We forget so many times that our iPhone can do so much more for us then just Facebook and Instagram, but these top 10 iPhone secrets can help you get the best out of your Apple phone! Our iPhone has secrets that make it quite a powerful little companion, but it sometimes feels a bit of a waste if you don’t maximize it. So here’s our top ten that allows me to get to know my phone better, myself better and basically maximize my phone’s potential.
1. What Does Your iPhone Know About You?
With the recent debates about privacy, the first thing I wanted to know is basically what my phone knows about me. He knows where I like to hangout. Creeeeeepyyyyy! Just a little. But you have the option to clear it out and turn it off. Here’s how :
Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations
2. Need to Save More Power?
Always using your phone and you end up running out of power fast? Turns out your screen is the one that tends to suck our battery dry the fastest… Who would have guessed?! Well, we all knew about it, but what can you do besides lowering the brightness to save on battery life? Lowering it even more then the minimum of course! Here’s how! [Thanks to Justin Searls guide]. You’ll be able to triple tap the home button to turn it on. But first, you need to enable it.
- Open the Settings app and go to General —> Accessibility.
- Enable the “Zoom” option. Make sure that the “Zoom Region” setting is set to “Full Screen Zoom” in the same menu.
- Tap on your screen three times using three fingers.
- Tap on “Choose Filter” and select “Low Light.”
- Tap anywhere on the screen with one finger.
- In Accessibility’s settings, scroll to the bottom and tap “Accessibility Shortcut.”
- Select “Zoom.”
3. Get Your Personal Keyboard
You have your style of clothes, you have your own voice and style of writing, why not have a keyboard that better suits you? Create your own with gifs and emojis that suit your style. Type faster and up your chat game with this trick. I’m usually a fast typer and I just LOVE plugging witty comments or gifs. This made it faster so no one can steal my thunder!
- Settings > General > Keyboard > Add Keyboards
4. Not Using all the iPhone Apps?
iPhone always comes with a load of apps pre-installed. Not a big fan of all of them because… Well I just don’t use them all that much. Yet they still take up space on my screen and I ended up making a file named “useless” with all the apps I can’t delete. The apps aren’t useless, I just don’t use them… Turns out, I could have also just hidden them. So I did :
- Settings > General > Restrictions
5. Stressed About the Red Icons?
I don’t know for you, but when there’s an icon on top of my app that says I didn’t check the message… it stresses me. I know! I’ll check it later, if I feel like it… maybe. Stop telling me what to do! Basically, these “badges” always reminded me to check my messages and it stressed me. But you can turn them off, which I did.
Settings > Notifications > Badge icons
6. Get a Picture WHILE Filming!
I make videos and I love taking pictures. But sometimes, while taking a video, there’s this nice shot that could have been a picture… I missed my… oh wait, I can just click the button at the bottom to get it. Cool!
Capture a picture during your video by simply using the button at the bottom of the screen.
7. Use Your Flash as Notification
Not a fan of vibration or ringtone notification? Here’s the old “blackberry” style notification where the camera flashes when you get a new message! Yey! Oh right, for those that don’t know, “Blackberry” is this old Canadian company that used to make business phones with a very high security key that made them “unhackable”. Then it got hacked and they had to move on…
General > Accessibility / Enable LED Flash for Alerts
8. Customize Your Vibrations Notifications
I said you could customized a lot on your phone, including vibrations for people that call you. How about the nice heartbeat style vibration for when your lover calls you? Or maybe something really hectic and scary for your mom. Or even a nice beat for your besties. Basically, just a nice little thing to have to add a little extra to your daily life.
Sounds > Ringtone > Vibration > Create new vibration
9. Musical Timer
I listen to music a lot. Morning to Evening and also before I got to bed. So… what happens to music when you go to sleep? Does it stop magically working as soon as you are snoring? I doesn’t… From experience, waking up at 3AM still having the music playing, it doesn’t. But you can set the timer feature on your phone to “stop playing” the music. Problem solved. Now to have it start when I wake up and get my phone to do my coffee…(*coming soon, but in the mean time…check these out!*)
Clock app > Timer > Switch alarm option to stop playing
10. Save Battery Life by Turning off Siri & Search (or Spotlight Feature)
For all of us big users, we need different tricks to get our phones to survive through our day. One of which is to spare the battery life as much as possible. Turns out that the “spotlight” feature hogged quite a lot of the battery. Here’s how to save on it to survive through your day!
Setting > Siri & Search > Turn off Suggestions
That’s our top ten tips for iPhone. If you know more or have your own “secret ones” please do share!
