5 iPhone Tips Every iPhone User Should Know
The iPhone has so many features and capabilities that it’s easy to overlook even some of the essentials, so we’re going to share some iPhone tips that will enhance your experience and help you make the most of your device. These tricks can help improve your workflow, simplify your interactions with iPhone, and save you time too.
Let’s check out five essential tips for iPhone that every iPhone user should know. Whether you’re needing to take screenshots, quickly access the camera, quit out of apps, find text on a webpage, or undo, we’ve got your covered.
1: How to Take a Screenshot
Screenshots are handy for myriad reasons, whether you want to quickly show someone else what you’re seeing on screen, capture an image from an app where an image can’t be saved directly, troubleshoot a tech issue, share a forecast, and much much more.
Capturing a screenshot of the iPhone screen is easy, all you need to do is this; simultaneously press the side Sleep/Power button, and the Volume Up button.
The screen will flash briefly and make a sound effect, indicating that the screenshot was successfully taken. Screenshots are then stored in the Photos app, either visible in your entire camera roll, or in the Screenshots album.
2: Access Camera from Lock Screen
Many of us use the iPhone exclusively as our camera, so knowing how to access the camera as quick as possible on iPhone is obviously useful.
To quickly access the iPhone Camera from the Lock Screen, do this; tap and hold on the Camera icon in the bottom right corner of the iPhone screen, or simply swipe left on the Lock Screen.
You’ll instantly be in the Camera app, where you can snap a photo or record a video, all without having to unlock your iPhone first, let alone poke around for the Camera app.
3: Force Quit Apps from App Switcher
While the iPhone automatically manages multitasking, you can also manually force quit and close out of apps. This can be a useful trick if you notice your iPhone battery is draining quickly or performing slowly, since some apps running in the background are still active. Also, many users like to quit out of background apps simply to declutter their iPhone experience.
To close/quit out of background apps from the App Switcher on iPhone, do the following; swipe up from the bottom of the screen, and then hold a moment. This will open the multitasking App Switcher. Now, to quit an app, simply swipe up on the app card to force quit that application.
You can quit all apps by simply swiping up on every app card to close them, or just close a single app, by using this method.
4: Find Text Matches on Safari Web Pages
Being able to quickly find specific text on a web page is a super useful feature, whether you’re on an iPhone or any other device.
There are two ways you can search for text on a webpage in Safari; one approach is to tap the Sharing arrow button in Safari, then choose “Find On Page” from the menu options and type your text to search matches for. The second approach is to tap into the address bar, type your search term, and then scroll down to find matches under the “On This Page” section.
Use whichever method works best for your workflow.
5: Undo/Redo Typing by Shaking iPhone
If you have ever made a mistake when typing on iPhone, you can quickly undo (or redo) by literally sharking your iPhone.
To undo/redo by shaking, simply shake your iPhone, and a pop-up option will appear on screen that you can choose “Undo Typing”
This trick works in basically any text input or text entry field, in virtually every iPhone app. Whether you accidentally deleted text, made a formatting error, or typed something you didn’t mean to, shaking it out is a quick way to undo or redo the prior action.
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What do you think of these five tips? Do you have some other essential iPhone tips and tricks that you think all users should know? Share your thoughts and your own tricks in the comments.
I have an old iPhone 7+, with an older OS which I’ve purposely chosen not to upgrade (that’s a different topic)… and my experience is the same as that of Bill S. So by following his instruction (not the author’s) I just learned how to make a screenshot on the phone, a useful skill since it lets me make a record of how my websites (sanstudio.com and santhology.com) look on a phone.
The overall issue here is something that bugs me in articles about Macs as well as phones. Most tech writers don’t bother identifying what version of the OS they’re using when they make their observations. Do they assume everybody has (or even wants) the latest? And what about a few years later, if their articles are still online, and readers with an even later version of the OS waste their time trying to follow the writer’s instructions?
I don’t know whether this typical omission is laziness, hubris, or just being clueless… but it’s annoying.
I did not know about the app switcher so that’s good, but is there any way to close all apps without going trough each one?
A handy iPhone trick I recently discovered: Have you seen a plant or tree and wondered what kind it is? Take a photo with your iPhone, then press the info (i) key and it will identify it for you. Also works for places of interest, monuments, historical buildings, etc.
I use all five tips, they are very useful.
Please indicate which models of iPhone/iOS that these tips apply to.
I, personally do not upgrade to the latest hardware just because it is available, I am 78 years old with a fixed income. I am still using an iPhone 6s+ running iOS 15.7.8. My screenshot is power button plus home key. The camera is NOT on my lock screen. The other features may or may not be available to me, and would be nice, but not at a price tag of much over $1k.
Thank you.
I still use an iPhone 6 Plus as well, it’s a great phone, and it has the Lock Screen camera like every other iPhone does. Press the camera button on the Lock Screen, or swipe to the left to open the camera from the Lock Screen. Works on every iPhone I have used.
-Joseph
While swiping left on my lock screen does indeed open the camera app, the camera DOES NOT appear on the lock screen itself.
The 3rd image in this article shows the flashlight and camera icons at the bottom of the lock screen. There are NO icons at the bottom of my lock screen. The only thing at the bottom of my lock screen is the two dots that show a second page is available and the second page is the camera app in operation. I was simply asking for clarification as to which versions of hardware/software the article was referring to.
I have an SE (2020) and it does NOT have the camera on the Lock Screen. And the App Switcher is accessed by double-clicking the Home Button, not swiping up from the bottom of the screen.
Shake to Undo is there, but you have to turn it on under Accessibility>Touch.
Screenshot info is wrong, too. On the SE (and iPhones without Face ID) you have to click the right side power button and the Home button at the same time, as Bill S. does on his phone.
So Bill S is correct, these tips do NOT work on ALL iPhones as stated.
I would suggest to Bill, though, that he doesn’t need to spend $1000 for an iPhone, he can get an SE for a lot less, and used ones for even less.
My iPhone 3G won’t get on 5G networks or LTE and does not have a 48mp camera, why don’t you take that into consideration?