iPad tips and tricks: Talking Tech Podcast

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Hey there listeners. It's Mike Snider here and welcome back to Talking Tech. Brett Molina is off today, but I have a special guest with us, Marc Saltzman, longtime contributor to USA Today's tech coverage is here to help you get more out of your iPad. Marc, thanks for joining us.

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Hey, thanks to the invite, Mike. Great to chat with you.

Always good to see you on Zoom and hear your voice.

Yeah. It's been a while in person.

Yes. Yeah. I really enjoyed your recent column on iPad tricks, especially because I learned something. We know iPads are likely big holiday gifts, but those of us who have one now can always use new ideas about how to be more productive or how to customize our tablet.

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And it doesn't matter what version you have, by the way. The tips that we'll chat about for this Talking Tech episode will work regardless what year you've got. It doesn't matter if it's an iPad Mini, an iPad Pro, an Air, a regular iPad. It works across the board.

Was there any particular thing that led you to want to write this column now?

Not in particular, no, the timing wasn't really pre-holidays or pre-Black Friday or anything like that. It was just one of those evergreen things that I get asked a lot about. And as you know, Mike, we follow each other on social, that I like to write these like tech tip of the day posts where showing people how to get more, instead of always talking about new tech that I'm expecting people to buy or evangelizing some new gadget that I've been reviewing that I love. What about the things that we already own? How do you squeeze more practicality out of all that, right? We probably only use like 10% of what we buy, right?

Yeah, for sure. Sure. Well, one of the simplest tips from your story that I pulled out of it was the idea that people could type more quickly if they want to customize the keyboard.

Right. And there's a couple of ways to do it. One is, and I do this, I'll hold the iPad and type a message at the same time, which could be a bit cumbersome them, especially if you have smallish hands as I do. So, a real simple tip for those who want to write a message, an email, a note, whatever on the iPad that they're holding, instead of putting it down, all you have to do is put each thumb on the virtual or onscreen keyboard and then stretch it to each end, so pull away from each other. And the keyboard will magically break into two parts. The keys will be a bit smaller so you can reach, for example, the letter H with your right thumb or the letter G with your left thumb very easily, even though it is the farthest key away from your hands.

So that's just a simple tip. And then when you're done typing a message and it's surprisingly intuitive even though it's broken into half. When you're done, just push the two sides back together again, and they will reconnect to make that larger keyboard, which might be easier when you're propping it up on a desk or a table or something. So that's an easy one. Yeah, the split keyboard trick. And another one is a lot of people will start typing on their iPad and then when they need to get to a special character, like a number or a symbol, what they'll do is they'll tap in the bottom left or right corner to switch to the secondary keyboard so you can access those extra characters, but you don't need to. If you look above every letter, it's a bit grayed out, but there is a number or a symbol over every letter.

So for example, the letter K, when you swipe down with your thumb, when you're typing on it, or your finger, it will let you type an apostrophe because that's that key's secondary function, or the letter three, maybe an L that kind of thing or the other way around. Swipe down an L, could be the number three, you get the idea. And it's just a faster way of typing because you don't have to activate that second keyboard. You just need to swipe down instead of press and it does the same thing. And then finally, and this also works on iPhone, if you're done your sentence, you don't have to stop, type, do two spaces as a lot of journalists have been taught that. And then you start the new sentence with the capital and all that. All you have to do is double tap the space bar, and it'll put the period in for you and then start capitalizing the next word for you at the start of your new sentence.

This all sounds good. I've used every one of those tips you said, except for the alternate text, which I probably need to look for that when I'm really doing it in the real world, but those are all great ideas. Now, the other thing I like was this idea of how the easier ways to navigate apps that you might already have open.

Right, so a lot of this falls under the accessibility banner. So for those that have maybe some dexterity challenges or seeing or hearing impairment of some sort, they're already used to using these amazing tools that are built into today's tech, but really anybody can take advantage of them. And one of them is some of these gestures that you can use on your iPad. I'll get to an accessibility feature tied to hearing in a moment. But, for example, if you just want to scroll between all your open apps and that's convenient and all you have to do instead of having to close it and then try to find that app and all that is take a couple of fingers and then swipe left or right. It's four fingers left or right. And that will help you navigate between all your open apps.

If you want to quickly close an app, you just put your fingers on the screen and then swipe inwards for a quick close, just those kinds of little things that you can learn. And if you Google Apple accessibility iPad tips, or anything like that, you'll find many more of these like pinching inwards and outstretch finger tips. And then speaking of accessibility, one of my favorite all time hacks, if you will, is turning a regular ebook into an audio book for free.

So instead of buying the audio book and no offense to anybody listening that works for Audible or anything, but this also works for articles like you're reading Mike Snyder in USA Today, and you're feeling tired, you're in bed. You can actually have the article read to you instead of you reading the article. So all you have to do is activate something called Speak Screen. This is in your accessibility features under speech. And then when you take two fingers from the very top of your iPad and swipe down, it's going to read to you whatever text is on the screen. So for example, I've got an... oops, let me just navigate my, let me just move my microphone here. I have an open source book here. It's Alice in Wonderland and if I take two fingers, I'm going to swipe down. And then the Siri voice is going to read to you. So have a listen.

So she swallowed one of the cakes and was delighted to find that she began shrinking directly. As soon as she was small enough to get through the door, she ran out of the house and found-

So you get the idea. She doesn't usually say punctuation. So I don't know why she said comma, but you can hear that's pretty good. And then you can actually adjust the speed. So have a listen.

It's raining outside.

So I'm going to go a little bit faster.

Was in the middle being held up by two guinea pigs-

Or a little bit slower.

Guinea pigs who are giving it something out of a bottle.

So you can adjust the voice, the speed, you can navigate, you can skip through sections. And again, it's a feature called Speak Screen. It's an accessibility feature that turns any ebook into an audiobook or an article or any text emails, messages, and it's just great, because you can now listen to something while you're driving instead of having to wait until you get home to read that book that you just bought. Love it.

Or being a bad guy and reading it at the stoplight or whatever.

That I don't recommend.

Having somebody honk at you to get going. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's very cool. That's very cool. Now one of the last things I wanted you to talk about is this if someone who is a Mac centric user, they can use their iPad as a second screen, right?

Yeah. So it's a feature called Sidecar and it's a way of having a second monitor really. You just prop it up beside your Mac monitor, whether it's a MacBook Pro, MacBook air or a desktop version of a Mac and it just lets your iPad serve as a secondary display, whether you want to mirror your desktop or extend it.

So a lot of content creators, let's say an animator or an artist, a music composer, they'll use the iPad as their pallet and they'll use their Mac screen for their canvas and they'll just take their mouse and they'll click on whatever on one side and then drag it over to your main screen, your canvas in order to manipulate the content there. So it's really handy. It's free. It's really easy to get going. You just have to make sure that your Mac and your iPad are both signed into the same iCloud account with the same ID. And then you just do a search for the word Sidecar on your Mac and it'll find your iPad for you magically. And there you go. It also works, there's some third party apps for Windows PCs as well. If you look for that at the Apple app store on your iPad, you can find some free versions for Windows, but with Mac OS Big Sur, it's all built in. It's all baked into the operating system.

Very cool. Well this is all great information, Marc. And folks, if you listen to this and you can't quite get what's going on, Marc's story is on tech.usatoday.com and you can get it all there. And if you call it up on your iPad, you can swipe two fingers down and it'll read to you evidently.

That's right. There you go.

Well, thanks for being with us, Marc.

My pleasure, Mike. Great to chat with you as always.

You can get more content from Marc by following him on Twitter at marc underscore Saltzman, and you can subscribe to his [inaudible 00:09:35] podcasts@marksaltzman.com. Listeners let's hear from you. You have any comments, questions, or show ideas, any questions about some of these tips? You can find me on Twitter at Mike Snyder. Please don't forget to subscribe and rate us or leave a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcast. You've been listening to Talking Tech. We'll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.