Tips

Apple's personal voice assistant offers a variety of options to customize the way it sounds. Siri supports many different languages tailored to regions around the world. When it comes to English, Apple has built-in a few options to tweak how Siri talks. The most basic option is choosing whether Siri speaks in a female or male sounding voice.

After a few years, the battery life on AirPods declines as the lithium-ion cells inside reach too many charging cycles. If your AirPods frequently need to be charged after only a short time of active use, it's likely the batteries can't sustain required power levels. AirPods batteries are relatively small cells tucked into the bottom of the in-ear wireless headphones.

Playing music with Siri using your favorite streaming service just got easier. Instead of having to specify which service to use with each request, Siri can be preset to use any supported audio subscription by default. The days of ending song requests with "on Spotify" or "on Pandora" are now over. Siri can use services other than Apple Music without any extra direction.

Apple Watch owners have a new option to easily unlock their iPhones when wearing a face mask. The global pandemic has made it more difficult to unlock iPhones using Face ID, given that the TrueDepth camera looks to match an entire face. With the mouth and nose covered, this process mostly ends up with the user entering a passcode. Some have tried to train their iPhones to recognize a mask, but there is a more secure way.

The investment app Robinhood has made waves across markets as a simple way for smartphone owners to buy and sell stocks. As more people sign up for accounts, new users of Robinhood must keep in mind their security. As with all financial apps, extra precautions such as two-factor authentication (2FA) can help restrict unwanted account access. Using 2FA on Robinhood is highly recommended.