Being able to blur the backgrounds of iPhone photos (and unblur them) is a godsend for anyone interested in portrait photography. One of the most important aspects of portraiture is obtaining a separation between the subject of your photo and their background. Blurring the background does this, isolating the subject against a distraction-free backdrop, allowing the viewer to focus solely on the person in the portrait. 

That said, blur isn't the only technique used in portraiture, and you might not necessarily want it in your photos. Sometimes, for example, a photographer wants to encapsulate a subject within their surroundings, if the background is of contextual importance to the photo or to who the subject is as a person. Either way, blur or no blur, what's important when shooting portraits is having the ability to control what's going on in the background. 

On a full-sized DSLR or Mirrorless camera, you'd do this by adjusting the aperture of the lens, which is measured in 'f-stops'. The wider the lens aperture (opening), the lower the 'f-stop' value and shallower the depth of field, resulting in greater background blur, and vice versa. On the best iPhones, there's a super easy but not too obvious trick to let you do the same. 

In Portrait mode, there exists a depth control slider to let you tailor the background blur of your images. It's not actually controlling the physical aperture of the iPhone's lens like an aperture control ring would do on a camera lens, and is instead using software to add or remove blur to give the effect of a changing depth of field. That said, it's a nice way to give you as a photographer control over your images and make them feel more professional.

This is just one of the reasons why the iPhone shows up on our best camera phone list. Whether you own an iPhone 13 or an older iPhone, here's how to blur the background of an image on iPhone.

If you're anything like me and you keep your phone on silent pretty much all the time, at some point you'll have missed those battery notifications your iPhone gives you when you reach 20%, 10% and 5% charge. This can be pretty problematic when suddenly you pick up your phone and there's only 3% charge left, and has often left me wondering whether there is a better way to be notified about your battery life when your iPhone is on silent. 

Similarly, I've often felt that even the earliest 20% warning can come a little too late if you know you'll need charge later on — if you have a long commute later in the afternoon, for example, you might find it useful to get an alert at 30% or 40%, so you make sure you charge up ahead of time. 

Well, perhaps unsurprisingly given the iPhone's standing as one of the best phones out there, it turns out Apple has thought of a simple solution to both of these issues. By using a personal automation within the Shortcuts app, you can have Siri verbally warn you when your battery hits a specific percentage, even when on your iPhone is on silent.

Here's how to set custom battery alerts using iOS Shortcuts.

1. Open the Shortcuts app. If you don't know where it is, swipe up from the middle of the screen to open Spotlight and then search "shortcuts". When it appears, tap the app icon. 

Knowing how to disable Windows services is an extremely handy yet surprisingly easy task all Windows computer users should know. 

Although Windows 10 and Windows 11 are incredibly efficient operating systems, they can still experience performance slowdown. One way to make sure that your PC delivers its best performance, especially when tackling vital but demanding tasks, is by disabling all the Windows 10 services that aren’t essential. 

Windows services are small tasks and programs a PC runs, usually in the background, to ensure that all the other tools, applications and software run smoothly. That includes everything from basic ones like spooling print jobs to a printer to the more complex ones like monitoring various sensors on your display.

A lot of these services are essential to your day to day. Others, however, aren’t, which means they’re utilizing vital resources that your computer should be allocating to more important tasks. That’s where disabling Windows services comes in handy, and we’ll show you exactly how to do it.

Why should I disable Windows services?

The more applications and programs taking up space and using your PC’s resources, the less likely it’s able to perform at its best. But, some of the Windows services your PC is running aren’t essential, which means they can be disabled without interruptions to its day-to-day operations.