The iPhone is a mysterious gadget, really.

Regardless of how many hidden iOS tricks you know, there always exist more tricks waiting to awe you. And this isn't any joke or exaggeration.

I've been writing on Apple for over 2.5 years and even before writing this article, I was thinking I knew every hidden iPhone trick. But as I started researching, I realised I got biased by the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The 14 tricks I'm writing below aren't just secret tricks – but ultra-secret tricks almost nobody in my peer group knew about. And I hope that applies to you too!

Tricks included in this article

Miscellaneous Tricks 1 — Dial the last outgoing number 2 — Open a hyperlink in a new tab 3 — The quickest way to set a timer 4 — Owning an Apple Watch is good for your iPhone's battery iMessage Tricks 5 — Trigger phrases to share location or "pics" 6 — Trigger phrases for full-screen effects (+ A Secret Effect) 7 — Cooking up multiple emojis for better expression Keyboard Tricks 8 — Access trackpad on Emoji keyboard 9 — Select text without touching it 10 — Get Kaomojis locally Panorama Tricks 11 — Capture Panorama right to left 12 — Stop capturing Panorama without needing your finger Notes Checklist Tricks 13 — Automatically move checked items to the bottom 14 — Delete all checked items

Miscellaneous Tricks

#1. Dial the last outgoing number

This little dialpad trick saves a tad bit of time every time you use it.

Say you just hanged up a call you made. Now to call them again, you don't need to open your Contacts or Call History. Simply open dialpad, double-tap the Call button, and they'll receive your call.

What actually happens with the two taps?

• On the first tap, their number appears on the dial screen (without you typing it)
• On the second tap, your call will be placed.

Note that this trick only works when your last call is an outgoing one (not incoming). And only calls the person you last spoke to.

Bonus trick to save you more time

Here's how to call the last outgoing number without needing any taps.

Simply ask Siri to

• "Call last"
• "Call again"
• "Call back"

Those are the exact trigger words she needs, to understand that you wanted to do it. If you wanna make your commands sound more human, add pronouns — like "call her again".

#2. Open a hyperlink in a new tab

Whenever I research for my articles on Google, I'd open all the first page results in separate tabs — hoping I'd get 99% of the information right from them.

But that's a daunting task, isn't it? You're prolly thinking I'd long-press each result and tap on Open in New Tab/Open in Background. But no.

I'd instead tap on each link with two fingers.

And all the results would open in new tabs/background based on what's set in Settings ⚙️ < Safari 🧭 < Open Links.

#3. The quickest way to set a Timer

Say you've just put some biscuit dough in the oven or turned on the cooker to boil some potatoes.

Normally, when you need a reminder, you'd set a timer for… say 15 min in the Clock app. Or if you're a seasoned iOS user, you'd ask Siri to "Set a timer for 15 minutes", right?

But know what? You can cut off the words "Set a timer for" and just say "15 minutes". And a timer will still be set for that much time.

This works for durations ranging from "1 second" to "23 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds".

However, if you wanna set a label to your timer you can't use this trick. You have to say it in full — "Set a timer for 15 minutes to turn off stove".

Bonus tip

To set an alarm for, say 2:30, you don't need to say "Set an alarm for 2:30".

Just trigger Siri and say "2:30" — and an alarm will be set for the nearest 2:30 (AM or PM). You may wanna explicitly mention the meridiem too.

#4. Owning an Apple Watch is good for your iPhone's battery

iPhone's Always-On Display (AOD) by itself is very battery efficient. It's only offered to iPhone 14 and 15 Pro models. Why?

• They have OLED displays whose pixels turn off completely to display true black.
• They can down their refresh rates to as low as 1Hz while in AOD mode (Proof in #1 of this article).

Both of which save a ton of battery.

AOD is helpful if you wanna occasionally glance at your screen for time and notifications. But what if you're not around and your iPhone's still on AOD?

There's no use and it still costs battery, right? So how to let your iPhone know that you're not around so it'd turn off display?

Simple. Just connect your Apple Watch, wear it and move away. Ask someone to check if your iPhone's display has turned off. They'd say yes.

Come back and you'll see it turns on again.

This saves more battery than plain AOD. How cool!

Turn on Always-On Display in Settings ⚙️ < Display & Brightness 🔆.

iMessage Tricks

#5. Trigger phrases to share location or "pics"

Let's say your friend's on a vacation and you just knew it. And as a travel-freak, you're eager to know where they've been to. What would you do?

You'd probably send a message asking "Where are you?" but then, you'd see a prompt to Request Location magically appearing over your keyboard.

If you tap on it, your friend will receive a Find My location request. Cool, isn't it?

However, if you don't wanna appear too prying, better not to send the location request. Because anyways, your friend also sees a prompt to send location — by design.

Ok, now let's forget everything and assume you didn't know this iMessage trick. So you'd casually message "Hey! Where've you been to?". Now neither of you will be prompted to Send/Request Location.

However, if your friend knows a trick, they'll reply with "I'm at " (notice the space). But even before they send it, they'll be prompted to Send Location.

How cool!

Now as your friend returns back, you're excited to see some of their pics as you're planning to visit the same place next summer.

So you send a phrase like: [Send/Show] [pics/pictures/photos]

Shifting POV to your friend's screen, the words "pics", "pictures", "photos" get underlined.

When tapped, they reveal media picker that lets them share their recent photos. Alternatively, they'll also see a prompt to Choose Photos as they receive your message.

However, if you haven't sent the "trigger phrase", but they still wanted to send you their pics, there's a hack for that: Instead of clicking ➕ < Photos, they can long-press the ➕ glyph beside the text field to jump to media picker directly.

#6. Trigger phrases for full-screen effects (+ A Secret Effect)

If you've been using 'Messages' for a while, you'd likely know that you could send your messages with full-screen effects like Fireworks, Celebration, and Lasers to amplify your messages' emotions.

To add a full-screen effect, after typing your message, long press the 'Send ↑' button < Tap on 'Screen' < Keep swiping left until you find the perfect effect < Tap on ↑ to send the message along with the effect.

You'd have also discovered by accident that when you wish your friend "Happy Birthday!" or say "Congratulations!", your screen floods up with a relevant full-screen effect. Why?

Coz they are the "trigger phrases" for those effects set by Apple. Lemme now make a list of every such phrase that triggers a full-screen effect automatically. (Consider these as iOS Easter eggs.)

I'll mention them in lower case to show the minimum viable phrases possible. Be sure that they still work even if you use title case, all caps, or add exclamatory marks.

• 🎈 Balloons — happy birthday
• 🎊 Confetti —

congrats
congratulation
congratulations
best wishes
happy holi
(Holi is an Indian festival celebrated on the full moon day in the Hindu calendar month of Phalguna - February or March.)

• Lasers — pew pew
• 🎆 Fireworks —

happy new year
happy diwali
happy deepavali
happy deepawali
(Last three phrases are wishes for the same Indian festival celebrated on the 15th day of the Hindu calendar month of Kartika - October or November.)

• 🎇 Celebration —

happy chinese new year
happy lunar new year

• 💫 Shooting Star (The SECRET effect) —

Surprisingly, this effect isn't visible in the effects menu unlike others. For some unknown reason, Apple removed it beginning with iOS 14 — but thankfully, that isn't its death.

You can still see it using these trigger phrases (only):

eid mubarak
happy eid

(Eid is an Islamic festival celebrated on the first day of the Islamic month of Shawwal.)

Bonus feature

Also, what I think most people don't know is: The full-screen effects come up even with the translated versions of these phrases.

For example,

• French phrase bon anniversaire , like happy birthday , triggers Balloons
• Italian phrase congratulazioni , like congratulations , triggers Confetti
• Danish phrase godt nytar , like happy new year , triggers Fireworks
• Chinese phrase 春节快乐 , like happy chinese new year , triggers Celebrations
• Urdu phrase عید مبارک , like happy eid/eid mubarak , triggers Shooting Star

Trigger phrases for full-screen effects work in over 50 languages like English, Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Persian, Russian, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and most, if not all, European and Indian regional languages.

Get the detailed list of all trigger phrases across all supported languages in this blog by GadgetHacks.

#7. Cooking up multiple emojis for better expression

Before we dive into the so-called "Emoji Cooking", let me tell you about a less-popular iMessage hack.

Did you know you can send emojis as stickers? Here's how: tap on ➕ beside the text field < select Stickers 😀 < choose an emoji, and send it.

"But what good does this do apart from making my conversations bulkier?"

After sending the 'base' sticker, drag and drop another emoji sticker on its top to combine them. Maybe try adding hands or accessories to the base emoji to make it more expressive.

Here are a few examples to strike some inspiration:

However, you should be hyper-wary while placing the new sticker over the base one — coz once you stick it, you can't move it (except if you sticked it too far).

The only way out is to remove the sticker by long-pressing it < clicking 'Sticker Details' ⓘ < swiping left on the emoji.

Now it's your next chance, be more careful.

If you're hating this stickie stuff already, let's "cook" emojis instead. That's a better way to mix, or rather fuse, two emojis.

Howzzat! You too can create such stickers using:

• Google's Emoji Kitchen
• iMessage extension apps like Emoji Cooking
• Websites like Emoji Supply and Emoji Kitchen

These let you create over 20,000 unique and new emoji combinations that feel like real emojis. After creating an "emoji dish", you can easily copy and send it as an iMessage sticker.

Keyboard Tricks

#8. Access Trackpad on Emoji keyboard

If you've been using iPhone for a while, you'd be knowing you could use your spacebar as your trackpad.

For the uninitiated, here's how: While typing, just press and hold the spacebar. Once you feel a jerk, swipe your finger ←/→/↑/↓ to move the cursor accordingly.

But what about when you're on the Emoji keyboard? There's no spacebar there, right? Then where's your trackpad?

Do you think you have to switch back to the QWERTY keyboard for it? NO.

Apple kept this secret: Your trackpad is hidden in the empty space below your emojis. Just tap and hold that space and you'll sense a jerk — yeah that same jerk that acknowledges trackpad activation.

Bonus tip

Contrary to what you've been believing, it isn't the spacebar of the QWERTY keyboard that's the trackpad — it's actually this part:

It coincidentally includes spacebar.

#9. Select text without touching it

Say you just typed some stuff on your iPhone. And you wanted to select some text of it — perhaps to copy or clear. What would you do?

Typically, you'd put effort to lift your finger up towards the text… to double-tap, adjust the edges, and finally select it, right?

But you know? There's a way to do that without even leaving keyboard. Here's how:

• Press and hold Shift ⇧.
• Press and hold spacebar until you feel a jerk, then swipe your finger left or right to select text towards that side.

You can also swipe up or down to select text at the top or bottom.

How easy is that!?

Bonus tip

Using the above tip, let's say you select some text towards the left of the word "respect".

Now how would you include text to the right of it — without de-selecting the left text?

It's simple… (Assuming you're still holding ⇧ and spacebar). Keep holding spacebar — DON'T leave it.

Now, leave and hold ⇧ again. Your keyboard will now focus on selecting text towards the right of "respect". Swiping left or right moves the right edge of the 'Text Selector'.

If you want to switch to the left selector, do that again.

GIF Explanation:

#10. Get Kaomojis locally

Do you love Kaomojis? I really, really do.

They were designed by the Japanese in the 1980s as a way to portray facial expressions using text characters of various languages.

How's this one: ＼(￣▽￣)／

If you're already using Kaomojis, I'm 99.9% sure you're using them by copy-pasting from Google — not knowing there's a treasure of Kaomojis already on your very iPhone.

Here's how to access them:

• Open Settings ⚙️ < General ⚙️ < Keyboard
• Tap on Keyboards < Add New Keyboard… < Japanese < Kana. Click Done.

Now that your Kaomoji keyboard is active.

To try out Kaomojis, head over to any text field like Notes, Messages, or even Spotlight. Switch to Japanese Kana keyboard by tapping on the 🌐 glyph at the bottom of your keyboard.

Tap on ^_^ at the bottom to paste it* — and to reveal the long-hidden 100s of Kaomojis.

*(^_^ will be deleted when you add a Kaomoji, don't worry.)

Now click on the arrowhead at the top-right corner of the keyboard — and BOOM! Scroll through all the available Kaomojis and tap on one to paste it.

Consider these as your new set of emojis and try using them while you chat with your friends! They'll be surprised, take my word.

Panorama Tricks

#11. Capture Panorama right to left

Say you found a stunning landscape and wanna capture it 360°. Panorama is the only way, right?

So you open Camera, tap on PANO, and you see this:

But what if you wanna capture the scenery anti-clockwise (right to left) rather than the default clockwise (left to right)?

Just tap on the panorama strip (I call it so) and the arrow immediately shifts to right, pointing towards left.

Now as you start capturing, you'll need to move towards your left, not right.

#12. Stop capturing Panorama without needing your finger

Great, so you started capturing your next favourite panorama. But maybe you didn't want to capture it 360° — but only upto a certain point.

What would you do? Click on the Camera button to stop capturing?

It works… but moving your finger can shake the Panorama. Try this instead:

While capturing the panorama, make a subtle move towards the opposite side and it instantly stops capturing.

Notes Checklist Tricks

#13. Automatically move checked items to the bottom

If you're a frequent shopper, you'd greatly appreciate this feature.

As you may be carrying huge shopping lists always, you might be needing a checklist to check off items that you bought — for efficient management.

For that, try this: On a fresh Note, type your shopping list one item in a line. Then select them all and tap on this glyph at the bottom:

Now that your checklist is ready. As you add a product to the cart, check it off the list to visually set it apart.

But, don't you think when checked and unchecked items are together, the list looks like a mess? How about automatically moving checked items to the bottom?

To do that, go to Settings ⚙️ < Notes 🗒️ < Sort Ticked Items < Select 'Automatically'. Now see (gif):

#14. Delete all checked items

Or what if you wanna delete all checked items to get their hell out of there?

• Double-tap on any item in the checklist
• Swipe left on the text actions to find Checklist. Tap on it.
• Now tap on 'Delete Ticked' to only remove checked items.

How cool!

Did you also notice the shortcuts to Tick or Untick All items?

For more amazing iPhone hidden tricks, read these →

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