As someone that is deep in the iOS / Apple ecosystem I often find tips and tricks that I use daily as things many folks don’t know about. Here are over 12 of some of my favorite iOS 15 Tips & Tricks (iPhone Edition), with a few old ones that weren’t added with iOS 15, thrown in as well
Ok, this one got me. When the beta of iOS 15 was launched and I was testing it, this was one of the features Apple added that I just didn’t enjoy. Why oh why after so many years would you move that input field? Yes it’s easier for the user to reach with one hand usage, but man the muscle memory here was deep set.
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This one is more fun than anything. The tip / trick here is giving you the ability to get a bit more custom.
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This is a new feature within iOS that holds TONS of power and is wildly useful. If you’ve grown accustomed to extensions on your desktop such as Honey or 1Password, well now you can have them on mobile Safari!
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Note: Some extensions will present themselves automatically when needed. For example, Honey does a pretty good job of knowing you’re on a cart page and prompts you to apply coupons.
While on the note of Safari, one of my all time favorite tricks is using tap to top. You can tap around the top of the screen (think status bar) and no matter how far down a page you’ve scrolled, this will jump you all the way back to the top. This can also be done within most apps (not all, some developers don’t allow it).
On Safari, when at the top of the webpage simply pull down. You’ll see the page come down and a spinner pops, release the screen and it will refresh!
This isn’t a ”tip or trick” but more of a new feature that is very useful, especially for those that get TONS of notifications throughout any given day.
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At the bottom of your Home Screen, if you tap and hold the dots you’ll see a new view pop open that allows you to make adjustments to entire home screens. You can delete and reorder them. This really makes things so much easier, compared to how it used to be 😀
This frankly deserves it’s own post, there is SO much you can do with Focus Modes. This will just introduce you to them.
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I highly suggest you “Share Across Devices” as this makes Focus Modes just that much better.
Listen, if you aren’t using Home Screen widgets yet, it’s time! They are pretty simple to add and can really make your Home Screen experience a lot more useful.
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Just like apps on your Home Screen you can move them around and customize the experience. You can also create “Stacks” or “Smart Stacks” these can be similar sized widgets stacked on top of one another so you don’t take up tons of space on your Home Screen. The Smart Stack will introduce widgets that Siri thinks will help you based on how you use your phone.
This comes off the heals of Apple purchasing the Dark Sky weather app, but it’s super helpful nevertheless. This will give you alerts about upcoming weather such as rain or snow in the next hour, high wind, etc.
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I’m sad to say I didn’t know about this one for a while, but it’s super helpful. If you type a digit that was by accident you can simply swipe on the top numbers from left to right. This will “undo” inputs one at a time.
Messages app has really grown in recent iOS releases and one item I really like is the ability to PIN content that’s been shared with me.
Steps:
Pinned content can be found in the details of your chat (check the next tip if you haven’t seen a chat’s details).
Another ever growing feature within Messages. In a chat with someone, tap on their face / icon at the top. This will open a new widow that you can scroll. Here you will find lots of useful items that will save you from scrolling through the whole chat thread. Enjoy
I like to keep my tabs to a minimum but sometimes I have a few links I want to copy at once to share, so here you go.
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Now with iOS 15 you can FaceTime with EVERYONE! It’s no longer a walled garden that only works with other iOS devices.
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There are tons of apps out there that do this very well, but sometimes it’s just easiest to do it with what comes on the phone, Notes App!
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Along the lines of scanning the doc, have you used live text within a photo or the camera app?
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Steps (Within Photo from Photos App):
This one is pretty straight forward but for let’s say a family, it’s very useful. My wife and I use a number of Notes docs to collaborate on lists for a variety of things. This may include shopping lists, home improvement projects, etc. So needless to say this little feature is pretty awesome.
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Well kinda, there are TONS of useful tips and tricks when it comes to iOS and iPadOS. These here just scratch the surface. Are there any that I missed that you think are a MUST ADD? If so let me know, hit me up on Twitter. To that point, I may add to this list over time, but I’ll post if I update. Thanks as always.
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