Phone and Tablet Tips Sort your crucial emails

Find types of emails quickly and change your settings

There’s an easy way to quickly find specific types of emails in ios’s Mail app. Open the app, then tap Inbox at the top left to see your emails (in the left-hand column on an ipad). At the bottom left, you’ll see a small circular icon with three lines (see screenshot right). Tapping it displays all your Unread emails. However, it’s easy to customise this button to see other emails. First, tap the small circular icon, then tap the Unread link at the bottom.

You’ll see six options in the Filter pop-up menu (see screenshot right). By default, Unread is the only one ticked, but you can select any of the filter options you want to include here. When you’ve finished, tap the Done button. Your email list will now change to reflect the changes you made. From now on, whenever you tap the circular icon, you’ll see the emails based on the filters you selected.

To change the Mail app’s default settings, you need to open the Settings app on your device, then tap Mail. Here, you’ll see options to increase the number of lines in your email message preview from the default two, and customise what swiping across emails in your list does. By default, all sent emails have a ‘Sent from my ipad/iphone’ signature. To change this, scroll to the bottom of Mail in Settings, tap Signature, delete the default text and type what you want.

ANDROID & IOS Keep an eye on the amount of mobile data you use

To see how much mobile data you’ve used at any time, open Settings, tap ‘Network & Internet’, ‘Mobile data’, then ‘Data usage’. On IOS, tap ‘Mobile data’, then Usage in Settings. You’ll see how much data you’ve used in the current calendar month. By default, this starts on the first day of the month, but you should change this to the date from when your mobile service provider bills you. You can check this date by opening your service provider’s app or by contacting them.

Three (Android www.snipca.com/26411; IOS www.snipca.com/26412) has updated its apps with a new feature that lets you monitor how much data, call minutes and texts you’ve used over the past four months. Open the app to see three graphs – Data (in GB), Voice (in minutes) and Texts (total number) – which display what you’ve used in your current billing cycle. At the bottom of the graph, you’ll see how many days it is before your data allowance renews.

Tap any of the three graphs to see your usage over the past four months as bars. At the top, you’ll see your average monthly and highest consumption. The red line at the top indicates your data limit. If you regularly exceed your limit, you should consider switching to another mobile plan or using Google’s new app, Datally (see Best New Apps below), which will help you save mobile data.

ANDROID & IOS Create a photo collage using Pixlr

There are any number of apps that let you create a collage from your photos, but Pixlr is our favourite because it’s free, doesn’t include adverts and has a wide range of layout and customisation options. Install and open the app (Android www. snipca.com/26415; IOS www.snipca. com/26416), then tap Collage.

You’ll see several photo folders on the left (Camera, Screenshots, Whatsapp, Facebook, etc). Select the relevant folder,

then select the photos you want to include in your collage (they appear in a panel at the bottom). Tap ‘done’ at the bottom right when you’ve finished. You’ll now see a default grid with your selected photos (see screenshot below).

At the bottom, you’ll see several grid styles that you can tap to select. To swap a photo’s position in the grid, tap and hold it, then move it to another position. The icons at the bottom let you change the thickness of the grid’s borders, and change its style and colour. When you’ve finished making changes, click ‘next’ at the top right, OK, ‘done’, then Save Image.

ANDROID & IOS Reduce Facebook’s constant notifications

If you find Facebook’s constant barrage of notifications irritating, it’s easy to reduce these to manageable levels. On Android, open Facebook, tap the three lines at the top right, then tap Notification Settings in the ‘Help and Settings’ section at the bottom. On IOS, tap the three lines at the bottom right, Settings, Account Settings, then tap Notifications. You’ll see two sections - ‘What notifications you receive’ and ‘Where you receive notifications’.

The first section includes categories such as Birthdays, ‘Friend requests’, Apps, ‘Updates from friends’ and so on. All options have items that you can switch on and off using the sliders. Tap Birthdays, for example, to see six sliders (see screenshot above right). The slider at the top lets you disable all birthday notifications. Below this, you’ll see three sliders for birthday notifications: Push (which appear on your device’s screen), Email and SMS (enable this to make Facebook Messenger your default messaging app). At the bottom, you’ll see sliders that let you receive notifications for upcoming and belated birthdays.

The second section in Notification Settings (‘Where you receive notifications’) - has three options: Push, Email and SMS. Tap Push to customise how you receive mobile notifications. You’ll see sliders to switch on/off sound, vibration, and your phone’s LED, and to change your default notification sound. Tapping Email and SMS displays all their respective notifications. Switch off the sliders next to any you don’t want to receive.