iPad Tips & Tricks
The iPad and the iPad 2 are amazing and powerful devices. To help you do amazing things with it, we offer this collection of tips and tricks and how-to articles.
Some of these are iPad Basics sort of stuff that are helpful for newer users- for instance, how to instantly jump to the top of a web or email page, how to save images from the iPad web browser or email apps. Others are how-to’s that are useful even for iPad power users – things like how to print from the iPad, or the best ways to get photos and videos transferred from an iPhone to the iPad without having to connect to a PC, or how to disable In-App purchases so your kids can’t inadvertently run up your App Store spending.
I hope some of these iPad tips will help you get the most out of your iPad.
Notification Center is one of the headline features in iOS 5. It’s a major improvement to how notifications were previously delivered in iOS and it works wonderfully well on the iPad. It lets you see all your notifications in one clear list view, and it’s instantly available with just a quick swipe gesture from anywhere on the iPad.
For those of your who are newer to the iPad or iOS 5, or even just to notifications on the iPad, here are a few handy little tips for working with Notification Center:
How To Open and Close Notification Center on the iPad
– To open Notification Center from any of your home screens or any app that displays the status bar, just swipe down from anywhere on the status bar. If you’re in a full-screen app that doesn’t show the status bar, you swipe down from anywhere at the very top of the page (on the bezel of the iPad) and you’ll see a little set of bars pop up in the middle of the screen at the top – tap and swipe down on those to invoke Notification Center.
– To close Notification Center you look for the same set bars at the bottom center of the Notification Center view, and tap and swipe up
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I generally use the Mail app on the iPad in landscape mode, because I like that it shows both the Inbox (or whichever mailbox is selected) message list (as a sort of left sidebar) and shows an individual selected message content, in the right portion of the page.
This morning I found a nice tip for making the Mail app on iPad nicer to use in portrait mode – an easy swipe gesture to pull up the Inbox message list when you’re in portrait mode. Here’s how:
All you have to do is swipe left to right to see the message list as a popover on the left side of the page. Swipe right to left to hide the message list again.
When you do the left to right swipe to bring up the message list, you can then swipe again in the same direction to show the list of all your mailboxes and folders.
Although you can accomplish the same things by tapping on the Inbox and Mailboxes buttons, using gestures feels far easier and faster to me. It makes using Mail app in portrait mode a whole lot nicer I think.
Hat tip to Mac OS X Hints for sharing this hint, which I’ve expanded on a bit here.
One of the many nice features of iOS 5 is the ability to split the keyboard on the iPad. Doing this can be very useful and can make typing faster and easier at times. I’ve found I’m using this feature more and more and finding it very effective.
I use it when I have the iPad 2 in portrait and landscape mode and it allows me to reach characters I just can’t get to if the keyboard is in its standard docked mode unless I hold the iPad with one hand and peck away at the keys with the other.
One drawback of using the split keyboard is that if you are writing a longer note or editing a longer document with a good number of paragraphs, you’ll find that the keyboard is on top of areas you’re trying to type in at times. When this happens you can’t see what you’re typing. Maybe this doesn’t bother those of you who are skilled touch typists, but I like to be able to have a glance at my writing to spot and correct any typos.
Happily, there’s an easy solution to this little problem – you move the split keyboard around the page so that you can see your latest lines of typing.
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Here’s a quick, useful iPad tip that will help you out if you’ve ever accidentally deleted an app you had installed on your iPad. Or perhaps had a child who accidentally deleted an app you still want on your iPad.
Luckily, regardless of how an app was deleted, it’s very easy to get it back on your iPad. There are a few ways to get a deleted app back. I’ll list them in order of how easy they are, with the easiest method listed first – here are the steps to get back deleted apps on your iPad:
Use the Purchased Tab in the iPad App Store:
– Open the App Store app on your iPad.
– Tap on the Purchased button in the bottom nav bar.
– Tap on the ‘Not On This iPad’ tab at the top of the screen. That will give you a complete listing of all apps that you have purchased (including free apps) that are not currently installed on the iPad.
– Tap on the download symbol next to the app you want to restore – it’s the symbol next to the app name, a cloud with a downward arrow inside it.
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Have you just got a shiny new iPad as a holiday gift, or maybe just bought one for yourself? Here’s an easy Getting Started Guide that will help you get the most out of your new favorite tablet:
The iPad has been a huge hit ever since it first hit the market back in 2010. It’s an amazing and powerful device, and a joy to use – whether for work or play. I’m hoping this short guide will give you a good jump-start on getting the most out of your iPad.
This guide is divided up into short sections covering key topics, so you can dive in and out of them as needed for subjects you are interested in. Hit the Read More link to get started …
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