Will upgrading to Yosemite break my computer? Your tech questions answered

Q I have an iPhone 5, and want to update to iOS 8, but it tells me that I don’t have enough space. I don’t really want to have to delete everything on my phone, so do I have any other options? asks Brian

A When Apple released the update to iOS 8, it left many people seemingly unable to update due to the 4-6Gb of free space requirement for over-the-air updates. For people with 8Gb or even 16Gb devices, the update would not be possible without deleting many files and applications.

Luckily, it is possible to update your device without requiring so much free space – by using iTunes on your Mac or PC. To update, first update to the latest version of iTunes, then plug your device into the computer using a USB cable and select “Check for software updates”.

Q I would like to get the photos from my phone on to my laptop so I can email them to somebody. How do I do that? asks Robert

A Getting photos from a phone to a laptop, depending on the type of phone and laptop, can range from being incredibly easy to incredibly annoying. I’ve found a range of solutions that work well depending on the platforms.

If you use an iPhone and a Mac, then Photo Stream works really well: just open iPhoto on your Mac and it will probably have the photos you want already sync’d for you. If not, plug in your iPhone and it will ask to sync over USB. If you’re trying to sync from Android, photos can sync via Google+, with the advantage that photos smaller than 2048x2048 pixels in size do not count against your data storage. Otherwise the best option is Dropbox, at £7.99 a month for 1Tb of storage, with support for most platforms, you can easily upload your photos and access them from anywhere – you can also share the link to a Dropbox copy of the file, to prevent having to send the image alongside the email and without dealing with maximum email sizes.

Q When people try to call my iPhone it takes a few attempts before my phone actually rings. Why is this and how do I fix it? asks James

A Apple introduced a feature in iOS 6 called “Do not disturb” that means people to have to dial your number three times before it will notify you of the call – which is great if you’re sleeping or avoiding non-important calls, but annoying at other times. Fortunately it’s off by default, but when iOS 7 added control centre it became easier to accidentally enable “Do not disturb” by accidentally swiping up from the bottom and touching the crescent moon-shaped icon.

You can disable the feature in the same way as enabling it: swipe up from the bottom of the screen and tap the crescent moon icon on the panel that displays.

Control Centre also offers quick music control, access to the calculator, camera, compass, and a flashlight mode.

Q I recently switched to Android, but still use my iPad and I’m looking for a way to sync podcasts between them. What should I use? asks Jennifer

A There are lots of podcast clients that can sync across Android and iOS using their own web sync services and all do things in their own ways. My favourite cross-platform podcasting app is Pocket Casts, offering a nice design on both iOS and Android. It was among the first to integrate things like Android Wear, showing that they care about staying up to date as new things are released. It automatically downloads new episodes, syncs play position, settings, and is very fast.

Q I want to update my computer to Yosemite, but I don’t want to lose all my files or make my apps not work. Will it break everything? asks Rodolpho

A Yosemite is the newest version of the Apple OS X operating system for desktops and laptops. Upgrading shouldn’t break anything if you’re already running a recent version of OS X, with most developers keeping their apps up to date, and the Mac App Store providing automatic updates to you. However, it’s always worth ensuring you have a backup of all your files to either a service like Backblaze/Crashplan, and an external hard drive or network drive. You can use Time Machine on the Mac, or Windows Backup Wizard on Windows. Both will automatically back up your computer on a regular basis and offer restores if a hard drive fails. If you don’t have a backup yet, the first one might take some time, but it’s worth it. When you’ve backed up, you can update without worrying – if anything goes wrong, you can restore your files and not lose anything. If you rely on any software, there’s a couple of great tools for checking compatibility before you update, I tend to rely on roaringapps.com (crowd sourced app compatibility charts)