iPhone tricks every Apple user should know

Your iPhone can probably do more than you think - especially with the help of tricks that not everyone knows. Most owners of Apple products only use the standard functions and do not even begin to exploit the potential of their cell phone. There are many iPhone hacks that can make your life easier in many situations. In this article we will show you the best iPhone tricks that can improve pretty much all areas of your cell phone, from the camera to the battery charge.

These are the iPhone tricks and tips at a glance:
1. Notes app for digitizing analog texts
2. Improve WiFi signal
3. Change font size
4. Record video and music at the same time
5. Hide photos completely
6. Find battery killer apps
7. Photos with long exposure effect
8. Clear iPhone RAM
9. Switch on noise detection
10. Activate notification light
11. Create notes from the lock screen
12. Start voice search in Safari
13. Scan documents and create PDFs
14. Change the brightness of the flashlight
15. Find photos again with text search

1. Notes app for digitizing analog texts

The first of the iPhone hacks affects the Notes app. It has a so-called OCR feature that you can use. This iPhone hack helps you add analog texts as a note in seconds. And it's that easy: First, start the Notes app on your iPhone and open a new note. Now simply tap in the still empty text area so that the live text icon is displayed in the context menu. Once you have clicked on it, the camera will open in the lower part of your screen -  now you can simply point your iPhone at the text that you want to have as a note in text form on your iPhone. You will then see the option to “Insert” at the bottom. If you tap on this, your iPhone uses this trick to adopt the analog text as digital text in your note. You can then continue to edit this note like any other.

2. Improve WiFi signal

Regardless of whether you are at home on your WLAN or on the go in public hotspots – sending messages or loading videos slowly is always annoying. But one of the iPhone hacks can also help in these cases, with which you can quickly improve your WiFi signal. To use the trick you just have to do the following: 

1. Open Control Center on your iPhone.

2. Put your iPhone in airplane mode by tapping the airplane icon in the top left. This will deactivate all connections, whether wireless or network.

3. Then tap the WiFi symbol in the top left to reconnect your iPhone to the WiFi network.

With this setting, your iPhone should now have a smoother and, above all, faster WiFi connection.

3. Change font size

Sometimes the text on the cell phone is just too small. Did you know that you can easily enlarge it using one of the iPhone hacks? Simply open Control Center and tap the "aA" icon in the bottom half of the screen. A slider will appear with which you can easily adjust the text size. You can choose whether you want the text size to be changed system-wide, i.e. in all apps, or whether you only want the font size to be changed on the home screen. If you don't see the "aA" icon in the control center, you still need to add this control. You can do this in the Settings app under "Control Center" by tapping the green plus sign next to "Text Size".

4. Record video and music at the same time

Would you like to capture a breathtaking landscape on video while also recording the music you are listening to? Normally the music stops immediately when you want to record a video. Our iPhone hacks offer a simple and straightforward solution: the QuickTake video feature, available on all models starting from the iPhone 11 including the second generation iPhone SE. So, to add music to your video using a popular iPhone trick, proceed as follows:

1. Start the music you want on your iPhone.

2. Open the Camera app.

3. In photo mode, press and hold the white shutter button.

4. The video recording will now start, but your music will continue to play and will be recorded.

5. Hide photos completely

The fact that photos can be hidden on the iPhone is probably known to most Apple users and hiding them is not one of the more unknown tricks. However, you can still easily access the photos in the “Hidden” album. With the next of our iPhone hacks you can deactivate a hidden album. This ensures that no one can view your hidden photos anymore. To deactivate, simply follow the following steps:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.

2. Open the “Photos” menu item.

3. Turn off Hidden Album by tapping the switch to the right of it.

If you then scroll through your "Albums" tab in the Photos app, you can see that the "Hidden" album no longer appears there and is therefore no longer visible to anyone. 

If you want to hide photos, you can easily select them in the Photos app, go to the share button at the bottom left and select the “Hide” option.

6. Find battery killer apps

A few hours ago the battery charge was at 100% and now you have to go into energy saving mode? Apps that you don't use at all or rarely use are often responsible for this. With the following iPhone hacks you can easily see which of your apps use a lot of battery.

To use the trick, simply open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap the “Battery” menu item. Under the menu item “Battery usage per app” you can see what percentage of the battery charge each of your apps has used. If you then tap on “Show activity” at the top right, you can see which apps you have used for how many minutes or hours.

7. Photos with long exposure effect

You've probably already figured out how to take live images - it doesn't require any special tricks. But did you know that you can also create impressive long exposure photos using an iPhone hack? To do this, first activate the live function in the camera app by tapping the round button in the top right. If the yellow “Live” message then appears briefly, the function is activated. Now you can point the camera at the desired subject. Moving subjects such as waterfalls, cars or rivers are particularly impressive for long exposure shots. Now hold your iPhone still and take a live photo. Then tap on the preview image at the bottom left and click on the “Live” button at the top left. A drop-down menu will appear from which you can then select the “Long exposure” option. The photo you took will now appear on your iPhone with a long exposure effect. You can then remove this effect at any time using the same method.

8. Clear iPhone RAM

If apps on your iPhone are running slowly and your entire device feels slower than usual, it may be that there is not enough available RAM. However, with one of our iPhone tips you can easily empty the RAM and make your iPhone faster. To do this, open any app and close it again by swiping it up in the app switcher. You can then close all other apps that you don't need at the moment and free up a lot of RAM with this iPhone hack. With free apps you can check how high your RAM usage is and use before and after screenshots to see how much RAM you freed up by closing the apps.

9. Switch on noise detection

You listen to your favorite music on headphones while tidying up and later find a note in the mailbox from a parcel delivery person saying that your parcel could not be delivered. It's annoying when you miss important sounds like the doorbell. For such situations, one of the iPhone hacks from our collection of tricks is ideal and can make your life easier. The iPhone has noise detection, which ensures that you are notified via push notification when certain noises are heard. The iPhone is able to recognize 15 different noises, such as barking dogs, doorbells, running water or babies crying. To activate this function, open the Settings app and go to “Sound Detection” under “Accessibility”. The function is activated by tapping the switch to the right. Under "Sounds" you can now select which sounds your iPhone should notify you of - you can also select multiple sounds. As soon as your iPhone recognizes one of the tones you have selected, a notification will appear on the screen.

10. Activate notification light

Notifications on an iPhone are only noticeable through a sound. If your phone is in silent mode, you may not even hear new notifications - unless you know this one of the iPhone hacks. If you don't want to miss a message, you can convert your iPhone's flash into a notification light. This will then not stop flashing until you have seen the missed notifications. To use the trick, go to "Accessibility" in the Settings app and tap "LED flash on notifications" under "Audio/Visual".

11. Create notes from lock screen

Quickly write something down on your cell phone? Not so easy if you first have to unlock the iPhone, open the Notes app and create a new note. For this we have another of our iPhone hacks that you can use to create notes directly from the lock screen: Instant Notes. To set this up, first open the Settings app, go to “Notes” and scroll to “Access on the lock screen”. At the next level you can then choose whether you always want a new note to be created or whether you want to continue your last note. Then, when you open your Control Center, you can simply tap the Notes icon to open a note without unlocking your iPhone. If the notes icon doesn't appear, you can easily add it in the Settings app under "Control Center".

12. Start voice search in Safari

Sometimes you don't have both hands free and typing on your cell phone is almost impossible. If you want to look up something on the internet, you can also do this using voice search in the Safari browser. To do this, simply tap the microphone symbol in the search bar and type in your search term. Thanks to this iPhone trick, multitasking is possible.

13. Scan documents and create PDFs

This iPhone tip is particularly practical if you don't have a printer: you can use the Notes app to scan documents and create PDF files. To do this, tap the camera icon in an open note and then select “Scan documents”. Using a yellow frame, you can now position your iPhone correctly over the document and hold it still while scanning. If you're happy with the result, select "Keep Scan" and then "Save" to save the document.

14. Change the brightness of the flashlight

You are probably aware that your iPhone has a practical flashlight function. But did you also know that you can adjust the brightness yourself using a trick? For this iPhone hack, simply press and hold the flashlight symbol and select the desired brightness level by simply swiping up or down.

15. Find photos again with text search

Over time, several thousand photos can accumulate in the Photos app on the iPhone. It is difficult to quickly find certain images again. There is an ingenious iPhone hack for this problem: text search. When saving photos, the iPhone carries out automatic image recognition and saves metadata, which can make your search much easier. You can simply enter a keyword into the photo search, such as “cat” or “car”. Thanks to this trick, your iPhone will then show you all the images that show the desired motif.