There’s a lot your iPhone can do. It’s a very powerful device with more features than you know about. In fact, there are a lot of cool hidden options that can completely change the way your phone works or how you use it; you just need to know where to look for them. These are 15 of the very best iPhone hacks you probably didn’t know about and tips on how you can use them.
#1: Swipe Right to Back Out
If you’ve made the transition from Android to iPhone, you may be finding it to be a bit of a struggle without a dedicated back button. Whilst the iPhone doesn’t have one of these, you can simply swipe from left to right to get back to your previous page.
#2: Customize the Home Button
On the newer iPhones, you can customize the feel of your home button. This is known as haptic feedback, and you can control the vibration intensity of the home button by heading over to Settings > General > Home Button. There are three levels to choose from.
#3: Charge Your Phone Quicker
By turning on flight safe mode, you make your phone charge much quicker, as all of its draining features – Wi-Fi and data roaming, for example – are disabled. This takes the strain off the battery while it is recharging. Although it’s not a huge difference, it can be useful when you’re pressed for time.
#4: Take a Photo Without Touching the Screen
Not everybody knows about this one: you can take a picture with the camera app by using your volume control buttons. Using the touchscreen to take a picture can be an impossible task at the best of times.
#5: Save Your Data
By going to Settings > Mobile Data, you can control which apps have access to your data, and which ones can only be used on Wi-Fi. This can stop apps sneakily using data in the background *cough* Snapchat *cough* and saves your precious (expensive) data.
#6: Improve Battery Life
Some features such as Apple’s Spotlight can be a huge drain on battery life. By going over to Settings, there are a whole load of things you can do to save battery life, such as disabling certain apps from running in the background.
#7: Hard Reset
If your phone crashes or is operating very slowly, you can perform a hard reset, which will disable all your apps and reboot your phone. By holding down the power and volume down buttons at the same time, you will reset your phone after a few seconds.
#8: Use Siri to Order an Uber
If you’re blind drunk and are struggling to use your phone’s touch functionality, you can use Siri to order an Uber. So long as you have your home destination set in Uber and have a payment method saved, you can simply say “Hey Siri, get me an Uber home.”
#9: Save Time With Searches
Pressing and holding the full-stop button while typing brings up a miniature menu of URL suffixes (.com, .co.uk, etc), which can save time when typing out web addresses.
#10: Find Out What Your Phone Knows About You
Your iPhone is always harvesting data about you, and you can find out what it knows by heading to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Frequent Locations. Google might be considered as a part as your phone too. You can check out what it knows about you and how to erase its “memory” here.
#11: Correct Siri
Although Siri is smart, she’s not fool-proof! If Siri says something wrong, you can respond back with “That’s not how you pronounce…” and then say the correct pronunciation.
#12: Set a Music Timer
Do you often fall asleep listening to music? Then this is great for you! Your phone’s timer can be used to turn off music after X amount of time, which is great if you listen to music loud and tend to nod off… it can damage your hearing over time.
#13: Shake to Undo Text
You can erase anything you just typed by giving your phone a vigorous shake – a great alternative to holding down the backspace button to get rid of long paragraphs you’re having second thoughts about. Changed your mind again? Re-shake your phone to get it back.
#14: Backspace on the Calculator
You can swipe left or right on the calculator to erase an incorrect number. Many people think you have to erase everything and start over, but you don’t! Just don’t press the ‘C’ button.
#15: Make the Screen Smaller
One-handed texters can make the job a lot easier by making their screens smaller. By holding the globe icon, you can reposition your keyboard and move it from right to left. Another trick is to double tap on the home button which will shift the top of your iPhone screen downwards.
Got any more great tips? Let us know!
Help to read a secret messenger