AWESOME THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOUR IPHONE COULD DO

Most of us don’t know how many bells and whistles are around the iPhone hood. Let’s look at awesome things you didn’t know you could do with your iPhone.

• ·        Shake to Undo

To undo typing even if it amounts to an entire paragraph, just give your phone a shake. Shaking your phone will result to a dialogue box which asks if you want to undo. You can click cancel if it was an accident or click the undo button. It’s enabled by default.

• ·        Make sure a surface level is equal

The iPhone’s compass is pretty useful. If you open the compass app and swipe left, you’d find an extra feature. It’s a working level that uses the phone’s gyroscope to detect its orientation. You can do lots with it such as hanging pictures or installing shelves. It would make sure you’ve got a perfectly leveled surface. – Open your compass app and swipe left to use this feature.

• ·        Search your photos

Having too many pictures and scrolling through them to find one can be a serious pain. As long as you’ve got few details about the picture, chances are that your phone can find it for you. Your phone can search your photos for objects, locations, pets, people and even year the picture was taken.  – Open your photos and notice a magnifying glass at the top right-hand corner. Select it and start typing.

• ·        Use text shortcuts

Most of us end up using a lot of same phrases, questions and responses when sending text messages.

There’s a more effective way that makes sure you don’t have to type the same long sentences over and over. – The Customise Text Shortcuts. You can create your own shortcuts, telling your phone to replace those series of characters with custom texts that can be as long or short as you want.

-          Open your Settings

-          Select General

-          Select your Keyboard

-          Click on Text Replacement

-          Select it and tap the plus sign at the upper ring hand corner.

One the phrase field, type the entire phrase that you want to create the shortcut for and in the shortcut field, type the series of characters you want your phone to replace with that phrase.

E.g, You can make two @@ signs produce your entire email address. This is an incredible and handy feature. Now that you’ve known, you can make your friends wonder why you text with such lightening speed.

• ·       Stop music with clock

If you listen to music on your iPhone as you fall asleep, you might appreciate being able to set a sleep timer, so it doesn’t play all night and drain your battery. Many people listen to audio and podcasts while they’re laying in bed, often sleeping in the process.

You can set a timer to stop music after a while.

-          -   Go to Clock

-          -   Click Timer at the bottom left

-          -   Set a Timer

-          -  Click on ‘When Timer Ends’

-          -  Go down to 'Stop Playing' and your music will stop playing for that long.

• ·         Hide sensitive notification preview on lock screen

You can disable notifications from showing on lock screen. In iOS 11, you can hide the content of your notification while your phone is locked, only letting you see the full preview when you use Touch ID or Face ID to unlock your iPhone.

  To hide notification preview for all apps

-          Go to Settings

-          Click on Notification 

-          Tap the ‘Show Previews’ option

-          Set the option to ‘When unlocked’. Notification preview will be hidden until you unlock your phone, preventing other people from snooping. 

     You can do this for other apps by following same settings and scrolling down on the app’s notification screen and tap show preview under options and select your preference.

• Hide private photos

Sometimes we hand over our phone to friends when we want to share a photos or videos. Your gallery might include certain private images you'd rather not show anyone else. The iPhone makes it easy to hide your personal and sensitive photos from view.
To do this;
- Click on the photo app
- Select one or more images
- Tap the Share button and choose Hide

Your chosen pictures or videos will become hidden in Moments, Collection and Years view, but can still be accessed via the Album screen. Your best option would be to hide photos in a recommended safe app called Safe Lock, which can be downloaded from the App store. 

• Receive notifications via camera flash

People prefer a visual phone alert to an audible one. You can make your iPhone's flashlight to light up when you receive a notification. This can also be used if you normally place your phone face-down on top of a table.
To get this feature
- Go to Settings
- Click General and select Accessibility
- Scroll down to the Hearing section and toggle 'LED Flash for Alerts' on.

You can also toggle 'Flash on Silent' off if you don't want it to light up when your phone is in silent mode.

• Get Siri to read articles and texts for you

Siri is a personal assistant that can be useful to our lives in different ways. You can get Siri to read all the text you want to read but do not actually need to read. You can also navigate through apps and Siri would continue to read the content you initiated.

To get Siri to start speaking to you; 
Click on Settings → General → Accessbility → Speech section.
Enable the 'Speak Selection' and 'Speak Screen' options.
You can also enable the 'Highlight content option' that enables you to visually follow along with what is being read on the screen.

To use;
Highlight selected article or text and click Speak. Siri can also be paused.

• Easily reach the top of the screen

Tired of trying to stretch your thumb all the way to the top of your iPhone screen? This feature makes it easier to reach the top of your screen. Reachability is only available on the iPhone 6 and above.
- Double-tap on the home button (Double-pressing on the home button activates the app switcher)
A double-tap would move the top-half of the content on the screen down to the bottom half of the screen.

To activate: 
Go to Settings → General → Accessibility → Reachability and Toggle on. 
















Have you found yourself using any of these accessibility features? Let us know in the comments.

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