With the average smartphone user spending hours tapping away at their mobile every day, it pays to get up to speed on all the nifty little tips and tricks to make your life easier.
So we’ve rounded up the best iPhone hacks around, from how to make the most of your camera to the easiest way to save yourself some data.
Try out these hacks and your iPhone life will never be the same again.
1. Turn your phone into a spirit level
The next time you’re putting up a shelf or hanging a picture, just click on the in-built Compass app, swipe right and voila! Your very own spirit level. And it’s really easy to use: once the two moving circles are overlapped and the screen turns green, you know you’ve found the perfect level.
2. Find out where you’ve been
This (slightly creepy) trick will show you on a map where you’ve been recently. Just go to Settings, click on Privacy, Location Services, System Services and finally Significant Locations. And if you want to clear the data held on your phone about your locations, just press Clear History.
3. Night shift
This cool feature adds a yellow tint to your screen, really handy if you often use your iPhone at night. To set it up go to Settings, Display & Brightness and click Night Shift. You can also put it on a schedule of sunset to sunrise.
4. Invert colours
This is a cool trick to essentially bring a dark mode to your iPhone. To enable it go to Settings, General, Accessibility, Display Accommodations, Invert Colours, Smart Invert.
5. Text to speech…
Having your phone read to you is an under-used but really handy little tool. I mean, you can essentially turn all those fascinating ShortList features and longreads into audiobooks. Just go to Settings, General, Accessibility, Speech and turn on Speak Selection and Speak Screen. Then the next time you want something read along just highlight the section and click the ‘speak’ option. You can also download and customise the voice that reads to you.
6. …And speech to text
You can also use your iPhone for the reverse: dictation. When you’re not in the mood for typing, just tap the mic icon on the keyboard and speak away.
7. Calculator trick
It’s pretty annoying when you’re using your iPhone’s calculator and accidentally enter the wrong number. But even though there’s no delete button you can simply swipe on the numbers to delete the last digit. Maths has never been so much fun!
8. Put your music on a timer
If you like to drift off to sleep listening to some tunes, you can use your Clock app to set your music to stop playing after a certain period of time. Simply open the Clock app, click on Timer, When Timer Ends and scroll down to Stop Playing. This works on Apple Music and Spotify.
9. Save yourself some data
When you realise you’re running low on data and still have WEEKS until your next month’s allowance, you can switch off individual apps’ background data usage. Just go to Settings and then Mobile Data.
10. Record your screen
To record what’s happening on your screen head to Settings, Control Centre, Customise Controls and click Screen Recording. When you click on the icon you’ll have three seconds before the recording starts – and just tap on the status bar to stop recording. You can then access the recording in your Photos app.
11. Take a selfie without touching your screen
This one is more well known but it’s so handy it’s worth repeating – when you’re taking a picture you can simply click your volume control button and it will take a pic. Easy as that!
(Images: Oliur Rahman / iStock)
