iOS

About iOS and Apps for iPhone and iPad.

Stolen Device Protection

First introduced in iOS 17.3, the Stolen Device Protection security feature is designed to prevent unauthorized access to your data and accounts if your iPhone is lost or stolen.

How Stolen Device Protection Works

When enabled, Stolen Device Protection requires Face ID or Touch ID authentication for specific actions on your iPhone when it is away from familiar locations like your home or work. This includes accessing passwords and credit cards stored in Keychain, using saved payment methods in Safari, and making changes to Find My and Apple ID settings.

In addition, a security delay of one hour is triggered before you can make critical changes like turning off Find My, erasing the device, or removing Stolen Device Protection. This delay is meant to prevent thieves from being able to perform these actions quickly.

What's New in iOS 17.4

The iOS 17.4 update builds upon the initial version of Stolen Device Protection in a couple of crucial ways:

  1. You can always keep Stolen Device Protection on, regardless of location. Previously, it only activated when away from familiar places.

  2. Attempting to turn off Stolen Device Protection when not at a known location will start the security delay before you can disable it, providing an additional safeguard.

Importance of Find My and Activation Lock

Stolen Device Protection works with the Find My app and Activation Lock to secure your iPhone. Find My allows you to locate and mark a missing device as lost, lock it, or erase it remotely.

Activation Lock prevents anyone else from using your iPhone if it is lost or stolen. When Find My is enabled, your Apple ID is securely stored on Apple's activation servers and linked to your device. This means your Apple ID password or device passcode is required before Find My can be turned off, the device erased, or reactivated.

Enabling Stolen Device Protection

To turn on this feature, your iPhone must be running iOS 17.3 or later and have the following enabled:

  • Two-factor authentication for your Apple ID
  • A device passcode
  • Face ID or Touch ID
  • Find My
  • Significant Locations (in Location Services settings)

Then navigate to Settings > Face ID & Passcode, enter your passcode, and toggle on Stolen Device Protection.

Remote Erase as a Last Resort

If you can't recover a lost or stolen iPhone, erasing it remotely using Find My should be a last resort. A remote wipe deletes all data on the device, but the custom message you set when marking it as lost will still display.

Remember that the device needs to be powered on and have a network connection to receive the remote erase command. Regularly backing up your iPhone is crucial in case you ever need to restore your data to a new device.

In conjunction with Find My and Activation Lock, Stolen Device Protection provides multiple layers of defense to help keep your data safe, even if your iPhone ends up in the wrong hands.

About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212510

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Toolbox Pro

Federico Viticci:

When I covered the updated Shortcuts app in my iOS and iPadOS 13 review earlier this year, I argued how, thanks to parameters, Shortcuts actions provided by third-party apps could become native features of the Shortcuts app.

With his debut app Toolbox Pro, released today on the App Store, developer Alex Hay has taken this idea to its logical conclusion: Toolbox Pro is a new kind of “headless” app – a utility whose sole purpose is to complement and extend Apple’s Shortcuts app with over 50 new actions, providing a native implementation of functionalities that Apple hasn’t brought to Shortcuts yet. After having used Toolbox Pro for the past couple of months, not only is the app a clever idea well suited for Shortcuts’ parameter framework, but it’s also a must-have for anyone who relies on Shortcuts on a daily basis.

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The best document scanning app for iOS

It’s the 21st century, and yet there’s still so much paper flooding into our lives: receipts, office forms, bills, letters home from our children’s school, and on and on. Owning a dedicated document scanner can help, but it’s not always nearby when we need it. Luckily, ever since the iPhone’s camera gained sufficient resolution to capture crisp text, there have been a number of document scanning apps that have put the possibility of going paperless much more in reach. After testing a number of these apps, our pick for the best document scanning app on iOS is Scanbot.

The best document scanning app for iOS

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Apps That Can Support You in Reaching Your Goals

For any given resolution, there are a slew of desktop and mobile apps that can support you in reaching your goals.

ReadWrite has these categories with extensive list of apps to get started:

  • Exercise More
  • Eat Healthy
  • Learn Something New
  • Quit A Bad Habit
  • Save Money
  • Get Organized
  • Give Back

Source: The App-Driven Life: How To Stick To Your 2014 New Year's Resolutions

Apps That Can Support You in Reaching Your Goals Read More »

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