Sunday, July 13, 2014

How to capture a screenshot on iPhone

Today I need to capture a screenshot on my iPhone for my blog and discovered that the following tricks can do just that! I am impressed! Here are the steps on how to capture screenshots on your iPhone/iPad (from https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3739872?tstart=0)

Steps

  1. Go to the screen on your iPhone that you want to capture the screenshot.
  2. Once you are at the screen, press the home button follow by the top right button of the iPhone (Sleep button) quickly. Note: You need to perform this in quick motion, otherwise the home button will bring you back to the home screen.
  3. If successfully, you will hear a shutter sound, similar to when you take a photo.
  4. Now check your Photo Album - there you have your screenshot.
  5. Then you can email/upload to dropbox your screenshots.
Enjoy! 

iOS7 - iPhone or iPad music out of sync with iTunes

Recently I have a problem with my iPhone 5 (iOS 7) (Music). The playlist is out of sync with my iTunes. Every time I sync with my iTunes on my Mac, the smart playlists are not updated on my iPhone. The symptoms are:

  • I have a smart playlist that only stores all songs that are added within a month ago. However, the smart playlist on my iPhone (iOS 7) does not get the latest songs and refresh the playlist. It still keep the songs that I have added a few months ago. 
  • All the new songs in my smart playlist still added into iPhone music, but the playlist is not refreshed.

I have tried various methods, such as

  • Delete the smart playlist and re-sync again.
  • Delete all songs and re-sync with iTunes again
None of them works because when I re-sync, the smart playlist "auto-magically" bring back the old songs in the list, as if the information is stored somewhere in iPhone and never get removed.

After several attempts and googling around, finally I found a solution that works for me. If you have something similar, here is a solution:
  • Plug your iPhone into PC/Mac with iTunes.
  • Click on the iPhone tab and select Music tab.
  • Uncheck "Sync Music". It will warn you that all songs and playlists on your iPhone will be removed (this is OK because we would like to start from clean sync).
  • Click "Apply" and wait until it is fully sync. 
  • Then go to iPhone.
  • Select Settings -> General -> Usage
  • You will see the space that Music consumes, i.e.
  • Next select Music
  • Swipe to the left on "All Music". This will remove the indexes as well after the clean sync to ensure that iPhone does not store any old data.
  • Select Delete.
  • Then go back to iTunes and select iPhone -> Music, select "Sync Music" again. Complete the sync and chceck your iPhone.
  • This works for me on iPhone 5/iOS 7 with iTunes on Mac.