9 Lesser-Known iPhone Tips & Tricks That’ll Make You Say “Yeah Nice”

The iPhone has been through a lot of changes over the years, so sometimes it’s easy to forget just what the device is capable of in its current state. To refresh your memory, here are some useful iPhone tips for you Apple fiends out there.

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One-handed keyboard

Sometimes you just gotta use your phone with one hand, and if you’ve got a particularly big one like, say, the iPhone XS Max, stretching your thumb all the way across its screen is gonna be a challenge unless you have abnormally long thumbs.

The one-handed keyboard is a solution to this problem, folks. To activate it, go to Settings > General > Keyboards, and tap One-Handed Keyboard to choose which side you’d like it to pop up. It will then be accessible by holding the emoji button and selecting it.

Photo extensions

If you’re into editing photos on your phone, there’s a way to access your favourite third-party apps straight from the actual photo.

To do it, just go to any photo, tap the three little dots, then tap more. Here, you should be able to see all of the available extensions and toggle them on or off. Once you’ve done that, tapping the three dots on an image will bring up those apps as options, allowing you to be taken straight to the desired app to edit the photo.

iPhone showing available third-party extensions

Screen recording

If you’ve ever needed to record your screen for whatever reason, you absolutely can. Bring up the Control Centre to access the feature (swipe down from the top right side of the screen for all X variants) and tap the record button, which looks like a circle with a solid dot inside it. When you’re done, just go back and tap the same button to stop.

If the record button isn’t in your Control Centre, you can add it by going to Settings > Control Centre > Customize Controls.

Quick calculator

Opening up the calculator for some rapid-fire math can be a bit of a struggle under pressure. It’s cool, we’ve all been there, but there’s an easier way, friends.

If you have something quick to figure out, simply swipe right on the home screen and type the sum into the search bar and hit Search. Say, for example, you need to split a $230 bill 5 ways and you can’t do math real good, type in 230/5 and you’ll get the answer.

Fixing a typo

Fixing a typo is a pain in the ass, mainly because moving the cursor around is tricky when it’s so small and your finger is comparatively huge.

The easiest way to do this is to press down anywhere on your keyboard to activate a kind of mousepad which lets you move your finger around to move the cursor. It’ll change your life.

Fixing a dud picture

If you’ve got Live Photos enabled, your phone will take a bunch of pictures instead of just one, so if the image you get is blurry or you just missed the target, you might be able to salvage it.

Live Photos will have a little circular icon in the top left corner and if you press down on the photo itself, it should play like a short video. These are all the frames captured when the picture was taken.

To choose an alternate image to the trash you managed to snap, do the following.

• Open the Live Photo
• Tap Edit
• Move the slider to change the frame
• Release your finger, then tap Make Key Photo
• Tap Done

Faster typing

A simple but effective shortcut – simply double tap the space bar to automatically add a full stop to your sentence. One of the easier iPhone tips floating around.

See stuff more good

You can literally use your phone as a magnifying glass if you’re having trouble reading some fine print or something. To do it, just turn on Magnifier (Settings > General > Accessibility > Magnifier) and triple click the side button to access it.

You can control the zoom and even take a picture if you need to. There’s even an option to adjust the brightness, which is great if you’re in a particularly dim restaurant with an intricate menu.

Customise missed call texts

The iPhone has three pre-written text options for when you miss a call: “Sorry, I can’t talk right now,” “I’m on my way,” and “Can I call you later?” These are fine, sure, but you can make you’re own if you have something particular spicy to keep as a quick option.

• Go to Settings
• Tap Phone
• Tap Respond with Text
• Tap the field you want to edit
• Enter new text you want

You could, for example, write something like “Piss off, I’m busy” and that will become an option the next time you miss a call. Bueno.

There you have it, mates, some nice little iPhone tips that’ll ramp up your efficiency just a little bit.


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