Creating text shortcuts

The Auto-Correction keyboard feature that mentioned earlier can speed up your typing chores a tad because Auto-Correction displays suggestions whenever it recognizes the word you are currently typing. When the suggestion appears, tap a word-ending character, such as a space, comma, or period, and your iPhone automatically fills in the rest of the word.

Note:
When your iPhone displays the longer phrase, it also includes an X at the end, which you can tap to tell iPhone not to enter the phrase. This is just like Auto-Correction, but remember that the two features are not the same. If you turn off Auto-Correction, as I describe earlier in this article, you can still use text shortcuts.

Still, this is only marginally useful for speeding up typing because Auto-Correction plays it safe and usually waits until you have only a character or two left before it displays the suggested word. If you really want to shift your iPhone typing into a higher gear, you need to take advantage of the text shortcuts feature. If you have ever created a keyboard macro or used the AutoText feature in Microsoft Word, you will know exactly what is happening here. A text shortcut is a short sequence of characters (usually just two or three) that represents a longer phrase. When you type the shortcut characters, your iPhone displays the phrase (much the same way that Auto-Correction does) and you then type a word-ending character to replace the shortcut characters with the entire phrase.

These phrases can be dozens or even hundreds of characters long, so if you have phrases or boilerplate that you use all the time, your iPhone typing fingers will thank you for saving them a ton of wear and tear. Here are the steps to follow to create a text shortcut:

If you have the phrase you want to use somewhere on your iPhone, copy it. This saves some time later when you create your shortcut.
On the Home screen, tap Settings. The Settings app appears.
Tap General. The General screen appears.
Tap Keyboard. The Keyboard screen appears.
Tap Add New Shortcut. The Shortcut screen appears.
If you copied the phrase earlier, paste it into the Phrase text box. Otherwise, type the phrase.
Use the Shortcut text box to type the characters you want to use to represent the phrase. The shortcut must be at least two characters long.
Tap Save. Your iPhone saves the text shortcut.

Note:
To remove a text shortcut, display the Keyboard screen, tap Edit, tap the red button to the left of the shortcut you want to remove, tap Delete, and then tap Done.

Configuring Siri

Controlling a computer with just voice commands has been a mainstream dream ever since the first Star Trek series. OS X and Windows come with speech-recognition features, but few people use them because they are difficult to configure and are more often than not frustrating to use. Third-party speech recognition programs are more powerful, but they tend to be expensive and still don't work all that well.

The dream of voice control remains unfulfilled on desktop machines, but on the iPhone 5 and 4S, voice control is a reality that comes in the form of the Siri app. Siri replaced the Voice Control feature from the iPhone 3GS and 4, which was limited to placing phone calls and controlling the Music app with voice commands. Siri is one of the slickest iPhone features because it goes well beyond this by also giving you voice control over web searching, your appointments, your contacts, your reminders, map navigation, text messages, notes, and more.

First, make sure that Siri is activated by tapping Settings in the Home screen, tapping General, tapping Siri, and then tapping the Siri switch to On. While you are here, you should also tell Siri who you are, so that when you use references such as "home" and "work" Siri knows what you are talking about. In the Siri screen, tap My Info, and then tap your item in the Contacts list.

You crank up Siri by using any of the following techniques:

Pressing and holding the Home button.
Pressing and holding the Mic button on your iPhone headphones.
Pressing and holding the Mic equivalent on a Bluetooth headset.

In each case, wait until you hear a two-tone beep and you see the Siri screen.

Siri is often easier to use if you define relationships within Siri. So, for example, instead of saying "Call Sandy Evans," you can simply say "Call mom." You can define relationships in two ways:

Within the Contacts app: Open the Contacts app, tap your contact item, tap the Relationship field label (it is the one with the default label of "mother"), and then tap the relationship you want to use. Tap the blue More icon to open the All Contacts list and then tap the person you want to add to the field.
Within Siri: Say "Name is my relationship," where Name is the person's name as given in your Contacts list, and relationship is the connection, such as wife, husband, spouse, partner, brother, sister, mother, or father. When Siri asks you to confirm, say "Yes."

For an even easier way to invoke Siri, tap Settings, General, and then Siri to open the Siri settings screen and then tap the Raise to Speak switch to On. This means that you can crank up Siri just by holding the phone up to your ear.

Signing in to your Facebook account

Much ink "both real and virtual" has been spilled in the past few years describing the technological juggernaut that is Facebook, with its hundreds of millions of users (probably more than a billion by the time you read this). While the world's pundits and talking heads can't seem to say enough about Facebook's impact on the world, the rest of us just use it day in and day out to stay in touch with friends, family, colleagues, and college buddies. On your iPhone, this usually involves accessing the Facebook app. That's fine, but it has long seemed odd that all your Facebook friends and events are separate from your other iPhone contacts and calendars and that to perform simple social tasks such as sharing a link or a photo required a few extra hoops to jump through.

That all changes with iOS 6, which now comes with Facebook support built right in to the system. You can integrate your Facebook friends with the Contacts app, see Facebook events in the Calendar app, easily post links, photos, and other content to your Facebook Timeline, and even send simple status updates without having to load the Facebook app.

Here is how to sign in:

On the Home screen, tap Settings. The Settings app appears.
Tap Facebook. The Facebook screen appears.
Type your Facebook username or e-mail address in the User Name text box.
Type your account password in the Password text box.
Tap Sign In. A screen appears with information about signing in to Facebook.
Tap Sign In. Your iPhone connects to your Facebook account. It also prompts you to install the free Facebook iPhone app, so tap Later or Install, as you prefer.
If you don't want the Calendar app to display your Facebook events, tap the Calendar switch to Off.
If you don't want the Contacts app to display your Facebook friends, tap the Contacts switch to Off.

Facebook events are added to your iPhone as a separate calendar, so you can also toggle them on and off within the Calendar app. Tap Calendar in the Home screen, and then tap Calendars to display a list of your calendars. Scroll down to the Facebook section and then tap Facebook Events to toggle that calendar on and off. You can also tap Birthdays to toggle Facebook birthdays on and off.

Using Siri to update Facebook

With Siri activated and configured and your iPhone signed in to your Facebook account, it is time to combine these tools and use Siri to compose and send a Facebook status update. Here is how it works:

Press and hold the Home button to launch Siri.
Say "Facebook." Siri responds with "OK...what would you like to say?" and displays the Facebook dialog, as shown in below.
Dictate your message. Siri processes the speech and then displays the text in the Facebook dialog.
Say "Post." Siri posts the status update to your Facebook account.

Signing in to your Twitter account

Twitter, that 140-characters-or-less phenomenon, started off by asking you the not-so-musical question, What are you doing? It is a question that seems crafted to elicit nothing but the most trivial of replies: I just woke up; I am having toast for breakfast; I am in a boring meeting; I just finished dinner; I am going to bed. But Twitter users took that original question and broadened it into a world of new questions: What are you reading? What great idea did you just come up with? What are you worried about? What interesting person did you just see or hear? What great information did you stumble upon on the web? What hilarious video would you like to share? Which is why, a couple of years ago, Twitter itself changed the original question from What are you doing? to What is happening?

Of course, what is most likely happening is that you are working or playing with your iPhone, and you have got something to share with your Twitter followers: a link, a photo, a video, or what have you. In the past, sharing such things required jumping through a few too many hoops. However, iOS 5 got rid of those hoops by baking Twitter right into the system. Once you sign in to your Twitter account using the Settings app, you can tweet stuff directly from apps such as Safari and Photos.

Here is how to sign in:

On the Home screen, tap Settings. The Settings app appears.
Tap Twitter. The Twitter screen appears.
Type your Twitter account name in the User Name text box.
Type your account password in the Password text box.
Tap Sign In. Your iPhone connects to your Twitter account. It also prompts you to install the free Twitter iPhone app, so tap Later or Install, as you prefer.

If you have multiple Twitter accounts, you can add more by displaying the Twitter screen, tapping Add Account, typing the account username and password, and then tapping Sign In.

Using Siri to send a tweet

Earlier showed you how to use Siri to post a Facebook status update, so it will come as absolutely no surprise that you can also use Siri to tweet. Follow these steps:

Press and hold the Home button to launch Siri.
Say "tweet" or "Twitter." Siri responds with "OK...what would you like to say?" and displays the Twitter dialog.
Dictate your message. Siri processes the speech and then displays the text in the Twitter dialog.
Say "Send." Siri posts the tweet to your Twitter account.

Controlling your privacy

Third-party apps will occasionally request permission to use the data from another app. For example, an app might need access to your contacts, your calendars, your photos, or your Twitter and Facebook accounts. You can always deny these requests, of course, but if you have allowed access to an app in the past, you might later change your mind and decide you'd prefer to revoke that access. Fortunately, iOS 6 offers a new Privacy feature that enables you to control which apps have access to your data. Here is how it works:

On the Home screen, tap Settings to open the Settings app.
Tap Privacy. The Privacy screen appears.
Tap the app or feature for which you want to control access. Your iPhone displays a list of third-party apps that have requested access to the app or feature.
To revoke a third-party app's access to the app or feature, tap its switch to Off.

Resetting the iPhone

If you have spent quite a bit of time in the Settings app, your iPhone probably does not look much like it did fresh out of the box. That is okay, though, because your iPhone should be as individual as you are. However, if you have gone a bit too far with your customizations, your iPhone might feel a bit alien and uncomfortable. That is okay, too, because there is an easy solution to the problem: you can erase all your customizations and revert the iPhone to its default settings.

A similar problem that comes up is when you want to sell or give your iPhone to someone else. Chances are you don't want the new owner to see your data "contacts, appointments, e-mail and text messages, favorite websites, music, and so on" and it is unlikely the other person wants to wade through all that stuff anyway (no offense). To solve this problem, you can erase not only your custom settings but also all the content you have stored on the iPhone.

Caution:
If you have any content on your iPhone that isn't synced with iTunes - for example, iTunes music you've recently downloaded or an App Store program that you've recently installed - you lose that content if you choose Reset All Content and Settings. First sync your iPhone with your computer to save your content, and then run the reset.

The Reset app handles these scenarios and a few more to boot. Here's how it works:

On the Home screen, tap Settings. The Settings app appears.
Tap General. The General screen appears.
Tap Reset. The Reset screen appears.
Note: Remember that the keyboard dictionary contains rejected suggestions. For example, if you type "Riv," iPhone suggests "Lob" instead. If you tap the "Bob" suggestion to reject it and keep "Riv," the word "Lob" is added to the keyboard dictionary.
Tap one of the following reset options:
- Reset All Settings: Tap this option to reset your custom settings to the factory default settings.
- Erase All Content and Settings: Tap this option to reset your custom settings and remove any data you've stored on the iPhone.
- Reset Network Settings: Tap this option to delete your Wi-Fi network settings. This is often an effective way to solve Wi-Fi problems.
- Reset Keyboard Dictionary: Tap this option to reset your keyboard dictionary. This dictionary contains a list of the keyboard suggestions that you've rejected. Tap this option to clear the dictionary and start fresh.
- Reset Home Screen Layout: Tap this option to reset your Home screen icons to their default layout.
- Reset Location Warnings: Tap this option to wipe out the location preferences for your apps. A location warning is the dialog you see when you start a GPS-aware app for the first time. When you start one of these, your iPhone asks if the app can use your current location, and you then tap either OK or Don't Allow.
When the iPhone asks you to confirm, tap the red button. Note that the name of this button is the same as the reset option. For example, if you tapped the Reset All Settings option in Step 4, the confirm button is called Reset All Settings. iPhone resets the data.

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