Ten iPhone Tips That Really Work
This is a writing sample from Scripted writer Savannah Richardson
The iPhone is one of the most popular phones on the market, thanks to its wonderful features and long lifespan. While the phone comes with many ready-to-use apps and other features that are easy to understand right out of the box, though, there are some tricks you have to learn to get the most out of your phone. Here are some handy ones that are incredibly helpful. 1. Have your music turn off automatically. You can set your music to a timer. (This works great for workouts!) Just go to the Clock, click on the Timer button and hit the "When Timer Ends" toggle. Select "Stop Playing," and your music will turn off after the specified amount of time. So, if you want to workout for 30 minutes, but you don't feel like checking your phone every so often, simply set up your favorite playlist, set the timer, and go. 2. Swipe to clear letters and numbers. If you use your iPhone frequently, you've probably learned that you can delete letters and numbers in various applications by simply swiping your finger from side to side. This trick works great in the calculator screen. If you accidentally mistype a number, simply swipe your finger to erase it instead of hitting the clear button, which will erase everything you've entered. Try this trick on other screens, too; you may be surprised to see which apps use it. 3. Take selfies and other photos easily. Taking a selfie while using the snapshot button on your screen can be difficult and awkward. To work around this, Apple lets you take a photo by hitting the up or down buttons on your volume controls, as well. These are located on the sides of your phone so you can reach them more easily. They're also placed on your headphones, though, which makes this trick even more awesome. 4. Type more quickly. There are many tricks for typing on an iPhone. For one, you can create shortcuts. Go to Settings>General>Keyboard>Shortcuts. Then type your shortcut. For example, you might type "IDK" for "I don't know." Next time you need to say this phrase, simply type IDK. The iPhone will spell it out for you. You can even use this nifty little trick for emojis. Just pick a phrase, then choose the emoji. Next time you type the phrase, the emoji you chose will pop up instead. You can also speed up your typing a bit by double tapping the period symbol when you need to start a new sentence. This will automatically insert a period and provide a space afterwards. You can just start typing the new sentence immediately. Finally, when you are typing in website URLs, hold down the period symbol. A menu of suffixes will appear (.com, .net, etc.). You can select one quickly without having to type it all out. 5. Find a word on a page. You can search for items on a webpage quickly with this function. Once you're on a specific page, simply type the phrase you need in the search bar like normal. Instead of hitting enter, however, look at the dropdown that pops up. Towards the bottom of the results you'll see "On This Page" with the number of results available. Tap the "Find (whatever your phrase was)." Now the webpage will display again with your search phrase highlighted for easy reading. If multiple results are found, you can cycle through them by hitting the arrows. 6. See your text message date and timestamps. Older phones displayed text message date and timestamps each time a text was sent or received. It seems that the iPhone is missing this feature, but it's really just hidden. To see the exact time a message was sent, simply swipe the text to the left. The stamp should appear to the right. 7. Erase text quickly. If you've ever written a whole text only to delete it again, you know how frustrating holding down the delete key can be. Next time you need to erase a large block of text, simply shake the iPhone. A message will pop up that asks if you'd like to erase your text. You can choose to erase or cancel the operation. If you decide you'd like to retype what you just erased, shake the phone again for a "Redo Typing" option. 8. Ask Siri for password help. If you like to keep your passwords especially secure, it's best to use different ones for each login. Coming up with random passwords is annoying, though, which is why you should ask Siri for help. Just tell her you need a random password of a certain length, and she'll do the rest. 9. Set vibration patterns for each of your favorite contacts. Want to know who's calling without looking at your phone? You can set unique vibration patterns for your callers. Just go to Settings>Sound>Ringtone>Vibration>Create New Vibration. You create the pattern by tapping your finger against the screen in whatever rhythm or pattern you desire. 10. Set up Do Not Disturb to your advantage. Your phone has a "Do Not Disturb" function that's even better than silencing the ringer. Why? Because it silences your entire phone, except for alarms and apps you initiate. The best part of this feature is that it's totally customizable. You can set your Do Not Disturb to activate automatically at certain times of day. You can also allow certain contacts to call you even when Do Not Disturb is activated. There's even a setting to allow multiple calls from the same person through, just in case of an emergency. To set up Do Not Disturb, go to Settings>Do Not Disturb. You can choose all the different options from this screen. If you need to activate or disactivate Do Not Disturb mode quickly, just swipe up from the bottom of your home screen. It's one of the options on this quick menu. Just click the moon symbol.
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