There are lots of things that you can do with your iPhone, sure, but
we’re willing to be that there are a few more that you either don’t know
about or haven’t used before, particularly with all of the additions in
iOS 5. Did you know you can put in typing shortcuts similar to Text
Expander? Or that you can make custom vibrations for each person? If you
didn’t — or just want to brush up on your iOS trivia — hit the jump and
find 40 top secret, ultra-cool tips for the iPhone.
Once you’re done becoming an iPhone pro, why not take your apps to the next level with our massive roundup of
The Top 100 iPhone Apps!
Camera & Pictures
Want to get the most out of the iPhone’s camera and photos? Follow
along as we guide you show you some well known (and not so well known)
features of iOS 5 and the iPhone.
1. Use Your + Volume Button as a Shutter on Your iPhone…
Taking
a picture by holding your iPhone with just one hand is an easy way to
get out of focus images. Fix it by holding your iPhone with two hands
horizontally, and then push down the + button usually reserved for
raising the volume. Now you’ve got a stable picture!
2. … and Your Headphones, Too
The same trick above works for the volume button on your headphones, too. This comes in particularly handy if you have a
Glif or similar tripod mount for your iPhone. If you couldn’t already guess, this works for Bluetooth headphones as well.
3. Add a New Photo Album
If you find that your photo album selection lacks a little pizzaz,
feel free to add more using this simple trick. Go to the Photos app,
click Edit in the top right corner and then click the Add button that
shows up in the upper left side of the screen. Now just title the album
whatever you want and you’re golden.
4. Quick Look for Pictures You Just Took
Want to look at the most recent image you shot? Open up the camera
app and slide the screen from left to right. It’ll show the last picture
taken, and you’ll be good to go.
5. Take a Picture With a Double Tap
Stuck on the lock screen but want to take a picture? Double click the
home button and look just to the right of your Unlock slider where
you’ll find a little camera icon. Touch it, and away you go to taking
pictures.
6. Edit Your Photos
Man, those red eyes in that shot look horrible, right? If only you
had some kind of way to tweak your shots so that they looked perfect.
Turns out you do, all baked into iOS. Just hit Edit on any image, and
you’ll be presented with your tools along the bottom row. They’re not
super extensive, but it’ll get the job done in a pinch.
Text & Email Functions
Everyone has to type things out on their iPhone, whether it’s text
messages or just responding back to an email. Why not make your life a
little bit easier? Here are a few tips that will help you out when
you’re working behind the keyboard.
7. Text Expansion
Do you find yourself typing the same thing a million times a day? Go
to Settings > General > Keyboard and look for Shortcuts after you
scroll down just a bit. Then just enter the phrase and appropriate
shortcut, and the next time you type that shortcut the phrase will
appear. This is particularly handy for things like BRB or your email
address.
8. Go Emoji
If you love using emoticons, add the Emoji keyboard to your setup.
Just go to Settings > General > Keyboard, then add the Emoji
keyboard. This also works if you want to use keyboard in other
languages.
9. Use Extra Characters
Want to make sure the accent mark in Montréal is correct? Just hold
down the letter you need to accent, and all of the extra characters will
appear. Just pick what you need and go from there.
10. Turn On Caps Lock
If you’re really mad and want someone to get the point, or you just
like typing in all caps, turn on caps lock by double tapping the shift
key. Now you can type with fury!
11. Look Up a Word in the Dictionary
Stumped on what that word in your favorite novel in iBooks means?
Wondering why your friend used such a complex word in a text? Look it up
using the iOS dictionary. Just hold down on the word that’s got you
befuddled, and then touch Define. Now you know the answer and can
respond appropriately.
12. Flag an Email
If you’re one of those people who flags every email that comes
through, make your OCD happy with iOS 5′s new flag an email feature. To
do so, go to your Inbox, hit Edit then select the email(s) you want to
flag. Select the Mark tag in the bottom right corner and then select
Flag, and you’re good to go.
13. RTF Emails
For those that prefer their email fancy, RTF is now available. Just
highlight the word or words you want to accentuate per your usual steps,
then select the arrow and then the
BIU button to pick between bold, italics or underline.
14. Read Receipts in iMessage
IOS 5 brought us iMessage, and with it the ability to get receipts
when other people read your messages. It’s an opt-in deal though, so to
turn it on, go to Settings > Messages and turn on Send Read Receipts.
Siri Only
Siri changed the way we communicate with our iPhones, and is one of
the big features for the iPhone 4S. If you’ve got one, here are a
few tweaks that should help you out along the way.
15. Tweet With Siri
Wouldn’t it be great if Siri allowed you to dictate your tweets?
Turns out you can, but it’s a bit of a workaround. First, read up on
sending your tweets via SMS,
which is available on Twitter’s site. Once that’s all squared away,
just add Twitter as a contact in your Contacts, and then treat the
service just like it was any other person that you want to send a
message. (By the way, if Siri cramps up on you because you used the word
Twitter, change it to something different that you’ll remember and
it’ll be fine.) You can do this with Facebook too,
The Next Web has a great writeup.
16. Get Siri by Holding Your iPhone Up To Your Ear
Not everyone knows about this one, but there’s another way to call up
Siri that doesn’t require holding down the home button. Go to Settings
> General > Siri, and then select Raise to Speak. Now the light
sensor on the iPhone will detect when you’ve got the phone up to your
ear, and Siri will pick up. It’s a handy way to use Siri in public
without looking like a jerk.
Web
One of the best things about the iPhone when it first came out was
that it provided a really good web experience, where viewers could see
full pages, not just mobile-optimized garbage. If you want to get the
most out of your web browsing experience, here’s a few tips to make
things go a little smoother.
17. Private Browsing
Want to make sure that your information isn’t getting sent out to
the Internet via Safari? There’s a quick way to fix that: Go to Settings
> Safari and then click the tab for Private Browsing. Now all of
your activity on the web is top secret, so proceed at your own
discretion.
18. Make a Reading List
If
you don’t use services like Read It Later or Instapaper, but still want
to read a webpage without advertisements, just check out Reader, built
into Safari. Just click on the little Reader button next to the URL and
your article will come up stripped of all distractions and in
easy-to-read text.
19. Tap to the Top
Doesn’t it suck to scroll through a long webpage and then flip back
up to show the Address bar again? Just tap the top of the screen by the
clock and Safari will zip back up and reveal the address bar, no
problem.
20. Saving Images
If you found an image on a website that you want to save for yourself
like a wallpaper or icon, just hold down your finger on the picture for
a second or two. A menu will slide in from the bottom of the screen
giving you the option to Save Image or Copy it to the clipboard. Once
it’s saved it’s in your Photo Library, ready for whatever you want.
Settings
There’s a lot you can do in iOS just by playing around with a few settings. Don’t believe us? Let’s show you, then.
21. Update Your OS
One of the nice benefits in iOS 5 is over the air updates, and if you
want to find out if you’re eligible, it’s as easy as cracking open the
Settings app. Go to Settings > General > Software Update and you
can find out if you’re in the clear, or needing to update.
22. Adjust Your Notifications
You’ve probably already played around with your notifications, but
there are tons of different ways to manipulate your apps and how they
alert you, making it just about perfect to make each app function
properly. To get there, it’s Settings > Notifications, and there you
can adjust what’s in the Notification Center, and then get even more
specific and tell the OS how you want each app to notify you. Everything
is clearly described, so you know what you’re getting into beforehand.
23. Custom Vibrations
One often forgotten customization available in iOS 5 is setting your own
custom vibrations. To do that, first go to Settings > General >
Accessibility and turn on Custom Vibrations under Hearing. Then, go
to Settings > Sounds. Scroll to the bottom, and there’s Vibration
Patterns. Tap it, and now you can make your own custom vibration on the
bottom of the screen. Just tap on the glass the pattern you want,
holding down your finger for longer notes. Then you can assign these
vibrations to a contact, or use them system wide.
24. Set Your Camera Flash For Alerts
That LED in the back of your iPhone isn’t handy for just taking
pictures in the dark, it can also be used for a notifying beacon,
similar to the LED on most BlackBerry phones. Go to Settings >
General > Accessibility and turn on the slider for LED Flash for
Alerts, and the next time something comes in, the LED will flash
accordingly.
25. Customize Your Alert Sounds
Who wants their iPhone to sound like everyone else’s? Not us, so we
customize our alert tones using this simple trick. Go to Settings >
Sounds, and now everything from your Calendar notifications to Ringtones
can be customized, just pick what you want and there you go.
26. Automatic Downloads
If you have multiple iOS devices, or you purchase things on your
computer as well, one option for keeping things in sync is to allow
Automatic Downloads of your Music, Apps and Books. To get there, go to
Settings > Store and check off whichever of the three you want. Now
all of your stuff will work in harmony. How very zen.
27. Fun With AirPlay
If you have an iPhone 4S, iOS 5 brought mirroring to the table,
making it possible for you to display your iPhone’s display on your
AppleTV. To do so, double tap the home button to bring up the
multitasking bar, then swipe to the right twice. Tap the AirPlay button
and select what AppleTV you want to deliver to, then check off
Mirroring. Now what’s on your iPhone will be on your AppleTV at the same
time.
28. Change Your Default Alert Times
If you use your Calendar app, then you know that there are default
alerts built into the system, but did you know how to change them? Go to
Settings > Mail, Contacts & Calendar > Default Alert Times
(which is close to the bottom) and adjust your times accordingly.
29. Change Your iCloud Storage Size
If you find yourself always bumping into the size limit on your
iCloud account, you can up the storage levels right on your iPhone. Go
to Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Buy More Storage
and select what level you want to use. You can also downgrade sizing if
you think you have too much, too.
30. Tweet It
Twitter is now integrated into iOS 5, so if you ever feel the need to
send that pic of Grandma drinking a bit too much wine off to
the Internet, now’s your chance. First, setup your Twitter account by
downloading the official
Twitter app,
then go to Settings > Twitter and enter your username and password
(if you have more than one Twitter account, no worries, it’s all
supported). Now whenever you take a picture, you’ve got the option to
send it to Twitter without ever opening the official app.
31. Dissect Your Storage
We’ve got lots of apps that all vie for space on our iPhone’s flash
drive, but what if you could find out who was using what? Go to Settings
> General > Usage and there’s a list of all of your apps, and how
much space they’re taking up. This way, if you find yourself low on
space you can delete the offending apps entirely, or just preen them
down using the app itself.
The Stuff That Doesn’t Fit Anywhere Else
There are lots of other good tips floating around in iOS, but not all
of them are big enough to denote their own category. That’s why we’ve
created this one; it’s a general grab bag for whatever other secrets
don’t fit somewhere else. Get it? Good. Here you go.
32. Get Week View By Turning Over Your iPhone
It’s new in iOS 5, and it’s fancy. If you want to check a rolling
week view of your calendar, just turn it over to a horizontal
orientation. Then you can scroll up and down to see hours, or left and
right to move through weeks. It’s pretty handy to have when you just
want to see what’s coming up in your week.
33. Get Hourly Weather Reports
This one is easy. Pull up the Weather app to get your weekly weather
report. Tap anywhere in the week and the current day will expand to
reveal the hourly forecast for the rest of the day. It doesn’t work days
in advance, but then again, neither does the local weather guy.
34. See Street View in Maps
Pull up Maps and search for something — anything — and you can
usually see a little orange dude that shows up on the left side of the
destination. Touch that and you go to street view where you can rotate
360 degrees. But what if you don’t have a search destination or just
want to see a random area on street view? Just drop a pin. Usually that
orange dude will show up again and you can scope out the area before you
head down.
35. Take a Screenshot
All these pictures up above? They were all taken using this little
trick. Press the home button and the lock button simultaneously and the
screen will flash white. As an added bonus, if you have Photo Stream via
iCloud, all those images go right into your stream (which is great if
your business is posting screenshots like ours is).
36. Location Based Reminders
One
of the big selling points with Siri was integration into the new
Reminders app, but there’s some cool GPS features built in, too. Make a
reminder, and then select to remind you At a Location. You’ll be
presented with your current location and the options When I Leave or
When I Arrive, or you can just make a custom spot up of your choosing.
Just know that this can eat up your battery life because the GPS will be
on all the time.
37. Add Twitter Handles to your Contacts
There are two ways to handle this one (see what we did there?). If
you start at Settings > Twitter, you can click on Update Contacts and
all of your current contacts in your address book will be trolled and
connected to their appropriate Twitter accounts. If you want to do it
manually (or Twitter can’t find it for you), then go into the contact,
hit Edit and then Add Field. Scroll down and you’ll get to Twitter, and
then you can manually enter the info.
38. Perform a Hard Reset
Sometimes nothing seems to work on your iPhone, and apps are giving
you problems. The answer is a hard reset, which shuts the iPhone off
completely — even mid task — and then restarts it. To do this, hold down
the lock and home buttons simultaneously for at least 5 seconds, or
until the Apple logo appears. When it boots back up, it should be good
to go.
39. Give Your Contacts Nicknames
We’ve all got friends that we call by their nicknames, whether it’s
KJ, Little T or Jackstands, and sometimes we can’t remember their actual
name. To fix that, you can add their nickname into Contacts pretty
easily. Go to the contact, hit Edit, then Add Field. Right there at the
bottom of the first box is Nickname. Once you get back to the main Edit
screen, just add in their nickname and now Siri will recognize it, as
will Voice Command.
40. Customize Your Music Controls
There’s only so much room on an iPhone screen, and that’s problematic
with the Music app. Some people prefer to search by Artist, others by
Playlists, and some don’t even listen to music and just focus on
Audiobooks and Podcasts. To customize your Music app, just open it up,
hit More then Edit. You’ll see a whole grouping of icons, and then you
can drag them to their new location on the bottom of the screen. Fancy.