While on vacation, your iPhone is your personal travel aid in many ways. It is therefore not only important to pack your suitcase, but also to prepare your iPhone for your trip. These are the 9 things you shouldn’t skip.
iPhone on vacation: this is how you prepare
You can arrange more and more things on vacation with your iPhone. Therefore, do not go out unprepared and make sure that you have the right settings and apps ready for a carefree holiday. By following the steps below, your iPhone is completely ready for vacation.
1. Disable (or enable) roaming
Depending on whether you are going on holiday within or outside the European Union, you have to switch your roaming on or off. Within Europe, you can use the internet, text and call from your own bundle anywhere. To make the internet work outside of the Netherlands, you do need to enable data roaming. If you are traveling outside the European borders, this option should be disabled to avoid high costs. You can set this up as follows:
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone;
- Tap on ‘Mobile network’;
- Select ‘Mobile data options’;
- Slide the switch at ‘Data roaming’ so that the box turns gray.
Also interesting: Refresher course: what about roaming on vacation?
2. Automatically save your parking location
Because of all the impressions you get on holiday, it can not always be easy to remember the parking location of your (rental) car in a foreign country. Fortunately, you can set the app to save your parking location in both Apple’s Maps and Google Maps. This way you will always find your four-wheeler.
To do this in Maps, your iPhone must be connected to the car’s bluetooth system or CarPlay. Then go to ‘Settings> Maps> Your Car> Show Parking Location’. Set the slider to green and you will now recognize your parked car on the map in the middle of a blue car icon.
Do you prefer to use Google Maps to remember your parking location? Then open the Google Maps app and tap the hamburger menu in the search bar. Then tap ‘Settings’ and ‘Navigation’. Here you select ‘Save parking space’. If necessary, follow the instructions to adjust your location permission. Depending on whether your iPhone is connected to the car with Bluetooth, if not, you should set the slider behind ‘Movement and condition’ in the same settings menu to green.
3. Free up space
You can count on it that you will end up taking many more holiday snaps than expected. Then you don’t want to suddenly get the message that your memory is full. You can prevent this simply by cleaning up your storage space before you leave. Delete apps you never use and get rid of unnecessary photos and messages. This gives you enough space for handy travel apps and all the photos you want to take.
4. Download offline maps
By navigating offline to that special church or that one restaurant you save battery and especially data. Fortunately, there are plenty of apps that can help you with this. Check out our overview of the six best offline navigation apps for this. Prepare yourself by installing one of these apps at home and downloading the necessary maps via the WiFi connection.
Install important vacation apps
In addition to an (offline) navigation app, there are of course more apps that come in handy when you are traveling. How about an app to find great restaurants and sights, book hotels or get medical advice. You can read which holiday apps are worthwhile in our overview.
6. Add insurance emergency numbers
Standing in a foreign hospital without your health insurance emergency number or not knowing how to contact your travel insurance about a lost suitcase. These are situations that you do not want to end up in, but are also easy to prevent. Look up the emergency numbers you may need in advance, but also, for example, the local emergency number of the emergency services in your holiday destination. Save these in your Contacts so that you are never faced with surprises.
7. Download offline playlists and series
Whether you are on the road a lot in the car or have a long flight ahead: make sure you have the necessary entertainment on your iPhone. Create offline playlists in Spotify or Apple Music and add your favorite series to the Netflix download list. Also download the necessary digital (audio) books and podcasts and you are good to go.
Read more: Offline on vacation: download series, movies and music with these apps
8. Make sure Find My iPhone is turned on
The biggest nightmare is that you leave your iPhone or iPad somewhere or it even gets stolen. Therefore, before you start your holiday, check that Find My iPhone is switched on. This way you can always find the location of your lost iPhone via another Apple device or the iCloud website.
This may save you a trip to the local police station to report the lost property. You can activate Find my iPhone by tapping on your Apple ID in Settings, then on ‘iCloud’ and then on ‘Find my iPhone’. Make sure the slider behind the option is green.
9. Back up your iPhone
In addition to activating Find My iPhone, it is also wise to make a backup of your iPhone beforehand. If your trusty phone gets killed during the holiday, for example due to water damage, you will not immediately lose all your data. By enabling an automatic backup, you also ensure that backups are made during your trip. That way you won’t just lose your vacation photos.