lock screen

The iOS Control Center is a great feature allowing iPhone and iPad users to quickly access screen brightness controls, volume controls, camera, wi-fi and bluetooth toggles, Do Not Disturb mode, and so much more thanks to the ability to customize it. But many iPad users, and some iPhone users too, may discover that Control Center is not working from the locked screen of their devices. Try as you might, swiping up from the bottom of the iPad or iPhone screen, Control Center just won’t swipe up to show itself. Don’t worry, it’s probably a simple fix.

The reason most iPad and iPhone devices can’t access the Control Center from the lock screen is usually a setting. While the swipe gesture to reveal Control Center from the Lock Screen is often enabled by default on the iPhone, for whatever reason on the iPad the lock screen Control Center access is often disabled by default – at least on several newer iPad models I have encountered lately. So if you can’t open Control Center on the lock screen of an iPad or iPhone, read on to enable the feature and check your settings for iOS.

How to Enable Control Center Access at Lock Screen on iPad and iPhone

1. Open the “Settings” app of iOS



2. Go to “Touch ID & Passcode”
3. Scroll down to the “Allow Access When Locked” section and find “Control Center” then toggle the switch nest to Control Center to the ON position



4. Exit out of Settings

You can test this is working by locking the iPad or iPhone screen and then swiping to access Control Center, it should reveal itself as expected on the Lock Screen of the device.

For all iPad models and most iPhone (except for iPhone X), to access Control Center you just swipe up from the very bottom of the screen. For iPhone X and presumably other future iPhones with the screen notch, you swipe down from the right of the notch to access Control Center on iPhone X.

It’s not entirely clear if the Lock Screen Control Center feature is enabled or disabled by default on all devices, or just seemingly at random, but as mentioned before I have personally encountered several new iPad models with Control Center access from the locked screen to be disabled, apparently by default. It’s always possible these users had previously disabled Control Center Lock Screen access in iOS and forgotten about it too, just as users often do to disable in-app Control Center access with swipe-based apps and games and so forth to prevent the screen from appearing when it’s not wanted. In any case, the result was that some people in similar situations think that Control Center is not working at all, when in fact it’s merely the locked screen access that has been disabled for the feature.

The Control Center is a great feature for quickly accessing all sorts of settings toggles, features, and adjustments, and for best results users can customize Control Center on iPhone and iPad to fit specific needs.

Did this fix your problems with accessing Control Center from the lock screen of an iPad or iPhone? Do you have another solution that worked for you to get Control Center working at the locked screen again? Share your experiences with us in the comments below!

Related

Signal is the encrypted messaging app that is used by many privacy conscious individuals on various platforms, but the Signal app defaults to showing a message preview on the locked screen of an iPhone or iPad, which may be convenient but it’s not particularly private. Given that Signal is typically sought out by users specifically for privacy and/or security purposes, some users may wish to have the Signal message previews not show up on the locked screen of an iPhone or iPad.

This article will show you how to hide the Signal message previews from the locked display of an iPhone or iPad. Signal users will be able to choose to have the message previews display on the locked screen when the device is unlocked, or to never show the Signal message previews at all regardless of the lock status.

How to Hide Signal Message Previews from Locked Screen of iPhone or iPad

The setting to disable Signal message previews is in the same location on any iOS device that has the app installed:

1. Open the “Settings” app on the iPhone or iPad
2. Go to “Notifications”
3. Locate and tap on “Signal”
4. Scroll to the very bottom of Signal notification settings to find the Options section, then tap on “Show Previews”



5. Choose the Signal “Show Previews” setting as desired, from the three following options:

• Always (Default) – this is the default setting which allows Signal messages to be visible in full even on a locked screen of iPhone or iPad
• When Unlocked – this setting mimics the new Messages app default where message previews are only visible when the device is unlocked, either though a passcode, Face ID, or Touch ID
• Never – never show previews of Signal messages, whether the device is locked or unlocked, thereby requiring the Signal app must be opened directly to read Signal messages

Tap your choice and when satisfied, leave the Settings app as usual for the change to take effect

Once the setting has been changed, your next incoming message(s) on Signal will reflect the choice you made, hiding the message preview as desired.

If you’re aiming for increased security and privacy of your Signal messages, you’ll probably want to go with the “When Unlocked” or “Never” setting. You can always return to the default option of revealing full messages on a locked screen later if you want to.

Personally I choose “When Unlocked” since it matches the default of Messages app on new iPhone models (you can also change the same message preview setting in the Messages app Notifications settings if desired), which requires that the passcode, Face ID, or Touch ID is used to unlock and reveal the Signal message preview on the iPhone (or iPad) locked screen. The other advantage to using “When Unlocked” is that you can quickly see the previews revealed after authenticating just like you can with the Messages app as discussed here.

As always, be sure you use a passcode on the iPhone or iPad, the more secure the better. Depending on your iPhone or iPad, you might also want to choose to enable or disable Touch ID authentication, or enable or disable Face ID too (and you can also temporarily disable Face ID if you need to for whatever reason).

If you’re interested in the general topic of information security and privacy, you may appreciate looking through many other security tips for Apple devices, or checking out some privacy specific tips too. You can also review this collection of iPhone security tips to improve your device security, and for tips apply the same to an iPad as well. And of course, feel free to share your own Signal tips or general privacy tricks in the comments below!

Related

The “Today” screen of iOS contains many widgets for things like weather, news and tabloid headlines, calendar, maps, suggested apps, stocks, amongst others. This “Today” screen is available on the left-most screen and is accessible from the lock screen or Home screen of an iPhone or iPad by swiping to the right (unless you disabled the Today screen, that is). Some users may wish to declutter the widgets that show up on this swipe-over Today screen of their iOS device, and remove widgets that are not applicable or useful to them. Maybe you don’t want your calendar visible at the widget screen, or maybe you don’t want to see tabloid headlines mixed in with news, or maybe you don’t want to stocks or apps on the widget screen, whatever you decide is your choice.

This article will show you how to remove widgets from the Today widget screen of an iPhone or iPad.

Remember if you have previously disabled the Today view screen access from the iOS Lock Screen, you’d only be able to edit and remove widgets by initiating this process from the Home Screen instead of the Lock Screen.

How to Remove Widgets from the “Today” Screen of iPhone and iPad

Ready to remove some of the widgets from your Today widget screen of iOS? Here is how the process works:

1. From the iPhone or iPad, swipe right from the lock screen (or Home Screen) to access the “Today” widget screen
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the Today screen, then tap on the “Edit” button



3. You’re now at the “Add Widgets” screen, which is where you can add or remove widgets from the Today screen of iOS
4. Find the widget you want to remove from the Today screen widget list and tap on the red (-) minus button



5. Confirm that you want to delete a widget by tapping “Remove”



6. Repeat with additional widgets you want to remove from the swipe-over Today screen
7. When finished, tap on the “Done” button to save your changes

Now when you return to your Today widget screen, the widgets you removed will no longer be visible. This process is the same on iPhone and iPad.

You can also remove all widgets from the iOS Today widget screen if you want to, but then accessing that widget panel would be fairly bare, and it’d probably be better just to disable it at that point.

There are many widgets to adjust, remove, or add, just browse through the list and remove the ones that are not applicable to you, and perhaps add the ones that are. Adding widgets is just a matter of scrolling further down and tapping the green (+) plus button at the “Add Widgets” screen of iOS. Or you can add widgets using 3D Touch on iPhone, but that’s limited to iPhone because iPad does not have 3D Touch support at the moment.

Many third party apps also have widgets, so the more apps you add to your iPhone or iPad the more options you will have to customize the widget screen.

Note this applies to modern iOS versions only, which have the “Today” widget screen view. This is different from earlier and mid-range iOS versions, where Widgets were part of Notification Center and customized from there in earlier iOS releases – if you’re still running an older iOS version that’d be the instructions to follow instead.

Related

Mac users have long been able to use various tricks to lock the screen of their computers, but with MacOS High Sierra 10.13.x onward, a simpler and faster option is now available on the Mac with an official Lock Screen feature.

With the new Lock Screen feature, you can instantly lock down a Mac through a system-wide menu option, or with a keyboard shortcut. Once Lock Screen has been enabled, a proper user login and password must be entered before the Mac can be accessed again. This is an excellent privacy and security feature, and one that Mac users should familiarize themselves with if they frequently use their computers in a public setting, be it at work, school, home, or anywhere else they may want to password protect their computer to prevent unwanted access.

Note this specific Lock Screen feature is only available in the latest versions of Mac OS, including macOS High Sierra 10.13.x onward. If you’re on an earlier version of Mac OS system software, you’ll need to rely on other methods to initiate the lock screen on a Mac as described here, or if you have a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar you can set a dedicated screen lock button.

How to Use Lock Screen in MacOS via Menu

You can enable the Lock Screen on Mac OS from anywhere via the Apple menu:

1. Pull down the  Apple menu from any application
2. Choose “Lock Screen” to instantly lock the Mac screen and bring up the login window

Locking the screen is instantaneous, and the Mac will require a password to login and regain access.

The Lock Screen feature does not log out of the user account, or quit any applications, it also won’t start a screen saver right away, it only locks the screen by bringing up a familiar login window thereby requiring the user name and user password to regain entry to the Mac.

Another option to enable the Lock Screen feature on the Mac is to use the keyboard shortcut…

How to Enable Lock Screen in MacOS via Keyboard Shortcut

The default keyboard shortcut for the new MacOS Lock Screen option is Command + Control + Q, you can hit the keystroke at any time to lock down the Mac:

• Hit Command + Control + Q to activate Lock Screen on the Mac

Once you hit the command sequence on the keyboard, the Mac screen will instantly lock out, thereby requiring a login to regain access.

For many users, using the keyboard shortcut for Lock Screen will be faster than the menu option, and it’s likely that the keystroke approach is the fastest way to initiate a screen lock procedure on any Mac.

Note that you can change the Lock Screen keyboard shortcut if you’re unhappy with Control + Command + Q for whatever reason by going to the Keyboard system preferences. If you find yourself accidentally quitting apps instead of locking the screen, you may wish to do that. Just be sure your new keystroke doesn’t conflict with anything else.

To reiterate, these dedicated Lock Screen keyboard shortcut and menu options are only available to the latest versions of macOS system software (10.13+), but that does not mean that users of prior Mac OS software releases are left in the dark or without similar options to quickly activate a password screen to lock down a Mac. In fact, all versions of Mac OS can enable a lock screen associated with the Mac Screen Saver feature as described here that can be activated by keystroke or by a mouse corner. Another option is to use an optional Screen Lock button on the Touch Bar of MacBook Pro if you have one of those Macs.

The primary difference between the new Lock Screen option in modern macOS releases versus the older lock screen trick available in earlier Mac OS releases is that the new variation is officially recognized as “Lock Screen” whereas earlier versions of Mac OS would indirectly go about enabling a lock screen by activating the screen saver with password protection. The end result is basically the same however, though the new variation won’t immediately enable a screen saver, whereas the screen saver based approach always immediately does.

By the way, if you’re using the Lock Screen feature for security and privacy reasons (and you should be if your Mac gets used in any work place, public location, school, or even many home environments) then you’ll also want to be certain you enable FileVault disk encryption on the Mac so that all data on the hard drive is encrypted, further protecting your personal data from prying eyes or potential privacy incursions.

Do you have any other handy tricks relating to the Lock Screen feature on the Mac? Share them with us in the comments below.

Related

Many iPad users wonder how they can stop their iPad screen from sleeping automatically. If you want to stop the iPad from sleeping and turning the display off on it’s own, you can easily do so with a settings adjustment.

For the unfamiliar; the iPad will put itself to sleep and turn the screen off when it’s not in use after a short amount of time, this mechanism is the default because it helps to preserve battery life and can improve device security since by sleeping itself it will lock with the device passcode as well. That’s all well and good, but some users may find the automatic sleep behavior on iPad to be overly aggressive, and if you use the iPad to read something while participating in another activity, like cooking, reading or referencing something on screen, of if you’re using the iPad as a display or kiosk type situation.

It’s important to differentiate between the automatic screen sleeping behavior, which occurs with inactivity, and the automatic display brightness adjustment, which occurs with changes in ambient lighting. You can disable or enable the auto-brightness setting in iOS if desired, note that it changed locations within Settings from iOS 11 onward.

How to Stop iPad Screen from Sleeping and Locking

In modern versions of iOS, you can stop the iPad from sleeping the display with inactivity, or delay how long it takes for iPad to sleep the screen, by doing the following:

1. Open the “Settings” app on iPad



2. Go to “Display & Brightness” then choose “Auto-Lock”



3. Choose one of the following options suited to your iPad display needs:

• Never – to stop the iPad from sleeping itself completely, choose “Never” as the option, this will completely prevent the iPad from sleeping the screen on its own
• 2 minutes
• 5 minutes
• 10 minutes
• 15 minutes

To completely disable the iPad screen sleep behavior just choose “Never”, but note that by doing so you will need to lock the iPad display yourself by hitting the lock/power button on the device (or using the virtualized lock button via Accessibility). Just remember there are security and privacy ramifications with the Never option, because if the iPad does not sleep itself and automatically lock, then anyone can freely use the device at any time just by walking up to it in the woken and active state. It will be entirely up to you or the last person on the iPad to turn off the display and lock it down with the lock button.

A decent compromise for many users is the 10 or 15 minutes options, which allow ample time to stare at a screen without interacting with it, before the iPad display turns itself off. The 15 minute option is popular with hobbyists reading manuals and guides, musicians reading notes or tabs, and chefs or any other kitchen enthusiast using an iPad as a recipe holder while cooking, and has the advantage of still turning itself off for security and privacy reasons after 15 minutes of inactivity.

By the way, if your iPad is an earlier model running a prior version of iOS the setting still exists but is located elsewhere, contained within the General settings section rather than the Display settings.

And for those who are curious, this setting also exists on iPhone and iPod touch too, though it seems to be used less on the pocketable devices compared to iPad.

Related

iOS Apple News defaults to pushing ‘news’ alerts and notifications to your devices lock screen, this is why sometimes you may pick up an iPad or iPhone and have various “News” notifications on the display, even if you never signed up to receive any headlines or news alerts.

These breaking News alerts on the iOS lock screen are often a mishmash of curious headlines on various topics, and while some users may find those type of stories to be vitally important and love having them pushed to their iPhone or iPad lock screens, other users may prefer to not have their device screens scattered with miscellaneous headlines of stories they might be disinterested in.

Fortunately it’s easy to stop the News app from pushing those alerts and notifications to your iOS device, thereby stopping all ‘news’ from appearing on the lock screen of an iPad or iPhone completely.

How to Remove News Notifications from iPad and iPhone Lock Screen

We’ll show you how to remove the News notification alerts from the lock screen (or “cover sheet” as later iOS calls it), and also how to turn them off completely device-wide, if you don’t want to see the news alerts anywhere ever again.

1. Open the “Settings” app on the iPad or iPhone and go to “Notifications”
2. Find and tap on “News” within the Notifications app list, then adjust settings depending on the desired effect of hiding news from the lock screen, or hiding news alerts entirely:

• To hide News from the iOS Lock Screen only (or “Cover Sheet” as the lock screen is called in iOS 11), flip the toggle next to “Show on Cover Sheet” or “Show on Lock Screen” to the OFF position



• To hide all News notifications and alerts from everywhere in iOS, toggle the switch next to “Allow Notifications” to the OFF position

Exit out of Settings app as usual

With the News notifications now turned off (either for the cover sheet / lock screen, or entirely disabled so the News app won’t alert you whatsoever) you are now free to lock your iPhone or iPad, then pick it up again, and not have the display scattered with headlines.

As long as the Notifications are disabled for News app, these type of notifications and headlines will no longer show up on your devices screen:

(I wonder, is there an intentional emphasis on tabloid style topics and buzzy headlines to show up on iOS screens? Are the news headlines chosen at random? What’s the point?)

Another possible approach is to go about blocking and hiding news channels and news sources in the News app that you don’t want to see. But while blocking news channels is a good solution to clean up the News app feed itself, it’s not as helpful if your aim is for stopping some of the nonsensical alerts from showing up at the lock screen. That’s because many respectable and high quality publications also push out tabloid headlines intermixed with their other news, and any of that may show up on the lock screen of an iPad or iPhone.

Going further, if you’re not thrilled with these sort of headlines and “News” material dotting various places throughout iOS, you might also want to remove News headlines from Spotlight search in iOS too so that the “News” headlines will no longer appear in your iOS Spotlight search results as well.

As usual, you can always reverse these changes simply by going back to the appropriate Settings and toggling the switches again. So if you decide to hide the “News” headlines but later determine you really miss seeing those latest headlines on the iOS screen, you will be relieved to know those alerts are just a few settings taps away again.