How to Digitize Your Signature So You’re Ready for Online Document Signing

Over the last decade, and particularly during the last year of pandemic life, documents have become more likely to arrive in email or as downloads than on paper. If you need to return a signed document on paper, it’s easy to print and sign it before popping it in the mailbox. But what if you need to send it back via email or another online method? You could print, sign, scan, and return the scanned document, but that’s both tedious and wasteful.

Happily, Apple has made it easy to digitize your signature such that you can quickly apply it to digital documents without them ever hitting paper. It’s not difficult to set up, and once your signature is in the system, it remains available for repeated use. Even better, it syncs automatically to all your other Apple devices signed in to the same iCloud account, so it’s available wherever you need it. The process varies a little depending on which Apple devices you have available.

Create Your Signature on an iPad or iPhone

You can create a signature on an iPad or iPhone with your finger or a rubber-tipped stylus, but you’ll get the best results with an Apple Pencil on an iPad. Follow these steps:

1. Open any PDF in any app, such as this IRS Form 1040 in Safari.

2. Tap the share icon and tap Markup in the share sheet.

3. In the Markup toolbar, tap + and then Signature.

4. Tap Add or Remove Signature and then tap + to add a signature.

5. In the New Signature panel, sign your name. (You can rotate an iPhone to landscape orientation if that’s easier.)

6. If you don’t like your signature, tap Clear and try again.

7. When you have a good signature, tap Done.

8. Close the PDF—there’s no need to save it.

Create Your Signature on a Mac

On a Mac, you create signatures in Preview in one of several different ways. You’ll get the best results from using the camera to scan your signature on a piece of paper, with an iPad and Apple Pencil as the next best. The trackpad approach is the least successful.

1. Open any PDF in Preview, such as the aforementioned IRS Form 1040.

2. Choose Tools > Annotate > Signature > Manage Signatures. (You can also click the Signatures button on the Markup toolbar.)

3. Click Create Signature.

4. Click Trackpad, Camera, or iPhone or iPad to create your signature:
   

5. Trackpad: Click the Click Here to Begin button and sign your name with your finger or a rubber-tipped stylus—after you click, lift your finger or stylus and start writing your signature at the left side of the trackpad. Press any key on the keyboard when you’re done, or click Clear and try again if necessary. (Tip: press any key to start and clear too.)

6. Camera: Sign your name with a black pen on a white piece of paper. Hold it up to the camera, just above the blue line, for automatic recognition. If necessary, click Clear and try again. For best results, use a full-size piece of paper and a fairly thick pen, like a Sharpie.

7. iPhone or iPad: Click Select Device and pick an available iPhone or iPad. The entire screen of the device becomes a signing surface—you can use whichever orientation is easier. Sign your name using your finger, a rubber-tipped stylus, or for best results, an Apple Pencil on an iPad. Tap Clear if you need to try again.
   

1. When you’re finished, click Done.

2. Close the PDF.

Although most of us have only one signature, Apple lets you create and sync as many signatures as you like. That could be useful if you have to sign documents for your boss or a member of your family (with their permission, of course).

Once you’ve digitized your signature, you can add it to any PDF form that you receive, either using Markup from an iPhone or iPad share sheet, or in Preview or the Markup tools on a Mac.

(Featured image by energepic.com from Pexels)

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What Is This “App Tracking Transparency” Apple Added to iOS 14.5?

You’ve likely seen mention of the dispute between Apple and Facebook. It revolves around App Tracking Transparency (ATT), a technology Apple released in iOS 14.5.

The goal of ATT is to give iPhone and iPad users more control over the extent to which app makers can track their data and activities across apps and websites owned by other companies. Before App Tracking Transparency, nothing prevented companies from sucking a vast amount of data about your everyday activities and connecting it to other data to build an insanely detailed picture of who you are and what you do. Apple has written A Day in the Life of Your Data white paper and released the Tracked TV ad to give you a sense of how apps track you. We like to think of app tracking as a fleet of tiny drones constantly hovering over your head, recording your every waking moment for their corporate masters.

Facebook is particularly perturbed by the introduction of App Tracking Transparency because the company makes billions of dollars every year by gleaning as much as it can about you and then selling advertising access to you to companies that want to target people like you. For instance, Facebook knows if you’re a New York City lawyer and divorced mother of two who loves dogs, donates to the Sierra Club, and has Crohn’s disease. Although App Tracking Transparency won’t prevent Facebook from tracking your behavior across its own apps, at least it won’t be able to track you across other companies’ apps and websites.

Once you upgrade to the latest version of iOS and iPadOS, App Tracking Transparency requires that apps ask for permission to track you. However, depending on your current privacy settings, you may never see those requests. In Settings > Privacy > Tracking, if Allow Apps to Request to Track is turned off, you won’t receive any permission requests, and apps won’t be able to track you. Turn that setting on, and you’ll start getting alerts that ask for permission.

Put bluntly, there is absolutely no reason to allow any app to track you. Apple explicitly says that apps may not withhold features from those who opt out of tracking. So if you turn on the Allow Apps to Request to Track setting, tap Ask App Not to Track whenever you’re prompted. If you accidentally tap Allow, you can always go back to Settings > Privacy > Tracking and turn off the switch to rescind permission.

You might want to enable Allow Apps to Request to Track to see which apps were likely violating your privacy before and are still willing to do so even after App Tracking Transparency has exposed their sleazy business practices. Frankly, we’d encourage you to think about whether you want to use apps from such companies—perhaps the best reason to allow the requests is to identify privacy-abusing apps that you’ll then delete.

Early statistics from analytics company Flurry suggest that 94%–96% of users in the United States have opted out of app tracking, either by tapping Ask App Not to Track or by disabling the Allow Apps to Request to Track. We’re surprised the number is so low.

(Featured image by Glen Carrie on Unsplash)

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Looking for More iOS 14 Widgets? Be Sure to Launch Seldom-Used Apps

Home screen widgets are one of the coolest features of iOS 14. They enable apps to offer quick access to features or at-a-glance previews of changing information, such as the Weather app’s widget providing a quick look at upcoming weather. What you may not realize, however, is that an app’s widgets become available for adding to your Home screen only if you have launched the app since upgrading to iOS 14. (To see the list, press and hold on an empty part of the Home screen and then tap the + button in a top corner.) For instance, if you haven’t traveled since the pandemic started, you might not realize that the Kayak app has a handy price alert widget. Just launch the app once, and you’ll see its widgets the next time you look through the complete widget list.

(Featured image by Omid Armin on Unsplash)