If you watch how someone else uses their iPhone for a few minutes, you’ll quickly find that they do a lot of things very differently from you. You might discover gestures you’ve never seen before, and vice versa.
It’s no wonder the average iPhone user doesn’t use many of its best features. The smart phones Modern devices have become extremely powerful and complex, and unless you pay close attention, you simply won’t know what they can do.
So, let’s show some new features. Here are 10 iPhone tricks and features that a surprisingly high percentage of users seem to completely ignore.
These tips should work on most modern iPhones (those made in the last few years) as long as you’re using at least iOS 15.
Stop calls from unknown numbers
calls from spam They got completely out of control. If you’re like me, you get at least three or four a day, and they always seem to come from a legitimate phone number.
Your iPhone can help! Open Settings > Phone and look for the option Silence unknown numbers.
By activating this option, phone calls from unknown numbers will not be blocked, but will be received silently. No ringtone, no vibration, straight to voicemail. You will receive a notification (also silent) with the number of the silent call.
But don’t worry: your contacts’ phone numbers, as well as recent outgoing calls and Siri suggestions, will ring normally.
Move text cursor freely
Whenever you type text, just hold down the spacebar until all the letters disappear from the keyboard.
Now continue to hold your finger and drag it in any direction to move the text cursor to where you want it to go, like using a small touchpad.
It’s a much easier way to go back and fix typos or overzealous autocorrect.
Configure touch shortcuts
to open Settings > Accessibility > Touch and look for the option proofreading. This handy setting lets you set a shortcut to a specific app or feature when you double or triple tap the back of your iPhone. And yes, you can set separate double and triple hotkeys.
Touch Back is one of the iPhone’s most useful features, and it’s a shame it’s buried in Accessibility settings. An easy-to-use shortcut to any app you want (or useful functions like screen capture) that you can perform with one hand, no matter what app you’re using? It’s good for all of us.
Play background sounds
Do you find it easier to concentrate with some background noise? Does it help you relax or fall asleep? There are plenty of apps for this stuff, but your iPhone has options built-in.
to open Settings > Accessibility > Audio and visual and look for the option background noise. Here you can activate them, adjust their volume and choose between six different sounds. You also have other options, like the ability to stop the sound when your iPhone is locked, or to play (or not) when other media is playing.
It’s a bit of a pain to go into accessibility settings every time you want to turn this feature on or off, so it’s a perfect candidate shortcut to set to “Touch Back”.
Select text in Photos or Camera
“Live Text” is one of the best features of iOS 15, and it hasn’t received enough attention.
If the Camera app is open, just point the camera at anything with text on it and you’ll see a yellow box appear surrounded by brackets, with a small yellow button in the bottom right.
Tap that button and you’ll freeze the text box, after which you can hold down and drag your finger over it to select it and copy it, translate it, look up a definition, whatever.
It also works in the Photos app. On any photo that has text in it, you’ll see the little icon as parentheses with lines at the bottom right. Tap it and all the text in the image will be highlighted, after which you can select it to copy, translate, search, share, whatever.
You can even drop text directly into the Notes app. Just open a note, tap the camera icon and select “Scan Text”.
Search anything anywhere
Your iPhone’s search function is much more powerful than you think. It’s amazing how many people don’t even know it’s there, let alone make full use of it.
Simply swipe down from any home screen i.e. tap somewhere in the middle of the screen and swipe down. If you swipe down from the edge, you’ll open notifications or the control center.
Type anything in this search box and it will search for it everywhere. You’ll get apps installed on your iPhone, search suggestions on websites, matches in your photos, relevant information from the Siri Knowledge Base, apps in the App Store, matches in Apple Music, matches in your messages and much more.
At the bottom of the results is the option to search apps, in case you want to find your search query in Mail or Calendar or whatever.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen experienced iPhone users fumble for 10 minutes to find that photo or message thread or whatever, when a five second search is all they need .
scan documents
The iPhone has a surprisingly good built-in document scanner. Just place the document you want to scan on a flat surface (the brighter the better), then decide whether you want to create a new PDF document or attach the scanned document to a note in the app Ratings.
To create a new file, simply open “Files”, open the folder where you want to save the scan and select the menu button at the top right (a circle with three dots). Select “Scan Document” and point the camera at the document you want to scan, keeping the camera steady.
Your iPhone will automatically take a photo (press the shutter if it doesn’t), clean it up, and shrink it to the corner, ready to take the next photo. If you have more pages to scan, simply repeat the process. When you are done, press “Save” and give the file a name.
In Notes, open the note you want to attach a scanned document to (or create a new note), tap the camera button, then tap “Scan Documents.”
You can even sign documents digitally. You will need to open the scanned PDF in “Files”, press the small markup button in the top right (it looks like the tip of a pen), then press the “+” sign in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen screen.
Tap “Signature” and you can add or remove signatures (by signing directly on your iPhone screen), or choose a previous signature to place on the document.
Send effects with your messages
Want to add punch to your text messages? You may have noticed that some messages (such as “Happy Birthday”) have special effects added automatically. Well, you might not know that you can add these effects to any post.
This only works if you send an iMessage (blue bubbles), not an SMS (green bubbles). Write your message and long press the send button. At the top, switch between bubble effects and screen effects.
Simply select the effect you want and send, and boom!
Put a call on hold
Everyone knows you can mute a call, but did you know you can also put it on hold?
While on a call on iPhone, you just need to press and hold the mute button for a few seconds until it goes to sleep.
What is the difference? When you mute, you can hear the person on the other end of the call, but they can’t hear you: you literally mute your microphone.
Sleep mode means that neither party on the call can hear each other.
Download the hidden manual
Your iPhone might not come with an instruction manual in the box, but it does. Apple offers an updated iPhone user guide on its website.
It has an excellent search function, a well-organized index, and the instructions are simple, clear, and interrelated.
If you prefer to have something you can read in your spare time offline, download the iPhone User Guide from Apple Books. It’s free of course.
You might think you don’t need to read the manual after all these years, but even if you’re an iPhone veteran, you’ll be amazed at how much you can learn from it.
Original article published on igamesnews.com.
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