Three Hints To Make Your Transition to iOS 7 Easier

Because there are a lot of changes in iOS 7 we can find ourselves flummoxed trying to do stuff we thought we knew how to do. Here are three tasks that not only caught me off-guard, but took a lot of research and experimenting to solve.

I Want My Own Ringtones Back!

It took me forever to learn how to create my own personalized ringtones. When I installed iOS 7 they were nowhere to be found. There were 22 of them. I wanted them back! I got them back and here is how I did it.

Open iTunes and connect your phone. Click on the phone designator under Devices in the left column.

Once you are connected and get the Summary window, click on the Tones icon under Library and confirm that your self made ringtones have been saved. If you have created and saved ringtones they will be listed there.

Tones folder

Next, choose the “Tones” tab from the menu bar. If there is no check mark next to Sync Tones when it opens your list will not show up so check that box.

Now you should see your list of self made ringtones. Either click the radio button next to “All tones” or click the one next to “Selected tones” and choose the ones you want by placing a check in the box next to the name.

List of self made ringtones contained in the Tones

The last step is to click the “Sync” button in the lower right corner. Note, you may find, as I did, that not all the tones you select will sync. My assumption is that is tied someway in the you didn’t purchase this song on iTunes phenomenon.

Now you can tap the eject button next to your iPhone and unplug it from your computer.

Open your iPhone and choose the settings > sounds > Ringtone. In the listing of possible ringtones you should see the ones you just added at the top of the list. Click next to the one you want to use and it is a done deal.

If you like to assign different ringtones to individuals the process has not really changed. Choose your phone list and select the individual from the Contacts list. Scroll down to “Ringtone”, select your ringtone of choice, and tap the “Done” option in the upper right corner.

Too Much Music Downloading

This one took two days and a trip to the Apple store genius bar. The genius solved it in less than a minute. When I downloaded stuff to my new iPhone 5s, I carefully marked only four albums of music that should download. I have a 16GB phone so I don’t want to use up all my space with music. In spite of my designations, every song in my library was listed on my phone. I won’t bore you with the details of everything I tried to fix this problem, (think two days) and rather tell you why it happened and how to fix it.

iOS 7 has a category under the Settings called “iTunes & App Store.” In addition to indicating what stuff you want downloaded to your device while you are in iTunes, you also need to visit this setting on your device.

Show All Music button

The button next to Music needs to be turned off if you only want selected items of music to be listed on your phone. Mine was turned on. I turned it off and no more problem. I just downloaded my music files again after I turned it off and only my selected albums were listed on my phone. Note that contrary to my belief, aside from my selected albums the songs in my iTunes library were not actually downloading, they were just listed.

Can’t Open The New Control Center

I don't like for the screen on my iPads or iPhone to flip every time I move the device. I really don’t like it, so the first thing I wanted to do after installing iOS 7 was to lock the screens of my iPads in landscape mode and my phone in portrait mode. Apple changed the way we do this, but I realized that the way the operation is handled in iOS 7 is way cooler than any previous option.

Open the Settings icon and look for Control Center.

Control Center

It's something that is new with iOS 7. Turn on the two options. When you can see green they are on. All white, they are off.

Access options turned on

Once you have authorized Control Center then you can access it on your devices. To access it you swipe up from the bottom and the Control Center appears. (I found it took some practice to make the "swiping" work the first time.)

If you want landscape saved, turn your device so that you see the landscape view. Then swipe up. The following image is the Control Center opened on my iPhone 5s. Tap the screen orientation lock icon and your screen is locked. To unlock it just tap it again.

New Control Center

Hope these tips help make some of your transitions a bit easier.