Merilee’s Tips & Tricks for Reporters: iPad Settings for Realtime

Merilee-Johnson, RMR, CRR, CCP, CBC, RSA - Veritext. Merilee's Tips & Tricks

Merilee’s Tips & Tricks for Reporters: iPad Settings for Realtime

By Merilee S. Johnson, RDR, CRR, CBC, CCP, RSA

In this installment of Merilee’s Tips & Tricks for Reporters, we’ll discuss finding the right iPad settings for realtime. Just as they have become central to reporters’ ability to provide realtime, they’ve become just as ubiquitous around the house and in our personal lives. Whether used as a digital babysitter, a message hub, or a mobile gaming and entertainment center, our lives can get intertwined with these devices.

iPads are impressive in their functions, but they are unable to distinguish when you’re kicking back on a Saturday versus when you’re in a room full of attorneys, all staring at your realtime feed.

If you’d like to keep your Candy Crush notifications to yourself and your incoming messages private, the following checklist will be helpful in keeping your feeds to counsel focused and professional.

iPAD CHECKLIST

Work your way down this Settings list and your iPad will be realtime ready!

Wifi
- Keep Wifi on (you’ll need this to connect to your realtime)
- Turn off “Ask to Join Networks”
Bluetooth
- Set this to “Off”
Control Center
(Not required, but is a helpful tool to make quick adjustments)
- Access on Lock Screen in “On” position
- Access within Apps in “On” position
General
There are a host of settings in here to adjust or tailor your personal preferences, but the main features that can provide ease of access to the attorneys during realtime are:
- Set Auto-Lock to “Never”
- Turn Lock/Unlock to “Off”
Messages
- Turn to “Off”
Battery Tip
- To preserve battery life, turn off “Background App Refresh” in each of your apps

Passcode
- Set to “Turn Passcode Off.” This allows attorneys quick access back into the iPad in case they touch something that locks the screen
Sounds
- Set all sounds (i.e. ring tone, text tone, new mail, etc.) to “None”
Do Not Disturb
You can manually set your iPad to “Do Not Disturb,” or you can set a schedule to do this automatically within a certain time period.
- Set Allow Calls to “No One”
- Turn Repeated Calls to “Off”
- Set Silence to “Always”
Display & Brightness
Depending on your color settings, you can edit the screen brightness feature to low to preserve batery life
- Turn Auto-Brightness to “Off”
FaceTime
- Turn “Off”