionOS 2.1.1 update.
Apple is also testing iOS 18.2 with new Apple Intelligence features like AI image and emoji creation and ChatGTP integration, plus other tweaks and non-AI features like a two-stage shutter with the Camera Control capture button and setting default apps for calling, messaging, contactless transactions, etc.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/11/19/apple-releases-ios-18-1-1-iphone-vulnerabilities-fixed/
