Chapter 3
In This Chapter
Starting your first sync
Understanding iCloud
Syncing iPhone with iTunes
Synchronizing contacts and calendars
Synchronizing ringtones, music, podcasts, video, photos, and apps
After you pass basic training (in Chapter 2), the next thing you’re likely to want to do is get some or all of the following into your iPhone: contacts, appointments, events, bookmarks, ringtones, music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, books, courseware, photos, documents, and applications.
We have good news and … more good news. The good news is that you can easily copy any or all of those items from your computer to your iPhone. And the more good news is that after you do that, you can synchronize your contacts, appointments, reminders, and events so they’re kept up-to-date automatically everywhere you might need them — on your computer, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. So when you add or change a contact, an appointment, a reminder, or an event on your iPhone, that information automatically appears on your computer and other iDevices.
This communication between your iPhone and computer is called syncing (short for synchronizing). Don’t worry: Syncing is easy and you find out how it works in this very chapter.
Here’s even more good news: You can set up and use an iPhone PC-free, which means you never have to connect it to a computer or sync with iTunes if you prefer not to. You discover how to sync with and without connecting your iPhone to a computer in this chapter. But please bear in mind that certain tasks — such as rearranging the icons on your Home screens and managing your music, movies, and pictures — are much easier on a computer than on the iPhone’s smaller screen. And some tasks, such as rearranging the order of Home screens, are possible only by using iTunes on a computer.
You start this chapter with an introduction to iCloud, Apple’s free wireless storage and synchronization solution (which, by the way, is even better in iOS 8), and find out how it makes using your iPhone more convenient. Then you get to the heart of this chapter: syncing.
One last thing: If your iPhone is brand-spanking new and fresh out of the box, go to www.dummies.com/extras/iphone for a walk-through on the phone’s initial setup.
Apple’s iCloud service is more than just a wireless hard drive in the sky. iCloud is a complete data synchronization and wireless storage solution. In a nutshell, iCloud stores and manages your digital stuff — your music, photos, contacts, events, and more — and makes it available to all your computers and iDevices automatically.
iCloud pushes information such as email, calendars, contacts, reminders, and bookmarks to and from your computer and to and from your iPhone and other iDevices, and then keeps those items updated on all devices wirelessly and without any effort on your part. iCloud also includes nonsynchronizing options, such as Photo Stream (see Chapter 9) and email (see Chapter 12).
Your free iCloud account includes 5GB of storage, which is all many users will need. If you have several devices (including Macs and PCs) or like saving data in the cloud, you’ll probably find yourself needing more storage; 20- and 200-gigabyte upgrades are available for $1 and $4 a month, respectively.
A nice touch is that music, apps, periodicals, movies, and TV shows purchased from the iTunes Store, as well as your photo stream and iTunes Match content (see Chapter 8), don’t count against your 5GB of free storage. iBooks don’t count against your 5GB either, but audiobooks do. You’ll find that the things that do count — such as mail, documents, photos taken with your iPhone camera, account information, settings, and other app data — don’t use much space, so 5GB may last a long time.
If you plan to go PC-free but still want to have your email, calendars, contacts, and bookmarks synchronized automatically and wirelessly (and believe us, you do) between computers and other iDevices, here’s how to enable iCloud syncing on your iPhone:
A list of apps appears. Tap any individual on/off switch to enable or disable iCloud sync for Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Safari (Bookmarks), Notes, and PassBook.
In the same list are five items that don’t have switches:
You find out much more about iCloud in the rest of this chapter and several other chapters, so let’s move on to syncing your iPhone.
You can sync calendars, reminders, bookmarks, and other data and documents among other iDevices and computers via iCloud. But if you never intend to introduce your iPhone to any computer, read the next section, “First things first: About iPhone backups,” and then skip the rest of this chapter. Why? Well, if you don’t have a computer, you don’t have any data or media on it to sync with your iPhone and this chapter has nothing more for you.
Whether you know it or not, your iPhone backs up your settings, app data, and other information on your iPhone whenever you connect to a computer and use iTunes to
Every time you sync your iPhone and computer, most (but not all) of your iPhone content — photos you’ve taken with your iPhone, text messages, notes, contact favorites, sound settings, and more — is backed up to either your computer’s hard drive or iCloud before the sync begins. Most of your media, including songs, TV shows, and movies, isn’t backed up in this process. This shouldn’t be a problem because these files are usually restored when you sync with iTunes.
Backups are saved automatically and stored on your computer by default. You can instead choose to back up to iCloud by clicking the appropriate button in the iTunes Summary pane, as you see in the next section.
Backups are handy if anything goes wonky with your iPhone or you get a new one. A backup lets you restore most (if not all) of your settings and many files that aren’t synced with iCloud or iTunes on your computer. If you’ve ever backed up an iPad, iPod touch, or iPhone, you can restore the new iPhone with the older device’s backup; the new device will inherit the settings and media from the old one.
Here’s how to enable backing up to iCloud from your iPhone, which we strongly suggest computer-free iPhone users do without further delay:
If you’re a computer-free iPhone user, you don’t care because you never connect your iPhone to a computer. But if you sync your iPhone with your computer, as many folks do, give some thought to which option suits your needs. Consider that restoring from a computer backup requires physical or Wi-Fi access to the computer but doesn’t require Internet access. Restoring from iCloud can take much longer and requires Internet access, but it can happen anywhere on Earth that has Internet access.
Backups are good; choose one or the other and move on.
For those who want to sync using iTunes on the computer, either with the included dock or Lightning connector–to–USB cable or wirelessly over Wi-Fi, follow the instructions in the rest of this chapter.
In other words, unless you don’t have a computer, follow these steps and you’ll be ready to sync by cable or wirelessly in just a few minutes:
When you connect your iPhone to your computer, iTunes should launch automatically. If it doesn’t, chances are you plugged the cable into a USB port on your keyboard, monitor, or hub. Try plugging it into one of the USB ports on your computer instead. Why? Because USB ports on your computer supply more power to a connected device than other USB ports or most hubs. If iTunes still doesn’t launch automatically, try launching it manually.
If you’ve taken any photos with your iPhone since the last time you synced it, your default photo management software (iPhoto, Image Capture, or Aperture on the Mac; Microsoft AutoPlay Wizard or Adobe Photoshop Elements on the PC) opens and asks whether you want to import the photos from your phone. (You find out all about this in the “Photos” section, later in this chapter.)
If more than one iDevice is connected to this computer, click the iPhone icon to display a drop-down list and select your iPhone from the list.
If you still don’t see this icon and you’re absolutely positive your iPhone is connected to a USB port on your computer (not on a keyboard, monitor, or hub), try restarting your computer.
The Welcome to Your New iPhone pane appears.
Your new iPhone will be restored with the settings and data from your previous one. In a few minutes (or more if your old iPhone contained a lot of data), your new iPhone will contain all the apps, media files, and settings from your old iPhone. You’re finished and can skip ahead to the next section, “Syncing Your Data.”
If you don’t see a Summary tab, make sure your iPhone is still connected. If you don’t see its name near the top-left corner of the iTunes window, as shown in Figure 3-1, go back to Step 3 and try again.
We changed this iPhone’s name from Robert’s iPhone to Bob L’s iPhone 6 in Figure 3-1.
Your iPhone creates a backup of its contents automatically every time you sync, regardless of whether you sync using a USB cable or wirelessly.
If you chose This Computer, you can encrypt and password-protect your backups by selecting the Encrypt iPhone Backup check box section.
That’s all there is to the Backups section. The remaining steps deal with the check boxes in the Options section (partially shown in Figure 3-1).
If you’ve selected the Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from Syncing Automatically option in the Devices pane of iTunes Preferences (iTunes⇒ Preferences on a Mac; Edit⇒Preferences on a PC), the Open iTunes When This iPhone Is Connected option in the Summary tab appears dimmed and is not selectable.
Your choice in this step is not set in stone. If you select the Automatically Sync When This iPhone Is Connected check box, you can still prevent your iPhone from syncing automatically in two ways:
Standard-definition video files are significantly smaller than high-definition video files. You’ll hardly notice the difference when you watch the video on your iPhone, but you can have more video files on your iPhone because they’ll take up less space.
That said, if you choose to watch video from your iPhone on an HDTV either with an A/V adapter cable or wirelessly via AirPlay (as discussed in Chapter 8), you’d notice a big difference.
Finally, if you have a wireless network at home, you don’t need to sync video that you intend to watch at home with your iPhone. Instead, you can stream it from your computer to your iPhone or your iPhone to your HDTV (with an Apple TV), as described in Chapter 8.
The conversion from HD to standard definition is time-consuming, so be prepared for very long sync times when you sync new HD video and have this option enabled.
A higher bit rate means that the song will have better sound quality but use more storage space. Songs that you buy at the iTunes Store or on Amazon, for example, have bit rates of around 256 Kbps. A 4-minute song with a 256 Kbps bit rate is around 8MB; convert the song to 128 Kbps AAC and it becomes roughly half that size (that is, around 4MB) while sounding almost as good.
Most people don’t notice much (if any) difference in audio quality when listening to music on typical consumer audio gear. So unless you expect to hook your iPhone up to a great amplifier and superb speakers or headphones, you probably won’t hear much difference with this option enabled, but your iPhone will hold roughly twice as many tunes. We’re picky about our audio, but we both enable this option so that we can carry more music on our iPhones. And neither of us has noticed a diminished sound quality with the headphones or speakers we use with our iPhones.
And, of course, if you decide not to select the Open iTunes When This iPhone Is Connected check box, you can synchronize manually by clicking the Sync button in the bottom-right corner of the window. Note, however, that if you’ve changed any sync settings since the last time you synchronized, the Sync button changes to Apply.
Now that your data is backed up and you’ve completed the prep work, you’re ready to sync. The next order of business is to tell iTunes what data you want to synchronize between your iPhone and your computer. You start this process by clicking Info in the list on the left side of the window.
Moving right along, the Info pane has three sections: Sync Contacts, Sync Calendars, and Advanced. The following sections look at them one by one.
If you want to sync reminders, mail settings, notes, Safari bookmarks, or passbook items, you must do so with iCloud, not with iTunes. Tap Settings⇒iCloud and enable the on/off switch for each item.
The Sync Contacts section of the Info pane determines how synchronization is handled for your contacts. One method is to synchronize all your contacts, as shown in Figure 3-2. Or you can synchronize any or all groups of contacts you’ve created in your computer’s address book program.
The iPhone syncs with the following address book programs:
Now, here’s what each option in the Sync Contacts section does:
The Sync Calendars section of the Info pane determines how synchronization is handled for your appointments and events. You can synchronize all your calendars, as shown in Figure 3-3. Or you can synchronize any or all individual calendars you’ve created in your computer’s calendar program; just select the Selected Calendars option and then select the appropriate check boxes.
The iPhone syncs with the following calendar programs:
Every so often, the contacts or calendars on your iPhone get so screwed up that the easiest way to fix things is to erase that information on your iPhone and replace it with information from your computer.
If that’s the case, just click to select the appropriate check boxes in the Advanced section of the Info pane, as shown in Figure 3-4. Then the next time you sync, that information on your iPhone will be replaced with information from your computer.
One last thing: If you’re using iCloud and you want to replace the contacts or calendars on your iPhone, you must first enable the item in iTunes. First, disable iCloud syncing on your iPhone, and then enable the check box for Sync Contacts or Sync Calendars in iTunes as we’ve just described.
If you chose to let iTunes manage synchronizing your data automatically, welcome back. This section looks at how you get your media — your ringtones, music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, video, iTunes U courses, books, and photos — from your computer to your iPhone.
Sharp-eyed readers may notice that we aren’t covering syncing iPhone apps in this chapter. Apps are so darn cool that we’ve given them an entire chapter, namely Chapter 15. In that chapter, you discover how to find, sync, rearrange, review, and delete apps, and much, much more.
And if you save pictures from email messages, from the iPhone camera, from web pages (by pressing and holding down on an image and then tapping the Save Image button), or from screen shots (by pressing the Home and sleep/wake buttons simultaneously), these too can be synced.
The following sections focus only on syncing. Need help acquiring apps, music, movies, podcasts, or anything else for your iPhone? This book contains chapters dedicated to each of these topics. Just flip to the most applicable chapter for help.
You use the Tones, Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, and iTunes U panes to specify the media that you want to copy from your computer to your iPhone. If you don’t see these panes, make sure that your iPhone is still selected in the iPhone section of the Summary pane (refer to Figure 3-1).
If you have custom ringtones in your iTunes library, select the Tones pane in the list on the left and then select the Sync Tones check box. You can choose all ringtones or individual ringtones by selecting their check boxes. Ringtones can be used also as text tones and alarms.
To transfer music to your iPhone, select the Music pane and then select the Sync Music check box. You can then select the option for Entire Music Library or Selected Playlists, Artists, Albums, and Genres, as shown in Figure 3-5. If you choose the latter, click the check boxes next to the particular playlists, artists, albums, and genres you want to transfer. You also can choose to include music videos or voice memos or both by selecting the appropriate check boxes at the top of the pane.
If none of the options just mentioned sounds just right (pun intended), you may prefer using the On My Device tab, which is covered in some detail later in this chapter.
Hover your cursor over any color to see a bubble with info on that category, as shown in Figure 3-7.
You can find similar information about space used and space remaining on your iPhone by tapping Settings⇒General⇒Usage. The iPhone’s display isn’t as pretty as the one pictured here, but it is useful when you need that info and you’re not near your computer.
To avoid such errors, select playlists, artists, albums, and genres that total less than the free space on your iPhone, which is displayed in the capacity bar before you sync.
Finally, if you select the Automatically Fill Free Space with Songs check box, iTunes fills any free space on your iPhone with music.
To transfer movies to your iPhone, select the Movies pane. Next, select the Sync Movies check box and then choose an option for movies you want to include automatically from the pop-up menu, as shown in Figure 3-8. If you choose an option other than All, you can optionally select individual movies and playlists by selecting the boxes in appropriate sections.
The procedure for syncing TV shows is almost the same as for syncing movies. First, select the TV Shows pane. Next, select the Sync TV Shows check box to enable TV show syncing. Then choose how many episodes to include from the first pop-up menu and whether you want all shows or only selected shows from the second pop-up menu. If you want to also include individual episodes or episodes on playlists, select the appropriate check boxes in the Shows, Episodes, and Include Episodes from Playlists sections of the TV Shows pane.
You can also sync podcasts, educational content from iTunes U, two types of books — e-books for reading and audiobooks for listening — and photos.
Content for the Podcasts, iBooks, and iTunes U apps is synced in a similar manner to movies and TV shows. The following sections detail the minor differences.
To transfer podcasts to your iPhone, select the Podcasts pane and then select the Sync Podcasts check box. Next, you can include however many podcasts you want by making selections from the Automatically Include and All or Selected Podcasts pop-up menus.
To sync educational content from iTunes U, first select the iTunes U pane and then select the Sync iTunes U check box to enable iTunes U syncing. Next, from the two pop-up menus, choose how many episodes to include and whether you want all collections or only selected collections. If you want to also include individual items from a collection, click the collection and then select the appropriate check boxes in the Items section.
By now we’re sure you know the drill: You can sync all your e-books and audiobooks as well as just sync selected titles by choosing the appropriate buttons and check boxes in the Books pane.
Syncing photos is a little different from syncing other media because your iPhone has a built-in camera — two cameras, actually — and you may want to copy pictures or videos you take with the iPhone to your computer, as well as copy pictures stored on your computer to your iPhone.
The iPhone syncs photos and videos, too, with the following programs:
You can also sync photos with any folder on your computer that contains images.
Select the Photos pane, and then select the Sync Photos From check box. Next, choose an application or folder from the pop-up menu; we selected iPhoto in Figure 3-9.
If you choose an application that supports photo albums (such as Photoshop Elements, Aperture, or iPhoto), projects (Aperture), events (iPhoto), facial recognition and places (Aperture or iPhoto), or any combination thereof, you can automatically include recent projects (Aperture), events (iPhoto), or faces (Aperture and iPhoto) by making a selection from the same pop-up menu.
If you choose a folder full of images, you can create subfolders inside it that will appear as albums on your iPhone. But if you choose an application that doesn’t support albums or events, or a single folder full of images with no subfolders, you have to transfer all or nothing.
Because we selected iPhoto in the Sync Photos From menu, and iPhoto 9.5 (the version installed on our Mac) supports projects and faces in addition to albums and photos, we have the option of syncing any combination of photos, projects, albums, and faces.
If you’ve taken any photos with your iPhone or saved images from a web page, an email, an MMS message, or an iMessage since the last time you synced, the appropriate program launches (or the appropriate folder is selected) when you connect your iPhone, and you have the option of uploading the pictures on your iPhone to your computer.
This chapter has focused on automatic syncing thus far. Automatic syncing is great; it selects items to sync based on criteria you’ve specified, such as genre, artist, playlist, and album. But it’s not efficient for transferring a few items — songs, movies, podcasts, or other files — to your iPhone.
The solution? Manual syncing. With automatic syncing, iTunes updates your iPhone automatically to match your criteria. Changes to your iTunes library since your last sync are synced automatically to your iPhone. With manual syncing, you merely drag individual items to your iPhone.
You can manually sync music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, and iTunes U lessons but not photos and info such as contacts, calendars, and bookmarks.
To configure your iPhone for manual syncing:
If iTunes doesn’t open automatically, open it manually.
If you have more than one iDevice, the iPhone icon becomes a drop-down menu listing all your connected iDevices. Click the icon to display the menu with your devices, and then select the device you want.
This step disables automatic syncing for music and videos.
If you’re happy with automatic syncing and just want to get some audio or video from your computer to your iPhone, feel free to skip this step.
To add items from iTunes to your iPhone without using the syncing controls or performing an actual sync, first click the icon for the type of media you want to copy to your iPhone — music, movies, or TV shows — or click the ellipsis (…) to select podcasts, iTunes U, audiobooks, or tones. Then start dragging the media to the left. As you do, a new pane appears on the left side of the iTunes window. Drag the media to this pane, as shown in Figure 3-10, and the media will be copied to your iPhone immediately.
You can add a media file to your iPhone without syncing at least one other way. As before, your iPhone has to be connected to your computer via Wi-Fi or USB, so you have to see the iPhone button above the picture of your iPhone or this (as well as the previous method) won’t work.
And that’s pretty much all you need to know to sync files automatically or manually. And if you haven’t figured out how to watch movies or listen to audio on your iPhone yet, it’s only because you haven’t read Part III on multimedia, where watching and listening to your iPhone are made crystal clear.