Quick and easy guide to securely erasing everything on your iPhone
Is your iPhone a bloated mess? Is there
some technical problem that only a reset will solve? Or are you selling
or loaning the device to someone else after several years of hard
service? There are many reasons why you might want to reset your iPhone
and wipe all (and we mean ALL) the data held within - fortunately we're
here to help you do just that. If you need to reset your device, follow these simple steps: Before we move forward – you should be aware that what you are about
do will wipe everything from your device. So make sure you have plugged
your iPhone 5 into iTunes and made a back-up, because you don’t want to
end up losing something of value.
Grab your iPhone
Hit ‘Settings’
Tap ‘General’
Right at the bottom of the screen you’ll find a tab labelled ‘Reset’ – hit it
On the next screen you will see a list of things which you can reset
– all of which are useful in sorting out potential problems, but we’re
concentrating on the whole kit and caboodle today, so go ahead and tap
‘Erase All Content and Settings’
You will be asked to confirm that you wish to continue, tap ‘Yes’
Your iPhone will, after a short wait, be wiped clean, ready for you to start afresh
Bright blue-white light blasting in your face at night isn’t so great
for your sleep or general health, but don’t worry: iOS now supports
color shifting so you can warm up the light of your iPhone for easy
nighttime reading. There is a growing body of research that exposure to artificial light late into the evening, especially
blue light like the crisp blue-white glow of our beloved gadgets, is a
serious issue that effects our sleep cycles and general health. A recent iOS update makes it dead simple to adjust the display of
your iPhone and other iOS devices–no jailbreaking or extra software
required. The new “Night Shift” mode adjusts the color temperature of
your iPhone’s screen so that instead of the crisp blue-white light we’re
all familiar with, the screen has a more candle-lit tint that’s less
stimulating to our brains. It’s almost exactly like f.lux, a popular app
available for PC and iOS, but it doesn’t require jailbreaking. The lead image of this article shows two iPhone 6 units side-by-side
with no Night Shift mode filter applied (at left) and the warmest Night
Shift mode filter applied (at right). When viewed side-by-side, the
difference is stark but we assure you when using a device with Night
Shift mode on it feels very natural and comfortable on your eyes. It’s dead simple to toggle on and off, you can set it to a time-based
schedule, and you can even configure it to turn on automatically at
sunset and off again at sunrise. Let’s take a look at what you need and
how to set it up.
How to Enable Night Shift Mode
To take advantage of the new “Night Shift” feature all you need is an iOS device capable of updating to iOS 9.3 and it
must have one of the newer 64-bit processors introduced in Apple’s 2013
product line. This means older devices that are eligible for the update
(like the iPhone 4s) can’t take advantage of the feature. Night Shift won’t work on the following older 9.3 eligible hardware:
iPad 2, iPad 3rd/4th Gen, as well as the iPad Mini.
iPhone 4s, 5, and 5c.
iPod Touch 5G.
Night Shift will work on the following newer 9.3 eligible hardware:
iPad Air and above, iPad Mini 2 and above, and iPad Pro.
iPhone 5s and above.
iPod Touch 6G.
When it doubt look up the hardware specs for your device; any iOS
device with an A7 processor and above is capable of running Night Shift. If your device is not already on iOS 9.3 navigate on your device to
Settings > General > Software Update to update to the most current
version. In iOS 9.3, there are two ways to use Night Shift mode. You can
toggle it on demand via the iOS control center, or you can set schedules
so the screen gradually fades to Night Shift mode as the sun sets. To toggle Night Shift mode, simply swipe up from the bottom of the
screen to open the control center and tap on the new Night Shift icon in
the center of shortcut row, as seen in the screenshot below.
A box will pop up with a quick summary of Night Shift mode and two
buttons: “Turn On Until 7 AM” and “Schedule Settings…”; you can tap on
the “Turn On” entry to immediately see what Night Shift looks like, or
you can select “Schedule Settings” to jump into the Night Shift
settings. You can also access the Night Shift settings by opening the Settings
app and navigating to Display & Brightness > Night Shift, but
given how easy it is to open the control center and tap right into it,
we’ll just hop there now. Select “Schedule Settings” to continue. Here you can select “Scheduled” to pick your schedule or “Manually
Enabled” to turn it on manually whenever you want. Like the “Turn On
Until…” button we just saw, toggling the “Manually Enabled” option will
turn it on for the rest of the day and then turn it off the next
morning. Since that’s self explanatory, let’s look at the scheduling
feature. Tap on “Scheduled”. A pre-populated schedule will pop out. Tap on it to make changes. Here you can set Night Shift to automatically turn on when the sun
sets, and turn off when the sun rises. If that doesn’t work for you, you
can set your own schedule based on the time of day. When you’re done, tap the blue “Night Shift” link in the upper left corner to return the main settings menu. One final trick to highlight before we’re done. You can adjust the
warmth of the screen by using the slider at the bottom of the Night
Shift menu. “Less Warm” means you’ll get less of a red tint when Night
Shift is on, while “More Warm” means the screen will look redder. If you
tap on the Night Shift slider, it will show you what that level of
warmth will look like when Night Shift turns on. While we really should just be putting our gadgets down and getting a
good night’s sleep, when we don’t (and we never do) features like
Apple’s Night Shift are just the ticket for minimizing the impact of
late night gadget benders.
Quick and easy guide to securely erasing everything on your iPhone
