‘The most wonderful time of the year’ is often preceded by a lot of stress. You can prevent that with this week’s iPhone tips!
iPhone tips: this is how you avoid the holiday stress
Sending Christmas cards and shopping are just two things that cause a lot of stress in the run-up to the holidays. In these iPhone tips we will help you to arrange all Christmas-related matters comfortably and without stress!
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1. Place a countdown widget on your iPhone
You may think that this only increases stress, but that is not the case. It’s rather reassuring that every time you unlock your iPhone you can see at a glance how many days until Christmas. This way you don’t have to doubt it for a moment. And doubt is something that causes stress.
There are many different types available in the App Store. And there are also many that are relatively expensive. The app UpAhead it is, but with the free version you can countdown to three different events. Just create an event and then add the widget to your home screen.
2. Make a Christmas background from emoji
To get into the right atmosphere, use a Christmas background on your iPhone. You can of course pick one from the internet (or from our iPhone wallpapers), but you can also easily put one together yourself emoji. This is how you do it:
- Open the Settings app and tap ‘Wallpaper’;
- Tap ‘+ Add new wallpaper’;
- Tap the yellow emoji button at the top;
- Remove the current emoji with backspace;
- Type up to six of your favorite Christmas emoji;
- Tap anywhere on the screen above the keyboard;
- Swipe horizontally across the screen for different patterns;
- Tap Add at the top right.
3. Use AI to create a playlist
You can of course use the same playlist that you always use at Christmas. Or you can start putting together a new one. The latter costs you a lot of time, especially if you look for songs that are not already in your good old playlist. Save yourself that time and stress and let AI do it for you!
With the app AI Playlist Maker: PlaylistAI it’s a piece of cake. You simply describe what kind of playlist you want (and also what you don’t want in it) and the app creates it for you. Then you simply send the playlist to Spotify, Apple Music or another music service and everything is already arranged! The only limitation is that you have to do it in English.
4. Send Christmas cards with an app
We completely understand if you don’t feel like looking for one of the few remaining mailboxes where you can drop your Christmas cards during the darkest days of the year. Fortunately, that is no longer necessary, because you can simply send Christmas cards from your couch via an app.
With the app MyPostcard Send cards App choose one of the Christmas cards on offer. You can then make that card more personal, possibly by adding one or more photos.
In the app of PostNL you can do pretty much the same thing. You have fewer templates at your disposal, but they are in Dutch. In the PostNL app, tap ‘Send’ at the bottom and then choose ‘Photo card’. Then choose whether or not you want an envelope. Then choose a template, add a photo and type your Christmas wish.
5. Use ‘My AH assistant’ in the AH app
You use AI not only to put together a playlist, but also to make it easier to create a great Christmas dinner. Albert Heijn has ‘My AH assistant‘ added to the AH app and it can help you with practically everything.
You can find recipe ideas, which wine goes well with dinner and useful preparation tips. Your chat with ‘My AH assistant’ will not be saved and will not be forwarded to Albert Heijn. You can find the assistant here:
- Open the AH app and tap the ‘Cooking’ tab;
- Tap ‘Or ask My AH assistant’;
- Type your question and tap Done.
Do you end up with ingredients left over? Then you use the option ‘Scan & cook‘. This allows you to take a photo of individual ingredients or of your entire refrigerator. The app analyzes the photo, recognizes the ingredients and automatically comes up with recipe ideas. You’ll find ‘Scan & Cook’ a little further down on the ‘Cook’ tab.
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