Please Disturb

If you value your sleep you probably configured your iPhone to use the "Do Not Disturb" function. iOS allows you to silence all calls, texts and alerts for a specific time period. But what if you want to allow calls or texts through even if "Do Not Disturb" set up and active?

Recently, my pregnant daughter asked my wife to help her during birth. Kind of an assistant doula if you will. Since most births occur during the wee hours of the morning my wife needed to set up her phone to allow calls and texts to come through even when "Do Not Disturb" was set.

Before iOS 10 the only way to allow users to call you was to open "Settings", navigate to "Do Not Disturb" and select "Allow Calls From"

BUT...you could only allow calls from all the people in your favorites or a select a specific group you wanted to grant access. If you only wanted one person to have access you would need to set up a brand new group and add that one person. Starting with iOS 10 you can now grant access to a single person inside your contacts application.

Open "Contacts" and select the person you want to grant access and Edit the contact. Now you just need to select "Ringtone"  and make sure the "Emergency Bypass" is selected. If you want to allow Texts through as well just edit the "Text Tone" the same way and enable the same "Emergency Bypass" switch.

That's it! Now even if it's the middle of the night that persons calls and texts will make it through and you won't miss the birthday party!

 

iPhone Setup - Opting out of Ads

Getting my first iPhone has been an awesome experience but also a learning experience. Making sure your phone is set up the way you want, with all the right data it is only part of the fun. You also need to make sure some of the more obscure settings are configured the way YOU want not the way Apple wants.  One of the first I changed was Ad tracking.

There has been a lot of news about Apple tracking the iPhones and what it means to you. You can read a couple of great articles about it here and here. With all that public focus, Apple changed a few things in iOS 6 and made it a bit easier to opt out of Ad tracking. Here's how to do that.

From your iPhone open up Settings and Navigate the following setting:

           Settings > General > About > Advertising

Toggle the "Limit Ad Tracking" switch to "On." Notice how easy that was to find? No? Well, just because Apple put the ability to limit Ad tracking in iOS doesn't mean they make it easy to find.

There is also one more thing you need to do. You also need to opt out of Apples iAd tracking from their web site.

On the iPhone open the following URL

    http://oo.apple.com

You will be greeted with the following web page.

As Apple states in the body of the text, "You may still see the same number of ads as before but they may be less relevant because they will not be based on your interests."  This isn't about the number of Ads it's about tracking your interests and keeping that information about you. Do you really want Apple to know you're interested in prostate treatment or menopause cures? I don't think so.

The iPhone is a great phone with a wonderful UI. Just make sure it's not used by someone else to gather information about you and your family you don't want to give out.