10 useful iPhone tips & tricks
The iPhone, like the Mac, is extremely simple and intuitive to use. Odds are that you’ve never even cracked open the user manual since the way just about everything works is pretty obvious.
But its simplicity can be a double-edged sword… there are many small “convenience features” that are often hidden away. If Apple exposed them in a more obvious way, it’d take away from the elegance of the device. And its elegance is one of its strongest points.
I’m sure that many of you are “power users” and probably know most of these tips and tricks. But I suspect that a lot of you are more casual iPhone users and will find this list useful. Even our team members that I showed the draft of this post to (people I consider iPhone experts), all picked up at least a tip or two that they weren’t already aware of. So I’ll bet there’s something for everyone here…
1. Scroll to top
Tapping the status bar (the bar at the top with the clock) will make scrollable content scroll to the top. It comes in handy in situations like when you’ve scrolled down a long web page or mail message and you quickly need to get back to the top.
This may be the most convenient, yet hidden feature on the iPhone. I had my phone for months before stumbling upon it (and I didn’t even stumble upon it by playing around with the phone, but by reading the programming documentation on scroll views).
As far as I know, there’s no corresponding way to scroll to the bottom, though.
2. Screenshots
Simultaneously press the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons to take a screenshot of your current screen. You’ll hear a camera shutter sound, your screen will flash white, then the screenshot will appear in the “Saved Photos” library of the Photos app.
3. Saving images in Safari and Mail
Touching an image in Safari or Mail for a couple of seconds will present you with an action sheet which will enable you to save the image. As with taking screenshots, the image will get stored in the “Saved Photos” library of the Photos app.
4. Caps lock
Double-tap the Shift key to lock it.
This one’s actually somewhat intuitive but I was surprised by how many people aren’t aware of it.
Note: For this to work, you need to make sure Enable Caps Lock is turned on in the Keyboard section of General settings.
Along somewhat similar lines, a handy way of saving a tap when you need to type a capital letter is to touch the Shift key then slide over to the desired key. This behavior also works for the Number key.
5. Extra keys
Do you need to type an umlauted-u (ü) but you’re not using the German keyboard? Touch and hold the U key and you get a set of additional keys to choose from.
This works for several of the alphabetic keys, enabling you access to letters such as éîçåß, etc.
In addition, there are several punctuation keys that behave similarly, so that you can type curly-quotes, etc.
And furthermore, when the keyboard is in “URL-mode”, where the “.com” key is available, touching and holding it pops-up additional options for quickly entering .net, .edu, and .org domains.
6. Lock / shut down / force quit / reset
You’d be surprised to know how many people don’t know how to turn their phone completely off. I’m not talking about “locking” the phone where you simply press the Sleep/Wake button on the top of your phone.
For a while, I was under the false impression that locking the phone was equivalent to putting your Mac to sleep. But when your phone is locked, the screen turns off but the app that’s running at the time continues to run. For instance a relaxation app is able to continue playing sound but save battery power with the screen off. So, locking your phone is actually more like “display sleep” on your Mac (⌃⇧⏏ or Control-Shift-Eject for those of you who can’t read Macroglyphics).
So to ensure that your phone is using as little battery as possible, you’re best off always pressing the Home button before locking so that no app remains running.
To turn your phone completely off, press the Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds then drag the red slider that appears.
When should you turn your phone completely off? The two situation that I usually do this is when I’m almost out of battery and when my phone is acting kind of wonky.
If your battery’s almost dead and you’re nowhere near some way of charging it your best bet is to turn it off if you’re going to need it to make a call or check something on the ‘net (assuming you can forego and incoming calls/SMSs).
And if your phone’s been acting flaky, where apps are starting to get really slow or behave unexpectedly, turning your phone off then back on usually gets things back to normal.
Have you ever been using an app and it’s become very unresponsive or completely frozen? You can force quit it by pressing the Home button for at least six seconds.
And finally, if your phone seems to be completely frozen where attempting to turn it off or force quit the current app does nothing, you can force a reset of your phone by pressing both the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons for at least ten seconds. Note that while Apple technically calls this a “reset”, it’s actually more like a “reboot” and none of your settings will be changed.
7. Home button options
A very underused, yet convenient feature is that you’re able to set the function for double-clicking the Home button. By default, this just brings you to the Home screen, meaning no different function than clicking the Home button once.
But if you go to the Settings app then navigate to General then Home Button, you’ll find a few handy options. I have mine set to go to my Phone Favorites but you can also set it to open the iPod app, or just show the iPod controls when music is playing.
And something I recently noticed after updgrading to the newest iPhone OS is that when you now click the Home button while already on the Home screen, it’ll quickly take you to the first page of apps. This is a great feature if you have your phone filled with apps… and who doesn’t these days?
8. Swipe to delete
In the Mail app and many others that use lists of items, you’re able to quickly delete an item by swiping your finger across the item… sort of emulating crossing something off a list. Doing so exposes a Delete button so that you’re able to confirm your action.
9. Register your Wi-Fi
Skyhook WPS is the service that, via Wi-Fi, enables your iPhone and iPod touch to locate where you are if GPS isn’t available. It generally gets you more accuracy than the cell tower triangulation method. The big issue with this method, though is that if the router that you’re currently connected to isn’t in the Skyhook database, you’re out of luck.
But after a ton of digging I was able to find the web page where you can add your router to its database:
http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/submit_ap.php
After a few simple steps and an “up to 7 days” waiting period, the router should be available to help you and others get improved location positioning. This helps us all so do your part and register your router, especially if you live outside a major metropolitan area (since Skyhook usually has the big metro areas covered already).
10. AIM mobile options
If you’re like me, you find the AIM app for the iPhone to be pretty useless. AIM (iChat on the Mac) is my main form of communication these days but if I’m not actually online, I don’t want to be seen as being “online”. One thing I find pretty annoying is IMing someone then not getting a response until like half an hour later. This is the nature of the AIM app on the iPhone so I don’t subject others to behavior I don’t like myself.
There’s a much better way of being “connected” to AIM without having to appear as if you’re there. With AIM (the service, not the app), you’re able to setup your account with a service called AIM Mobile Forwarding so that IMs to you when you’re offline get forwarded to your phone as SMS messages. This isn’t something specific to the iPhone but I found it to be most useful once I got my iPhone because of the iChat-like way that the SMS app works.
AIM Mobile Forwarding can be invaluable in emergency situations if someone has your AIM screenname but doesn’t have your phone number. This actually happened to me recently where the macheist.com domain accidentally expired and I was immediately notified while I was on the road… thanks, Cindy! (In my defense, there’s a long story involving a stolen credit card, defunct phone numbers, and some weirdness with an email address.)
When you have AIM Mobile Forwarding setup and you’re offline, here’s how you appear to others in their buddy lists:
If you’d like to set a custom staus, simply change your status to what you desire before you go offline and it’ll remain while you’re offline:
The beauty of this is that it instantly conveys, “don’t bug me unless it’s really important”.
So how do you setup AIM Mobile Forwarding? Simple… if you use iChat, open Preferences and just click the Configure AIM Mobile Forwarding… button in the Accounts tab. This will open a web page where you can enter your info and get it rolling. For those of you who don’t use iChat, the web page is here (warning: will foolishly resize your browser window).
Similar to AIM Mobile Forwarding, you’re also able to send SMS messages to other’s phones right from iChat (or any AIM client). Just use the Send SMS… item from the File menu.
And you can also setup “mobile buddies” so that your buddies who haven’t setup AIM Mobile Forwarding function as if they have. All you have to do is add their mobile phone number as an AIM account, beginning with a “+1”.
And while you’re at it, you may as well add yourself to your buddy list like this. This is very handy for when you’re about to hit the road and you need to send yourself a quick note. It’s definitely one of the easiest ways to to send yourself a note and is a few less steps than sending yourself a note via email.
Note: SMS messages that come from AIM Mobile forwarding come from the numbers 265-060, 265-061, and 265-080 through 265-089 (possibly more but I haven’t seen any others). So if you have these numbers in your contacts and use a name like “Mobile AIM” for the contact, the incoming messages will look a lot neater and will be more easily identifiable to you since they won’t be listed with some seemingly random phone number.
I created a vCard so that you can easily set this up. Simply download it on your Mac, open it to add the contact to your Address Book, then sync to your iPhone and you’ll be good to go.
Mobile AIM.vcfPost your tips
Hopefully you’ve found many of these tips useful. Feel free to post your “score” for the ones you knew in the comments below. And if you know of any others, or if you can expand on the ones I’ve listed here, please also add them in the comments.
For more cool iPhone-related stuff, be sure to subscribe to us or follow us on Twitter.
And if you’ve picked-up some useful tips from this post, digg it!
Oyvind Solstad
7:18am, December 9
The “scroll to top” tip was new to me! Great! Saves me lots of time in apps like Tweetie.
Do you know if AIM SMS forwarding works outside the US? I guess it don’t…
Peter
7:48am, December 9
Amazing tips, I didn’t know I can write typographic quotation marks, thanks! I wish they added some more characters, like –, —, ≤, ≥, °, ≠ using the same technique.
Some more:
1. Mic/clicker vs iPod – you can double click mic on your iPhone headphones to go the next track, triple click it to go to the previous (or the very beginning of the track if it’s playing for more than 3 seconds, just like in iTunes), press it once to pause and press it again to resume. However, sometimes iPod times out, especially if iPhone is low on memory and you can’t resume song after a longer while.
2. You can also create one contact with multiple numbers and name each of them. It’s useful for your operator short codes – like turning GPRS off, enabling roaming, etc. You simply have to create a new label for each number. And then you can add some of them to Favorites.
3. Calculator turns to scientific mode after turning your iPhone by 90°.
—
Ad 4: You can double tap space to get period + space.
Ad 7: If you double click Home button while the screen is locked, you will get an option to [play / pause] the [last picked / playing] song (it’s very useful when iPod will timeout after stopping it through mic clicker - see above for explanation) and controls.
JPDyson
8:13am, December 9
Knew most of these, but the slide-to-caps, extra characters on symbols, and skyhook registration were new finds for me. Thanks for the article - it’s a great resource.
Matt Crest
9:49am, December 9
Really solid explanations of these tips - and thanks for the vCard.
I knew most of these, but wasn’t aware of the shift-slide to capitalize a letter, and sadly for me, didn’t know about the force quit (I’ve just used the reset when apps crash).
One to add, when entering a URL in Safari, you don’t need the http://www. or the .com - it figures all that out for you (only works for .com though I believe). So, to get to http://www.taptaptap.com you would just need to enter taptaptap.
Scott
10:28am, December 9
i can’t seem to get iChat to send an SMS, every time it says “the other person appears to be currently offline.”
am i missing something?
Derrik
7:36pm, December 9
The mic on the earbuds is also a button. Squeeze once to start music, again to pause. Or if a call is coming in, squeeze once to answer and once to hang up. When listening to music a double squeeze will advance the track.
Derrik
7:37pm, December 9
The mic on the earbuds is also a button. Squeeze once to answer a call, and again to hang up. If there is no call, squeeze once to start music and again to pause. A double squeeze will advance to the next track.
Brian
11:27pm, December 9
Is it possible to download the Apple Script that you are using?
Melek
12:09am, December 10
Fantastic tips! I only knew one of them. Thanks for sharing.
rick Smith
12:26am, December 10
thanks! There were a few in here I didn’t know about!
Mark
5:00am, December 10
WOW!
What an awesome repository of useful info. And I thought I knew my way around an iPhone.
sakshi
6:28am, December 10
Hi
I dont have the options for different domain names (.com/.net etc) on my iphone
I also cudnt take the screenshot
also cudnt save images from web.
are these only available in iphone 3G?
John Corey
7:49am, December 10
Thanks for the tips. Some old and well used by me. Most were new or ones I forgot. Very well presented.
James
8:42am, December 10
This is a fantastic post…some great info in here. Thank you SO much for sharing!
Rob Sanders
8:54am, December 10
Great tips, knew most of them but some are really cool. Especially the special characters and the Slide-to-Caps technique.
Thanks a lot for this great article.
Jeffrey
9:31am, December 10
@sakshi: Make sure your iPhone is updated to the latest firmware. These should work if you have.
martin
9:56am, December 10
Thanks for the tips. I bought your “Classics” App in return..
Zhen Sun
10:53am, December 10
Thanks a lot for these useful tips.
Andy
11:09am, December 10
You can scroll to the bottom by holding down the Alt key and tapping the status bar.
(that was a joke
)
I actually didn’t know about the Mac display sleep shortcut, thanks.
iphone 3g blog
11:31am, December 10
Nice compilation and the work done with pictures is really amazing.
Marla Erwin
11:49am, December 10
Nice work on the screenshots!
Andrew
11:53am, December 10
My iChat doesn’t have the “Configure AIM Mobile Forwarding” button in the Accounts tab – wonder if my older version (3.1.9) doesn’t support it?
Zach
11:58am, December 10
Thanks for the AIM Mobile Forwarding tip–works great!
Harry
12:01pm, December 10
The best tip of all here was ⌃⇧⏏ to sleep the screen of my Mac… how did I not know that?
Sean Cooper
12:06pm, December 10
Same tip for quick Caps can be applied to punctuation.
Double tapping the space bar while typing will add a period and a leading space!
Steve Zec
12:18pm, December 10
Nice compilation of Iphone tips. I really appreciate your efforts in putting this information out on the web. Thanks!!
Chris
12:50pm, December 10
Use this link to refresh tap/tap/tap page you are on now, and watch my video posts here:
http://www.bubblecomment.com/id/keq2
Great job, and fantastic design! Much appreciated.
Gary
12:56pm, December 10
Terrific stuff. Not sure why there isn’t univerasl consistency with this stuff, but I can’t emulate the .com thingie in Safeari (Touch), nor does my Touch/General Settings have a home button. Hmmm…
Todd
1:13pm, December 10
I only knew 2 of these. What a treasure. I’m bookmarking this blog on my phone. Thanks!
dishpish
1:25pm, December 10
exshellent shtuff dude - shome totally shweet tipsh! The shcreenshot tip shpeshifically…
Thanksh!
Peter
1:27pm, December 10
When using headphones and use the mic/button to pause your music for over a minute or two, the music sometimes will not start again by pressing the mic/button. Simply press the hold button once and then press the mic/button. This is useful if you don’t want to pull your iPhone out of your pocket. This works on my 1gen iPhone.
Jerryc
2:57pm, December 10
I’m unable to add myself as a Buddy in iChat. What am I missing??
many thanks for the hints.
Lance
2:58pm, December 10
Tapping on the right or left of the row of page indicator dots just above the dock quickly takes you through pages of apps rather than swiping. It seems quicker.
Andrew
3:06pm, December 10
Since double tapping the Home button is a short cut to phone favorites, so I removed the Phone app from thr dock. Good spot for the SMS app.
Alex
3:10pm, December 10
Here are my tips:
1. Hold down your finger on a hyperlink while viewing a webpage and you get a pop up notification showing you the full URL of the link you are about to click on.
2. For less blurry iPhone camera shots, hold down the camera button while you frame your shot and steady your hand. It won’t take the picture until you let go of the button or tap the screen with another finger. This method is more instant and reduces the blur from your hand moving.
3. Most major urban areas and cities now have Google Street view in the newest firmware. BUT NOT ALL PLACES HAVE IT. If you search an address or city in Google maps, there should be an orange icon above the pin denoting that the area you searched supports street view. Hit that icon to launch street view, and hit the circle map at the bottom of the screen while in street view to return to the normal map.
3. Sick of the iPhone constantly trying to change the word “Fucking” to “Ducking”? Make a contact in your address book called “Bad Words” and fill the contact information with swear words and other uncommon terms the iPhone is constantly trying to auto correct. It will think it’s a person’s name or info about a contact and won’t try to suggest a different word! Works wonderfully!
4. In 2.1 they took away the ability to update all your apps with the click of the “Update All” button. They brought that feature back in 2.2 THANK GOD! Updating 10 apps one by one was just stupid. So if you don’t have 2.2, connect the iPhone to iTunes and update it!
5. Tapping to the right or left the highlighted little white circle (the circles that represent how many pages are on your homescreen) on the home screen will take you forwards or backwards to other screens instead of having to swipe your finger 7 times to get to all your apps! Then once you get to the last page, hit the home button to go all the way back to the first screen.
6. To silence a call, press the Sleep/Wake or either volume button. You can still answer the call after silencing it, until it goes to voicemail.
7. To send a call directly to voicemail.
Press the Sleep/Wake button twice quickly.
Press and hold the mic button on the headset for about two seconds. Two low beeps confirm that the call was declined.
8. While on a phone call, you can use all the features of your phone that don’t require the use of your cell data connection. If someone asks you what Bobby’s number is you can simply hit the Home button and go to your address book and get the number.
9. Scroll within a frame on a webpage: Use two fingers to scroll within a frame on a webpage. Use one finger to scroll the entire webpage.
megapenguinx
3:18pm, December 10
408? That’s my area code!
John Corey
4:02pm, December 10
A bit of a Twitter debate going on. It seems that the font color/contrast makes it hard for some to read the text. Better would be a shift to something with more contrast. Gray is not a great choice. Impact varies based on reader, their display and maybe other variables. Not worth the lost readers is my view.
Sara
4:09pm, December 10
Double click the home button while on your wallpaper screen (the one that where you need to slide to unlock) brings up a stripped down iPod menu (back, play, forward) where you can start or pause songs without having to unlock your phone or go the iPod app.
Scott
4:14pm, December 10
I couldn’t get the screenshot to work. It just tries to turn the phone off when I press both the Wake/Sleep and Home buttons. I have been upgraded to 2.2 - could that be the problem? Or is there something else I am not doing correctly?
Kristofer
4:17pm, December 10
@Alex
Thanks for your second number 3 tip! I’ve always been annoyed by that Ducking correction. Another way I’ve found to get around it is to send an SMS repeating the bad word over and over. The iPhone eventually learns that you’re not trying to say “duck” anymore and will even auto correct if you type “fuvk” or something of the sort.
Just be careful when choosing who to send your bad word SMS to.
Barb
4:22pm, December 10
AWESOME article - thanks!
User
4:48pm, December 10
The customisable home button shortcut does not work on 1st gen iPod touch with 2.2 firmware
Brendan
4:49pm, December 10
I’m sorry, i haven’t read though all of the other posts, so I’m not sure if this has been posted, but it wasn’t in the Top Ten.
If you want to just listen to some video you have on your iPhone, if you try to put it to sleep while watching, it will pause the video. But if you are to double tap the home button while its in sleep, hit the play button that appears to get audio only of videos.
Diederik
5:08pm, December 10
Love your work guys!
It just gets better and better
Thanks to Scott in Wellington for sending this link through!!
AdamR
5:39pm, December 10
I didn’t want to set up Mobile AIM so others could IM me on my phone, but I liked the idea of being able to send myself a note quickly on my phone. So I set up an iChat buddy with my phone number (just make the account name +1 and your phone number, like +12065551212) and called it iPhone and now I can easily text myself.
Kevin Merritt
7:52pm, December 10
Really useful tips. Thanks for compiling them into one coherent list.
Love the design of the blog, too, by the way. Keep up the great work.
dOGHAIR
10:25pm, December 10
You do not need to add words to contacts that are auto corrected. Simply hit the “x” next to the auto correction that pops up. (or anywhere on that pop up actually) The next time you type the word the iPhone has learned it’s lesson.
In fact, try typing Fuckinh after you have done so and the iPhone will auto correct to Fucking!
JAM PET
11:12pm, December 10
this one i just stumbled upon after frustration…
when i was opening a .pdf file on my school website it opens right in the browser but only a small area of the page so it doesnt seem like theres a way to scroll thru the pages within the pdf file except there is!
you have to use two fingers within the file & drag it up and down!
this works in other types of things but all ive experienced it on so far is pdf & comment boxes on my fantasy yahoo..
Perry
11:17pm, December 10
I’ll just pile on with what everyone else is saying with this… Great post, love the tips, love the great illustrations for the tips, and the blog looks great too.
Steve Trefethen
11:18pm, December 10
Great list, several were new to me so very useful. Thanks!
felipesiny
11:28pm, December 10
this was very helpful thank you
Allan L.
11:58pm, December 10
“So to ensure that your phone is using as little battery as possible, you’re best off always pressing the Home button before locking so that no app remains running.”
That’s new to me, thanks for the tip!
Paul
12:01am, December 11
I have a first gen iPhone with latest 2.2 firmware, and all the tips (customizable home button, .net/.edu/.com button etc) work.
Jeremy Ricketts
12:07am, December 11
This just changed the way I type on my phone. I’m not even kidding. Awesome.
John
12:14am, December 11
Fav Tip: Info in the lyrics tags of an MP3 file will be displayed as a scrolling overlay over the album cover when a song is played.
Kimberly
12:35am, December 11
Thank you, great info!!!
Dotty
12:40am, December 11
To make make a conference call while already on a call. You can hold down the keypad icon for 5-7 seconds.Which is in between mute and speaker. If you have done it right it will flip over and in the top right there will be a send box underneath the call timer. Dial your number then hit send. As far as I know it’s been around since 2.0. With the addition of 2.2. It now takes the caller info and drops it in the way of the number your dialing. Where as in previous 2.x updates the caller ID info would stay put. Just a little annoying.
EVula
12:57am, December 11
The Safari image saving was the only iPhone trick I didn’t already know.
*However*, I also didn’t know the Control-Shift-Eject trick, and I’ve been using Macs for… a while. Good one to know.
The only thing I would have mentioned in addition is the fact that the click-and-hold keyboard trick also works on the currency characters, but that whole bag is pretty well covered in the very well-written article. Good work.
Mike Swarts
1:00am, December 11
Surprised no one mentioned holding down the star key on the old-fashioned keypad to add a comma (pause) to a phone number.
Using this trick, you can change your credit card phone number to 999-999-9999,0,0,0 (or whatever prompts you want) and get straight through to a person when you call.
Can’t believe I didn’t know about smart quotes/top-level domains.
Also:
@ John, didn’t know about the lyrics trick either.
@Alex, didn’t know about 2-finger scrolling in frames and holding the camera button.
Jay W.
1:07am, December 11
Re: setting user status on logout, something along the lines of the following almost works. If you used some more standard additions, you could read and write the times from a file, which should solve the communication issue. You might even be able to schedule a timer to tell iChat to log out, thus dodging the seeming issue of not being able to log out from within the handlers themselves. But I’ve spent enough time playing with this already, so I leave working out the solution to another.
(*
This DOES NOT WORK. Properties appear not to be properly interpreted. As well, “say” and “display alert” statements act as no-ops. You also seem to be unable to log out from a log out handler; the log in handler seemed unable to log out, as well, though when I checked, it seemed the script had been unchecked from there, so further testing is needed.
After testing for a while, AIM decided my account had been too busy. It began booting me off, but not till iChat thought I had logged in. This led to a vicious cycle that proved that the lastRunTime property was not preserving its value across runs - it seems iChat was recompiling at each run.
*)
–! Last run time in seconds since reference time.
(*!
* Used to keep the handler from triggering itself.
*)
property lastRunTime : 0
–! Only set status if |timeSinceLast| run is greater than this.
property statusRecentlySetTime : 5 — unit is seconds
using terms from application “iChat”
–! Sets the user’s mobile status on logout.
(*!
* Requires that the user’s password be
* stored in the keychain.
*
* The user might have to grant
* permission for the |current date|
* reference to succeed.
*
* \attention The script must be saved as
* a compiled script (extension .scpt)
* for the property to not be reset with
* each run.
*)
on logout finished for aService
set thisRunTime to time of (current date)
set timeSinceLastRun to thisRunTime - lastRunTime
set shouldSetStatus to aService’s service type is AIM
set alreadySetStatus to timeSinceLastRun ≤ statusRecentlySetTime
if shouldSetStatus and not alreadySetStatus then
log in aService
set the status message to “Via iPhone.”
– Can’t log out from this handler.
–log out aService
end if
set lastRunTime to time of (current date)
end logout finished
on login finished for aService
set thisRunTime to time of (current date)
set timeSinceLastRun to thisRunTime - lastRunTime
set shouldLogOut to aService’s service type is AIM and timeSinceLastRun ≥ statusRecentlySetTime
if shouldLogOut then
set lastRunTime to time of (current date)
log out aService
end if
end login finished
end using terms from
EBrown
1:10am, December 11
Thank you. Really helpful information/
Y
1:11am, December 11
I second Harry. How did I not know control-shift-eject put the display to sleep? I’ve wanted that every night for years.
jaymcinnes.com
1:49am, December 11
Thanks tons,
I left blackberry for iphone and completely regret it. But those comments are sure a big help. Thanks alot.
Lesile Kaminoff
1:54am, December 11
Adding myself to my AIM Buddy List is a stroke of genius - thanks. I’ve discovered that I can copy an appointment out of iCal and paste it into the IM I send myself, and it shows up complete with all the associated info (including links). Easier than digging it out of the iPhone’s calendar app. - especially since it may be new info that hasn’t synced yet thru MoribundMe.
Giles
1:58am, December 11
I didn’t know any of these tricks because I bought an iPod touch yesterday only, but after reading these I have two remarks: Apple Manuals are lacking a lot, and your tricks add at lot of value to my iPod.
By the way, most of your iPhone tricks also work on an iPod touch (I was trying them as I was reading your post).
Alan Wolk
3:50am, December 11
Just wanted to add to the chorus of thank yous.
So many useful tips in here from you and other commenters.
To Giles’ point: any notion why Apple doesn’t publish this stuff in a guide that comes with the phone? Or do they and Giles and I just threw it out before reading it?
Olafur
3:57am, December 11
Great post. Thanks! Btw. love the sushi deco.
Mike
4:58am, December 11
Great tips! Thank you all!
pradeep
5:34am, December 11
iPhone tips are great info, thanks
Jim
5:50am, December 11
Some nice tips I didnt know about
thx!
Marcelo Wolfgang
6:12am, December 11
If you want to start the ipod after sometime that the phone is off/locked without taking it out of your pocket, you can press the home button once, wait a sec and them press it twice, and press the mic button once, it will start the ipod where you left it.
(this only works if you configure your home button to open the ipod on double click)
David Chartier
6:25am, December 11
I think the reason that many people aren’t aware of the caps-lock trick is that it isn’t enabled by default. You have to dig into the Settings > General > Keyboard to turn it in. This is also where the new “auto-correction” toggle for spelling is located, and also where you can turn off the “type two spaces to get a period” shortcut.
Killol Virani
6:28am, December 11
Does anyone know where I can download few apps / games (like Mario) or Nitendo games?
I tried to Google it but no use.
Thanks
Killol Virani
6:33am, December 11
I am looking for a site where I can download apps / games for the iPhone.
I am looking for NES - Mario games. I tried to Googel it with no luck.
Is there a site where I can dowload these games / apps?
Any ideas are welcome.
Thaanks
killol
cbartolo
6:43am, December 11
for what i understand most of you are americans, so this function could be something that you don’t use a lot, and then…
when writing sms the iphone use the dictionary and correct or complete what you are writing using the english (or whatever language you normaly use) dictionary
but it’s possible to write in different languages with the same ability, without leaving the sms that you are writing
before that you need to go to the”general”/”international”/”keyboards” and choose the languages that you know or want to use, as many as you want
then in the sms keyboard a new button will appear between the numbers and space butons, representing the earth, and then you just click on them and change the language that you want to use
all the keyboard will change to that language keyboard, and that language dictionary will begin to correct whatever you are writing in the same language (it’s possible to know what is the language that is on, as the “space” button will say “espace”, “espacio”, “espaço”, etc according to the chosen one)
that way is always easy to say “je t’aime” to the loved one, or “mi casa es su casa” to a friend without making errors
and by the way, thanks for the tips, some i knew, some are new
XCool
8:48am, December 11
The Home button tip works on my 2nd Gen iPod touch, but I can’t seem to find the settings for it.
torin
8:48am, December 11
to send an incoming call to voicemail, just hit the wake / sleep screen button on the top of your iphone. screen turns off, call is in voicemail.
great list, learnt one i didn’t know the ctrl / shift / eject. which is strange, i use ctrl / eject all the time to put the mac to sleep.
Rud Bobbins
9:34am, December 11
That screenshot tip begs for the ole gag of setting your wallpaper to a screenshot like we used to do on the Mac. “I’m tapping but nothing is happening!”
Peter
10:10am, December 11
Thanks for some very good tricks! But not all of them work on the 2G like (at least with my hacked OS 1.1.4) e.g. picture save, screenshot and some more. When using German as default language it ads to the .com button the country domain .de - very useful indeed.
Suresh
10:17am, December 11
Great tips. I have an iPod touch and many of the tips are applicable to that as well. Thanks a lot.
By the way, does anybody here have an idea of how to view track information on the iPhone/iPod touch (the equivalent of Cmd+I in iTunes)? Maybe some hidden trick that I am missing.
Dan Keldsen
10:36am, December 11
Wow, great list of tips, and incredibly well done on the presentation front. Consider me subscribed!
BTW - any way to pre-load shortcuts/signatures for frequently typed people, companies, etc.? An auto-expander essentially. If it doesn’t exist yet, someone get thee to the App Store stat!
Mark
12:07pm, December 11
First of all, thanks so much!
Now, regarding my favorite tip, AIM call forwarding, I’m running into an old AIM problem. Even though iChat offers me the options illustrated above, AIM doesn’t seem to recognize my username@mac.com login (presumable because it’s not an actual AIM account).
Has anyone found a workaround to this?
Mark
12:18pm, December 11
OK I’m Mactarded. Your MobileMe password is now your AIM password. Not sure when that changed, but it works. Continue.
Jamie
12:26pm, December 11
The Skyhook stuff is great, except when you move. At home my iPhone constantly thinks I’m living at my old address. I’ve gone to the Skyhook webpage and registered the new address, but it never seems to change. Oh well, I guess when I’m at home I know where I am, but I often use “Current Location” when getting directions and it can be a little irritating.
len
1:17pm, December 11
Any way to jump to the middle or bottom of a photo album? Takes forever to scroll down through a couple thousand photos to get to the latest ones. Why can’t I do this like I can in Contacts by using the side scroller?
Chris
1:31pm, December 11
One tip not mentioned that was just introduced in the 2.2 firmware is that you can click the home button to return to the first page of apps from any other page. Useful for people with many pages of applications like me.
Chris
1:33pm, December 11
Correction on my previous comment - The home button trick to return to the first pages of apps was mentioned. My apologies.
scott
1:57pm, December 11
Great tips. Like the simple site-design layout - very effective. Really love the graphics.
How did you capture not only the screen shots, but also shown them with the whole iPhone device as a single graphic?
Mike
2:00pm, December 11
Another tip: You can import vcards from email. Found this one out the hard way when turning off mobileme wiped out my address book. Luckily I had just emailed an export of my address book to my wife when she was setting up Outlook, so a copy of my contacts was in my sent items.
Brian Richmond
3:23pm, December 11
I had the same issue with Skyhook as JPDyson. I submitted my router to their service and it still shows my old address. It’s really annoying when locating myself in an application.
Great collection of tips here. I had heard of most of them, but learned a couple of other new things in the process of reading this post.
MTE
5:14pm, December 11
I must admit I didn’t think I would pick anything up from this list, but, yes even I picked up 1 tip. Good work.
Nice layout, and good screenies.
http://www.mte.me
kyle
5:26pm, December 11
As a blogger with an iPhone I really appreciate the screenshot capture funciton. It helps for recording all them high scores.
allan jamie
8:08pm, December 11
me gustaria tener un iphone para poder probar las funciones
Greg Ostravich
11:50pm, December 11
Thanks! I knew some but not all. These tips are great! Anybody know how to get to the “Saved Photos” from iTunes or otherwise? I want to reorganize them into my photo albums.
I’ve got one for you for any iPod.
If you’re listening to a book on CD you’ve ripped into your iPod do this:
1) Get Info - change tracks to not shuffle in with music and to remember playback position.
2) Make a Smart Playlist using Name of the book as 1 criteria (album name) *AND* playcount = 0 so that as you listen to a track it falls off the playlist because the playcount becomes 1.
Thanks again - great stuff!
BigSpender
8:48am, December 12
Hey guys does anyone know how to “mark as read” a mail from the inbox screen, I mean without actually opening the message, better still do a bulk thing like the delete option
Dave Cortright
12:15pm, December 12
To zoom out in Maps, single tap with multiple fingers (which is NOT the same as a double tap).
I spread my index and middle fingers into a victory V, and use that to tap. If the fingertips are too close together, it won’t work.
Chris Wilson
12:30pm, December 12
Great list. Stumbled.
Here’s another one. A quick Double-click of the home button brings up the music controls over the current app.
lolec
2:07pm, December 12
When you are in the springboard, no matter what page, if you press the home button you will go to the first page. 2.2 and after
Steve Lininger
9:34am, December 13
“Go To Date” workaround for Calendar.
In Month or Day view press and hold either , Cal. will *rapidly* scroll forward or backward in time.
Steve Lininger
9:35am, December 13
Re above;
Press either of the arrows on the top bar that shows the date.
Rupi
8:29am, December 15
Cool. I didn’t know all the tips.
Bookmarked this page
Jane
10:40pm, December 16
Very very useful tips for us!
Thanks a lot!
Apple also provides tips. But there lists too much… (iPhone tips from Apple: http://www.apple.com/iphone/tips/)
Mark Aplet
2:24am, December 17
Another tip:
Press the home button to accept your changes.
From your application pages, press and hold an icon until they all start to wiggle a little bit. Now you can delete them by hitting the “x” above the icon, or you can move icons to other pages and organize your apps by subject, productivity, or my personal favorite, by color.
Top100India
10:15am, December 17
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Shalmanese
7:53am, December 19
If you want to play a video but only listen to the audio portion of it:
Start the video on your device.
Turn off the iPhone, this will stop the video from playing.
Turn on the iPhone but do NOT slide the slider
Double tap the home button and then hit play
Turn off the iPhone again.
Cagatay de
4:25pm, December 19
on mail application, there’s no option to archive mails. (gmail). when i click delete, it really deletes. any trick?
Arjan
8:37am, December 21
You can archive gmail messages by moving them to the folder ‘All Mail’ using the second button in the bottom toolbar.
bdiesel
9:57am, December 21
Thanks for the tips
sariska
10:27am, December 21
some morw tips:
doubleclicking in the center of a text in a website will enlarge the text to the exact width of your iphonescreen.
Doubleclicking on the bottom will scroll down for you.
Doubleclicking on top of the text will scroll up!
very handy when reading laege amounts of text. Works also for reading ebooks!
Sebastian Dreijer
11:01am, December 22
If you want to make a stopmotion video on your iPhone, you can do so by taken one picture at a time, and when you’re done shooying, you can play the stopmotion movie by tapping the first picture in your galleri and tab and hold the right arrow.
Merry Christmas from
Sebastian Dreijer
jeff
12:52am, December 25
great post! wanted to find out what wallpaper image is on the mac screenshots at the end of the post in the aim settings section! thanks.
John's Brother
7:13pm, December 29
As the PC wielding brother of the infamous John Casasanta, I am pleased by these tips that John has posted. John was nice enough to buy me and my wife iPhones and my 3 kids each an iPod Touch for Christmas. I have switched my Samsung SCH-i760 to the iPhone and couldn’t be happier.
Marco
8:47pm, December 30
@Killol Virani
Don’t know if you’re kidding : just connect to iTunes Store with your computer… 10 000 apps there (many are free) !
Patrick Poulain
1:00pm, January 1
Good evening,
Do you know if there is an App favourite for Bluetooth who lead us faster when it took my car ?
Free or not, it’s not a problem.
Thank’s for your answer.
Daniel
12:57am, January 4
Not sure if this was mentioned above yet, but tapping on the corner of each screen above the task bar allows you to navigate through different screens.
gillian Ashmead
11:29pm, January 6
I have just done an update on my Iphone.All my contact numbers have gone.The names are still there ? Help plz
Lizzan
11:44pm, January 6
@Greg:
To organize your pictures, just open iPhoto with the iPhone connected, then you can import and organize as much as you want! You’ll then need to sync the photos back onto your iPhone from iTunes.
Ria
10:06am, January 21
Can anyone help me please!
I’ve put some apps onto the home screen and i want to take them off but don’t know how to?
Ria
Samantha Armacost
5:11pm, January 22
Thanks so much for this information. I was getting highly irked by having to scroll so much.
Lee Munroe
8:58pm, January 26
Some great tips. Can’t believe I didn’t know about a few of these. Thanks!
Catherine
6:09pm, February 2
Is it possible to forward text messges?
donnamck
4:37am, February 24
fantastic site. I am a novice iphone user and have learnt heaps. I am in Australia.
Is there anyway you can make the font bigger in things like notes, contacts, sms ect
Jason
6:35pm, March 22
Thanks heaps to everyone’s tips, many I knew but did learn quite a few. We all would find it much harder to use an iPhone/iTouch if it weren’t for people being kind enough to share their tips.
On that note, one trick I learnt is one of my favourites, if you want learn how to have a custom ringtone of any song you want, go to this page!
http://www.cnettv.com/9742-1_53-50003920.html
You can do it all yourself in iTunes.
Takes a bit to get used to on the first go, but becomes really easy.
Deepurple
7:45pm, March 27
Please help.The lower keyboard of my unlocked Iphone 2G is not functioning anymore(space,number and return keys).I have searched the web, many people have the exact same problem.No one knows why is happening and how to solve it.Looks like you may help us.I appreciate your time.Thank you.
Ashli Norton
7:06am, April 2
Sooo..sooo..helpful!
Also add, double clicking the home screen brings up the controls for the iPod.
jckrbbt
3:47pm, April 8
I’m new to the iPhone, so i don’t know if this is assumed knowledge, but on any text you’ve typed, if you hold your finger over it, you will get a magnifying glass that allows you to move the cursor between letters. Much more useful than having to backspace, erasing all your written text.
ryan powell
3:43pm, April 10
this is really cool but i think you should know that this guy called macboy 123456 on youtube is using this website’s tips and some more website’s tips aswell. that bastard!
wakuwaku
1:42am, April 13
great post! Always wanted to find out what wallpaper image is on the mac screenshots at the end of the post in the aim settings section! mny thanks.
DjPan
4:15pm, May 26
very usefull tips..thank u all guys!
Terry
7:13am, May 31
Holding onto one of the apps in the home screen will cause all apps to start “wiggling” when this happens, you can move the apps around, and delete any apps you don’t want.
alice
5:52am, June 3
Is there a way to enlarge the font when reading/sending mms?
modeless
4:32pm, June 15
Force Quit via holding the home button no longer works in iPhone OS 3.0 since that action triggers the new Voice Control feature instead. (Force Quit was removed on all phone even though Voice Control only works on 3GS phones). Luckily Apple made quitting apps the normal way more responsive, so Force Quit is less necessary, but Apple’s own built-in apps that run in the background (Mail, Phone, iPod, and Safari) can no longer be killed with Force Quit. In 3.0 the only way to manually quit these apps is a reboot.
arlee
4:39pm, June 25
Thanks for the great tips! I just discovered the other day that you can shake your iphone to delete all text that you are typing.
arlee
4:49pm, June 25
Shake it again to redo typing.
Tom
9:04am, July 3
Double pressing the home button while the phone is locked automatically brings up the iPod.
wakuwaku
4:29pm, July 19
Awesome tips very helpful. Thanks for sharing these.
ktn
9:04am, July 28
Good tips,
Other question, anyone know how to turn of the “passcode” ?
ktn
10:06am, July 29
Pls ignore, got it.
Leafyfire_ch82
3:38am, August 17
Great tips…
but improve more
on the operation tips
wakuwaku
10:09am, August 20
very usefull tips..thank u all guys!
Geri
4:06pm, September 2
please tell me how to lower my orange or other memory on my iphone 2g.
Per Tormod
1:36am, September 13
Iphone and MacBookPro would not communicate with bluetooth. Can not send files from Iphone 3gs to mac
Dan
8:21pm, October 6
If your listening to music and want to stop quickly (for some reason) than pulling the headphones out of the jack is the quickest method. Found this out accidentally but it’s a very nice feature and you won’t miss a beat of the track your playing.
Bilal
4:13pm, October 9
Does any one know the shortcut to display lyrics on iphone video in a playlist?
I have added lyrics to music videos using itunes. When the videos are played in the portrait mode from the beginning the lyrics show up. Once you change to landscape mode and come back to portrait mode to only way to get the lyrics is to skip to next track and get back to the track. Is there a shortcut to display the lyrics again?
Wendy
9:16am, October 26
I can’t seem to get messages to send tooffline buddies in AIM on my Iphone. I’ve checked settings in AIM. Any suggestions?
wilmer
8:07pm, November 11
la verdad este telefone es una maravilla mi telefono lo livere y no se si sea x eso q no puedo conectarme con otros dispositivos por medio de via bluetoothy mi wi-fi no me responde
satrap
1:32am, November 16
Thanks for the post, i enjoyed reading it. blogging is not as easy as many think it is, it’s hardwork. any how thanks.
Karin Hansonnum
3:35pm, December 4
After I last updated my iPhone, the ability to see who is caling me is gone…every call now shows caller unknown. This is driving me crazy…is there a fix for this?
John
3:55pm, December 9
Can I go back to listening to music on my iphone ipod feature after answering a call while wearing the headset, without restarting the app?
Lampiri
2:21am, December 12
Nice tips , thanks !
WilhelmR
7:05am, December 13
A massive THANK YOU for the Skyhook tip!
:]
mazen
3:48pm, December 13
This occured with me on my iphone 3gs once, when talking on phone, whenever I remove phone from my ear, it automatically open speaker on an when I approaches it to my ear, it go back ot normal ear speaker. Any one knows how to reactivate this?
One tip to add for you guys, shake your iphone while writing, it will ask you to undo or redo… enjoy
Jon h
4:33am, December 18
When typing anything if u make a mistake u can shake ur iPod/iPhone and an undo popup option will appear
Thiago Placidino
2:10am, December 19
great tips….please post some more when
possible thanks
Tina
7:36pm, December 23
Okay. You guys are really stupid if you are just gonna sit around all day and type about some “cool” apps. Really.
Angelo
1:23am, January 2
How do I adjust the colors on my screen? I accidentally did it last Tuesday and thought; oh, i can do that trick later. Now I can’t remember what I did and I can’t find it in settings. Help.
Angelo
1:35am, January 2
BTW. Love this blog! Learned a lot! And I agree…art deco sushi is fantastic!
Tanya Mc
1:27pm, January 3
Just purchased my first iphone and these tips r fantastic! Don’t feel like a total beginner now - cheers
Adam Carroll
4:54pm, January 6
Heres a good one….
On the iphone 3Gs which has voice dialling , if you hold down the middle button on your handsfree for about 5 secs you hear a beep, when you hear this just say the name of who you want to dial and it picks the entry out of your phonebook and dials it, if you get it wrong press the middle button to hang up and try again!…. awesome when your phone is in your pocket and your listening to music and want to call someone without getting your phone out!
Holly Castles
2:29am, January 13
I am actually suprise no1 mentioned how to re-arrange your apps to move them around / sort them. hold your finger on the app until is starts “shivering” and then move them around, then press home once finished.
ravi
9:28am, January 18
my iphone slider every time struck then power/sleep button press double time pressing then relese the slider any solution please send
Lyn
1:27pm, January 19
Thank you very much! It was very comprehensive!
Aaron C
8:16pm, January 21
Thank you so much for the scroll up tip! This is a HUGE help to me when browsing forum threads with lots of posts that don’t have a “top” button at the bottom, like on Rivals.
ipod next generation
1:11am, January 29
these useful tips to put on my web content… thanks.
Regards,
iPhone tips and tricks
David
1:32pm, January 29
i went to sleep and lay on the phone. when I awoke the screen is unresponsive to tapping; except that now a voice tells me what app I have touched and then askes me to double tap to get into that app. I cannot expand the screen, and i cannot work ot how to turn this vexacious “thing” off. Help please?
David
1:40pm, January 29
it is OK. I fixed it but it took time thanks
Sheila
2:52pm, February 1
Loved all the tips, I’m very new at this - just bought my iphone on Friday! On the mail icon there is a number 7 in a red circle - any idea what this means? It doesn’t mean I have seven emails!
Thanks,
Sheila
Ashim
3:19am, February 2
Great post. Great tips.
Have an addition for the headphone mic-clicker.
While playing music:
If you double click and hold on the second click it will start scrubbing forward.
And triple click and hold on the third will start rewinding.
Takes a little getting used to, but great addition to the simplicity of the single button!