If you’re like me and have a server or NAS (Network Access Storage) at home where you save your files, you can access it using the Files app on your iPhone or iPad, or using Finder on your Mac. 

To access a NAS on your iPhone or iPad, open the Files app. Under ‘Browse’ in the menu, tap on the ellipsis icon in the top right of the screen. Choose ‘Connect to Server’ and then enter the IP address of your NAS, or the computer where you store your files. If you don’t know the IP address, don’t worry. I’ll explain that step in just a sec.  

If you use an account to access the computer where you store your files, you’ll be asked to provide those credentials to authenticate yourself. Assuming those details are correct you should be able to access your files. Once connected, you can then do things like copy files or folders directly to your Phone or iPad. Long tap to bring up the context menu and you should see the option to copy and paste.

To do the same thing on a Mac, open Finder. In the Finder menu, click on ‘Go’ and choose ‘Connect to Server’. Again type in the IP address of your storage device, and as with your iPhone or iPad you’ll be prompted for the account details. Your network files should open in a Finder window. To save you having to enter these details every time, you can click on the plus icon to save the IP address (what Mac refers to as a ‘location’) as a Favourite.

If these steps didn’t work for you; if you were unable to connect, it’s likely you either have the wrong IP address or your credentials are wrong. If you’re not sure of the IP address of your NAS, there are a few things you can check.  Firstly, make sure all your devices are connected to the same network. That means the NAS or file server must be connected to the same network as your iPhone, iPad or Mac. If you’re trying this at home (and since most homes only have one wireless network) it’s more than likely this should be fine. If you’re trying to connect in an office environment, you may need to check with someone.

To check the IP address of your iPhone or iPad, open the Settings app and under Wifi, tap on the Information icon next to the network you’re connected to. This will give you the IP address of your device. It will look something like 192.168.0.5. Your numbers may be different but you should have four numbers with a period in between.  

You now need to check the IP address of your storage device. Obtaining the IP address from your device will depend on the type of device it is. I use a Synology NAS and I can find the IP address in the Control Panel, under the Network Settings. Regardless of the device you use, it’s a safe bet that searching for the network settings should lead you to the IP address. 

You’ll hopefully notice that both of your iPhone or iPad and your NAS have very similar IP addresses. Just the last one or two sets of digits (octet as they're known) might be different. This is a common format and in most cases, as long as these first two or three sets of numbers are the same, your devices will all be connected to the same network. 

If you use a Mac, rather than an iPhone or iPad, you can check the IP address of your Mac by holding down the option key and clicking on the wifi icon in the menu bar. 

Now you have the IP address of your NAS or storage device, and you’ve confirmed the device is connected to the same network as your iPhone, iPad or Mac, you should be able to follow the instructions above. 

If you found this post useful, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel for lots of tips and tricks on all your favourite apps.

You can track your steps at any time by opening the Activity app on your Apple Watch and using the digital crown to scroll down past your rings to the Steps screen. If this seems overly complicated, you can also just ask Siri, “How many steps have I walked today?” And Siri should respond by opening the same Steps screen in your Activity app.

If you don’t own an Apple Watch, don’t worry, you can get the same information from both the Fitness or the Health app on your iPhone. On the Summary screen when you open the Fitness app, you’ll see the amount of steps and the distance you’ve walked. In the Health app, you’ll find the number of steps you’ve walked displayed in Favourites.

Like on your Apple Watch, you can also ask Siri on your iPhone, “Siri, how many steps have I walked today?”

As an aside, if you are keeping track of your steps and maybe the calories you burn whilst you’re walking, it’s worth checking that your Health measurements are accurate. These details affect the accuracy of your data. You can adjust these measurements in the Fitness app by tapping your profile icon, in the top, right corner of the screen.

Personally I find Apple’s built-in apps are not ideal for the purpose of tracking your steps. Instead I recommend downloading a pedometer app from the App store. I spent the last couple of days testing three of them: Pedometer ++, StepsApp and Activity Tracker.

As you might have guessed these apps all basically do the same thing, which is to measure and display the steps you walk each day. They are all absolutely free, but do include premium subscriptions that unlock certain extra features. What I like about these apps, unlike Apple’s own apps, is that they all include home and lock screen widgets that will display your steps at a glance, without the need to open the app or ask Siri. Pedometer ++ and StepsApp also have an Apple Watch complication so you can see your steps on your watch face.

All of these features are available for free but my favourite of the apps I tested was StepsApp. I preferred the design of the interface and the fact it included widgets and complications in the free tier.

It ranked top in my test because you can also set daily step goals and you’ll receive notifications when you complete your goals. It also has a useful workout feature which will track where and how far you’ve walked. All available in the free tier.

My least favourite was Pedometer ++ because the interface, I felt, just looks very basic compared to the other two apps. Activity Tracker missed out because it didn’t include an Apple Watch complication and I think you can only set weekly goals rather than daily.

If you want to give StepsApp a try, download it from the App store. The first time you open the app, it will run through the setup and you’ll need to allow it access to your motion and fitness activity. It will then want to link to your Health app so it can pull your measurements to accurately measure your data. You don't have to do this but you’ll likely get more accurate results. You can choose what you want to share but I’ll turn on everything.

You’ll be asked to set a daily step goal, and whether you wish to receive notifications about reaching your goal. If you don’t wish to subscribe, just tap the X in the top left corner. At this point, if you have a watch, it will ask you permission to connect. If you think you’ll use the workout feature you can choose to turn on location services to view where you’ve walked.

Finally, you can import your existing data from your watch, to update the app. And that’s it, the app will automatically start tracking.

If you want to add the widget to your home screen, long press anywhere on your iPhone screen, until your icons start to jiggle. Tap on the plus and scroll down to StepsApp. Choose your widget from the list and tap Add Widget. Now lock your phone, to bring up the lock screen, and again long press to customise the lock screen. Tap on Add Widget below the time, and as before choose a StepsApp widget from the list. This will allow you to keep up to date with a simple glance of your phone.

If you own an Apple Watch, and wish to add the StepsApp complication to your watch face, open the apple watch app on your phone. Tap on the watch face you wish to edit and choose the location for your complication. Scroll through the list until you find StepsApp and choose from one of the options. And there we are. You can now track your steps on your Apple Watch and iPhone, and view how many steps you’ve walked with a quick glance of either your watch or your phone.

If you found this post useful, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel for lots of tips and tricks on all your favourite apps.

If you’re considering signing up for YouTube Premium or you already have a YouTube Premium subscription, then it should cost you $11.99 a month (at the time of writing) and not $15.99 that you might be paying if you subscribe directly through the YouTube app on your iPhone or iPad.

This price difference does not only apply to people living in the US either. Here in Australia, if I sign up through the YouTube app, it’ll cost me 19.99 but through the YouTube website it’s 15.99. Four dollars cheaper a month is not insignificant.

If you are overpaying, you‘ll need to cancel your subscription through your Apple account before re-subscribing directly through the YouTube website. You can access your app subscriptions by opening Settings on your iPhone, clicking on your Apple ID, and choosing Subscriptions. Once cancelled, you’ll need to wait out the remainder of your subscription period before resubscribing through YouTube directly.

The difference in price is the result of what’s referred to as, “the Apple Tax”. The Apple tax is the commission fee that Apple charge developers to sell their app or subscriptions on the Apple App Store. Where some developers choose to absorb this cost themselves, YouTube has instead opted to pass it on to Apple users.

Since this Apple tax affects all apps and subscriptions, it’s worthwhile checking out any other subscriptions you may have. For example, if you subscribe to the New York Times through your Apple device, you might find that you’re paying significantly more than if you had signed up directly through the website.

Another thing you’re likely missing out on when subscribing directly through your mobile device are the one-off deals that many app companies offer. For example, apps like Headspace, Blinkist and Audible all frequently offer significant savings on their subscriptions. To benefit from these you simply need to create a free account or free trial, and then wait for the discount emails to start flooding in.

Finally, if you’re an Apple Music subscriber you can also save a bit of cash by subscribing annually rather than monthly. Apple doesn't offer the same annual deal on their Apple One subscription so, I was surprised to see they do offer it if you just subscribe to Apple music on its own.

If you found this post useful, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel for lots of tips and tricks on all your Apple devices.

 I have a shortcut on my Apple Watch which asks me which Workout I wish to start, offers me a list of several different options, then starts my chosen workout based on my response.

To create a similar shortcut where you can choose between different menu options, start by tapping on All Shortcuts in the app and tap on the plus icon to create a new shortcut. In the search box type Menu and you’ll be presented with two options - ‘choose from menu’ or ‘choose from list’.

We’ll be using ‘Choose from menu’ but you would use ‘Choose from list’ if you wanted to select multiple items from a list. Say, a bunch of photos in the photos app or files in the files app. Tap ‘Choose from Menu’ and a menu will be added to the shortcut editor. Start by adding the text that you want to appear when you start your shortcut. What Apple refers to as the ‘prompt’.

In my example, I’m choosing between two workouts, so my prompt will be ‘Which Workout’? But you type something relevant to your menu options. Below your prompt will be your different answers or menu options.

By default there are only two but you can have as many different menu options as you wish by tapping ‘add new item’. For my example I’ll stick with just the two, and replace the text, ‘One’ and ‘Two’ to read Run and Weights. Tapping Done on the keyboard, will display your script. My example starts by asking ‘Which Workout?’ and I’m presented with two options either ‘Run’ or ‘Weights’.

Having created your menu, you need to define what action to take when each menu option is chosen. Since I want to start a workout I’ll search for exactly that. Use the search box again and type the action you wish to take. Tap the result to add it to the editor.

Having created your action long press to select it and drag to where i want it to execute, which will be under one of your menu options. Add an action for each menu option, and move each one under the associated menu option.

That completes the steps in your shortcut. In my example, starting the shortcut will prompt me to choose between two workouts either Run or Weights. Tapping my choice will either start the Outdoor Run or the Functional Strength Training. The script will then end.

Once you're happy with your steps, you can give your shortcut a name and change the icon representing your shortcut by tapping the little drop down arrow next to the shortcut name. You can also add the shortcut to the home screen of your phone from this menu too.

If you want to be able to run the shortcut from your watch, go back into the script editor, tap on the little information or ‘i’ icon and enable the option to, ‘Add to Apple Watch’. You can then add your shortcut as a complication. I have a YouTube video, if you’d like more information on how to add a shortcut to your watch face. 

If you found this post useful, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel for lots of tips and tricks on all your favourite apps.

Hey everyone Anthony here from the Faculty of Apps with another quick tip for your Apple devices.

Before and after I go for a run I like to give myself 10 minutes to warm up and cool down. You can add Warmup and Cool Down intervals into your Workout routine on your Apple Watch by creating a custom workout.

Open the Workout app and choose the type of workout you want to start. Rather than tapping to start your workout, tap on the little three dots, ellipsis icon.  This will display different variations of your chosen workout routine. 

Scroll to the bottom of the list and choose Create Workout. 

You’re then offered a list of goals to choose from such as a distance, time or calories burnt. Scroll to the bottom of these and choose Custom. 

Now you can create your custom workout and already included is the option to Warmup and Cool Down. By default these are set to Skip but tapping on each one will allow you to set a value. Since I like to stretch for 10 minutes before and after, I’ll choose a time based goal for my warmup and cool down intervals. If I scroll down I can set the period of time, which defaults to 10 minutes. 

The Alert option is where you can enable your stats to be read out to you during the warm up or cool down periods. Since I only stretch I don’t bother with this. 

Having set your warmup, tap the back button and your custom workout should be updated. Next, tap Add to add the main part of your workout. Tap on Work and you're given a few different goals based on the type of workout you’ve chosen. I choose Distance for my runs and use the digital crown to add 10 kilometres.

You should now have your warmup and main workout set. All that is left is to add the Cool Down interval,  which is exactly the same as adding the warm up interval. 

It’s worth mentioning that if you plan on doing a variety of different activities you can keep adding them by tapping Add. Once you're happy with your Workout routine, give it a name, and then scroll to the bottom of the screen to save or “Create” your workout. It’s very important you remember to do this otherwise you’ll lose the changes you’ve made. 

Your new workout should appear at the top of your list in the Workout app and tapping it will start the Warm Up interval. Note the reference in the top left corner of the display showing you're in the Warm Up phase of your exercise. THe W tells you your next interval is Work. If you set a time goal the timer will start to count down. 

At the end of the interval you’ll be notified that the interval has finished and your next interval will start automatically, unless you’ve set an open goal. If you set a distance goal, the display will show you how far you have left to run. It also shows the total time across your 3 intervals and the time spent in the current interval. 

As with any normal Workout, you can swipe right to stop or pause the workout, or skip to the next interval. If you swipe left you can set your music. Scrolling down will display your other stats. 

Having reached your goal, you’ll be notified that you're now in the Cool Down phase of your workout and, as before, your display will reflect the change. Since this is the last interval, if you swipe right now you have the option to complete your workout, rather than skip ahead.  You’ll be notified when all your intervals are complete and you’ll receive your workout stats as per normal. Switching to the Activity app on your phone will confirm your custom workout and clicking on it will provide more stats about your different intervals. 

So that is how to add warm up and cool downs intervals to your Workouts.

If you found this post useful, you might also be interested in reading my favourite free Word Games and don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel for lots of tips and tricks on all your favourite apps.

To sign out of Gmail in a browser by clicking on your photo or avatar in the top right corner of your browser, and choosing Sign Out. However, how you log out or sign out of Gmail depends very much on how you access Gmail.

We’ll start by looking at Gmail through an internet browser, then we’ll sign out of the Gmail app on iPhone before finally, looking at signing out of Gmail using the mail app on iOS and macOS.

If you use a desktop or laptop, more than likely you’re accessing Gmail through a browser and, therefore, when signing into any of Google’s suite of apps it’s all or nothing. If you sign into Gmail by association you are also automatically signed into Google’s other apps, such as YouTube and Google Drive.

It’s a similar story when signing out. If you sign out of Gmail, you will also sign out of YouTube, Google Drive and any other Google apps you use.

If you use the Chrome browser, you’ll notice that when you sign out your account will switch to being paused. When paused, any changes you make in that browser are no longer synced with Chrome on any of your other devices. For example, your browsing history will not be updated and updates to your passwords will not sync between your devices.

You can see how much of your browser activity is being saved and synced by signing back into Chrome, clicking on the three-dots menu icon, opening Settings, choosing Syncing and Services, followed by Manage What You Sync.

To check what other devices you are signed into, click on your photo or avatar in the top right of the browser. Choose, ‘Manage Your Google Account’. Click on Security followed by choose Manage Devices. Here you will be presented with a list of all the devices you have signed into using your Gmail account and you can sign out of each device by clicking on the three-dots icon.

If you use the Gmail app rather than a browser, you can sign out by tapping on your avatar/photo icon in the top right corner, and choosing Manage Accounts on this Device. Tapping on the slider button will sign you out. This will not remove your gmail account from your phone, nor will it delete your credentials. To log back in, simply re-enable the switch. To log out completely and remove your details from the phone, you need to choose, ‘Remove from this device’.

If you use the iPhone Mail app to access Gmail, you can log out of Gmail by opening the Settings app, tapping on Mail, followed by Accounts. Choose Gmail and click on delete account or click on the slider button to disable mail.

Similarly on Mac OS, if you access Gmail through the built-in mail app, you can sign out of Gmail by opening up System Preferences, clicking on Internet Accounts, selecting your Google account, and clicking the minus button to remove it. 

If you found this post useful, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel for lots of tips and tricks on all your favourite apps.

There are two requirements for recording a Zoom meeting on your iPhone. Firstly, only subscription users on one of Zoom’s paid plans can record meetings on their iPhone. The feature is not available to free users. Secondly, you must be the host of the meeting. The record option is not available for participants.

If you are a subscription user, regardless of whether you are on the Pro, Business, or Enterprise plans, you can initiate a recording by clicking on the three dots menu icon and then choosing ‘record to the cloud’. On Android, I believe the option just reads ‘Record’ rather than ‘Record to the Cloud’. 

Once the recording starts you will see confirmation in the top, right corner of the screen. Clicking on the recording notification allows you to either stop or pause the recording. Ending the meeting will also stop the recording.

Any activity outside of the app is not recorded, unless you are also sharing your screen. So, if you swipe out of the Zoom app to reply to a message or check another app, these interactions are not recorded by Zoom.

The recording is not processed until after the meeting has finished. Zoom will notify you by email when the recording is available. In the email is a link to access the recording and there is a second link you can use to share the recording with others. You’ll need to share both the link and the password for others to be able to access the recording.

You can also access the recording yourself by logging into your Zoom account in a browser and choosing Recordings. Or if you are in the Zoom desktop app, open the Settings window, choose Recording, and click the Manage button, under Cloud Recordings. There is also a useful indicator to show you how much of your cloud storage you’ve used. 

If it was a long meeting, it might take a while before the video is ready to download.

If you found this post useful, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel for lots of tips and tricks on all your favourite apps.

Ok, so you can recover deleted WhatsApp messages, which we’ll go through in this post, but the truth is I wouldn’t get your hopes up because, as you’ll see, it only works in certain circumstances.

I tested 3 methods. Firstly using Notification History which is only available on Android. Second was by restoring a WhatsApp backup, which you can do on both iPhone and Android. And, finally, I tried using apps like UltData from Tenorshare and ChatsBack from the ridiculously named iMyFone, both of which were useless. In fact they might have just been malware.

Restoring from a WhatsApp Backup.

Let's assume you have a message that you want to keep, and also maybe a photo for good measure. To be able to restore these from a Whatsapp backup, you need to open WhatsApp Settings, click on Chats followed by Chat Backups.

Now, iPhone users, assuming you have both iCloud Drive and Whatsapp enabled in your iCloud settings, you can take a backup of your Whatsapp account by clicking Backup Now.

Android users will need to connect to Google, and choose Backup Now. Alternatively both iPhone and Android can rely on auto-backups.

Now, if your chat messages are ever deleted by you or someone else in your chat group, you can restore them from your backup.

To do this you’ll need to delete the WhatsApp app from your phone, reinstall it, and follow the setup process until you get to a screen that asks if you want to restore from backup. WhatsApp will restore the most recent backup. Once restored, you’ll be able to see the messages before they were deleted. For everyone else in the chat session messages will still appear as deleted.

It’s worth noting you can only restore to the most recent backup, So if auto-backups are enabled and a backup occurs after the messages were deleted, this method won’t work.

Recover WhatsApp Messages Using Apps

As I mentioned, I did also try restoring my messages using two 3rd-party apps. These work by installing the applications on your computer and then connecting your phone. As I said neither app was successful in retrieving any deleted whatsapp data.

Tenorshare’s UltData was only able to recover the profile images of my contacts, and ChatsBack was only able to tell me I had one chat session but it didn’t include any of the messages.

Both applications actually took so long to analyse my phone, I actually started to worry they were doing something more than just retrieving my deleted whatsapp messages. In fact I became so suspicious I actually decided to disable my internet connection.

Honestly, my recommendation is to steer well clear of these types of apps, and certainly don’t pay any money for them.

Notification History on Android

As mentioned at the start of this post, if you use an Android phone you can try retrieving deleted whatsapp messages using Notification History. You can enable Notification History in Settings under Notifications.

Once enabled, whenever you receive a WhatsApp message, it will be saved to your history. So, even if the message is later deleted, you can click on Notification History, choose WhatsApp, and there are the messages prior to them being deleted.

If you found this post useful, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel for lots of tips and tricks on all your favourite apps.

You can add an emoji to any document or text-based app on your Mac, and there are several ways to do so. Apple’s recommended method, which of course works for all Apple applications and many 3rd-party apps, is to press Control, Command and Space Bar on your keyboard simultaneously. This will display the Character Viewer and you can select your emoji from the list.

If this shortcut seems a bit cumbersome, and frankly having to press three keys does have a habit of stopping your flow of writing, there is a quicker alternative…

Open Settings, choose Keyboard from the menu, and you’ll find an option where you can use your FN key to display emojis. I demonstrate this in my tutorial.

Now that you’ve enabled the FN key to bring up the Character Viewer, when you are replying to a message or typing an email, rather than hitting Control, Command and Space Bar, you can just hit the FN key.

That’s much quicker, but if you’re looking for an even quicker method you might want to try Text Replacements. Text replacements is a feature of MacOS that automatically replaces a few typed characters with a longer sentence or, in this case, with an emoji.

You can find the Text Replacements feature in the same Settings menu under the Keyboard options. Here you can add your text replacements. So, for example, I can add the characters ‘t’, ‘u’ and ‘p’ and use them to display the thumbs up emoji. Press the FN key or Control, Command and Space Bar to bring up the list of emojis and add the thumbs up as the replacement text for ‘tup’.

So now, when replying to a message, I can type ‘tup’ and it will automatically replace ‘tup’ with a thumbs up emoji.

One final thing, if you are a Google docs user like myself, annoyingly none of these shortcuts I’ve mentioned work when you’re writing in Google docs. Instead Google has their own shortcut which is to just use the colon key. Pressing colon will bring up a list of emojis and you can choose the one you want from the list. 

If you found this post useful, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel for lots of tips and tricks on all your favourite apps.

If you only use either the Zoom desktop or mobile app, you can’t join two meetings simultaneously. Zoom will disconnect you from the first meeting before allowing you to join the second meeting. You can, however, join multiple meetings if you use a combination of devices or browser tabs.

For instance, you can join one meeting using the Zoom desktop app and another meeting using the mobile app. Alternatively, if you want to use the one computer, you can use the desktop app for one meeting and a browser session for another meeting. This second method will result in the audio from both meetings coming through the same set of speakers or your headphones, which isn’t ideal.

Interestingly, in Zoom’s support pages they suggest joining simultaneous meetings is an option that can be enabled in Settings. However, when I had a look through my Zoom settings, I couldn’t find the option they were referring to.

To connect to two meetings at the same time, I suggest connecting to the first meeting as per normal. Having started your first meeting, go into your Zoom calendar and open your second meeting appointment. Clicking on the link to the meeting will automatically open a browser window.

You'll be prompted to launch the meeting in the Zoom app, but doing so will result in a message requesting you to end your first meeting. So instead of opening the app, click the Cancel button. Zoom will then give you an additional option to join the meeting in a browser session.

By choosing this option you’ll be in both meetings simultaneously. One using the Zoom desktop app and the other in a browser tab.

As mentioned, using this method will result in the audio from both meetings coming through your computer’s speakers, which will be very confusing. To get around the audio issues, I suggest using different devices. I recommend having one meeting open on your desktop and another using the mobile app. At least then you separate the audio channels.