5 more sweet iOS secrets you’ll enjoy

Five little features to help you get more from your iOS devices

I spend a lot of time looking for cool hints and tips to make using Apple’s devices more fun, but there are always a few smaller items that are pretty cool even though they don’t make for a long blog post. Here’s five such features I think you’ll enjoy — they aren’t necessarily new, but they aren’t necessarily obvious, either.

Apple Music? Make Siri your DJ

If you subscribe to Apple Music then you have to try this feature. While I’m sure most of us are used to using Apple’s Siri to play and pause music, raise and lower volume and the like, we may not be using this feature. You see, Siri quietly watches the music you play on Apple Music to figure out what kind of music you like. That’s why when you ask Siri to “Play me music I will like”, your intelligent assistant will put together a playlist of music it thinks you’ll enjoy. I think this hint is going to be incredibly useful to AirPods users.

Apple Watch? Flash that iPhone

If you use an Apple Watch then it’s likely you already know that when you tap the phone icon in your Watch Control Center you can cause your iPhone to make a sound (even when its muted). Had you noticed that if you then keep pressing the icon you can make your iPhone flashlight flash, too? Well, you can. Now you can find it in the dark.

Get to Control Center, fast

If you use an iPhone Plus or even an iPhone X, you may not have noticed that when you double tap the Home button to lower the contents of the display in Reachability mode, you can then easily access Control Center by swiping up from the lower right of the display. That’s particularly useful for iPhone X owners, who must otherwise swipe down from the right of the notch to access it.

Double tap Maps

Everyone (by which I mean, me) forgets this: Double tap when you’re in Maps to zoom in, you can then repeat this until full zoom is reached – but there’s another thing – double tap and keep holding after the second tap and you can zoom in and out of the map just by moving that holding finger up and down the screen. This also works in combination with Reachability, which I kind of like for some reason.

Calculator backspace

This tip will absolutely transform your use of Apple’s Calculator app. One of the reasons people don’t use the app very much is because it simply isn’t clear how to get rid of an incorrectly entered number. Most people simply start the calculation all over again (boring), or look for a calculator app with a visible backspace button (better). They may not need to with this tip: when you enter a number incorrectly, just swipe to the left or the right at the top of the screen, where the digits are displayed. The last number you entered will be deleted. (And don’t forget the more sophisticated calculator you’ll see when you turn your device into landscape mode).

Got any more of those little iOS features/tips you think people may enjoy? Let us all now in comments below 🙂