More iPhone and iPad tips and tricks
After the recent iPhone tips I’ve posted, here’s a few more tips and tricks I’ve gathered from the MacRumors.com forums. I’ve added in some of the previously posted tips for a full reference. Let me know any I’ve missed!
Keyboard
- Turn on the Caps Lock feature in Settings -> General -> Keyboard. You can then use Caps Lock on the keyboard by double-tapping the Shift key. Note this is turned off for a new phone.
- Turn on the full stop / period shortcut in Settings -> General -> Keyboard. You can then quickly type a full stop / period by tapping Space twice. Note this is turned on for a new phone.
- Hold down a modifier key (.?123) and slide to the button you want to quickly enter the character and return to the alphabetic keyboard. This works the other way around too, if you’re in the numeric keyboard and need to enter a single letter.
- Hold down certain letters on the alphabetic keyboard to get accented letters.
Navigation and Advanced Usage
- Double-tap to zoom on an element (hopefully everyone knows this one!)
- Pinch with your thumb and forefinger to zoom (again, you probably know this)
- Tap the status bar at the top of the screen to immediately scroll to the top of a page or list.
- To effectively “page down” through a long section of text instead of scrolling, double tap towards the bottom of the page. The page will re-centre on where you tapped.
- Double-press the Home button to go quickly to certain apps and locations, specifically Home, Search, Phone Favorites, Camera, and iPod. Change the setting through Settings -> General -> Home.
- Quick-mute by holding down the volume decrease button.
- Take screenshots by holding down the Home and Sleep buttons for half a second. The screen will flash.
- Shut the iPhone down by holding down the Sleep and Home buttons until you’re presented with the option to slide to power off. Turn the iPhone back on by holding down the Sleep button until you see the Apple logo.
- For a hard reset, continue holding both buttons down even after you see the slide to power off screen; this shuts down and powers back up again.
- To force quit a stalled app, hold down both the Sleep and Home buttons as though you want to shut down. When the slide to power off screen appears, hold down the Home button until the app quits.
- You can use Voice Control (iPhone 3GS only) by holding down the Home button for a few seconds until you hear a beep. Full details on the voice commands can be found in Apple’s iPhone How-To.
Home Screen
- When swiping through pages of apps on your home screen, press the Home button to go straight back to your first home screen page.
- When on the first home page screen, swipe to go left (or press the Home button) to go to the search screen. You can configure which items appear in searches and which order they appear in through Settings -> General -> Home -> Search Results.
- To rearrange or delete apps on the home screen, tap and hold an app’s icon until all the icons start wiggling. You can then rearrange them with your finger. Move them to other home screen pages by moving towards the edge of the page. You can also move icons in and out of the dock at the bottom of the home screen. Delete an app from your iPhone by touching the X in the top left of the icon. Finish rearranging and deleting by pressing the Home button. Note that you can always re-add a deleted app from your iTunes sync, or you can re-download an app from the App Store for free (this is different to songs in the iTunes Store), however any saved data cannot be recovered.
Editing
- Tap and hold editable text to display a magnifying glass, which allows you to accurately position your text cursor.
- Tap and hold text, then release to Select or Select All. You can drag the two blue tags to change the selection, then you can Cut, Copy, or Paste.
- Double-tapping a word selects only that word, bypassing the selection process for quick cut, copy, and paste. Tapping a word four times will quick-select the entire paragraph.
- Shake the iPhone to Undo Typing.
Phone
- To stop an incoming call from ringing, press the Sleep button. To send an incoming call immediately to voicemail, press the Sleep button twice.
- You can access other apps when on a phone call: pressing the Home button won’t end the call. To return to the phone call in progress, just tap on the pulsing green area at the top of the screen.
Safari
- When entering text in a text field, scrolling with a single finger will scroll the web page as normal, but scrolling with two fingers will scroll the content of the text field.
- Tap and hold a link to see the URL, and either Open, Open in New Page, or Copy.
- Tap and hold an image to either Save Image, or Copy.
- Tap and hold an image with a link to either Open, Open in New Page, Save Image, or Copy.
Contacts
- Tap a contact’s address to display it in Maps.
- Tap a contact’s phone number to call them.
- Tap a contact’s email address to compose a new email.
- Tap a contact’s URL to open it in Safari.
Lists
- Quick-delete a list item by swiping it horizontally in the list. A Delete button will appear for the item. This works for emails in Mail, conversations in Messages, and notes in Notes.
Maps
- Enter a three-letter airport code to go straight to a map of that airport.
