How to Prevent Vocal Nodules

How to prevent vocal nodules? What are vocal nodules and how do you get them? These are all the questions I will be answering in this video. So, stick around. Hi! I am Katarina, speech language pathologist from How 2 Improve Singing and here on this channel, I share practical tips about using your voice in a healthy way. So, if this is a topic that interests you, consider subscribing to this channel and hitting that bell notification icon so that you don’t miss any of my videos.

So, first of all. If we want to learn how to prevent vocal nodules, we need to know what they are and how you get them in the first place. Other names for vocal nodules are nodes, calluses or singer’s nodes. The reason why vocal nodules grow in the middle of vocal folds is because that is the place of the biggest impact when they come together. When we talk or sing, the vocal folds vibrate at a very high frequency. They come together and touch each other 100s and even 1000s of times per second when we produce voiced sounds.

How to Prevent Vocal Nodules

And every time they touch, cells from the surface are damaged and lost. If you do this over a long period of time, first the vocal folds will get swollen and overtime with more vocal misuse, a small masses or growth of tissue start appearing on the vocal folds in the place of the biggest impact. As a result of these bumps, the vocal folds cannot come together completely when speaking or singing. The vocal fold closure will be often times incomplete and therefore, there will be air escaping between the vocal folds and therefore the voice may sound breathy. People who have vocal nodules may feel that speaking or singing is effortful and their vocal endurance may be limited. Also, the voice will sound hoarse, rough or raspy because the nodules interfere with normal vibration of the vocal folds.

So, there will be always some degree of hoarseness present. The voice also may sound low or husky because the mass of the vocal folds is increased. Singers with vocal nodules usually loose the ability to sing high notes quietly or in general, loose some of their vocal range they’ve had before. How do you know if you have vocal nodules? When you sound hoarse, it does not mean that you have vocal nodules. You won’t know unless you visit a specialist who will use a visual examination to see your vocal folds. This can be a simple indirect laryngoscopy or videostroboscopy. I talked about these methods in my previous video.

So, how do you get vocal nodules? Well, vocal nodules are typically associated with vocal misuse, abuse or overuse. People who are mostly affected by vocal nodules are women, and especially women who like to talk a lot or women who are voice professionals with high demands on voice use, like singers, fitness instructors, teachers, and especially music teachers. I want to stress that vocal nodules do not appear after one night of singing or loud cheering. Vocal nodules are a result of long-lasting vocal behaviours with high impact on the vocal folds. Examples of such behaviours are excessive or loud talking, excessive coughing or throat clearing, talking in loud environments, using incorrect vocal technique, straining while singing and other behaviours. So, now that we know how vocal nodules develop, we can also determine how to avoid them. Here are 5 tips on how to avoid vocal nodules:

#1 Eliminate abusive vocal behaviours! Abusive vocal behaviours are behaviours with high impact on vocal folds. Obvious examples are yelling and screaming for prolonged periods of time. But also, behaviours which are less obvious, such as coughing and throat clearing, or talking in noisy environments or singing without proper amplification if you are not properly trained in this technique. Once you identify such behaviours, avoid them all together. I prepared a checklist of such abusive behaviours to help you identify them and eliminate them so that you can avoid any vocal issues.

 Click this link or a link below the video to download the checklist.

#2 Learn proper vocal technique when speaking and singing. How do you know if you are using good vocal technique? Some signs of poor vocal technique are a feeling of tickling, itching, coughing, pain, discomfort or tension during or after speaking. The same applies to singing. I am sure you have experienced it before. You try to sing something new or in a slightly different way than before, or you add more breath pressure or a little grunt to your singing, and you end up with a scratchy feeling in your throat or the need to stop and cough or clear your throat.

This is your voice telling you that it did not like the way you produced that sound. If you keep doing it over and over again without paying attention to these signs, you can end up with vocal nodules in the long run. So, be in tune with your body and voice and notice these signs. Singing should never hurt or be painful and you should never end up with a hoarse voice during or after using your voice. If you are trying a new technique, make sure that you understand what you need to do to avoid straining or pushing. If you have hoarseness that lasts more than 2 weeks, visit a voice specialist to have your voice evaluated. It is always easier to treat a voice problem when you catch it early. #3 Steam your voice!

Benefits of steaming your voice are now well recognized. Steaming as a hydration method for voice professionals is becoming more and more popular. I made a video, in which I compared a personal vocal steamer and nebulizer. If you haven’t seen that video, you can watch it later. In any case, steaming the old-fashioned way over a pot of boiling water, in a steam room, hot shower or with a personal steamer is the fastest way to bring moisture to your vocal instrument. If you are a professional voice user, you should definitely steam your voice on a regular basis. It’s very relaxing! Try it and you will love it.

#4 Keep that voice hydrated! I know this piece of advice gets old. Everyone says: hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. But I also know that research shows that most people (in some studies it’s as much as 75% of US population) are not well hydrated. So, I will keep saying it: keep a bottle of water handy and sip it throughout the day, add fruits and vegetables with high water content into your diet or add some soups to your meals. The bottom line is that dehydrated vocal folds are more susceptible to vocal injuries. So, if you keep them hydrated, they will be able to self-repair and defend themselves. #5 Don’t forget to rest your voice!

Schedule periods of vocal rest during days with high demand vocal use. If you know that you will be using your voice all day long, find periods of time, during which you will rest your voice. For example, if you know that you have a full day of vocal lessons during the day and an evening performance, don’t talk on the phone during your breaks, or don’t talk in the car on the way to the theater, or be more of a listener at the afterparty. Make that commitment to preserve your voice whenever possible to give it a chance to restore. Ok. And that’s all for today. In the comments below, let me know which tip you are going to apply right away. And check out my other videos right here below. I will see you in the next one.

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Top 10 Things to Do to Keep You Stay Calm and Relax Faster

Now since this is Health Channel, I would like to give it to you the top 10 things to do To help you calm down and relax faster The moment the stress is there and you were arguing before and fighting What do you need to do? So these are the top 10 things to do to come down?

Faster and you relax. Let's go and do it first thing that you should do is to first is number one is DBE or the deep breathing exercises now how can you do that that, deep breathing exercises like you have to calm down your breathing like you have to put it on your nose and Breathe out on your mouth So it means like the air passed through on your nose and then goes into the lungs and then breathe out through your mouth.

Top 10 Things to Do to Keep You Stay Calm and Relax Faster

You have to prolong Prolong it in order to trap the air inside and help the lungs relaxes as well So because the stress would increase respiration so therefore by doing this exercise would help to decrease your respiratory rate or your respiration and it relaxes your Muscles of the lungs so therefore it is helpful. So you could do it like 10 to 20 times So therefore you could feel relaxed do it at the same time repeat and repeat the process.

You could do it like you can do it like that and repeat the process now the second is we have to Relax the muscle now Because tension is there like you wanted to explode so what you're gonna do because it hurts your back It hurts your neck. It hurts your head and everywhere on your body So what you're gonna do is to relax your muscle, you could use a stress ball Press ball. It could release the tension of your Muscle and aside from that using the stress ball is you could lay down Like a straight line and extend the knees and head and then just think of no body else think Positively and just close your eyes and meditate so that could help you

Release the tension of your body think of good memories when you were young when you were happy like like thinking of ways many things or ways and how to Good memories when you were young with your family loved ones It will block The stress and the tension so therefore it will relax your body then the third is Distraction technique Now this traction technique is to divert the tension. Of course, you don't need to focus on the stress itself because if you keep thinking of the of the people keep thinking of the things that happens They will stay there so therefore you have to distract yourself divert attention like keep your hands busy like flap or you could also post a pen or you could also make a flick of your hands or Things that make your hands busy you could write down So those are the things that you could do mental conditioning Now mental conditioning is like a lot of thoughts of thinking of the stress

You have do not make advance thinking when Like you were fighting some people what they do is to hurt someone else they grab nice They grab things that could hurt the people that is totally wrong you could displace things but not into the person you could get a Bottle and throw it to the floor. That's fine. But we have to be careful of not hurting other people You could use Mantra mantra is like a repeat. It's down the words.

You could say you can do it You need to calm down. You need to relax calm down relax repeat and repeat itself And that is an example of mental conditioning or the use of mantra So therefore you are trying to block the thoughts of doing evil things So don't do that okay, so that is called mental conditioning the fifth is Challenge your thoughts when stress is there sometimes we cannot avoid to advance thinking like what if what if like that what if like this so Like it don't do don't think about it and make it worse. Stop look and listen Sit down calm down relax and think of what will have If you do this you do that so stop it. So just relax first and then think of Positive way think of good memories.

So that's the first thing you do and feel your stress lower So that's the best thing to do Rest your mind. So make yourself more words. So rest for a moment and feel you could think better Okay, that's the fifth one the sixth one is To not argue so argue with people because the moment that you keep Fighting and talking it may get worse. So if you keep yourself humble and Stay positive and let those people talk to you like that and make it them words Just stay relaxed and let them have the stress. Don't talk to them don't bother so that would help you be a better person and you stay positive to smile and Share a positive way, then it will not be It will not affect you at all Okay, then number seven is control your emotions emotions.

I know emotions is Never static it changes from time to sometimes people they have abrupt emotions that could fire Control emotion know when to stop and know when to let go so Sometimes people what they do is they cry, that's okay. That's fine. And sometimes they could displace emotion true Loud Shouting that's okay when you were on the room But with outside you could be spare batteries for stuff. That doesn't good. So therefore all We can do is you could cry even let go to lessen the burden of your emotions to ease stress time you could cry to a room or you could be able to Make us because if you keep your emotion to yourself

That's not good as well because you try to hurt yourself more So let go of that if you is really and then you could also verbalize that to other people in that place Helpful there then the number eight listen to the music music is powerful because it's stimulus or it's a stimulus or It's a stimulus to our brain You know, praise they're very powerful that it control everything So anything that we put on our brain, of course, it will be processed and since come Coming music or sound which? Will stimulate our brain so therefore it could help to lower your hyper

Activity of your brain so we would be helpful choose the music that is your favorite when you were young in love so that would help you to relax number nine is Benign is talk to someone else verbalize your feelings your emotions talk someone call your friend and talk about it and get an advice that is really helpful because Don't keep it the earth to yourself it will Destroy yourself rather than if you tell it to someone and they will give it a listen Then that would be very helpful the burden that you keeping into your insides will be relieved The last is pain positive Humility and as well as people who are always smiling and thinking of things that is beyond their

Capabilities and always thinking that there's hope and you could do a lot of things for that You'd be a better person so I Know it's hard. But sometimes you have to do it. So doing things that would help you and Think of your strengths that you could overcome these obstacles Then you'll be a good person Tempe to do to help you calm down and relax bastard.

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Women's Health Tips For Heart, Mind,And Body

The journey towards a healthy life isn't straightforward however, if you follow these steps it'll assist you plenty. The correct diet, exercise and stress-relief set up all play a giant role in a very healthy lifestyle.

Follow a wholesome diet
Eat additional fruits and veggies Choose whole grains.
Attempt rice rather than white.
Switch to wholemeal alimentary paste.
Choose lean proteins like poultry, fish, beans, and legumes.
Cut down on processed foods, sugar, salt, and saturated fat.

Exercise each day

The additional active you're the higher you're leading towards a healthy lifestyle. Exercise boosts your heart, builds muscle, and bone strength, and wards of health issues. Aim for two and a [*fr1] hours of moderate activity, like brisk walking or salvation, every week. Do running and a few time strengths coaches too.

If you're busy, attempt short bursts of activity throughout the day. Walk often. an honest target is ten steps every day. Take the steps. Park your automotive far-off from your destination.

Lose Weight

When you shed pounds you'll lower your risk of cardiovascular disease, kind a pair of polymeric disease, and cancer. Aim for a slow, steady drop. try to lose 1-2 pounds every week by being active and consumption higher. Attempt approx three hundred minutes of exercise every week to change state. Eating a healthy diet can go a protracted means. Begin by cutting sugar, that she says is usually concealing in plain sight and acquired things like sauce, packaged bread, and nuts. try to avoid soda and sugar-laced occasional drinks.

Cut Down Your Stress

It will take a toll on your health. You most likely cannot avoid it altogether, however, you'll be able to realize ways that to ease the impact. Do not withstand an excessive amount of. try to set limits with yourself et al.

To relieve stresst,try:
Deep respiration
Meditation
Yoga
Massage
Exercise
Healthy consumption

Talking to a lover, friend or skilled counselor.

Create Healthy Habits

If you create the correct decisions nowadays, you'll be able to chase away issues tomorrow. Brush your teeth double every day and floss each day. Don't smoke. Limit your alcohol. Keep it to 1 drink every day. If you've got medication, take it specifically however your doctor prescribed it. Improve your sleep. Aim for eight hours. If you've got hassle obtaining shut-eye, ask your doctor. Use sunblock and keep out of the sun from ten a.m to 3 p.m.

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Plastic Pollution In The World and How to Stop It

Today, plastic remains a big problem all over the world. Plastic is everywhere, Any item, whether it is a food product like milk, vegetables or anything, it is not possible to carry it without a plastic package or bag. We all know that plastic is harmful, but it is a compulsion there is no alternative to plastic. In today's time, the demand of the whole world is to reduce the dependence of plastic. Plastic is a material that takes many thousands of years to finish.

Effects of Plastic Pollution

Every time one of these plastic item gets thrown away, there is more chance to harm our environment. Plastic is low cost, it is easily available and overused it. And it is not easily decomposed, it pollutes land, air, and water.

Burning plastic is most toxic and can lead to harm to the environment and severe illness. In a landfill with plastic, it will never stop releasing toxins in the area. At the point, when plastic is dumped in landfills, it associates with water and structures perilous synthetics, when these synthetic substances leak underground, they decrease the land or water quality. Water is in great danger because of plastics waste. Groundwater and reservoirs are susceptible to release environmental toxins.

Nowadays our river also polluted with plastic waste. Plastic affecting the world’s oceans. It has harmful consequences on many marine species which can lead to consequences for those that eat fish, and marine life for nutrients –including humans. It is a great danger.

Replace, Recycle Or Reduce Plastic

bags still found today easily but can be efficiently replaced by reusable bags. When we shop in the market Just think about how many bags typically carry out from a grocery store That’s a lot of plastic! Always reuse plastic bags as much as possible or use cloth, jute bags. Every person drinks lots of water each day from the water bottle, which is a great way to stay hydrated throughout the day.

Most companies sell reusable water bottles as a substitute, reducing plastic waste. Many coffee shops there be paper cup widely used it is likely with plastic for insulation. (when pouring coffee in the paper cup there is no leakage). Metal glass and clay glass can replace paper cups. There is too much use of plastic sheets for packaging of a food product or many items. Maximum companies are starting their product packaging with excellent low-cost replacements, like bamboo utensils in place of plastic. It a great solution to replace the plastic. Nowadays decomposed plastic bags are available in the market. These plastic bags decompose in three months which is incredible and save our environment.

Plastic Free our coast area and if possible don’t throw plastic waste in the ocean or coast area. Select all non-plastic reused and recyclable bundling, appropriately handle things that can't be reused. Securely check everything before you put it in the trash, Remember plastic doesn't separate effectively (if at any time), reusing plastic implies that it is as yet plastic, simply being utilized for an alternate reason. Along these lines, you're not really decreasing plastic sums or introduction, even in the reusing procedure.

Conclusion

So much effort is needed to free our Earth from plastic so that all living organisms on the earth are protected from plastic pollution. So all of us should consider how to reduce the dependence of plastic in our daily life. Say to no plastic, plastic-free earth.

Save earth, save environment from plastic. Stop using single use plastic.

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How to Stand Out in a Crowded Marketplace

Do you aspire to be known for something? Are you concerned there's no room for you and for your message? Let's talk. (heavy whooshing) Shout out to Brad Poyer for asking me this question on Instagram. (soft new age music) Let's take the most crowded industry in the entire world, can you guess what it is? It's the food industry. Every single human that I'm aware of on the planet needs to eat. (laughing) - [Director] (laughing)

How to Stand Out in a Crowded Marketplace

That you're aware of? - And the reality is, there's a lot that can be said about food, and some people might say, well, there's no way that I could ever create any food related content that hasn't already been done. Well let's explore whether that's true or not. First let's take a look at Love and Lemons. It's literally a blog about using lemons with food, and that's all they talk about is lemons, lemons, lemons. How about this YouTube channel Cooking With Dog. - [Dog Voiceover] Hi, I'm Francis, the host of this show Cooking with Dog. -

Literally it's about a woman who cooks with her dog. Yeah, there's a whole YouTube channel, and she's crushing it. Or how about A Taste of the Past, which is a podcast dedicated to flavors and foods from the past. A lemon, a dog, the past, those are all angles on food that somebody got creative with. There are absolutely endless options for you no matter what industry you're in. Let me share a story with you. (upbeat new age music) I started Social Media Examiner more than 10 years ago, and there were hundreds and hundreds of blogs talking about social media. How did I decide to differentiate? First, I designed a cartoon character.

People said, a cartoon character? Who's gonna listen to a cartoon character? I said, that's not the point. The point is that I've created a cartoon character that no one will ever forget. And whenever they come to our site, they'll remember Scout. I also noticed that everybody was talking about their opinion, I don't like Facebook for this, the Twitter way all this, everybody was complaining, complaining, complaining, but you wanna know what no one was doing? Sharing "how to" tips. So I decided to differentiate my brand by just talking about the "how to". (mechanical clicking) (heavy whooshing) What's unique about you in your industry?

What can you do to stand out? Here's a couple questions that I want you to ask other people, here we go. Number one, imagine you had an Internet Movie Database profile page on you, and there's that one section that says you're most known for, (blank). What's the name of that movie, metaphorically? For me, Michael Stelzner, most known for Social Media Marketing Analyst. What are you most known for? Ask your friends and customers to answer that question. The second question to ask your friends and customers is what makes me different?

Why? The last question, what would you most like me to talk about? And then tell me more. The next step is to decide what type of delivery platform you're gonna use. Are you a performer? Are you a writer? Are you a talker? You know your skills best, start with the path that's easiest for you, and sometimes, if you're not sure, maybe just pick up Instagram, and start using Instagram Stories; why? Because when you record that little 15 second video it's gonna be gone after 24 hours, and you won't have to worry about what people think about it.

That might be your good on-ramp to testing your message to see whether or not it resonates with people before you dive fully into video, podcasting, or the written word. Remember that you are unique, and you have everything you need already to be successful, because there's absolutely no one else in the world like you.

There's no one else who has walked the path that you've walked, had the experiences that you have, and has thought the things that you've thought. And if you really wanna stand out, don't try to be someone else. Instead, be you. Despite there being billions of people on this planet, there's no one anywhere like you. So get out there and start sharing your message with the world. In the next video, I'm gonna talk about how stopping is the key to starting.

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7 Proven Hangover Cures and How to Help

Hello, I'm Emma Hammett from First Aid for Life and onlinefirstaid.com. Today, I want to talk about alcohol, and alcohol poisoning and hangovers, as well. It's really important that we're all sensible with our alcohol and how we approach it, and try not to overdo it because there is so much evidence that says it's not good for us. However, sometimes it all goes a bit wrong, and we can end up feeling rotten the following day.

7 Proven Hangover Cures and How to Help

So here are my seven proven top tips and hangover cures that might make things a little bit easier. So, number one, is a really simple one, limit your alcohol intake. How much or how severe your hangover is or the concentration of alcohol there is in your blood is dependent on all sorts of things. So, your fat to muscle ratio. So, fat absorbs more alcohol than muscle. And your body weight, as well. Your gender, men can drink more than women, generally. When you last ate. The type of alcohol you're drinking and the time you spend drinking it. So they will all affect how drunk you feel and how rotten you feel the following day.

Number two, drink water, keep hydrated. An awful lot of the hangover feelings and effects you have is due to dehydration. Alcohol is a diuretic, it will actually make you pee more. So, we all know that, if you are sitting there drinking, that you will visit the loo far more often. What that will do is be taking, as well as the alcohol, all your water out with you, and you can end up quite severely dehydrated. So match drinking water with drinking alcohol as you go. And start with having preloaded with a bit of water in your system, as well. If you have really overdone it and you are being sick, you will lose even more water. So you are likely to get even more dehydrated, so you will need to replace that fluid.

Three, line your stomach before you go out. It's not a myth, it does make a difference. So, if you have eaten and you have proper food in your stomach before you go out and drink, or if you're drinking with a meal, then you will find that you will get less drunk, and you will feel less rotten the following day. How much sleep you've had also affects your propensity to be able to tolerate alcohol and how rotten you'll feel the next day, as well. So, if you have got sleep deprived, you are likely to have a worse hangover. So, if you could build up your sleep bank before a really heavy night, you are likely to survive it and enjoy it more.

Pres, think very carefully about how you drink and when you drink. I know both my children are quite fond, they're at uni, they're quite fond of going round and having pres, which is basically preloading cheap alcohol from the supermarket before you go to a club, so that you don't have to buy drinks at the club because they'll be more expensive. So you get that drunk feeling before you go out. It's not good for you, and it can lead to people being incredibly drunk. I mean, 337,870 people were admitted to hospital from alcohol, overdoing it on the alcohol, last year, and 5,843 of those died. So, alcohol is serious and overdoing alcohol can have serious repercussions.

I'm going to go into a little bit later what you do for alcohol poisoning, and how to help if you find someone that's unconscious. We run first-aid courses for young people and teenagers, in particular, where we teach them how to help each other if somebody has overdone it at a party. It's not just a young person problem, but it's often young people that don't know how to help each other, and they don't know how to put them properly in the recovery position and why that's important. So, think about how you drink it.

Now this is the interesting one, think about what you drink. Have you heard of congeners? Well congeners are byproducts of the process of breaking down the alcohol, or making the alcohol rather than break it down. So, when you formulate alcohol or you make it, you end up with these byproducts called congeners. One of them is methanol. And they are more prolifically found or readily found in darker alcohols, so like brandy, bourbon, red wine, and that's why, they think, that you end up quite often with a heavier hangover if you've been drinking those sort of drinks. They are not as heavy in gin and rum and in lighter beers, and vodka has hardly any of them.

Now, what happens is that they break down, so methanol, in particular, breaks down into formaldehyde and formic acid. And it's thought that those two byproducts, in particular, actually worsen and prolong a hangover because they make it harder for you to metabolise and break down the alcohol in your system. So the alcohol stays around for longer and can make you feel worse. Now the last one is interesting. It's interesting, it's not something I recommend, but it's saying that actually there might be some truth in that hair of the dog, having a second drink the following day.

From a scientific perspective, if you have these congener byproducts in your system, actually taking an additional drink the following day, they think, may mean that, instead of the methanol breaking down into formaldehyde and formic acid, that actually it inhibits that process, and you then excrete methanol straight through your system, which may mean that your hangover lasts less long. Now, drinking the following day is never recommended because it can lead to very unhealthy relationships with alcohol. So, it's not something I'm recommending, but it is saying that actually there might be some science behind it. So maybe, in time, they will find something that replaces taking another drink but does the same effect.

Now last thing I want to cover very quickly is if you're with someone who has collapsed from drinking too much. So, we've all been there where we've seen people who are absolutely off their head. They have drunk far too much and, if they've been combining it with other substances, well it's really serious. Now one of the most serious elements is dehydration. So, if they are still with it, they should be encouraged to drink some water. So they should be encouraged to rehydrate. If, however, they're out and they're out for the count, and they're really in such a bad state that they're unable to look after their own airway, it's really important you put them in the recovery position. If they are outside, you need to make sure they're warm enough.

Alcohol inhibits your ability to be able to keep yourself warm. So people that have been drinking are far more likely to develop hypothermia. So really important you keep them warm, you put them in the recovery position. You're putting them over enough so that the contents of their stomach will drain out, their tongue will flop forward, and their airway will remain open. If they are being sick, you need to stay with them and make sure that their airway remains open, and that they don't asphyxiate on their vomit.

People do die from drinking too much, and it's really important that somebody is with them and there to help them. I hope that's been helpful. Please come and join one of my first-aid courses, as well. And, if you are a parent of a young person, please send them on our first-aid courses, too. Our next one's in January, and we will make sure that they have the skills to keep each other safe.

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How to Use NFC Tags with Your iPhone

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. In this episode let me show you how you can use your iPhone with these NFC tags. There you can read more about it, join us and get exclusive content. So what's an NFC tag? Well they're these little stickers or they could be little cards or just about anything and it has a bit of electronics in it. NFC stands for Near Field Communication and it's technology that allows to use your iPhone with Apple Pay and other systems. But these little tags are the simplest form of this use.

How to Use NFC Tags with Your iPhone

You can actually use the Shortcuts app to react to when you bring your iPhone near one of these tags. There are also ways to put data on these tags so your iPhone or somebody else's iPhone automatically reacts to them. This is a strip of NFC tags I got on Amazon. I think they cost like $6 for ten. You can get them even cheaper if you buy more. There are tons of them. Just search for NFC tags. If you actually hold a flashlight up to the tag they become a little transparent and you can see the actual circuitry inside.

To use them all you need to do is bring it near your phone. This can be a sticker on the wall and you touch your phone to it. The very top part here. They only work within an inch and a half of the tag. Thus the end, the near, in Near Field Communication. So one way to use a NFC tag with your iPhone is to create a personal automation in the Shortcuts app. You can have that automatically run when you bring a tag next to your iPhone or your iPhone touching the tag. So let's go into the Shortcuts app and switch to Automations.

We can create a personal automation. Then is you go towards the bottom you'll see NFC is one of the options. We'll select that. Now the first thing we need to do is scan a tag. So I'm going to tap the Scan button there and it's going to say Ready to Scan. Now I'm going to bring this tag right up against the top of my iPhone here and once it recognizes it, it pops up a little Name This Tag. So I'm just going to do a Test Tag name and hit Okay. Then I hit the next button there at the top and now I can add Actions. So let's go and add a simple thing that just starts a Timer. So I'll go into the Clock app here and look at the actions for Clock.

I can say Start a Timer. Let's say 10 seconds just as a demonstration. But this could be something for 30 minutes. Say a tag you want to tap your iPhone to then take a nap or remind yourself in 30 minutes it's time for dinner. Something like that. So this could be my 30 minute timer tag that I can tap. Just keep it simple like that. I'll do Next and you can see it's setup for when Test Tag is detected. Do, Start Timer. Now I can turn on Ask Before Running. So let's make this an automatic automation here. I'll turn this off and now it should work automatically. In order for this to be active I have to hit Done to finish.

Now I can return to my Home screen and let's give it a try. In my test if the phone is asleep it doesn't work. It has to be woken up so you have to have some movement because the screen has to be on. But it doesn't need to be unlocked. It will work whether it's locked or unlocked. Let's test it out here. I'm going to touch the tag to the phone and you can see it gives me a notification there that something is running. So now it should be just 10 seconds before the alarm goes off.

There you can see the Timer went off and I have the Stop button and I can hear a sound as well. I can return to Shortcuts here and I can go into the Automation and change what it does without changing the tag. So I can go in here and I can add more things. I can make it do something different. I can have it get a playlist, for instance, and play it. I can have it send messages. I can do anything I could do in the Shortcuts app. I can have triggered here. I can also simply add Run Shortcuts. So I can have an existing Shortcut and have this Shortcut here simply run the existing Shortcut. So the existing one could also be linked to say a Siri command or a Home screen button and now I add this personal automation that will run it when I touch the tag.

Now one of the big advantages here is that these can run automatically. If you've been playing around with personal automations one of the disappointments is you can't set one triggered by a location or by a time to run automatically. They will ask you for permission. You still have to take that extra step to actually have it run. But with these tags it runs automatically because you're already taking an action by touching your phone to the tag. So you can do things like having one by the front door and you touch your iPhone to it and it turns off or on the lights in your house. You can have one in your car that when you touch it it starts playing your playlist. You can have one by your office door that when you leave it will text somebody that you're on your way. Now a second way to use NFC tags is to store data on the tag.

When you do that in a certain way it can trigger a phone to take a certain action. It doesn't have to be something that you programmed into your phone before. So it's your phone or anybody else's phone. For instance you could store a webpage URL on a NFC tag. If somebody touches their phone to it, if they have NFC on their phone, it will then prompt them whether or not they want to open up that page. There are other things you can do as well. You need to grab an app to do this. If you can search for NFC in the App Store you're going to come up with a ton of stuff. I grabbed this one because it's mostly free but I didn't really compare it against others so I don't know if it's the best. But it will work for the purposes of my demonstration.

So when I go into this tool here I can do a bunch of different things. I can Read a tag. I can Write to a tag. Let me write to a tag. Here I have to add record. So I can add various bits of data to the tag. Now tags have different amounts of memory. So if you're going to put a lot of stuff on a tag you may want to pay attention to what type of tag you buy. Whether it can store a lot of bytes. If you're going to do something simple it probably doesn't matter. Let's add a record and you can see all these different things that you can add to the tag.

You can add a piece to text. You can add an URL. You can add a link to a file, an email, contact, phone number. All sorts of things. These will all trigger different things on your phone. Let's do the simplest one and add an URL. Then I'm going to just put a simple URL in here. Then I'm going to tap the okay button at the top. So now I'm all ready to write to this. So I'm going to tap the Write button here and it's going to say Ready to Scan. I'm going to take the tag and put it up against it. Watch what happens when I touch the phone to this tag. It's going to come up with this little alert at the top and I can tap it and it will go to this webpage.

Now if I want to change what the tag does I'm going to have to change things. I'm going to have to go back and you can see there is Other and I can Erase the tag. Then once I've erased it I can write different things to the tag. In this app what you're going to write stays there. So I can actually program several different tags to it. There's also the ability here to add a WiFi network. You can give the authentication there. So in other words the password for the WiFi network. So what I plan to do is program one of these tags with my WiFi network for my house and put it right by the front door. The next time a guest comes over and wants the WiFi password all I've got to do is tell them, Touch your phone to this tag.

It will instantly set their phone up with my WiFi network. So there are a lot of different things that you can do with these tags. If I had a store or coffee shop I could see having one of these setup with an URL to signup for my newsletter and people could just touch their phone to it when they checkout and it takes them to that page and they can enter their email address. You could also use the email record there for customer feedback. So it automatically starts them up with an email sent to you with a certain subject. All they need to do is type the body text and hit Send.

You can also use the location tag there and they could tap the little alert that shows up and it takes them to a location on the map. So you can actually get a bunch of these and setup a fun scavenger hunt for your friends where they go from location to location looking for one of these and getting the next location from the tag. So there are a lot of fun things that you could do with NFC tags. Either setting up a shortcut to have one of these work for your phone specifically or setting up one that triggers an action on anybody's phone. Now I should note that you need a fairly recent iPhone to use NFC tags. They work on the iPhone 7, 8, 10, or 11 models. Programming them with things like URLs, locations, or WiFi passwords should also work for most recent android phones.

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