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 about. Most owners of Apple products only use the standard functions and don't even come close to exploiting the potential of their phone. There are many iPhone hacks that can make your life easier in many situations. In this article, we'll show you the best iPhone tricks that can improve pretty much every area of ​​your 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 Wi-Fi signal
3. Change font size
4. Record video and music at the same time
5. Hide photos completely
6. Find battery-killing apps
7. Photos with long exposure effect
8. Clear iPhone RAM
9. Turn on sound 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 with text search

1. Notes app for digitizing analog texts

The first of the iPhone hacks concerns the Notes app. It has a so-called OCR feature that you can use to your advantage. This iPhone hack helps you add analog texts as notes in a matter of seconds. And it's that easy: First, start the Notes app on your iPhone and open a new note. Now simply tap in the empty text area so that the Live Text icon is displayed in the context menu. Once you have clicked on it, the camera opens 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. The option to "Paste" will then appear below. If you tap this, your iPhone will use this trick to transfer the analog text as digital text in your note. You can then edit this note like any other.

2. Improve Wi-Fi signal

Whether you're at home using your Wi-Fi or out and about using public hotspots, it's always annoying when sending messages or loading videos is slow. But even in these cases, one of the iPhone hacks can help you quickly improve your Wi-Fi signal. To use the trick, all you have to do is do the following:

1. Open the Control Center on your iPhone.

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

3. Then tap the Wi-Fi symbol at the top left to reconnect your iPhone to the Wi-Fi network.

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

3. Change font size

Sometimes the text on your phone is just too small. Did you know that you can easily make it bigger using one of the iPhone hacks? Simply open the control center and tap the "aA" symbol in the lower half of the screen. A slider will appear with which you can easily adjust the text size. You can choose whether the text size should be changed system-wide, i.e. in all apps, or whether you only want a changed font size 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

Do you want to record a breathtaking landscape on video and record the music you are listening to? Usually, the music stops immediately when you want to record a video. Our iPhone hacks offer a simple and straightforward solution: the QuickTake video function, which is available on all models from the iPhone 11 onwards, including the second generation iPhone SE. So to add music to your video using a popular iPhone trick, follow these steps:

1. Start the desired music 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 playing and will be recorded.

5. Hide photos completely

Most Apple users probably know that photos can be hidden on the iPhone and hiding them is not one of the lesser-known 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 see your hidden photos anymore. To deactivate it, simply follow these steps:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.

2. Open the menu item "Photos".

3. Disable "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 simply select them in the Photos app, click the Share button at the bottom left and select the "Hide" option.

6. Find battery-killing apps

A few hours ago the battery charge was at 100% and now you have to go into energy saving mode? This is often due to apps that you don't use at all or only rarely. 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 on the "Battery" menu item. Under the "Battery usage per app" menu item, you can see what percentage of the battery charge each of your apps has used. If you then tap on "Show activity" in the top right, you can see which apps you have used and for how many minutes or hours.

7. Photos with long exposure effect

You've probably already figured out how to take live photos - it doesn't require any special tricks. But did you know that you can also create impressive long-exposure shots using an iPhone hack? First, activate the live function in the camera app by tapping the round button in the top right. If the yellow "Live" message appears briefly, the function is activated. You can now 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 the preview image at the bottom left and click on the "Live" button at the top left. A dropdown menu will appear from which you can then select the "Long exposure" option. The photo you took will now appear on your iPhone with the 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 clear the RAM and make your iPhone faster. To do this, open any app and close it again immediately by swiping it up in the App Switcher. You can then close all other apps that you are not currently using and free up a lot of RAM with this iPhone hack. With free apps you can check how high the current RAM usage is and use before and after screenshots to see how much RAM you have freed up by closing the apps.

9. Turn on sound detection

You're listening to your favorite music on headphones while you're tidying up and later you find a note in your mailbox from a parcel delivery person saying that your parcel couldn't be delivered. It's annoying when you miss important sounds like the doorbell. For situations like this, you can use one of the iPhone hacks from our collection of tricks that can make your life easier. The iPhone has sound detection that ensures that you are notified by push notification when certain sounds are heard. The iPhone is able to recognize 15 different sounds, such as dogs barking, 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 about - you can also select multiple sounds. As soon as your iPhone recognizes one of the tones you selected, a notification will appear on the screen.

10. Activate notification light

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

11. Create notes from the lock screen

Quickly write something down on your phone? Not so easy if you first have to unlock your iPhone, open the Notes app and create a new note. For this we have another of our iPhone hacks that allows you to create notes directly from the lock screen: Instant Notes. To set this up, first open the Settings app, go to "Notes" and scroll down to the point "Access on lock screen". On the next level you can then select whether you always want to create a new note or whether you want to continue with 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 phone is almost impossible. If you want to look something up on the Internet, you can also do this using voice search in the Safari browser. Simply tap the microphone symbol in the search bar and say your search term. Thanks to this iPhone trick, multitasking is possible.

13. Scan documents and create PDFs

This iPhone tip is particularly useful 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 are happy with the result, select "Keep scan" and then "Save" to save the document.

14. Change the brightness of the flashlight

You're probably aware that your iPhone has a handy flashlight function. But did you know that you can adjust the brightness yourself using a trick? To use this iPhone hack, simply hold down the flashlight symbol and select the desired brightness level by swiping up or down.

15. Find photos with text search

Over time, several thousand photos can accumulate in the iPhone's Photos app. This makes it difficult to find specific images quickly. There is a brilliant iPhone hack for this problem: text search. When you save photos, the iPhone performs automatic image recognition and saves metadata, which can make searching a lot easier for you. You can simply enter a keyword in 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.