The iPhone has been around for a while, and most of us know its basic uses. But, you likely don’t know everything that you can do on your iPhone.
There are some cool features that your iPhone has that you might not have heard of, as several features can be hidden or just unknown to the average consumer. So, here’s some of the coolest things that you can do with your iPhone right now.
Cool things to do with iPhone
1. Make your phone self-destruct
One thing that’s usually worth doing is enabling “self destruct mode” on your iPhone. Hidden within your phone’s settings, this password is used when the password fails 10 times.
You can turn this on by going into your iPhone settings, then selecting the Touch ID and passcode option.Then, scroll down to Erase Data to delete the old data on your device.
Even if this potential loss of data sounds alarming, the fact is that you won’t need to worry about this unless it’s someone trying to access your iPhone without your knowledge – just make sure you’ve a backup installed on your device.
2. Type Faster by Swiping
Swipe-style keyboards are well known to Android devices, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that Apple devices to install it on their devices too – dubbed Quickpath.
This swipe-to-type style typing can make it much quicker to type. How can I use Quickpath? Compose an email or message as usual, but instead of “typing” simply swipe between the letters on your keyboard.
Although it may not seem like a massive hack, it can save as much as 60% of your time, so it may be worth learning how to swipe-type.
3. It can tell you exactly when you received a text message
Okay, not a revolutionary one, but in the past iPhone messages didn’t show the exact time of delivery for texts.
It’s primarily a useful feature to find out if someone’s messages have sat in your received pile for awhile. If you wish, just tap to the right on a message to see the date in your phone chat and you can see when a specific message was sent.
4. You can permanently lock your iPhone’s autofocus and exposure on a specific spot
Your iPhone camera automatically adjusts the focus when you’re taking pictures, and many users find it annoying. However, you can force your iPhone camera app to focus on a specific point of your photo.
You simply have to hold the finger to the screen and wait until the yellow square flashes three times – then, you will see an announcement announcing “AE / AF lock”.
This allows you to take a picture on your camera app without having to worry the automatic focus ruining your photos.
5. Track your menstrual cycle
Although this won’t apply to everyone, the iPhone health tracker can be used for a variety of things. Something that most guys don’t know is that it also provides an online tracker that allows women to track their periods.
You could also record period flow, spotting, or other signs of discomfort and symptoms. The feature provides forecasts for when your cycle starts to end for the upcoming future.
Hey, if you’re going to spend billions on technology development, make it useful and practical right?!
6. It can work without buttons
If you already have a broken silent button on your iPhone, you may have figured this out already. But, you don’t even need to touch your iPhone to use it.
In settings, select “Assistive touch” – you can use this to tell the iPhone what to do, which works great when buttons aren’t working.
You can use it to turn the smartphone on, as even without power button, the phone will start working automatically.
7. See popular apps specifically near your location
A small option on the bottom of the App store called ‘Near me’ – this shows a list of all the popular apps within your local area.
Generally, these options will include a local news app or transport app that are relevant to your location, making it extremely useful when you’re on holiday.
8. Set your phone to perform certain actions when you triple click the home button
You can use your Settings to adjust your accessibility settings and make it easier to do certain things – one of them is triple clicking the home button, which you can adjust within your Settings app.
You can set your home button to automatically activate zoom, adjust voice controls, and other functions by triple-clicking.
9. It tracks every place you’ve been
Your iPhone knows everything. To see just how fascinating/creepy an iPhone can be and how much it knows about you, go through settings and privacy settings. If you head into Google Maps, you’ll be able to see exactly where you’ve been.
And likewise, if this scares you a little bit, you can easily go into your Settings and disable the feature,
10. Siri can learn
Something that many iPhone users don’t know is that you have the potential to teach Siri what you want it to know.
Whenever she says something wrong, she will tell you several different pronunciations and you can tell her the right one. You can train Siri to understand your voice, which can be useful for helping her understand what you mean.
Conclusion
Although millions of us have a smartphone, most of us have never used many of the hidden features they have, with several examples above. While you may know about some or all of these, many of them are probably unexpected.
There’s plenty of hidden features available in new versions of iOS to help with a variety of different things, from helping you take better pictures through to sending personal emails. Hopefully, there’s something here that can help you!
This list of fun things you can do with your iPhone will give you the chance to look at your iPhone in a new light.
