9 hidden iPhone features that simplify your life

This month a viral Twitter post we all learned a valuable lesson on how intuitive the phone interface are not: Apple has let iPhone users move a text editing cursor to the screen for a few years, but outside of the tech press, no one seemed to have received the memo.

Yes, it is difficult to make the interface features visible on touch screens. (I'm asking a little bit about why Apple does not use the built-in tips app to teach users to use the features of its devices.) But it's also an opportunity d & # 39; learning! And with that, I present nine other simple iPhone features that may have escaped your attention.

Change apps with a slip

On iPhone X family models (iPhone X, XS, XS Max and XR), you can know that you can slide your finger from the bottom of the screen to get back home. But you can also slide your finger to the left or right on the home indicator (this horizontal bar that appears mostly at the bottom of the screen) to switch from one to the other. one application to another.

This is a convenient way to quickly switch to the latest application you are using and, if you continue to slide, you will continue to move to previous applications.

Show multitasking controls

Swipe up from the home indicator takes you home, yes, but if you slide up more slowly then you let go of it, you get to the multitasking display of the home # 39; s iPhone. This view allows you to browse previews of all the applications you have used recently. Tap one of them to bring them to the foreground. If you think that an app is working badly, slip on its preview and force it to quit.

If you want to access this view even more quickly, try sliding diagonally in the lower left corner. Every moment saved helps.

Customize the control center

The Control Center is a convenient place to quickly access the functions of your phone without opening any application. To open the Control Center on an iPhone X family phone, slide your finger from the upper right corner of the screen. (A scan of the rest of the top of the screen will pop up Notification Center, but if you do it at the top right, it's more like the Control Center. Talk about not intuitive!)

The Control Center is a great place to quickly play or pause music or podcasts, adjust volume and brightness, disconnect from Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and perform all sorts of other tasks. (Here's a bonus tip: try 3D Touch or Haptic Touch if you're using an iPhone XR, Control Center buttons.You'll find that many of them will expand to fuller controls.Select the brightness level of the flashlight.)

But the control center is not limited to what you might think: it is customizable. Go to the Settings application, press Control Center, and then click Customize Controls. From there you can add all kinds of buttons, including access to accessibility shortcuts, screen recording and applications such as calculator and alarm.

Reverse light applications

So you watch your iPhone at night and the all-white interface of an app is too blatant to be used. (The bright white web pages in Safari are common examples.) Consider using an accessibility feature called Invert Color in combination with the Control Center to combat this problem.

Smart Invert Colors inverts the screen of your phone, so white is black and black is white. This is great for web pages that normally feature black text on a white background. What makes this feature Clever it's usually smart enough not to invert other multimedia elements, such as photos, for example. The result is a surprisingly readable white-on-black display that is best for some applications when you're in the dark.

Start by opening the Settings app, tap General, and then tap Accessibility. Scroll down and tap the Accessibility shortcut, and make sure Smart Invert Colors is checked. This means that you can click the side button three times to display a quick menu of accessibility options, including Smart Invert Colors.

Then go back to the top level of the Settings application, press Control Center, then click Customize Controls and add accessibility shortcuts to your Control Center. Now you can also activate Smart Invert directly from the Control Center in a few taps.

Quick access to the camera or flashlight

At the bottom of the device lock screen of the iPhone X family, you will see two icons: a flashlight on the left and a camera on the right. They are easy to miss, but they are important: they give you quick access to these two features.

But you can not just exploit them: Apple does not want to trigger these features with a wrong key. So you have to use 3D Touch to trigger them (which means press hard – on the iPhone XR, hold your finger down). This is the best way to turn on the flashlight without exception.

See the screen Today

One of the most useful features of iOS is hidden to the left of the notifications center. This is the Today screen, which consists of small items called "widgets" generated by your phone's apps. These widgets can contain a lot of useful information or provide shortcuts to useful features. (Literally, you can save shortcuts from the Apple Shortcuts application and run them directly from the Today view.)

To display the widget view, swipe down from the top of the screen (but not up to the right – Control Center) to display the Notification Center. Then swipe from left to right to view the Today view. It's useful! And you can make it more useful by customizing it. Simply scroll down to the bottom and press Edit to choose the widgets you want to display in this view.

Unsubscribe from notifications

One of my favorite features of iOS 12 is the ability to manage your notifications directly from the Notification Center. When viewing notifications, swipe from right to left to display a submenu. From there, you can tap View to open the application that sent the notification, click Clear All to clear all notification bubbles from this application, or Manage.

Manage is an excellent feature. Try it from time to time. Since the resulting interface, you can quickly disable all notifications for this application – the equivalent of an unsubscribe link in an email. You can also choose Deliver quietly, an option to view these notifications in the Notification Center, but do not interrupt by opening a notification balloon while doing something else.

Use Siri shortcuts without programming

I like the application Shortcuts for all the power it gives me on iOS, but it's not for everyone. That's why Apple does not even include it on devices; instead, you download it for the App Store. But even if you do not want to take the step with the Shortcuts app, you can still customize your phone via Siri shortcuts.

To do this, open the Settings application and press Siri & Search. In the resulting screen, you will see a list called Suggested Shortcuts. These are things you've done recently and that Siri thinks can turn into a useful shortcut. Tap on one to record a key phrase and turn that action into a new Siri command. You can also tap the All Shortcuts list for an entire set of actions you've done over time, which you can all assign to a Siri voice command.

Go to the top with a tap

This gesture is on iOS since always, but I continue to meet people who do not know it. It is therefore useful to call him once more. If you are down a drop down list and want to get back to the top, do not waste time slowly scrolling upwards.

Just try pressing the top of the application or the menu bar to see what's going on. In most applications, you will be automatically scrolled up.

Credit: Tom's Guide