10 iPhone Tricks I Actually Use

I sat down and made a list of the iPhone tricks I keep coming back to. Some are old, some are new in iOS 26, and a couple are things I went years without using before someone showed them to me

Wes Brennan·May 16, 2026·7 min read

Here's the thing about the iPhone: it's been around long enough that most of the cool stuff is buried under three menus and a long press. Every year Apple adds new features at WWDC, the keynote highlights make the rounds for a week, and then half of it gets forgotten by the people who would actually use it. Including, sometimes, me.

So I sat down and made a list of the iPhone tricks I keep coming back to. Some are old, some are new in iOS 26, and a couple are things I went years without using before someone showed them to me. None of them require you to be a power user. You just need an iPhone and about ninety seconds of curiosity.

1. Turn any app icon into a widget

This one still feels like a magic trick. On the Home Screen, long press on an app icon. Above the menu that pops up, you'll see little square previews. Tap one of those and the app turns into a widget right where it was. Tap any size from small to large, and you're done.

Works with most Apple apps and a ton of third party apps too. To turn it back into a regular icon, long press again and tap the four squares icon in the top left.

Personally, I do this with Calendar and Reminders so I can see what I'm supposed to be doing without opening anything. It's the closest thing iOS has to "glanceable" that doesn't involve building a stack from scratch.

2. Customize the Lock Screen buttons

The flashlight and camera shortcuts on the bottom of your Lock Screen don't have to stay flashlight and camera. You can swap them for almost anything in Control Center, including third party app controls.

Long press on your Lock Screen, then tap Customize. Tap the minus button to clear the existing shortcuts, then the plus button to pick replacements. I traded my flashlight for a Shazam shortcut and I haven't looked back. Whatever you do most, put it there.

3. Use Back Tap for, well, anything

Back Tap is one of those features that's been on the iPhone for years and almost no one I know uses it. You tap the back of your phone, and it does something. Could be a screenshot. Could be turning on the flashlight. Could be running a Shortcut you wrote.

Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. You get a double tap and a triple tap to assign. I have double tap set to screenshot because I take a lot of them, and triple tap runs a Shortcut that turns on Low Power Mode. Try it once and you'll find a use for it.

4. Screenshot an entire webpage

The regular screenshot just grabs what's on screen. But if you take a screenshot in Safari (or open it from the thumbnail in the corner), tap into the preview, and you'll see a Full Page option at the top. Tap that and your screenshot becomes the entire webpage, scrolled out as one long image or PDF.

I use this constantly for receipts, recipes, and any article I want to save without dealing with bookmarks. Works on PDFs too.

5. Hide a whole Home Screen page

If you've got a Home Screen page full of stuff you only need sometimes (work apps, games, that folder of utilities you forgot existed), you can hide the whole page in one move instead of dealing with apps one by one.

Long press on the Home Screen to enter jiggle mode, then tap the row of dots near the bottom. You'll see every page as a thumbnail with a checkbox underneath. Uncheck the pages you want to hide. They stay searchable in Spotlight and they still live in the App Library, but they're off your Home Screen until you bring them back.

I keep a "Travel" page that's hidden 90 percent of the year and only comes out when I'm actually going somewhere.

6. Set custom vibration patterns for specific people

You probably know about custom ringtones for contacts. You can do the same thing with vibration, which matters a lot if you keep your phone on silent (which, for the record, you should).

Open Contacts, pick a person, tap Edit, then tap Text Tone or Ringtone. Tap Haptics and then Create New Vibration. You actually tap out the pattern with your finger, like you're playing a tiny drum kit.

Honestly, I went a little overboard with this and gave my wife a long, short, long pattern that I can feel in my pocket without checking my phone. Now I know if it's her texting before I even look. It's a small thing and it's great.

7. Use AirPods as a camera remote

Anyone with AirPods 4, AirPods Pro 2, or AirPods Pro 3 can trigger the iPhone's camera with a squeeze of the stem. Open the Camera app while wearing at least one AirPod, frame your shot, and squeeze. That's it.

Go to Settings, tap your AirPods name, scroll to Camera Control, and pick Press Once or Press and Hold. Pair this with the camera's timer and you've got a real group photo solution where nobody has to hold the phone or lunge into frame at the last second.

8. Change your alarm snooze from 9 minutes to whatever you want

I never understood why 9 minutes was the default. iOS 26 finally lets you change it. In the Clock app, when you create or edit an alarm, you can set a custom snooze duration. Want 5 minutes? Fine. Want a more punishing 2? Also fine.

I went with 7 minutes, which feels exactly right for "okay one more snooze" without being long enough to fall fully back asleep. Pick your number and never deal with the random 9 minute thing again.

9. Stop your podcast (or music) on a timer

Falling asleep to a podcast and waking up at 3 a.m. to a true crime episode about something terrible is, in my experience, not great. Built right into the Clock app is a timer that will stop your media when it ends.

Open Clock, tap Timers, set a duration, then tap When Timer Ends. Scroll to the bottom and pick Stop Playing. Hit Start. Whatever's playing (podcast, audiobook, music, you name it) shuts off when the timer hits zero.

This is the single most underrated feature in iOS for anyone who listens to stuff in bed.

10. Let your iPhone tell you when your camera lens is dirty

This one is new in iOS 26 and I love it. Your iPhone can detect when the camera lens has smudges or fingerprints that are making your photos look bad, and it'll pop up a little warning so you can wipe it off before you take the shot.

Go to Settings > Camera and toggle on Lens Cleaning Hints. Now whenever you open the Camera app, your iPhone will check for smudges. I had no idea how often my lens was getting dirty until I turned this on. Now I wipe it on my shirt before every important photo and they all come out better.

A few more tips worth your time

If you liked these, the iPhone has a lot more buried in it. Custom voicemail greetings per contact, call screening that asks unknown callers their name, the new Action button shortcuts on the 15 Pro and newer, and a Reachability gesture that drops the top of the screen down so you can actually thumb it one handed. I'll get to those another time.

For now, pick two or three of these and try them today. The lens cleaning one alone is going to fix your photos, and the alarm snooze change is going to start your mornings better. That's a pretty good return on five minutes of setup.

My Favorite iPhone Accessories:

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