Continuity Feature on iOS 8 & Mac – Connecting Devices Explained

Apple announced the iOS 8 operating system for the handheld devices, i.e. the iPhone, iPad and the iPod Touch. Along with that, there was the announcement of the Mac OS X Yosemite, the new version of the Mac OS X. What came as one of the best announcements in the list of features was the Continuity feature. The syncing between devices in a few apps was already seen, but Continuity takes it to the next level, such that you won’t feel any difference while shifting from one device to the other during work. Let’s see what all does this help in.

Check out: The best iOS 8 features.

Answering or making a call

Not always when your iPhone rings, you would be around it. The phone could be in another room, or might be charging, or in the backpack. There’s a lot of situations, but you cannot avoid the call due to that reason. While you are sitting beside an iPad or in front of your Mac, you can now receive or make phone calls directly from those devices as long as the iPhone is running the iOS 8, latest OS version.

Even in that, you could choose to either respond to the call, ignore or send a quick message to reject the call. Click on the notification and do whatever you want to. The same Mac or iPad can be used to make a call too. The best part is, there is nothing to set up and even without a SIM card, you can simple make calls if you have the iPhone in sync with the device.

Sending text messages from any of your devices

This is helpful especially for messaging those contacts who don’t use an iPhone. Whatever device they send the message from, you can simply respond to them from even your iPad or Mac, and in the similar way, you can start a conversation by clicking on a phone number in either Safari, Contacts or Calendar app.

Instant Hotspot for connecting

Although the Continuity feature would be using the Wi-Fi network that all your devices are connected to, but if you are in an area where the Wi-Fi network isn’t there, you can use the new Instant Hotspot feature which would show the device in the list of Wi-Fi networks in the Mac, an then after connecting to it, the phone functions could be done on the Mac. To save battery, the Instant Hotspot turns off automatically when the Mac or iPad isn’t using the phone’s hotspot network.

Continue using on other device from where you left on one

The syncing is live, where you can start writing an email or a document, and leave it there. Next, switch to the Mac screen and you can continue writing it from there. This is excellent, especially for those who wanted to write long mails with attachments from the iPhone. Same is the case with the Safari browser where the web page you are browsing would show on the Mac. The other apps such as Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Maps, Messages, Reminders, Calendar and Contacts.

This is still something new from a user’s point of view and there could be quite a lot of restrictions on this, but we are sure the calling and messaging would happen flawlessly and this should be one of the very exciting features for the users, who are upgrading their iPhone to the latest iOS 8 operating system.