Top 19 Unique & Unexplored Features of Latest iPad
Apple's revolutionary tablet iPad recently completed its 5 successful years. When iPad was launched on 3rd April, 2010, there were clouds of uncertainty surrounding its acceptance. Experts weren't sure whether iPad will gain popularity or not, thinking the demand of it didn't exist. But critics were proved wrong, with nine different versions of iPad already being rolled out in the market.
Apple has been able to sell 225 million iPads in the last five years, exhibiting how much popular and successful the tablet has been. The recent iPad versions Air 2 and Mini 3 include plenty of useful and innovative features. But are you sure you have explored all their features? Here are some unique features of iPad that might be helpful to you in your day to day use and let you tap into the full potential of your iPad!!
It is easy to adjust the text size in your iPad. Go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Text Size and slide the bar to keep the text size as per your choice.
If you want to make the text size even larger, then go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Larger Text and drag the slider to select the size you wish to. Through Accessibility option you can even make the text bold, increase the contrast or invert the colors on your iPad screen to improve the readability.
This feature works on all the native Apple apps and third-party apps supporting Dynamic Type.
Closing multiple apps is easy with iPad. Double tapping the home button or swiping up with four fingers will bring up the new app switcher or multitasking tray. To close an app, you can fling it off through your finger, use two finger to close two apps and three apps to close three. You can close up to three apps at a time using your fingers.
If you have entered some text by mistake or changed your mind after writing, you are not required to hard press the backspace pad of your keyboard to delete the entire text. Just shake your iPad and an alert box of Undo Typing will pop up. TapUndo to delete and your last entry will be wiped out. If you change your mind and wish to add the text again, you can shake your iPad and select Redo Typing once more and get the text back.
If you are not comfortable typing on your iPad and feel your keyboard is a bit spaced out, you can use the Split Keyboard. iPad splits the keyboard into two separate sections enabling you to type with your two thumbs easily where one half is designed to type through your left thumb and the other half designed for the right thumb.
Tap and hold on the Keyboard button, the one which you use for hiding the keyboard. Tap on Split to split the keyboard; to return back to the normal position tap on the Keyboard button again and choose Merge and Dock.
The iPad keyboard shows word suggestions automatically while you are typing. If you don't want to use this feature, you can even hide it to get more space on the screen. Tap and hold at the top of the auto-suggest bar and drag it towards the top row of keys. You can bring the feature back if you wish to, by just dragging up from the top of the keyboard.
If your hand tends to shake or you are unable to capture a proper selfie through your screen camera button then iPad allows you to use the volume button instead. Similarly when your Apple headphones are plugged in, you may use their volume buttons to take a picture.
Apple's voice recognizing assistant Siri is built in iPads and gives you voice assistant when you are feeling too lazy to type something. When you have an app opened in your iPad; simply press and hold the home button to bring up Siri. This unconventional service will listen to whatever you will speak and follow your commands, even while your screen is turned off.
For example if you say "settings", Siri will open the settings page for that particular app. It will also assist you to access and search the internet.
iPad allows you take the advantage of its full screen by letting you switch between apps within no time by using your four or five fingers to swipe them sideways, where four fingers must touch the display. Your apps will slide right and left.
To enable this feature, you need to turn on Multitasking Gestures. Multitasking will allow you to quickly perform your tasks without using the bottom Home button. Go to Settings > General and on the bottom there will be Multitasking GesturesOn/Off option.
It is really annoying when you are watching a movie or playing a game on landscape mode at an angle and with a slight tilt the orientation changes to say portrait mode.
You can easily lock the screen orientation without getting disturbed in your activity or task by flipping the switch next to the volume controls on the side of your iPad. For this go to Settings > General and select Use Side Switch To: Lock Rotation. This will change the switch on the side of your iPad from being Mute, to orientation lock.
As an iPad user you would be aware of the bottom tray, which comes with four apps. You can add up to six apps to it. You just need to tap an icon, drag and drop into the tray; other apps will automatically make space for the new icon.
You can even drop folders on this bottom tray. This is really helpful when you want to get quick access to your games.
If you wish to communicate with your family, friends or colleagues in different languages then iPad helps to add Multi-language support keyboard. Go toSettings> General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard to add a new language to your keyboard. Once you have added the language, you can tap on the globe icon besides the space bar on your iPad keyboard to change the language.
Sometimes you might be searching for a website through a term and then not be able to find the same term on the page. iPad comes to your assistance there. Tap the address bar in the Safari Browser and enter the word/words you are searching for. This will display Google Search results; when you will look down the list you will see 'On This Page'. Tap on it and your search term will be highlighted on the page.
You can use the arrows at the bottom of Safari to view all the matches one by one.
iPad has the Exposure Control feature, which helps you to take better pictures and set screen's focus area manually. At the time of capturing a picture, you need to tap and hold so as to fix the focus as per your wish. A sun icon will appear which you can move up and down to control the exposure.
iPad allows you to directly reply from the notifications without disturbing your activity or task. No need to close down the app you are using, just swipe the notification downwards. A small box will pop up from where you can type and give quick reply, thus letting you continue with whatever you are doing.
Sometimes you might delete a photo by mistake or need the photo back again on your iPad. iPad has the feature to save your pictures from getting deleted forever, but only if they are recovered within 30 days.
When you will delete a picture from the photos app, it will go into Recently Deleted album. You can open this album to know the number of days each picture will stay there before it gets permanently deleted. If you wish to recover the photos you can do that by selecting them and tapping on Recover.
Want to get rid of the contacts that continuously disturb and irritate you? iPad has the solution for this. Go to Settings > Do Not Disturb to configure this feature. It will give you the facility to filter the contacts you want to Allow Calls From. You can even choose from Everyone, No One, Favorites Contact or some specific groups.
This feature can be turned on manually by swiping up from the bottom of your iPad screen and tapping the Moon icon.
This feature is really useful as it helps you to stay in touch with the contacts you want to all the time and mute a few ones whom you don't want to talk to every time.
Do you find it hard to search for your iPad sometimes or tend to forget where you kept it last? Now you can find your iPad easily and quickly, even after it runs out of the battery through Find my iPad feature. Got to Settings > iCloud > Find my iPadand choose Sent Last Location.
After this setting has been done in your iPad and you tend to forget where you have kept it, you will be able track it, even if it doesn't have signal or its battery dies.
If you are on a site and want to go back to the top of the page, you will not need to constantly swipe on your touch screen. iPad has the facility to go back to the top of the list by tapping at the top of the screen near your clock. You will automatically be scrolled to the top without having to do it manually. This feature works for emails, messages, websites and contacts.
You sometimes might be going off to sleep while listening to music and come to know about it only after you wake up. iPad has a sleep timer, which can be accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the screen and tapping the Timer App (looks like a stop watch) in the Control Center. Tap the musical note under the big circles and select Stop Playing. You will then have to set the time as per your convenience and tap on Start. Now if the music is playing and the timer runs out, your iPad will stop the music.
These are just a few unique and amazing features of iPad; a list prepared with all its features will tend to be extremely lengthy!! We hope we have helped you to understand your iPad better through these points.
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