10 Tips for Using SIRI

Siri is a genius invention, Siri makes your iOS devices different. Nowadays, Apple enables Siri more and more powerful, we can let Siri do more for us as long as we know it better.

1. Activate Siri by saying "Hey Siri

In the old version, you may have to press the Home button till Siri activated, but now you have a different way to activate here, which is more intelligent and friendly way.

You can go to Settings > General > Siri, turn on ‘Allow “Hey Siri” ’, when your iOS devices were in charging, you can say “Hey Siri” to activate her instead of pressing the Home button till Siri say Hi to you. This new feature is very useful when you were driving or hands full.

2. Let Siri Read For You

Apple has enabled Siri an awesome function, which let Siri read website, book, SMS. You can go to Setting > General > Accessibility > Speak Selection. It’s turned off on default, now you can turn it on, when you select a text, there will be a speak option appeared. Tap speak and Siri will read the text to you. You can also adjust the speed of speaking by tuning the bar under Speaking Rate.

3. Teach Siri how to pronounce a  Name

Sometimes Siri cannot pronounce a name very well or even recognize it. Apple has enabled Siri with learning ability, when you speak a name at first time, Siri would ask you if she understand correctly for the name, also she can adjust her pronunciation.

4. Read Your Text or Voicemail

If you are driving or walking on road, you have your earphone on, you can have Siri read text messages or play your voicemail, so that you can keep your eyes on the road.

Just say, “Read me my text messages” or “Play my voicemail” and you will get fast access to your messages or voicemail.

5. Turn Lights on or Off with Siri

Now IoT is more and more applied in our life. If you have Lutron Casetta lights or you have Philips Hue lights with HomeKit support, except for you control them through the remote controller, you have a better alternative. Siri is able to help you control the lights. Just say “Turn all the light on”, or “Set the color temperature in bedroom is 3000K” which makes you a warm environment. You can dim the Homekit compatible lights, set a welcome scene like “Party time”. If you forget to turn off the lights before leaving house, you also say “turn all the light off”, Siri will make it happen.

6. Get an Uber with Siri
Siri connects to a variety of apps, you can say “Get me an Uber home” or to a specific location. Siri can bring a summary for your routine.

7. Change the Search Engine from Bing to Google

By default, when you ask Siri to search for something for you, the digital assistant search information on bing.com. But many of users like Google than Bing.com, so you can say “Search Google for ……”, then Siri will get what you want from Google.

8. Say, Take a picture

When you want to take a picture, you may not need to say “Open the camera” and wait to tap the Camera app. Just say, “Take a picture”, Siri will open the Camera app and take a picture with no waiting.

9. Make a call on speakerphone

 When your hands tied up, you want to make a call, just say “Hey Siri, call David using speakerphone”. Siri will activate the call and turn on the speakerphone for you.


10. Find the local time in another city

If you want to call to your customer or a friend abroad, but you are not sure for the time, just say “What time is it in Shanghai?”, Siri will tell you the time as well as how many hours ahead or behind.

How to Check iPhone Activation Lock Status?

In iOS7 and later version, there is a new function named "activation lock" in "Find My iPhone", which will be automatically turned on when you enable Find My iPhone. In case your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch was lost or stolen, activation lock will prevent someone else to erase the data and reactivate iPhone. Follow below steps to check activation lock status.

1. Enter www.icloud.com in your browser, click "Check Activation Lock Status" on the bottom.

2. Enter the IMEI or Serial Number of your iPhone.

3. As for IMEI and Serial number, you can find it in Settings > General > About.

4. After you enter the IMEI or Serial number, you can find the similar information to below:

By and large , when you get a new iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, we recommend you turn on Find My iPhone, then the Activation Lock will be turned on. Meanwhile, the Apple ID and password are vital important, too simple password might let your iOS devices in dangerous status.

How to Increase iPhone Security

In current information era, the smart phone, no matter iPhone or Android Phone is necessary for us. Even we can't without it for one hour. The contacts, photos, messages, notes, credit card, payment information, etc., all of these stuff should be protected with high security. Here are some tips about how to increase iPhone security.

1. Set Touch ID for your iPhone.

When you activate your iPhone 5S and later version first time, you will be requested to set your Touch ID. This is quite important, which makes this iPhone is unique for you, the others can't access to your iPhone, as the device only recognizes your finger print. What's more, the fingerprint will facilitate the utilization of iPhone whatever you unlock it or proceed the payment through Apple pay.

2. Turn on "Find My iPhone"

"Find My iPhone" allows you to locate, lock, or erase your iPhone and prevents it from being erased or reactivated without your password. 

3. Turn off "Frequent Locations"

Once turn on the "frequent locations", iPhone will record places you frequently visit in order to provide useful location-related information in Maps, Calendar, and more. Actually, we do not need to memorize the frequent location we went, but others with dubious intention will abuse the frequent location, so turn off it will enhance the security of your iPhone. 

4. Limit Ad Tracking

   Opt out of receiving ads targeted to your interests. You may still receive the same number of ads, but the ads may be less relevant to you. 

5. Don't send Diagnostics & Usage

   Diagnostics & usage helps Apple improve its products and services, but some privacy information like location information is included. So Don't send diagnostics & Usage. 

6. Don't allow other Apps access Contacts or Camera

   If other Apps can access contacts and/or Camera, the contacts in your iPhone and location while using camera will be retrieved, this is not good for protection of your privacy information.

7. Using Private Browsing Mode in Safari

   On private browsing mode, Safari won't remember the pages you visited, your search history, or your AutoFill information.

8. Don't Jailbreak your iPhone

Jailbreak allows the iPhone user to customize the iPhone in ways that not approved by Apple, they will be able to install apps that have been rejected for inclusion in the official App Store. Apple has designed the iOS for iPhone with security purpose, so iPhone aren't subject to viruses, malware, or other software-based security threats common to PCs and Android phones. The investigation for the iPhone that was struct in by viruses approved that the iPhone is Jailbroked. So if you want your iPhone to be as secure as possible, DO NOT try to jailbreak. 

How to Extract Contacts From iTunes Backup

If you carelessly or unintentionally delete the files in your iPhone, don't panic. You can try a powerful data recovery tool--Cocosenor iOS Data Tuner. With this program, you are able to extract contacts from iTunes backup as long as you have backed up the files in your iPhone. Follow below steps, you can recover what you want.

Step 1. Download the software and install it in your computer. 

Step 2. Run the software, you will see two taps Recover from iOS Device and Recover from iTunes Backup File, click the latter one.

Step 3. You will find all of the backups you made on the computer are loaded, click the one you want to recover, and then click Start Scan, the software will start to scan the data in the backup.

Sidenote: if you have encrypted the backup, and you have forgotten the password, you can refer to how to decrypt the iTunes backup when you are locked out of it 

Step 4. After a while, you will be able to see all of the data in the backup is shown as below, you can
select the checkbox before Contacts, then tap recover, the contacts will be stored in your computer. Then you can sync the data to your iPhone with iTunes.

Tip: You can also multiple select the checkbox before the files in the backup, and then tap Recover, this will save your time. 

How to Recover it When Forgot iTunes Backup Password

Encrypting the iTunes backup is of crucial importance for iPhone users, as it can enhance the security of the data in backup, keep the data from unauthorized access. However, some days later, when you want to extract photo, contacts, message, notes from the previous iTunes backup,  you possibly forgot iTunes backup password, as you didn't touch the file for a long time. This is quite normal, as we have to memorize soooo many password. Now we can have a solution to recover the password. 

1. Try every possible password. 

    When you found that you may forget the password for iTunes Backup, don't be like a cat on hot brick. You should calm down, and search every possible password in your memory. For instance, the passcode for your iOS devices, Apple ID password, birthday, lucky number, etc. I have found the top 20 popular passwords, you can take them for a reference.

2. Try a Password Recovery Tool

If you still can't find the password after searching in your memory, you could try a password recovery tool--Cocosenor iTunes Password  Tuner, which is user-friendly, 100% clean, absolutely virus free, spyware free. Follow below steps to know more detail about the tool and learn the usage:

Step 1. Search "Cocosenor iTunes Password Tuner" in google.com, normally the first one is the tool you need, click the link, download the software and install it in your computer. (Or you can download it directly from the product page.)

Step 2. After the software successfully installed, double click the icon Cocosenor iTunes Password Tuner on your desktop. Click Open, you are able to add a backup file. Basically, all backups will be automatically shown, if you can't see the backup you want to recover, please click the button "Add File".

Step 3. When you move the cursor to Type of attack, you can find four types of attack: Brute-force, Mask, Dictionary and Smart. Now we explain the features of these four types:

• Brute-force refers to the software can search the password for you, you can set the range options. For example, if your password is just including digits, you just need to select all digits, you also can set the minimal and maximal length of password on the Tap Length. The brute-force range options allow multiple selection. These settings can speed up the decryption.
• Mask refers to you remember some parts of the password, maybe the beginning part, maybe the end part, or middle part. You can fill in the parts that you remembered, for the parts that you do not remember, you can replace it with question mark "?", one question mark replaces one character.  
• Dictionary requests you to make a notepad file in .txt format, then input the combination of different words, digits, characters, symbols as many as possible.  In the dictionary tap, you can speed up the password recovery by checking Smart mutations, Try all possible upper/lower case combinations, and Convert to OEM encoding. 
  

Smart attack refers to secure the password through every possible characters or combinations, you can't set the range options, but you still can set the length of the password.

In respect of recovery success rate, brute-force and mask attack are higher than dictionary attack. If you remember some parts of the password, you can select Mask attack, or you can select the default attack--brute-force. In the mean time, if you have a better computer with higher CPU and GPU that represents higher computing capability, the password recovery speed will be heightened.

You can also follow the below video to recover password