Chapter 11. All About Apps

App is short for application, meaning software program, and the App Store is a single, centralized catalog of every authorized iPhone add-on program in the world. In fact, it’s the only place where you can get new programs (at least without hacking your phone).

You hear people talking about downsides to this approach: Apple’s stifling the competition; Apple’s taking a 30 percent cut of every program sold; Apple’s maintaining veto power over apps it doesn’t like.

But there are some enormous benefits, too. First, there’s one central place to look for apps. Second, Apple checks out every program to make sure it’s decent and runs decently. Third, the store is beautifully integrated with the iPhone itself.

There’s an incredible wealth of software in the App Store. These programs can turn the iPhone into an instant-message tool, a pocket Internet radio, a medical reference, a musical keyboard, a time and expense tracker, a TV remote control, a photo editor, a recipe box, a tip calculator, a restaurant finder, a teleprompter, and so on. And games—thousands of dazzling handheld games, some with smooth 3D graphics and tilt control.

It’s so much stuff—2 million apps, 150 billion downloads—that the challenge is just finding your way through it. Thank goodness for those Most Popular lists.

Two Ways to the App Store

You can get to the App Store in two ways: from the phone itself, or from your computer’s copy of the iTunes software.

Using iTunes offers a much easier browsing and shopping experience, of course, because you’ve got a mouse, a keyboard, and that big screen. But downloading straight to the iPhone, without ever involving the computer, is wicked convenient when you’re out and about.

Organizing Your Apps

As you add new apps to your iPhone, it sprouts new Home screens as necessary to accommodate them all, up to a grand total of 15 screens. That’s 364 icons—and yet you can actually go all the way up to many thousands of apps, thanks to the miracle of folders.

That multiple–Home screen business can get a little unwieldy, but a couple of tools can help you manage. First, you can just use Siri to open an app, without even knowing where it is. Just say, “Open Angry Birds” (or whatever).

Second, a Spotlight search can pluck the program you want out of your haystack, as described in Spotlight: Global Search.

Third, you can organize your apps into folders, which greatly alleviates the agony of TMHSS (Too Many Home Screens Syndrome).

It’s worth taking the time to arrange the icons on your Home screens into logical categories, tidy folders, or at least a sensible sequence.

You can do that either on the phone itself or in iTunes on your computer. That’s far quicker and easier, but it works only when your phone is actually connected to the Mac or PC. Read on.

Rearranging/Deleting Apps Using iTunes

To fiddle with the layout of your Home screens with the least amount of hassle, connect the iPhone to your computer using the white charging cable or over Wi-Fi. Open iTunes.

Click your iPhone’s icon at top left, and then click Apps in the left-side list. You see something like this display:

From here, it’s all mouse power:

For each listed app, click the button so that it says either Install (if the app is on your computer but not currently on your phone) or Remove (if it is; at that point, the button changes to say Will Remove). In other words, it’s possible to store hundreds of apps in iTunes but load only some of them onto your iPhone.
Click one of the Home screen miniatures on the right list to indicate which screen you want to edit. It gets big. Now you can drag the app icons to rearrange them on that page. (Click the background to close the life-size image.)
Beneath the Home screen miniatures, iTunes displays similar mock-ups of each folder on your phone. Because they’re visible here, all of them, all the time, it’s very easy to put icons into them—and to work with the multiple “pages” within each folder (read on).
It’s fine to drag an app onto a different page mock-up. You can organize your icons on these Home screens by category, frequency of use, color, or whatever tickles your fancy. (The + button above each pile of mock-ups means “Click to install an additional Home screen.”)
Tip
You can select several app icons simultaneously by -clicking them (or Ctrl-clicking in Windows); that way, you can move a bunch of them at once.
You can drag the page mock-ups around to rearrange them, too.
To delete an app from the iPhone, point to its icon and click the ×. (You can’t delete Apple’s starter apps like Safari and Messages.)
Create a folder by dragging one app’s icon on top of another (see Restoring the Home Screen for more on folders).

When your design spurt is complete, click Apply.

Rearranging/Deleting Apps Right on the Phone

You can also redesign your Home screens right on the iPhone, which is handy when you don’t happen to be wired up to a computer.

To enter this Home screen editing mode, hold your finger down lightly on any icon until, after about a second, the icons begin to—what’s the correct term?—wiggle. (On some phones, if you press too hard, you’ll trigger Force Touch—see Force Touch (iPhone 6s and 7)—and get frustrated.)

At this point, you can rearrange your icons by dragging them around the glass into a new order; other icons scoot aside to make room.

Tip

You can even move an icon onto the Dock. Just make room for it by first dragging an existing Dock icon to another spot on the screen.

You can drag a single icon across multiple Home screens without ever having to lift your finger. Just drag the icon against the right or left margin of the screen to “turn the page.”

To create an additional Home screen, drag a wiggling icon to the right edge of the screen; keep your finger down. The first Home screen slides off to the left, leaving you on a new, blank one, where you can deposit the icon. You can create up to 11 Home screens in this way.

You may have noticed that, while your icons are wiggling, most of them also sprout little ’s. That’s how you delete a program you don’t need anymore: Tap that . You’ll be asked if you’re sure; if so, it says bye-bye.

In iOS 10, for the first time, you can actually use this technique to delete Apple’s less important preinstalled apps, like Stocks and Watch! You don’t have to hide them in a folder just to get them out of your face.

Note

You’re not actually deleting them—only hiding them. They still occupy 150 megabytes. (To “reinstall” them, download them from the App Store as usual.)

When everything looks good, press the Home button to stop the wiggling.

Restoring the Home Screen

If you ever need to undo all the damage you’ve done, tap Settings→General→Reset→Reset Home Screen Layout. That function preserves any new programs you’ve installed, but it consolidates them. If you’d put 10 apps on each of four Home screens, you wind up with only two screens, each packed with 20 icons. Any leftover blank pages are eliminated. This function also places all your downloaded apps in alphabetical order.

Folders

Folders let you organize your apps, deemphasize the ones you rarely use, and restore order to that dizzying display of icons, just as on a computer.

These days, each folder can have many pages of its own, each displaying nine icons. A single folder, in other words, can contain as many apps as you want—and therefore, only memory limits how many apps you can fit onto your phone.

Setting Up Folders on the iPhone

To create and edit folders, begin by entering Home screen editing mode. That is, hold your finger down on any icon (lightly) until all the icons wiggle.

Now, to create a folder, drag one app’s icon on top of another. iOS puts both of them into a new folder and, if they’re the same kind of app, even tries to figure out what category they both belong to—and names the new folder accordingly (“Music,” “Photos,” “Kid Games,” or whatever). You can type in a new name at this point.

You’re welcome to add more apps to this folder. Tap the Home screen background to close the folder, and then (while the icons are still wiggling) drag another app onto the folder’s icon. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If one of your folders has more than nine apps in it, iOS creates a second “page” for the folder—and a third, a fourth, and so on. You can move apps around within the pages and otherwise master your new multipage folder domain.

You can scroll the folder “pages” by swiping sideways (facing page), just as you scroll the full-size Home pages. The only limit to how many icons a folder can hold is your tolerance for absurdity.

Once you’ve created a folder or two, they’re easy to rename, move, delete, and so on. (Again, you can do all of the following only in icon-wiggling editing mode.) Like this:

Take an app out of a folder by dragging its icon anywhere else on the Home screen. The other icons scoot aside to make room, just as they do when you move them from one Home screen to another.
Move a folder around by dragging, as you would any other icon.
Tip
You can drag a folder icon onto the Dock, too, just as you would any app. Now you’ve got a pop-up subfolder full of your favorite apps—on the Dock, which is present on every Home screen. That’s a useful feature; it multiplies the handiness of the Dock itself.
Rename a folder by opening it (tapping it). At this point, the folder’s name box is ready for editing.
Tip
On an iPhone 6s or 7, you can hard-press a folder icon—even when you’re not in wiggling-icon mode—to reveal the Rename command.
Move an icon from one folder “page” to another by dragging it to the edge of the folder, waiting with your finger down until the page “changes,” and then releasing your finger in the right spot.
Delete a folder by removing all of its contents. The folder disappears automatically.

When you’re finished manipulating your folders, press the Home button to exit Home screen editing mode—and stop all the wiggling madness.

Setting Up Folders in iTunes

It’s faster and easier to set up your folders within iTunes, on your Mac or PC, where you have a mouse and a big screen to help you. Connect your iPhone to your computer (by cable or Wi-Fi), open iTunes, click your iPhone’s icon at the top, and then click Apps in the left-side list. You see something like the illustration in Rearranging/Deleting Apps Using iTunes.

To create a folder, double-click a Home page miniature to expand it; now drag one app’s icon on top of another, exactly as you’d do on the iPhone. The software puts them into a single new folder. As on the iPhone, the software proposes a folder name; an editing bar also appears so that you can type a custom name you prefer.

Once you’ve got a folder, you can open it just by double-clicking. It expands to life size, revealing its contents. Now you can edit the folder’s name, drag the icons around inside it, or drag an app right out of the folder window and onto another Home page (or another folder on it). Just keep your finger down on the mouse button or trackpad until the new Home page or folder page opens.

Below the Home pages, you’ll discover that each of your app folders now has an app-management screen mock-up of its own, complete with a horizontally scrolling set of pages. That’s so you can move the “pages” around, organize the apps within them, and so on.

If you remove all the apps from a folder, then the folder disappears.

App Preferences

If you’re wondering where you can change an iPhone app’s settings, consider backing out to the Home screen and then tapping Settings. Apple encourages programmers to add their programs’ settings here, way down below the bottom of the iPhone’s own settings.

Some programmers ignore the advice and build the settings right into their apps, where they’re a little easier to find. But if you don’t see them there, now you know where else to look.

App Updates

When a circled number (like ) appears on the App Store’s icon on the Home screen, or on the Updates icon within the App Store program, that’s Apple’s way of letting you know that a program you already own has been updated. Apple knows which programs you’ve bought—and notifies you when new, improved versions are released. Which is remarkably often; software companies are constantly fixing bugs and adding new features.

Manual Updates

When you tap Updates, you’re shown a list of the programs with waiting updates. A tiny What’s New arrow lets you know what the changes are—new features, perhaps, or some bug fixes. And when you tap a program’s name, you go to its details screen, where you can remind yourself of what the app does and read other people’s reviews of this new version.

You can download one app’s update, or, with a tap on the Update All button, all of them...no charge.

Note

You can also download your updates from iTunes. From the top-left pop-up menu, choose Apps; then click Updates at the top of the screen. This window shows the icons of all updated versions of your programs. You can download the updates individually (click an icon, click Update) or all at once (Update All Apps).

Automatic Updates

If you have a lot of apps, you may come to feel as though you’re spending your whole life downloading updates. They descend like locusts, every single day, demanding your attention.

That’s why Apple offers an automatic update-downloading option. Your phone can download and install updated versions of your apps quietly and automatically in the background.

To turn on this feature, open Settings→iTunes & App Store. Under Automatic Downloads, turn on Updates. (If you’d prefer that the phone wait to do this downloading until it’s in a Wi-Fi hotspot—to avoid eating up your monthly cellular data-plan allotment—then turn off Use Cellular Data.)

From now on, the task of manually approving each app’s update is off your to-do list forever.

Tip

Fortunately, the iPhone also keeps a tidy record of every app it’s updated and what that update gives you. Open the App Store app; tap the Updates tab. There’s your list, sorted chronologically. Tap an app’s row to read what was new in the update you’ve already received.

How to Find Good Apps

If the Featured, Categories, and Top Charts lists aren’t inspiring you, there are all kinds of websites dedicated to reviewing iPhone apps. There’s appadvice.com and whatsoniphone.com and on and on.

But if you’ve never dug into iPhone apps before, you should at least try out some of the superstars, the big dogs that almost everybody has.

Many of the most popular apps are designed to deliver certain websites in the best-looking way possible. That’s why there are apps for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Spotify, Pandora, Flickr, Yelp, Netflix, YouTube, Wikipedia, and so on.

Here are a very few more examples—a drop in the bucket at the tip of the iceberg—of the infinite app variety beyond those basics:

Apple Apps (free). The first time you open the App Store, you’re offered a set of free Apple apps that Apple thinks you might like: iBooks, iTunes U, Podcasts, Find My Friends, and Find My iPhone. With one tap, you can grab this whole set.
Google Maps (free). Google Maps is a replacement for the built-in Maps app. It’s much, much better than Maps—even Apple has admitted that. Among other things, it offers Street View (you can actually see a photo of almost any address and “look around” you), it incorporates the Zagat guides for restaurants, and it’s unbelievably smart about knowing what you’re trying to type into the search box. Usually, about three letters is all you need to type before the app guesses what you mean.
Google Mobile (free). Speak to search Google’s maps. Includes Google Goggles: Point the phone’s camera at a book, DVD, wine bottle, logo, painting, landmark, or bit of text, and the hyperintelligent app recognizes it and displays information about it from the web.
Echofon (free). Most free Twitter apps are a bit on the baffling side. This one is simple and clean.
FlightTrack 5 ($5). Shows every detail of every flight: gate, time delayed, airline phone number, where the flight is on the map, and more. Knows more—and knows it sooner—than the actual airlines do.
SoundHound (free). Beats Shazam at its own game. Hold this app up to a song that’s playing on the radio, or even hum or sing the song, and the app miraculously identifies the song and offers you lyrics. It’s faster than Shazam, too.
Instagram (free) has a bunch of filter effects, as iOS’s Camera app does. But the real magic is in the way it’s designed to share your photos. You sign up to receive Instagrams from Facebook or Twitter folk. They (the photos, not the folk) show up right in the app, scrolling up like a photographic Twitter feed. Seeing what other people are doing every day with their cameraphones and creative urges is really inspirational.

Other essentials: Angry Birds and its sequel, Bad Piggies. Uber and Lyft. Skype. Hipmunk (finds flights). The New York Times. The Amazon Kindle book reader, B&N eReader. Dictionary. TED. Mint.com. Scrabble. Keynote Remote (controls your Keynote presentations from the phone). Remote (yes, another one, also from Apple—turns the iPhone into a Wi-Fi, whole-house remote control for your Mac’s or PC’s music playback—and for Apple TV). Instant-messaging (AIM, Yahoo Messenger, or IM+). Yahoo Weather (gorgeous).

Happy apping!

The App Switcher

Often, it’s handy to switch among open apps. Maybe you want to copy something from Safari (on the web) into Mail (a message you’re writing). Maybe you want to refer to your frequent-flier number (in Notes) as you’re using an airline’s check-in app. Maybe you want to adjust something in Settings and then get back to whatever you were doing.

The key to switching apps is to double-click the Home button. Whatever is on the screen gets replaced by the app switcher (below, left).

Tip

On the iPhone 6s and 7 models, there’s a second way to reach this screen: Hard-swipe from the left edge of the screen. This method has one advantage: It lets you peek at whatever apps are in the background, and then, without ever lifting your thumb, slide back to the left. You’ve had a quick glance without ever fully entering the app switcher.

You see a scrolling series of “cards” that represent the open apps, in chronological order. They’re big enough that you can actually see what’s going on in each open app. In fact, sometimes, that’s all you need; you can refer to another app’s screen in this view, without actually having to switch into that app.

Tip

Thoughtfully enough, the app switcher always puts the previous app front and center when you first double-press the Home button. For example, if you’re in Safari but you were using Mail a minute ago, Mail appears centered in the app switcher. That makes life easier if you’re doing a lot of jumping back and forth between two apps; one tap takes you into the previous app.

When you tap an app’s icon or screen in the app switcher, you open that app.

Force-Quitting an App

The app switcher lets you manually exit an app, closing it down. To do that, flick the unwanted app’s mini-screen upward, so that it flies up off the top of the screen (shown on the previous page at right).

The app is not really gone; it will return to the lineup the next time you open it from the Home screen.

You’ll need this gesture only rarely. You’re not supposed to quit every app when you’re finished. Force-quit an app only if it’s frozen or acting glitchy and needs to be restarted.

Tip

There may be one more element on the task-switcher screen, too: a faint app icon at the far left. That’s a document, email, or web page being sent to your phone by your Mac, using Handoff (see Handoff).

A Word About Background Apps

Switching out of a program doesn’t actually close it. All apps can run in the background.

Of course, if every app ran full-tilt simultaneously, your phone would guzzle down battery power like crazy. To solve that problem, Apple has put two kinds of limits in place:

iOS’s limits. Not all apps run full speed in the background. Apps that really need constant updating, like Facebook or Twitter, get refreshed every few seconds; apps that don’t rely on constant Internet updates get to nap for a while in the background.
In deciding which apps get background attention, iOS studies things like how good your phone’s Internet connection is and what time of day you traditionally use a certain app (so that your newspaper’s app is ready with the latest articles when you open it).
Your own limits. You can’t control which apps run in the background, but you can control which ones download new data in the background. In Settings→General→Background App Refresh, you’ll find a list of every app that may want to update itself in the background. In an effort to make your battery last longer, you can turn off background updating for the apps you don’t really care about; you can even turn off all background updating using the master switch at the top.

The bottom line: There’s no need to quit apps you’re not using, ever. Contrary to certain Internet rumors, they generally don’t use enough memory or battery power to matter. You may see dozens of apps in the app switcher, but you’ll never sense that your phone is bogging down as a result.

Back to App ()

This humble button may become your favorite feature.

It’s a Back button that appears when you’ve tapped a link of some kind that takes you into a different app. For example:

You’re in Messages, and you tap a web link (below, left) that takes you into Safari. A Messages button appears at the top-left corner of your screen (below, right).
You’re on Twitter or Facebook, and you tap a link that opens a web page. Sure enough: The top-left button says Twitter or Facebook.
You’re in Mail, and you tap an underlined date and time that takes you into the Calendar app. A Mail button appears in the corner.
You’re in Safari, and you tap a link that opens in YouTube. Sure enough: The button says Safari.

And so on. Add it all up, and this tiny recent enhancement can save you literally minutes a week. It’s the best.

AirPrint: Printing from the Phone

The very phrase “printing from the phone” might seem peculiar. How do you print from a gadget that’s smaller than a Hershey bar—a gadget without any jacks for connecting a printer?

Wirelessly, of course.

You can send printouts from your phone to any printer that’s connected to your Mac or PC on the same Wi-Fi network if you have a piece of software like Printopia ($20).

Or you can use the iPhone’s built-in AirPrint technology, which can send printouts directly to a Wi-Fi printer without requiring a Mac or a PC.

Not just any Wi-Fi printer, though—only those that recognize AirPrint. Many recent Canon, Epson, HP, and Lexmark printers work with AirPrint; you can see a list of them on Apple’s website, here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4356.

Not all apps can print. Of the built-in Apple programs, only iBooks, Mail, Photos, Notes, and Safari offer Print commands. Those apps contain what most people want to print most of the time: PDF documents (iBooks), email messages, driving directions from the web, and so on. Plenty of non-Apple apps work with AirPrint, too.

To use AirPrint, start by tapping the button; tap Print. You’re offered a Select Printer option. Tap it to introduce the phone to your printer, whose name should appear automatically. Now you can adjust the printing options (number of copies, page range)—and when you finally tap Print, your printout shoots wirelessly to the printer, exactly as though your phone and printer were wired together.

The Share Sheet

Every app is different, of course. But all of them have certain things in common; otherwise, you’d go out of your mind.

One of those things is the Share sheet. It’s your headquarters for sending stuff off your phone: to other apps, to other phones, to the Internet, to a printer. It’s made up of several icon rows, each of which scrolls horizontally. (From top to bottom, you could title these rows “What to Share,” “Send by AirDrop,” “Send to an App,” and “Act on This Data Directly.”)

The Share sheet pops up whenever you tap the Share button () that appears in many, many apps: Maps, Photos, Safari, Notes, Voice Memos, Contacts, and so on.

The buttons you see depend on the app; you may see only two options here, or you may see a dozen. Starting in AirDrop, for example, you can read descriptions of the icons that appear when you’re sending a photo: AirDrop, Message, Mail, Twitter, Facebook, Copy, AirPlay, Print, and so on. The options here vary by app.

Moreover, there’s a More button at the end of each row. That’s an invitation for other, non-Apple apps to install their own “send to” options into the Share sheet. When you tap More, you can see the full list of apps that have inserted themselves here. Now you can perform these tasks:

Hide a sharing option. Flip the switch to make one of the sharing options disappear from the Share sheet. (You can’t hide the sharing options that Apple considers essential, like Messages or Mail.)
Rearrange the sharing options. Use the handle to move these items up or down the list, which affects their left-to-right order on the Share sheet.

AirDrop

It’s a headline feature: AirDrop, a way to shoot things from one Apple phone, tablet, or Mac to another—wirelessly, instantly, easily, encryptedly, without requiring names, passwords, or setup. It’s much faster than emailing or text messaging, since you don’t have to know (or type) the other person’s address. It’s available on the iPhone 5 and later.

Note

If the Mac is running OS X Yosemite or later, you can shoot files between it and your phone, too.

You can transmit pictures and videos from the Photos app, people’s info cards from Contacts, directions (or your current location) from Maps, pages from Notes, web addresses from Safari, electronic tickets from Wallet, apps you like in the App Store, song and video listings from the iTunes app), radio stations (iTunes Radio), and so on. As time goes on, more and more non-Apple apps will offer AirDrop, too.

Behind the scenes, AirDrop uses Bluetooth (to find nearby gadgets within about 30 feet) and a private, temporary Wi-Fi mini-network (to transfer the file). Both sender and receiver must have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi turned on.

The process goes like this:

Find a willing recipient.
You can’t send anything with AirDrop unless the receiving phone or tablet is running iOS 7 or later—and is awake. And only recent models work with AirDrop: iPhone 5 or later, 4th generation iPad or later, any iPad mini, and 5th generation iPod Touch or later.
Open the item you want to share. Tap the Share button ().
If your app doesn’t have a button, then you can’t use AirDrop.
When the Share sheet appears, within a few seconds, you see something that would have awed the masses in 1995: small circular photos of everyone nearby (previous page, left). (Or at least everyone with iOS 7 or later, or OS X Yosemite or later. Or at least everyone among them who’s open to receiving AirDrop transmissions, as described in a moment.)
Tip
When you send a photo, the top row of the Share sheet shows your other photos and videos so that you can select additional items to go along for the ride. A blue checkmark identifies each item you’ve selected to send.
Tap the icon of the person you want to share with.
In about a second, a message appears on the recipient’s screen, conveying your offer to transmit something good—and, when it makes sense, showing a picture of it (previous page, right).
Tip
Actually, you can select more than one person’s icon. In that case, you’ll send this item to everyone at once.
At this point, it’s up to your recipients. If they tap Accept, then the transfer begins (and ends); whatever you sent them opens up automatically in the relevant app. You’ll know that AirDrop was successful because the word “Sent” appears on your screen.
If they tap Decline, then you must have misunderstood their willingness to accept your item (or they tapped the wrong button). In that case, you’ll see the word “Declined” on your screen.

The One AirDrop Setting

Your existence probably won’t become a living hell of AirDrop invitations. Realistically, you won’t be bombarded by strangers around you who want to show you family pictures or web links. Even so, Apple has given you some control over who’s allowed to try to send you things by AirDrop.

To see the settings, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open the Control Center (Control Center). There, in the middle, is the AirDrop button. Tap it to see these three choices:

Off. Nobody can send anything to you by AirDrop. You’ll never be disturbed by an incoming “Accept?” message.
Contacts Only. Only people in your Contacts app—your own address book—can send you things by AirDrop. Your phone is invisible to strangers. (Of course, even when someone you know tries to send something, you still have to approve the transfer.)
Note
The Contacts Only option requires that both you and your recipient have iCloud accounts and are logged in. Your Contacts card for the other person has to include that iCloud address (or .me, or .mac).
Everyone. Anyone, even strangers, can try to send you things. You can still accept or decline each transfer.
Tip
OK, there’s one other AirDrop setting to fiddle with: In Settings→Sounds, you can specify the sound effect that means “AirDrop file received.”
(OK, OK, there’s one more setting. Deep in General→Restrictions, you can turn off AirDrop altogether. Now your youngster—or whomever you’re trying to restrict with restrictions—can’t get into trouble in a debauched frenzy of sending and receiving files.)

iCloud Drive

iCloud Drive is Apple’s version of Dropbox. It’s a folder whose contents appear identically on every Mac, iPhone, iPad, and even Windows PC you own, through the magic of instant online syncing. It’s an online “disk” that holds 5 gigabytes (or more, if you’re willing to pay for it).

Whatever you put into the iCloud Drive appears, almost instantly, in the iCloud Drive folder on all your other machines: Macs, iPhones, iPads, and even Windows PCs. In fact, your files will even be available at iCloud.com, so you can grab them when you’re stranded on a desert island with nothing but somebody else’s computer. (And Internet access.)

This is an incredibly useful feature. No more emailing files to yourself. No more carrying things around on a flash drive. After working on some document at the office, you can go home and resume from right where you stopped; the same file is waiting for you, exactly as you left it.

The iCloud Drive is a great backup, too, because of its automatic duplication on multiple machines. Even if your phone is stolen or burned to aluminum dust, your iCloud Drive files are safe.

Your first chance to turn on iCloud Drive was when you installed iOS 8, 9, or 10 (or bought your iOS 8, 9, or 10 phone). If you declined, maybe because you had no idea what it was about, then you can visit Settings→iCloud→iCloud Drive and turn iCloud Drive on now.

Note

iCloud Drive replaces a previous syncing feature that Apple called “Documents in the Cloud.” If you turn on iCloud Drive, then the old system goes away; all the files you kept there are brought onto your new iCloud Drive. That’s fine, as long as you understand that pre–iOS 8 (or pre–OS X Yosemite) gadgets will no longer be able to see them.

Once you turn on iCloud Drive, you can’t go back to the “Documents in the Cloud” system. Sure, you can turn off iCloud Drive (in Settings), but all that does is stop syncing the drive’s contents with your other machines.

Now, it’s easy to understand iCloud Drive on a Mac or PC. It looks like any other disk, full of files and folders. You can even access them at iCloud.com (click the Drive icon), which is handy when you have to use someone else’s computer. Any change you make to the iCloud Drive or its contents is instantly synchronized across all your other gadgets.

On the phone, iCloud Drive is an actual app—the closest thing the phone has to a “desktop” where you can organize files and folders. Tug downward to reveal three tabs at the top, which sort the list of files and folders by Date, Name, or Tags; the switches between icon view and list view.

Hold your finger down on any icon in the iCloud Drive until the options bar appears, with options for Delete, Rename, Share, Move, and Info.

You can also hit Select and then tap the icons you want to put into a New Folder, Move into a different folder, or Delete from the iCloud Drive.

Now, iOS is not macOS or Windows; still, it can open many kinds of documents right on the phone. Graphics, music files, Microsoft Office documents, and PDFs all open from the iCloud Drive.

Other kinds of computer files, not so much. The iPhone can’t open the specialized files from sheet-music or genealogy programs, for example. In those cases, iCloud Drive is still useful, though, because it lets you forward those documents by email to a machine that can open them.

You can also see what’s on your iCloud Drive within apps that can open and save documents. That includes Apple’s apps—Keynote, Pages, Numbers, iMovie—and other apps that create and open documents, like, say, Scanner Pro and PDF Expert.

In all these apps, there’s an Open button or icon that presents the iCloud Drive’s contents. In Pages, for example, when you’re viewing your list of documents, tap Locations, and then tap iCloud. There’s the list of folders on your iCloud Drive, corresponding perfectly to what you would have seen on a Mac or a PC. Tap a folder to open it and see what’s in it.

Note that iOS shows you everything on your iCloud Drive, even things you can’t open at the moment. For example, if you’re using the iMovie app, you can’t open a Pages file, so Pages documents appear dimmed and gray.

On an iPhone, the iCloud Drive folder list is not quite the same thing as having a real desktop—you can’t rename, copy, or delete files or folders on the phone, for example.

But it’s comforting to know that everything on your iCloud Drive that you can open is available wherever you go—and that you can now load up everyday documents (pictures, music, PDFs, Microsoft Office files, iWork documents) onto your phone by dragging them into the iCloud Drive folder on your computer.