10 iPhone Hacks That Are Actually Worth Knowing

I’ve had an iPhone in my pocket for well over a decade now, and it still blows my mind how many little features are just buried. They’re not hidden in a secret menu or anything, but Apple’s version of “user friendly” often means “we just won’t mention this exists, good luck finding it.”

The other day a friend watched me edit a typo on my phone and he literally grabbed my wrist and asked how I did it. That’s when I realized that most of the iPhone hacks I rely on daily are not common knowledge. So here’s the list. No filler, no weird Siri tricks you’ll never use twice. Just the stuff that makes the phone feel a little less clunky and a little more like the $1,000 device it actually is.

1. That Thing With the Space Bar You Didn’t Know About

Okay, this is the one that makes people stop and stare. You know when you’re typing an email or a text and you need to go back three words to fix “teh” to “the”? Trying to tap the exact spot between the “e” and the “h” with your fat thumb is a nightmare. You end up highlighting the whole word or, worse, selecting a random emoji.

Forget tapping. Just press and hold down the space bar with your thumb. Keep holding it. After a split second, all the letters disappear and the keyboard turns into a virtual trackpad. You can just slide your thumb around to move the cursor wherever you want. It’s so smooth. I honestly think I use this more than the actual keyboard. It’s one of those iPhone hacks that once you know it, you can’t un-know it.

2. Tapping the Back of the Phone Like a Secret Door

This one is tucked away in Accessibility settings, which is where Apple hides all the fun stuff. It’s called Back Tap, and it lets you literally double-tap or triple-tap the back glass of the phone to make something happen.

You set it up under Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. I have a double tap set to pull up Shazam because I’m always in a coffee shop trying to figure out what song is playing. And I have a triple tap set to turn on the Flashlight because I’m always walking around my dark house at night looking for the cat. It works through my silicone case just fine. The only downside? Occasionally I pat myself on the back enthusiastically and set off Shazam by accident. Small price to pay.

3. Your Battery is Begging You to Stop Charging to 100%

Alright, I’m going to get on a tiny soapbox here. I used to be the person who plugged my phone in at 11 p.m. and unplugged it at 7 a.m. every single day. And every single year, my battery health would tank to like 85% and I’d get annoyed. The reason? Sitting at 100% charge while plugged in for hours is like leaving a roast in the oven on warm overnight. It dries it out. Same thing with lithium-ion.

If you have an iPhone 15 or later, do your future self a favor. Go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging > Charging Optimization and pick “80% Limit.” You’ll wake up with 80% battery. Is that enough for a normal day? Almost always, yes. And a year from now, your battery health will look way better than your friend’s who insists on that full 100% juice. It’s a weird mental hurdle to get over, but it’s worth it.

4. Grabbing Text Right Out of the Air

I used to type out Wi-Fi passwords from the sticker on the bottom of the router. You know the one: “1lI0O0O” where you can’t tell if that’s an L or a one or a capital i. It was agony. Then I discovered Live Text and I felt like a complete fool for not using it sooner.

Open your Camera app. Point it at any text—a recipe card, a book page, a business card. You’ll see a little yellow square icon with lines inside it pop up in the bottom right. Tap that icon. Now you can literally highlight the words on the page as if they were in a Word doc. You can copy it, paste it into Notes, or translate it on the fly. It even works on old photos in your library. This has saved me from typing out a handwritten grocery list more times than I can count.

5. Whispering to Siri

I’m not a big fan of talking to my phone in public. It feels a bit… much. Especially when Siri decides to shout back at me that she “didn’t quite catch that.” But there are times when I need to set a timer without touching the screen. The solution is Type to Siri.

You’ll find this under Settings > Accessibility > Siri. Flip the switch for Type to Siri. Now, when you hold down the side button, a keyboard pops up instead of that wavy listening orb. I just quietly type “set a timer for 8 minutes” while my pasta is boiling. No one around me knows I’m even doing it. It’s infinitely more discreet and, honestly, she understands what I want the first time more often this way.

6. Bringing the Top of the Screen Down to Your Thumb

If you have a Pro Max model or even just a regular sized phone and small hands, you know the struggle. There’s a back button way up in the left corner, and you’re trying to reach it with your thumb while holding a coffee in the other hand. You end up doing this precarious hand-shimmy that usually ends with the phone slipping.

There’s a gesture for this that’s been around forever but nobody talks about it. It’s called Reachability. Swipe down on the very bottom edge of the screen—right where the home bar is. The entire screen slides down so the top items are suddenly in the middle. Tap what you need, then swipe up from the middle to send it back up. It’s a total wrist-saver. I use this constantly when I’m using Maps one-handed.

7. Hiding Photos Without Being Obvious

The “Hidden” album in the Photos app is a joke. Everyone knows where it is. If you hand your phone to a nosy relative, they know to scroll down to Utilities and look for Hidden. If you really want to lock a photo away so it’s not just sitting in your camera roll, use Notes.

Open a new Note. Tap the camera icon and insert the photo. Then hit the three dots menu and select Lock Note. Set a password (and make sure you remember it!). Now you can delete that photo from your actual Photos library. The only copy of it lives behind a password-protected note. I use this for gift ideas, scans of my passport, and screenshots of those long tracking numbers you need once a year. It’s way more secure than the default option.

8. The Level and Tape Measure You Always Have

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a store, holding up a lamp base next to a shelf, squinting and trying to guess if it’s 8 inches or 10 inches wide. You do not need to guess. You have an app called Measure (it’s pre-installed, just search for it).

Open it up and point it at the shelf. It’s shockingly accurate. It uses the LiDAR scanner or just the regular camera to figure out dimensions. Even cooler: if you point it at a rectangle like a painting, it’ll outline the whole thing in yellow and give you the square area. My husband used this to hang a gallery wall perfectly level without owning a single actual tool. It’s one of those iPhone hacks that makes you feel like you have superpowers.

9. Making Dark Mode Work on Your Schedule

The automatic sunset-to-sunrise switching for Dark Mode is fine if you’re a vampire or live in a cave. But I want Dark Mode on at 9 p.m. when I’m winding down, and I want Light Mode back on at 7 a.m. when the alarm goes off and I need to see my screen in the blinding morning light.

You don’t have to settle for Apple’s default. Use the Shortcuts app. Go to Automation, hit the plus sign, pick Time of Day, and set Appearance to Light or Dark. It takes about forty seconds to set up and then it just hums along in the background forever. My eyes thank me every morning when they aren’t assaulted by bright white text at dawn.

10. Moving a Whole Pile of Apps in One Go

Reorganizing your home screen used to be a 20-minute project involving lots of swiping and dropping. I’d drag an icon to the edge of the screen, wait three seconds for the page to turn, drop it, curse, and repeat. It was miserable.

Here’s the real way. Get the apps wiggling. Pick up one app with your thumb and start dragging it just a little bit. Don’t let go. Now, while you’re holding that one app, use your other hand (or another finger) to just tap the other apps you want to move. You’ll see them all stack up in a little pile under your thumb. It looks like a tiny cartoon stack of icons. You can then drag that whole stack onto a new page or dump it into a folder all at once. It’s ridiculously satisfying.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Ten little things that probably won’t change your life, but they will definitely change how annoyed you get while using your phone. And that counts for something, right?

Start with the space bar trackpad thing. That one is an instant quality-of-life upgrade. Then maybe mess around with Back Tap for a few days until you find the combo that works for you. These aren’t complicated iPhone hacks; they’re just the good stuff Apple forgot to put in the manual. Have fun digging around in Settings—just try not to get lost in there.

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