While Google’s Pixel 6 series launched to acclaim, both phones have been affected by some issues since their October launch. One area that Pixel 6 seemingly has trouble with is with external audio DACs, but a fix is coming.
Not long after launch, some users found that Google’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro weren’t fully compatible with some external DACs.
A DAC is a digital-to-audio converter that can take digital audio and output it to an analog signal, which can then be used by audio gear. Traditionally, these devices are only used by those who consider themselves audiophiles, so this is certainly a niche issue, but one Google should definitely patch up.
With Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, the problem with using an external DAC seems to come down to certain apps, such as Poweramp, crashing. Some users have also reported that the issue outputs a loud screeching noise, which is sure to be unpleasant when wearing a pair of headphones. Tweaking some settings seems to help in some cases, but there are clearly some problems going on.
As spotted by the folks over at Android Police the other day, Google has now confirmed that it is working on a fix for external DAC compatibility with Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, but it will be some time until the fix arrives. One of Google’s community managers confirmed on Reddit that a fix for this issue is coming this summer. While it’s great that Google has figured out a patch, that timeline certainly isn’t ideal, but there’s always a chance the timeline is accelerated behind the scenes.
Hey GbEBliss. We’re sorry you’ve been experiencing this issue, and thank you for reporting it. We’ve identified a fix and will roll it out this coming summer.
After issues, bugs, and tons of problems, the January Pixel 6 update at least appears to have fixed things for our readers.
Early last week we asked you if you have seen a reduction in device-breaking problems that were facing some Pixel 6 early buyers. There were a number of common problems, but connectivity problems provided the biggest roadblock for many owners. Now, it’s often a loud, vocal majority that will be visible online and while in many cases smartphone issues can get overblown, in this case, it certainly was not.
Google’s decision to pull the late December patch and issue a later-than-usual January update to resolve a mounting list of problems is an indication that this was not just isolated to a few cases here and there. If you are wondering why people have complained, here’s a short refresher video explaining the issues that Pixel 6 and 6 Pro owners have faced:
Have you ever needed to find a Windows product key? Maybe you’re troubleshooting a Windows PC, planning on re-installing Windows 10 in a virtual machine, installing on a PC, or installing into Boot Camp on a Mac, or maybe you have a PC computer running Windows that needs the Windows product key for some reason or another.
This article will show you three different ways for how to find a Windows product key directly from Windows itself on the computer, without having to rely on tracking down the Windows product key card from a box, email, or COA. So if you lost or misplaced any of those, don’t worry, the methods covered will work to retrieve the Windows product key directly from Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, or even Linux. And yes if you’re running Windows in Boot Camp on a Mac or in a VM, these tricks work there too.
This article is obviously aimed at users who need their Windows product key for whatever reason. Nonetheless, it’s worth remembering that you can download the Windows 10 ISOdirectly from Microsoft for free, and you can then use that ISO to create a Windows 10 installer drive for Boot Camp, install Windows 10 into VirtualBox (also free), into Parallels or VMWare, or even for installing on PC hardware. And no, you do not need to activate in order to install Windows 10 from the ISO, nor do you need a product key, but of course there are some limitations with running Windows without activation, of which you can always activate later if needed. Anyway, assuming you have an authorized version of Windows running somewhere and you need the product key, read on to discover three ways to retrieve it.
How to Get the Windows Product Key via cmd in Windows
The simplest way to find the Windows Product Key license is to turn to a privileged command prompt in Windows and execute a command that retrieves the software license product key.
From Windows, open a new Administrator Command Prompt window and then enter the following syntax:
wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey
Hit Enter / Return for the Windows product key to be displayed, it is a 25 character alphanumeric string in the format of the following:
XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
That’s it. You can get the Windows product key on nearly any Windows installation using this method.
How to Find Windows Product License Key via Powershell
You can also retrieve a Windows product key from Windows Power Shell with the following command string, entered into a privileged command prompt:
powershell "(Get-WmiObject -query ‘select * from SoftwareLicensingService’).OA3xOriginalProductKey"
Regardless of which method you use, the product key will be the same (assuming it’s being run on the same installation of Windows anyway).
How to Get Windows Product Key via Linux
You can also get the Windows Product Key from Linux by entering the following privileged command:
Executed correctly with the proper syntax and you’ll find your Windows product key immediately reported back.
This handy linux trick was found on Twitter by @brandonprry and is perfect for users who dual boot Windows and Linux on a computer. And no, in case you were wondering, the linux specific trick does not seem to work from a Mac running Windows in Boot Camp, but if you do know of a method to retrieve a Windows product key used in Boot Camp from Mac OS, share it with us in the comments below.
You can use any of the three methods outlined above to find the Windows product key, obviously two are specific to Windows while the third applies to Linux. There are other options available as well, including using Windows specific utilities like ProduKey which can reveal a Windows product key as well as a Microsoft Office product key, which is quite helpful if you’ve misplaced those as well.
Where can I find the Windows product key usually?
Aside from using the above methods to find a Windows Product Key, the typical places you’d find the 25 digit license key code are; on the COA sticker, in the physical software box, or in an email if you bought Windows digitally.
As you may already know, the most typical place for the Windows product key to be found is on the shiny COA (Certificate of Authenticity) sticker adhered to the enclosure of a Windows PC, whether it’s a laptop or desktop, but maybe that sticker was lost, peeled off, damaged, or never included at all.
If you bought a physical copy of Windows, the product key is typically included in the box itself on a piece of paper, but of course that can be lost or misplaced.
And if you bought Windows digitally, you typically get the product key in an email instead.
But if you’re running Windows in a virtual machine, or on a Mac in Boot Camp, or on a home-built PC or even some laptops, the Certificate of Authenticity sticker for Windows that includes the product key will not be available, and perhaps you long ago lost the email or box containing the product key itself. Or maybe you’re on the road and just don’t have the materials with you, or access to the email or other methods of obtaining the license key. This happens fairly often, regardless of how, where, and why you’re using Windows, which is why it can be so helpful to retrieve the product key directly from software.
Obviously if you don’t use Windows then this will be of no use to you, but Windows remains the most common operating system in corporate, government, and educational environments, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. So even if you’re a heavy Mac user or Linux user, you may still be working with Windows from time-to-time, and this can apply to you as well.
Android Oreo wasn’t a monumental shift in design or user experience, but it introduced Autofill, and that’s enough for us.
Most changes in Android 8.0 Oreo came in the form of under-the-hood improvements, ways of making your phone run faster, cooler and smoother. But Autofill is a change that benefits both users and developers, since it makes it super easy to people to enter usernames and passwords in apps that support them.
But how does it work? And why should you use it? Let us explain.
What is Autofill?
When you load a new phone, there are often dozens of apps to log into, requiring you to remember your unique username and password for each. Google has, for a long time, provided its own password manager, which securely (but not that securely) stores that information in a database in its cloud. The database is mainly used for web pages, but it also works inside apps that use Google’s WebView.
The notion of automatically filling in usernames and passwords for websites and apps is called Autofill. Other apps, too, from LastPass to Everpass to 1Password to Dashlane, perform the same thing, often much better than Google’s own. Before Oreo, these apps offered their own clunky ways of automatically filling in usernames and passwords, often utilizing hacks to get the job done. No more!
In Oreo, Google added a framework for apps like 1Password and Dashlane to prompt users to automatically and securely enter their login information when an app opens for the first time, or when a webpage prompts for authentication. As with default messaging apps, Google forces the system to have a default Autofill service so they’re not competing with one another.
How does it work?
If you’re already a password manager user (and you should be!) setting up Autofill in Oreo is fairly easy. By default, the system chooses Google’s own solution, but it’s very easy to switch to your own once the app is installed. Right now, there are only a handful of popular cross-platform services that support Autofill on Oreo:
Some, like 1Password, are still in beta, while others are available in the public build. Either way, they’re really easy to set up and use.
Note: This guide takes you through the steps to enable and change Autofill defaults on the Pixel 2 running Android 8.0 Oreo, but the steps should be similar on most phones running Oreo.
Download and install a supported password manager. (We’re using 1Password here as our example).
To switch to it, swipe down on the notification shade from the home screen.
Select the Settings icon (looks like a cog**.
Scroll down to and tap on System.
Tap on Languages, inputs & gestures.
Expand the Advanced menu by tapping on it.
Select Autofill services.
Select your service.
Now, open an app and, when prompted, tap Autofill with 1Password.
Authenticate yourself using a fingerprint or password.
Log in to the app.
That’s it! Now your Autofill prompt will automatically ask you to enter your credentials using a password manager whenever it detects a compatible app.
Why isn’t every app prompting me to use Autofill?
Right now, the Autofull API is a bit buggy, and not every app will prompt you to use the service in every instance. For example, Twitter, which supports Autofill very well, sometimes just forgets it exists and I have to close the app and re-open it for the prompt to appear.
Other apps just don’t support Autofill at all. In that case, you can always open the password manager app separately to copy and paste the username and password, but I know that’s not ideal. If an app you often use doesn’t prompt for Autofill, you may want to contact the developer.
What about saving passwords to a password manager?
Another awesome aspect of the new Autofill feature is that if you have a new username or password, or haven’t logged it into your favorite password manager, once you do so for the first time, the app should prompt you to save the information into the default manager.
In the case of 1Password, it’s prompted me to create entries for apps that are already in my database, but because the Android app has a different “address” than the website, it doesn’t already know it’s in there. Bug? Maybe. Feature? Maybe. Either way, you’ll likely have a few duplicates once you start using the Autofill feature.
Coming next
The whole Autofill experience is supposed to get better in Android 8.1, which should be released to the public in December of 2017. Here’s what Google’s saying about it:
Autofill enhancements — we’ve made it easier for password managers and other Autofill services to use the Autofill framework. For example, we’ve added support for more UI customization of the Save dialog, as well as setAutofillOptions() for users to set credit card expiration using a spinner.
The Lenovo K8 series of phones just released in India this past August, but the company has now confirmed that the Lenovo K8, Lenovo K8 Plus, and the Lenovo K8 Note will all receive the Android Oreo update.
The only downside to this announcement is that Lenovo’s slated release time for the update appears to be June 2018 for the Lenovo K8 and July 2018 for the Lenovo K8 Plus and the K8 Note. That’s an unfortunately long time to wait for something that’s already available on some flagship devices and will be just a few months before Google rolls out Android P.
Right now the Lenovo K8 family of phones are exclusive to Amazon in India, where the devices retail for between 10,000R and 14,000R depending on the model you get.
Apple has released iOS 11.0.3 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users running iOS 11. The latest small software update includes bug fixes to iOS and is therefore recommended to all users running iOS 11 on their devices.
Release notes accompanying the iOS 11.0.3 download mention the update fixes an issue here audio and haptic feedback were not working on some iPhone 7 Plus and iPhone 7 devices, and also fixes an issue where some displays were unresponsive to touch on certain iPhone 6s models screens that had been replaced from third party sourcing (perhaps related, we recommend using Apple to replace a broken iPhone screen for best results). It’s unclear if any other bugs or security fixes are included in the iOS 11.0.3 release.
Users can download and install iOS 11.0.3 using OTA with the Settings app, iTunes, or using IPSW firmware files for iOS 11.0.3 with the provided direct download links below.
Download & Install iOS 11.0.3 on iPhone and iPad
The simplest way to download and install the iOS 11.0.3 update is through the Software Update mechanism in iOS Settings. Be sure to backup your iPhone or iPad to iCloud or iTunes (or both) before beginning the software update.
Open the “Settings” app, go to “General” and then to “Software Update”, then choose “Download and Install” on iOS 11.0.3
Users can also update to iOS 11.0.3 with iTunes on a computer with the generic update mechanism, or by using IPSW files.
iOS 11.0.3 IPSW Firmware Download Links
You can download iOS 11.0.3 as IPSW firmware files directly from Apple by using the links below, using IPSW to update iOS is considered advanced and is generally not necessary for most users:
Do you miss having the App Store in iTunes? You’re in luck, because Apple has released iTunes 12.6.3, an alternative version of iTunes that retains the ability to download and install iOS apps directly within the iTunes application on a computer. App management via iTunes was a popular feature that was removed from iTunes 12.7 in favor of managing apps directly on iOS devices instead.
Apple apparently released iTunes 12.6.3 as an alternative version because “certain business partners might still need to use iTunes to install apps.” But even if you are not a “business partner” you can still download and install iTunes 12.6.3 and use the version of iTunes to manage apps with an iPhone or iPad connected through a Mac or Windows PC.
iTunes 12.6.3 is available to download for Mac and Windows users, and can be easily installed over iTunes 12.7 to regain the native iOS App Store functionality for improved iPhone and iPad app management. Users who would like to have the iOS App Store functionality in iTunes on their computers again should download and install the alternative iTunes release. The ease of installation prevents the need to downgrade iTunes 12.7 or fiddle with the somewhat hidden iTunes 12.7 method of transferring apps and ringtones to an iPhone or iPad.
Download iTunes 12.6.3 with iOS App Store Support
You can download iTunes 12.6.3 from the Apple support page, or using the direct download links below which point to the files directly on Apple servers:
Download iTunes 12.6.3 for Mac or Windows from Apple support here
Choosing a direct download link will start the file download for iTunes 12.6.3 immediately. The download is about 280 MB and can be installed like any other software onto a Mac or PC.
How to get the App Store back into iTunes
Accessing the App Store, apps, or Tones in iTunes 12.6.3 is basically the same as prior versions of iTunes, here’s all that is necessary to get app management and the iOS App Store back in iTunes again:
Download and install iTunes 12.6.3 onto the computer, you can install it over iTunes 12.7 or a prior release version
Launch iTunes as usual
Select the pulldown menu in the upper left corner
Choose “Apps” or “Tones”
Under “Apps” you will find the app library, updates, and an ‘App Store’ option to be able to download apps directly into the App Store via iTunes again
If you connect an iPhone or iPad to iTunes 12.6.3 and select the device by clicking on the tiny little icon in the titlebar of the app, you’ll also have direct access to apps and tones on the device through iTunes again as well.
Downloading and installing iTunes 12.6.3 also stops iTunes from asking the user to download any new versions, so if you want to stay on iTunes 12.6.3 with the App Store, ringtones, and other features that are since removed from future versions, you can easily do so.
iTunes 12.6.3 supports all existing iPhone and iPad devices, and the release also supports the iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus, meaning users of the newest model iPhone hardware will have full iTunes support without needing to bother with iTunes 12.7.
If you have been having difficulty adapting to the removal of the App Store in iTunes 12.7, you’ll likely appreciate installing iTunes 12.6.3 and getting app management back again, so check it out.
There are mixed reports that updating to iOS 11 has slowed down some iPhone and iPad hardware, or that performance of tasks like opening and interacting with apps is slower after installing iOS 11. If your iPhone or iPad feels slow after installing iOS 11, then you might want to try a few of the tricks we have outlined in this tutorial to speed up your device again.
many of the tricks that help to speed up sluggish performance can also positively impact battery, so if you’re having iOS 11 battery life problems then you may find some cross-benefit to this approach as well.
Speed Up iOS 11 on iPhone and iPad
We’re going to cover a wide variety of tips here to potentially help speed up a device. Aside from the first two tips involving installing software updates and then having some patience and waiting a while, you can follow the others in any particular order.
1: Install Any Software Updates for iOS and Apps
Before going any further, check for software updates both to iOS and to your apps. Software updates can often remedy performance issues and are not to be skipped, particularly if a performance problem is related to a bug or some other problem that has been resolved in an available update.
For getting any updates to iOS 11 (such as iOS 11.0.2, iOS 11.1, etc)
Open the “Settings” app and go to > General > Software Update > and choose to Download & Install any update to iOS 11
For getting updates to apps:
Open the ‘App Store’ app and go to the Updates tab, and install any available app updates
2: Just Updated to iOS 11? Have Some Patience and Wait
If you just updated an iPhone or iPad to iOS 11 and the device feels slow, have some patience. When a major software update arrives on your device, iOS will re-index everything for Spotlight, Siri, Photos, and perform other background tasks. This can lead to the feeling the device is slow because of the increased background activity being performed.
The best thing to do is wait a few days, leave the device plugged into a wall outlet overnight, and let it complete whatever system behavior is necessary. After a night or two things usually behave normally again and performance is often better, and often this fixes battery life problems too.
3: Turn Off iOS Background App Refresh
Background App Refresh allows apps to update themselves in the background. This is nice for multitasking quickness, but it can also lead to a hit in system performance. Turning it off is easy, and most users won’t notice the difference in how apps function anyway.
Open “Settings” and go to > General > Background App Refresh > OFF
4: Disable Siri Suggestions & Siri Look Up
You can often speed up how fast Spotlight behaves, as well as the Notifications screen and elsewhere, by turning off Siri Suggestions and Siri Lookup features.
Open “Settings” and go to > Siri & Search > “Suggestions in Search” to OFF and “Suggestions in Look Up” to OFF
5: Force Reboot the Device
Sometimes forcibly rebooting a device can help performance, particularly if some errant process is going haywire in the background, or some app or other event is out of control
For most iPhone and iPad devices, hold down the POWER BUTTON and the HOME BUTTON concurrently until you see the Apple logo appear on screen.
On iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, hold down the VOLUME DOWN BUTTON and POWER BUTTON concurrently until you see the Apple logo appear on screen.
Then just wait for the device to boot back up again.
6: Use a Simple Wallpaper
Using a plain or simple wallpaper originating from a small file size image can help to speed things up sometimes. The idea behind using a simple or plain wallpaper is that it requires less memory and system resources to display, thus it can help to speed up drawing and redrawing of the Home Screen of the iOS device.
Open “Settings” and go to > Wallpaper > Select a boring wallpaper, either of a single color or a very small file size
The Home Screen might look a bit more boring when a simple background wallpaper picture, (or not, depending on your taste) but it also might feel a tad faster. Try it out, you can use the simple tiny gray image wallpaper below if you’d like, or find your own.
7: Disable Parallax UI Effects and Reduce Motion
iOS uses various visual effects which look snazzy but require more system resources to draw and render properly. Disabling those system user interface visual effects can improve performance, or at least the perception of improved performance by disabling the animations.
Open “Settings” and go to > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion and turn ON
* While in Reduce Motion settings, you might want to turn off “Auto-Play Message Effects” too, since those animations in Messages app can also make things feel a bit sluggish sometimes.
When you turn on Reduce Motion, the zipping and zooming effects of opening and closing apps is replaced with a simple subtle fading animation too.
8: Reduce iOS System Transparency Effects
Transparency and blur effects are scattered throughout iOS, from the Dock, to Control Center, to Notifications panels, and more. They look nice, but rendering those blur effects can use system resources and make things feel sluggish sometimes. Turning them off may help the device feel faster:
Open “Settings” and go to > General > Accessibility > Increase Contrast > Reduce Transparency to ON
Using Increase Contrast can make things look a bit plain, but using things like Control Center should feel faster as a result.
9: Make Sufficient Free Storage Space Available on the iPhone or iPad
Having sufficient free storage available is ideal for optimal performance of an iPad or iPhone. Generally speaking it’s a good idea to have 10% or more free storage available. So if you have a 32GB device, then having 3 GB of free space or more is desirable. This is so there is plenty of available space for caches, updating apps and iOS itself, and performing other system functions.
Open “Settings” and go to > General > then choose “Storage” (now labeled as iPhone Storage or iPad Storage, respectively)
Once you’re in the Storage management section of your device, you can either follow the recommendations to free up storage space, or delete unused or old apps, or take other actions necessary to free up storage on the iPhone or iPad.
This is important, and if your iPhone or iPad is full or very low on storage, performance will suffer, plus you won’t be able to install updates to apps or system software, and other strange behavior can occur like locking a user out of their email, data being mysteriously removed from the device, amongst other curiosities. Always aim to have some storage space available.
10: Reset iOS System Settings
Resetting your iOS device settings may speed up performance for some users. Be aware if you reset device settings, you will need to make configurations to all of your custom settings changes again, like many covered previously in this article.
Open Setttings and go to General > Reset > Reset All Settings
11: Backup & Restore iOS
A common troubleshooting trick is to backup a device to iTunes or iCloud, then restore iOS. This can sometimes fix obscure performance issues, and if you contact Apple to troubleshoot a device they will likely want you to perform this action as part of their process.
You can backup to iTunes, or iCloud, or both. Always backup before beginning a restore process.
Using iTunes with the device connected to the computer, you then choose to “Restore” the device. Or you can choose to Restore directly on the device itself and select either iCloud or iTunes backup to restore from.
Some users may also try setting up a device as new which means nothing is on the device at that point. An obvious flaw to that approach is the iPhone or iPad would be lacking any data, images, pictures, photos, notes, apps, contacts, or any other personal information. This is why most users choose to restore from a backup instead of setting up as new. Nonetheless, if you don’t care about that, setting up a device as new can sometimes make it feel snappier.
What about reverting from iOS 11 back to iOS 10?
Some users may wish to downgrade iOS 11 back to a prior version of system software on their iPhone or iPad.
While reverting to the prior iOS release was possible for a while, unfortunately this is no longer an option for most devices, because Apple has stopped signing the iOS 10.3.3 firmware. You can learn about how to check iOS IPSW firmware signing status here if the topic interests you.
The Messages screen in iOS 11 is busier than ever before, displaying a row of colorful icons and iMessage apps on the bottom of every conversation in Messages on iPhone and iPad. While some users will love the quick access to their gifs, message stickers and apps, not everyone is satisfied with having a row of brightly colored app icons and the app drawer showing up with their Message conversations, and many professional users have sought out a way to disable or remove the Messages app icons from the iOS communication client.
If you’d like to hide the Message app icons in iOS 11 on an iPhone or iPad, you can do so with a little trick that hides the app drawer.
How to Hide the Messages App Icons in iOS 11
Open Messages app in iOS 11 if you have not done so already and open a message conversation thread
Tap the gray App Store icon button to hide the Messages app drawer *
The Messages app drawer and row of icons will stay hidden until it is revealed again by tapping the App Store icon again. Additionally, if you use an iMessage app or sticker, the Message dock row of icons will appear again, meaning you’ll have to tap the icon to hide it again.
How to Show the Messages App Icon Drawer in iOS 11
If you’d like to see and access the Message app drawer of icons, simply open a message thread then tap on the App Store icon to reveal the iMessage apps and stickers again.
* Note that some users have reported that tapping and then swiping down on the App Store icon is necessary to hide the iMessage app drawer. Whether or not the behavior is different per device is not entirely clear, but should you have problems hiding the iMessage apps row with the tap method try the press and swipe gesture instead.
This is a less than obvious method of hiding the feature, but like some other parts of modern iOS it’s often a discovery process to learn how to perform a particular function that is discretely implemented. Many users have wandered around searching for an option to disable the app icon drawer in the Messages section of Settings, but there is no app drawer toggle available there, and instead the ability to hide and show the iMessage app drawer is entirely contained within the Messages app itself.
Thanks to the various readers who emailed or left comments, like Lisa, who asked “How do I get the apps off the bottom of my text screen. Who had that bright idea?” for the question and tip idea!
The App Store in iOS will now automatically play video previews of apps while you navigate through the App Store on an iPhone or iPad. These video previews can offer a helpful look into what an app does or may look like, but they can also be distracting, cause battery to drain faster than otherwise, lead to unintentional bandwidth and data usage, and be annoying if you’re not inclined to enjoy automatically playing videos of iOS apps you may or may not have any interest in.
Users can disable video auto-playing in the iOS App Store by adjusting the appropriate settings on their iPhone or iPad.
Be aware the App Store video auto-play feature is available in iOS 11 or newer, as is the ability to turn off video autoplay in the App Store. If your device is on an older version this will not be relevant to you.
How to Turn Off Video AutoPlay on the App Store in iOS
Open the “Settings” app on the iPhone or iPad and locate ‘iTunes & App Store’
Tap on “Video Autoplay”
From the available settings options chose “Off” to disable Video Auto-Play
You’ll notice there is also an option to have video autoplay limited to wi-fi only, which may be a reasonable setting option for some iPhone or iPad users if they like the autoplaying videos but don’t want them to consume their cellular bandwidth.
A little notice under the video autoplay settings for the App Store also mentions that “autoplay will temporarily turn off if you have low battery or a slow internet connection” which may make some iPhone and iPad owners happy, but for others they’ll still want to disable the video autoplaying feature entirely.
If you don’t like video autoplay in general you might also be interested in turning off similar autoplay features elsewhere, you can turn off autoplay in Twitter for iOS, stop Facebook autoplaying audio in iOS, stop YouTube autoplay, or even stopping autoplay video in Safari on a Mac and stopping iPhone autoplay music over Bluetooth too are options. Whether you love or loathe autoplaying of video or sound likely depends on user preference, but fortunately most of the time those features can be adjusted to accommodate for what each person sees fit for their individual device usage.
Of course, if you decide you regret turning off video autoplay for the App Store, you can return to the settings and adjust as necessary to get the feature back again.
With iOS 11, the new Control Center toggles for turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth do not actually turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on an iPhone or iPad. Instead, if you hit the buttons for disabling Wi-Fi or Bluetooth in Control Center, the iPhone or iPad will disconnect from wi-fi or Bluetooth, but not actually turn off those wireless services on the iPhone or iPad. This can cause some confusion for obvious reasons, and many users are left wondering why wi-fi or Bluetooth is not actually turned off on their devices, or how to turn off wi-fi or Bluetooth in iOS 11 completely.
You can still turn off wi-fi and disable Bluetooth on an iPhone or iPad with iOS 11, but rather than use Control Center to turn the wireless features off, you must go to the Settings app to disable either.
To be clear, turning “off” Bluetooth or Wi-Fi in Control Center simply disconnects the iPhone or iPad from wi-fi or Bluetooth. For example, if you hit the wi-fi off button in Control Center, it actually just disconnects from the current wi-fi router, but the wi-fi service remains active on the device. Similarly, if you hit the Bluetooth “off” button in Control Center, it only disconnects any connected Bluetooth device (like a keyboard or Apple Watch), and does not actually turn off the Bluetooth service on the iPhone or iPad. This is different from how Control Center worked in past versions of iOS, where hitting the toggle buttons would actually disable the service rather than simply disconnect from connected devices.
How to Disable Wi-Fi in iOS 11 on iPhone or iPad
Because the toggles in Control Center no longer turn off wi-fi or Bluetooth, you will instead need to turn to the Settings app to disable these services:
Open the “Settings” app
Near the top of the settings options choose “Wi-Fi” and flip the switch to the OFF position to completely disable wi-fi on the iPhone or iPad
How to Disable Bluetooth in iOS 11 on iPad or iPhone
Open the Settings app on the iPhone or iPad
In Settings choose “Bluetooth” and flip the switch to the OFF position to completely disable Bluetooth on the iPhone or iPad
Note that the AirPlay mode option in Control Center continues to work to disable both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, but AirPlay mode also turns off the cellular capabilities of the device, thereby taking it completely offline.
Remember, the wi-fi and Bluetooth toggles in Control Center for iOS 11 disconnects only, it does not turn off wi-fi or Bluetooth. To actually turn off wi-fi or Bluetooth now, you must go to the Settings app instead. The wi-fi settings section still allows you to forget wi-fi networksand perform other similar more advanced options as well.
In some ways this change is a feature improvement because now there is an easy way to disconnect from wi-fi or Bluetooth without disabling those services, this can make it slightly easier to join a hidden wi-fi network from an iOS device for example, particularly if your device is auto-joining another network, but the change in Control Center button behavior can lead to some confusion if the new behavior is not understood.
This isn’t the only change brought to the totally redesigned Control Center of iOS 11, and there are some other feature adjustments that take some getting used to as well, like accessing the Night Shift toggle in Control Center of iOS 11. Fortunately much of Control Center in iOS is now customizable via the Settings app too, so it’s possible that future versions of the operating system will unveil new button toggles to have these functions more directly.
