There are so many new multitasking features in ios 8 that are really great, but sometimes figuring out how to use or customize something isn’t easy.

I’ve written short posts on some of them, but sometimes I find someone else has done great job explaining a little tweak better, so I’m including some of the best ones I run across here.

How to Fill An Empty Contact Bubble

with a Photo on an iPad or iPhone

The new contact bubbles that show up in multitasking mode are great, but some of my frequent contacts don’t have photo’s associated with them.

Here’s how to attach a photo to a contact to a nice picture shows up in their bubble.

Another way to add a photo to a contact bubble is in the contact card for a person. Just tap on edit contact then the work edit by the bubble.

Tips On the Interactive Features of Notifications and Lockscreen Actions

ios 8 includes a lot of new way to get things done quickly from within a notification.

iPhonehacks has written one of my favorite articles about these new features and even has a video!

How to Turn Off  Voice Control (aka Siri)

After Turning On Accidentally  

Voice Control on iPads and iPhones gets turned on quite readily if you press the Home Button a bit too long.  But figuring out how to turn it off again can be frustrating.  It all has to do with dexterity and the length of time the Home Button is pressed or held down for.

To Turn Voice Control On Press and hold the Home Button

To Turn Voice Control Off Again  Just quickly press the Home Button (immediate releasing it is the key)

How to Hide Photos in the Photo App |

ios 8 iPhone & iPad 

There’s a neat feature that hides your photos without deleting them. Tap and hold a photo in the Photos app and an option to “hide” will surface. You’ll be able to remove it from Collections, Moments and Years and keep it in the Hidden album. No one needs to know how many pictures of your cat you take on a daily basis.

Link to the Source Article:  Mashable ios 8 Hidden Featu

How to Permanently Delete Photos &

Free Up Valuable Space

One significant new feature in ios 8 can drastically impact the amount of storage space that you have available to you on your iPad or iPhone.  This new feature is the ‘Recently Deleted‘ photo album.

The new photo album is created automatically the first time that you delete a photo or screenshot on an ios 8 device.  Many people don’t realize however that in ios 8, when you delete a photo or screenshot it’s not actually deleted immediately.  The photo is moved to this new album where it’s stored for an additional 30 days.  This was done to prevent accidental deletion.   If you decide within that 30 day window that you really don’t want to delete it, you can open the album and recover the photo.

This feature can have both good and bad implications for ios users.  It’s really good if you know how to use it.  But it’s bad if users don’t recognize that deleted photos aren’t really deleted at all, they are just moved to a sort of ‘staging area’ for future deletion.  These deleted photos continue to be stored on all of your ios devices and in your iCloud for an extra 30 days, and they continue consuming storage space as well.  This can really frustrate users who are deleting photos specifically for the purpose of freeing up disk space.

Permanent deletion is possible.  There’s  just one additional step that’s very simple.

 These are the steps to permanently delete photos:

• Open the ‘Recently Deleted‘ album
• Tap ‘Select‘ in the upper right hand corner
• Tap on or select each photo that you want to permanently delete
• Tap the word ‘Delete‘ in the upper left hand corner
• This warning will appear:  “These photos will be deleted.  This action cannot be undone.  Delete x=#  Photos”  
• When you tape on the red, Delete # photos, they will be permanently removed from your device as well as any other devices that are synced with your photos and from iCloud backups too.

How to Revover Deleted Photos

Recovering photos is done exactly the same way.  But rather than tapping on the red Delete # Photos you simply tap on Recover, and the photos will be moved back into your current ‘Photos‘ album.