10 Hidden iPhone Tips You’re Probably Not Even Using!

1) Hidden Trackpad!
In the past, had to tap and hold your finger to get a cursor to move around. But now on the iPhone, just tap and hold on the space bar. Now you’ll see a cursor that you can move around by moving your finger on the trackpad

2) Hidden Keyboard Gems
Here’s a couple of nifty (but hidden!) keyboard tips: For Caps Lock, double-tap on the shift button and you’ll see a little line under the arrow that indicates caps lock! To take it off, just tap it again.

For accented letters, tap and hold on each letter to see the options. There are also some symbols like the hidden cents sign under the dollar sign, and the “section” symbol under the ampersand.

3) Hidden Text Expansion
The iPhone has something called “Text Replacement” which is found under Settings > General > Keyboard. You can create your own text replacements like for the names of judges and clients (you don’t want to misspell those names!) And you can set up text replacement for ANYTHING like email addresses, phone numbers, etc. I created one for the paragraph symbol – I copied and pasted the paragraph symbol into a replacement and then had that insert any time I typed “ppara”

4) Hidden Keyboards
You don’t have to tap each character, the iPhone now lets you swipe your finger over the letters that you need, and it will make a best guess as to what you mean – and it’s PRETTY GOOD!!

There’s also a one-handed keyboard! Tap and hold on the globe and then you see at the bottom that you can shove the keyboard slightly over to the left or fight so that you can more easily reach the keys with your thumb. Hit the arrow to get the keyboard back to normal.

5) Hidden Text Selection Tips
You can tap and hold on a word to select it, and then drag the little bubbles to select more text … but that takes too much time! Simply double-tap to select a word, or triple-tap to select a sentence!

6) Hidden Undo Tricks
One of the best keyboard shortcuts on a computer is Ctrl + Z (or Command + Z on a Mac) for “UNDO” and it’s great to quickly undo a mistake. The iPhone has some hidden “UNDO” tips as well! First, and the most dangerous, is the “Shake to Undo” which has been around for a long time. Just make sure you have a GOOD GRIP on your phone!!!

But much easier is the 3 finger tap or swipe. If you tap 3 fingers on the screen, you’ll get this tiny little toolbar at the top with an undo button, along with a copy and paste button. You can use those, but if you know you just need to quickly undo your last actions, just swipe your three fingers to the left on the screen and it will undo, and give you a brief little confirmation bubble at the top. To RE-do, three finger swipe to the right.

7) Hidden Magnifying Glass
My eyes aren’t getting any younger and if you’re in the same boat you’ll be thrilled to hear that the iPhone has a magnification option built in which his even better than the “zoom” on the camera. First go to Settings > Accessibility and make sure the “Magnifier” is turned on. Then I recommend scrolling down and making the “Magnifier” the Accessibility Shortcut, which means that when you triple-click the side button, you’ll go right into this mode. Here you can zoom into the image, and change the brightness or contrast of the image. I also like that you can flip on the flash for more light and take a picture if you need to.

8) Hidden Back Tap
If you’ve got at least an iPhone 8 and working in iOS 14, there’s a hidden back tap button that you can turn on. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch and scroll all the way down and turn on “Back Tap. You can set actions for a double-tap and a triple-tap.

9) Hidden “Print to PDF” Shortcut
Here’s one of my favorite tips! Any time you can pull up a print button, just go into the print menu and then spread your finger and thumb apart on the print preview image to get a PDF!

10) Hidden Measure and Level
If you have an iPhone 6s or later, look for the “Measure” app which can act as a measuring tape. When you open the app, you first might have to move the iPhone around to give it a frame of reference. Tap the screen at one corner of the object you want to measure, then glide along to the next point and tap the screen again.