10 BEST iPhone or iPod Tricks

1. Get to the first Home screen

You  have a large number of apps installed. Your most important apps are on the first screen, right? Say you’re currently on screen 7, and want to get to the first screen. Simplyclick the Home button to get there.

 

2. Flip pages by tapping

Many iPhone apps feature a paging system with dots at the bottom of the screen, such as:

• The Home screen
• Safari
• Weather

You probably know that you can flip pages in these apps by swiping left or right across the screen. You can also tap the areas either side of the row of dots at the bottom of the screen:

Tapping is slightly quicker than swiping

 

3. Instantly access iPod controls from anywhere

You want to pause the podcast quickly. Just double-click the Home button, and a window pops up with iPod controls, allowing you to pause, play, skip tracks or adjust the iPod volume:

You can tap the iPod button in the window to go straight to the iPod.

By default, this trick only works if an iPod track is playing. However, you can change the behavior of the Home Button double-click action by going to Settings > General > Home Button:

Choosing Home means that double-clicking has the same effect as single-clicking:  It just takes you to your Home screen.

Phone Favorites: the default setting brings up your favorite contacts for quick dialling. However, if you choose iPod then double-clicking takes you straight to the iPod app regardless of whether a track is playing or not.

You can use the iPod Controls setting to turn off the feature that displays iPod controls when a track is playing.

 

4. Keyboard trick #1: Quickly type a period and space

When you finish typing a sentence, you usually want to type a period, followed by a space. This is a bit awkward as you have to tap the bottom-left Number key, followed by a period, followed by the space bar. The quicker way: just double-tap the space bar.

(If this doesn’t work go to Settings > General > Keyboard and turn the “.” Shortcut option on.)

 

5. Keyboard trick #2:  Type a single number or symbol

The usual way to enter digits or symbols is to tap the Number key then tap the digits or symbols, then tap the Number key (which now shows ABC) again to return to the regular keyboard.

If you only want to type a single digit or symbol Tap and hold the Number key to bring up the number/symbol keyboard and then drag your finger to the digit or symbol you want to type, and let go. This types the digit/symbol and immediately returns you to ABC mode.

 

6. Keyboard trick #3: Caps Lock

The iPhone’s keyboard has a Caps Lock mode for typing all-caps words though it’s disabled by default. To turn it on, go to Settings > General > Keyboard, and turn the Enable Caps Lock switch to ON. When using the keyboard quickly double-tap the Shift key to enable Caps Lock (the Shift key turns blue). Type your capital letters, then tap the Shift key again to turn off  the Caps Lock.

 

7. Keyboard trick #4: Holding down keys for more options

Many keys bring up a list of other symbols or options if you tap and hold them for 1 second. For example:

• Holding down E, Y, U, I, O, A, S, L, Z, C, or N brings up accented letters
• Holding down $ in the number/symbol keyboard displays other currency symbols
• Holding down “ or ‘ in the number/symbol keyboard reveals alternative quote characters
• Holding down ? or ! in the number/symbol keyboard brings up the ¿ or ¡ symbol
• Holding down the .com key when entering internet addresses brings up options for .net, .edu and .org. Thi works when entering email addresses in Mail by tapping and holding the . (period) key.)

 

8. Save drafts in Mail

With the Mac OS X Mail app, it’s easy to save your currently-edited message as a draft by clicking the Save as Draft button in the toolbar.

Saving a draft in the iPhone Mail app: First, from the message editing screen, tap the Cancelbutton. You can then tap Save to save the current message as a draft, or Don’t Saveto delete the message.

 

9. Jump to the top of the page

Sliding up and down to scroll through a internet page, an email message or a list of messages is pretty quick; If you’re near the bottom of a long page or list it takes longer to scroll back up to the top. There’s a faster way to return to the top: just tap the status bar at the top of the screen:

This works for most screens that involve scrolling.

 

10. Customize the iPod dock icons

iPhone comes with 5 icons in the iPod’s dock – Playlists, Artists, Songs, Videos and More. You can control what kind of icon shows on your screen: Tap the More icon, then tap theEdit button at the top left of the screen. You’ll see a list of all available icons; simply drag an icon onto an existing icon in the dock to replace the icon you want to replace.

Tap Done when you’re done.  This also works in the YouTube app.