Here at iPhone Hacks, we love hacks. Not in the computer-hacking sense. For us Apple power users, it’s about knowing everything about the OS and making use of all the little features. Which is why we bring you how-tos, features, and tips and tricks. In this article, we want to talk about the best hacks for your iPhone.
1. Backup And Install iPhone Apps Without iTunes
Apple removed the App Store section from iTunes in iTunes 12.7, which meant that it isn’t possible to backup and install apps using iTunes any more unless you downgrade to an older version. But you use tools like iMazing app to back up and install apps on your iPhone or iPad from your Mac or Pac without iTunes. It gives you a lot more freedom than iTunes. You can individually extract apps from a backup. You can even backup and export iMessages (something you can’t do on iTunes).
Read more: How to Backup & Install Apps on iPhone or iPad from Mac or PC without iTunes
2. Use Your iPhone as A Level
Open the Compass app and swipe left. You’ll find a brand new level tool hiding there.
3. Shake to Undo Hack
Accidentally deleted some text? Just shake your phone and you’ll get a popup to undo the last action.
4. Get a Level Tool in Camera App
Go to Settings -> Camera and turn on the Grid feature. Now, when you go to the camera app, you’ll find a crosshair in the middle of the screen when you’re pointing your camera down. Match the crosshairs and make sure the overlap. This means you’ve got the camera perfectly leveled against the surface.
5. Reachability Hack
Can’t reach the top of the iPhone screen on your Plus models? Just double tap the Home button and the screen will slide down for you. On the iPhone X, this feature needs to be enabled from Settings -> General -> Accessibility.
Read more: How to Enable and Use Reachability on iPhone X
6. Text to Speech Hack
iOS can read any sort of text out to you aloud. Go to Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Speech and turn on Speak Selection and Speak Screen. Next time you’re on a long article you want to be read aloud, just swipe down with two fingers and iOS will start reading everything that’s on the screen.
7. Remotely Track iPhone
Use a tool like mSpy to remotely track the activity on an iPhone. This is a great solution if you have kids. All you need is the device’s iCloud login. There’s no software that needs to be installed on the iOS device.
Read more: How to Remotely Track iPhone
8. Speech to Text Hack
The inverse is also true. When you don’t want to type, just tap on the little mic icon on the keyboard and start speaking. The Dictation feature will convert your voice to text.
9. Ask Siri to Do Things For You
Siri is not a great at answers all your questions. It’s not a Google Assistant. But it’s great for doing things for you. Especially accomplishing tasks from iOS’s stock apps. And it does that reliably.
Ask Siri to call someone, send a message (even a WhatsApp), add things to your shopping list, set an alarm and even to turn off the Bluetooth and Siri will do that for you. Reliably, every single time.
Read more: How to Type to Siri on iPhone and iPad in iOS 11
10. Text Expansion Hack
Use the built-in Text Replacement feature to expand snippets of text into longer sentences. Go to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Text Replacement and click on the + button. Type the shortcut and the phrase and hit the Save button.
Read more: How to Use Text Replacement on iPhone and iPad
11. Keyboard Trackpad Hack
If you have an iPhone 6s and above, your iPhone has a 3D Touch feature that you might not know about. This feature lets you press deeper on the screen for a different action. You can press deeper on the app icon for quick shortcuts (on on a notification).
But one of the best places to use this feature is the keyboard itself. Press deeper on the keyboard and it turns into a trackpad. Move your finger left, right, up or down and the cursor will move as well. Press deeper once again and you’ll be able to select text as you move your fingers.
Read more: The Complete List of 3D Touch Shortcuts for iPhone
12. Night Shift Hack
This feature adds a yellow tint over your screen at night. It’s really helpful if you’re the kind of person who reads on their phone at night. Go to Settings -> Display & Brightness -> Night Shift and put it on a schedule of sunrise to sunset.
Read more: How to Master Night Shift on Your iPhone and iPad
13. Dark Mode Hack
iOS 11 has a Smart Invert feature that essentially brings a dark mode to iPhone. This feature turns the white background into black and the black text into white. And it doesn’t do anything to media like pictures and videos.
Enable it from Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Display Accommodations -> Invert Colors -> Smart Invert.
Read more: How to Enable the Secret Dark Mode on iPhone in iOS 11
14. Virtual Home Button Hack
You can use the AssistiveTouch feature in Settings -> General -> Accessibility to get a virtual Home button on any iPhone. This feature is especially useful on the iPhone X but comes in handy for all iPhones.
In AssistiveTouch, you can define what happens when you tap, double-tap, long press, and 3D Touch the floating icon. This means you can define actions like going to Home, opening Control Center, speaking to Siri and more to one of these action. Once it’s configured, you’ll effectively never need to use the Home button again!
Read more: How to Get a Virtual Home Button on iPhone X in 3 Simple Steps
15. Accessibility Shortcut Hack
iOS has a lot of awesome accessibility features. Things like magnifier, Smart Invert and so on. You can enable a shortcut that brings up a selection for quickly accessing your favorite accessibility feature. Just click the Home button three times and the menu pops up.
Go to Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Shortcuts and add the features you want to the list.
Jailbreak iPhone
The ultimate iPhone Hacks would be to jailbreak iPhone and break free from Apple’s walled garden. Unfortunately, it is not possible to jailbreak iPhone on iOS 11 or later. We are however hopeful a jailbreak will be released soon as security researchers have successfully jailbroken iPhone X on iOS 11.2.1.
If you’re on iOS 10.2 or lower then you can jailbreak your device using Yalu jailbreak. You can check out our how to jailbreak iPhone page to get more details about the tools and the step-by-step guide.
Bonus 1: Backup Photos to an External Drive
If you’re running out of storage space on your iPhone, and don’t have enough space to back them up on your Mac or PC, then you can use this hack to backup the photos to an external drive using our step-by-step guide.
- How to Back Up Photos From iPhone to External Hard Drive on Mac
- How to Backup Photos from iPhone to External Hard Drive on Windows
Bonus 2: Control Center Customization Hack
iOS 11 brings a hidden feature that lets you customize Control Center. Go to Settings -> Control Center -> Customize Controls and you’ll find a list of features you can add to the bottom of the Control Center. You can add a fully featured Apple TV remote, a Low Power Mode toggle, Notes shortcut, Screen Recording feature and a lot more.
Read more: How to Customize iOS 11 Control Center
Bonus 3: Screen Recording Hack
iOS 11 has a secret built-in screen recording feature. Enable the toggle from Settings -> Control Center -> Customize Controls. Next, go to Control Center and tap on the Screen Recording control. In 3 seconds, screen recording will start. Tap on the status bar to stop the recording. You’ll find the recording in the Photos app.
Read more: How to Record iPhone or iPad’s Screen without a Mac in iOS 11
Your Favorite iPhone Hacks?
As we keep discovering new and awesome iPhone Hacks, we will keep updating this list (and the website). What is your favorite iPhone Hacks that we missed out on? Share with us in the comments below. We’ll update the list and give you a shoutout!
