Siri has made it incredibly easy to set reminders on your iPhone. Want to be reminded of something you have to do at a certain time? Tell Siri to remind you when it’s time. Want to be reminded of something you need to do when you arrive somewhere? Tell Siri to set a reminder based on location. But what if you want to set a reminder manually – silently – without invoking Siri? Maybe you’re in a meeting, or church, or somewhere else where you don’t want Siri blabbing her loud mouth?

One of the more frustrating things about the iPhone is how darned big the .mov video files are, and that there is no native way to change that. Here is a step-by-step tutorial, with pictures, as to how to both make your iPhone record your videos in a smaller format, so that your iPhone movies are saved to a smaller file, and also how to reduce the size of the .mov files that you may have already taken.

Facebook Chat Heads were fun for about 5 minutes. Then they became annoying. They take up real estate on your phone screen, and if you also use Facebook Messenger they are completely superfluous. So, naturally, people want to turn Chat Heads off. Here’s the good news, and the bad news, about how to turn off Facebook Chat Heads.

If you use Meetup.com as a way of finding fun and rewarding things to do, you may find yourself wondering how to sync your Meetup.com calendar with your iPhone or Android calendar, Google or Gmail calendar, Apple Mac calendar, Outlook calendar, or other calendar. Here is how to synch your Meetup calendar with your ics or other calendar.

Many people have found that once they either updated to iOS 10, or upgraded to a new iPhone with iOS 10 onboard, such as an iPhone SE, iPhone 6, or iPhone 7, that reminders no longer would send notifications such as alerts or banners, or lock screen notifications. Here’s what worked for us for both location-based and time-based reminders.

If you have started receiving spam iCal calendar invitations on your iPad or iPhone or Mac, you’re not alone. This is because of some change that Apple has made allowing spammers to send you ‘in-app’ iCal invitations for calendar events. Here’s how to turn that off.

If you are like countless other users who are tired of autoplay videos on Facebook (and other websites), here is how to stop videos from automatically playing on Facebook and other sites, on your iPhone or Android phone, and in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and even Internet Explorer (IE).

Yesterday Apple released an urgent security date for iOS, affecting all iOS devices, such as iPhone, iPad, and iPod. Security update 9.3.5 is essentially a security patch, to fix not one, but three different security holes that have been known to be exploited by spyware created by an American-owned Israeli group known as the NSO Group. NSO Group was acquired by San Francisco-based equity fund Francisco Partners in 2014.

Ever wish that while you were listening to a song on your phone you could also see the lyrics? Well, you can, whether it’s music that you have resident on your phone, or you are listening to a music service such as Pandora, or, yes, even Spotify.

We recently had an opportunity to review this wireless bluetooth selfie remote for iPhone and Android, and its selfie remote app, and it’s a great addition to your selfie-taking bag of tricks! And it does so much more than just selfie remote shutter control – you can switch between front and back cameras, zoom in and out, turn the flash on and off, even switch between photo and video! Of course, a selfie stick also allows you to hold your phone, with the remote, you need to prop it up somewhere or use a tripod. The best combination is one of each!

In the latest round over the Feds’ effort to force Apple to help them break into the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, and Apple’s refusal to do so, Apple has come out with both fists up. The Feds most recent court filing accuses that “Apple’s rhetoric is not only false, but also corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights.” In response, Apple’s general counsel, attorney Bruce Sewell, said during a press conference call that “…it seems like disagreeing with the Department of Justice means you must be evil and anti-American.” (Full text below.)

In a novel twist in the FBI versus Apple iPhone case, the San Bernardino District Attorney’s office has filed a motion (full text below) to submit an Amicus Curiae brief, stating that, among other things, the phone could harbor a “lying dormant cyber pathogen.” Of course, there’s no such thing as a lying dormant cyber pathogen, but why let a little thing like the facts get in the way of a good argument?

We’ve written before about how to set up location-based reminders in the iPhone, however until fairly recently it required you to have the address of the location at which you wanted to be reminded in your contacts. No more. Now you can tell Siri to remind you of something when you arrive anywhere, any time! Here’s how.

As we recently reported, the FBI (and so the Federal government) is trying to force Apple to assist them in unlocking the iPhone that belonged to San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. A Federal court ordered Apple to do so, and so far Apple has resisted. Part of the heart of the FBI’s argument is that this will affect only one phone, while Apple has insisted that it’s much larger than that – that an order to help unlock one phone will lead to a dangerous precedent of being ordered to help unlock any number of phones. The Feds have steadfastly insisted it is “just this one.” However, recent court filings have revealed that in fact there are as many as a dozen iPhones in other cases just waiting for Apple to be ordered to unlock them.

In Round 2 of the Apple iPhone FBI court dispute, in which the court ordered Apple to alter the iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook, the Feds have filed a Motion to Compel Apple to comply with the order, in which they mention, in passing in a footnote, that the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health (SBCDPH) actually changed the password to the iCloud account to which the phone was backing up, thwarting any further backups of the phone’s data, between the time it was recovered from Farook’s vehicle, and handing it over to the FBI.