If you’re an iPhone user and you’ve updated to iOS 14, chances are you’re not taking full advantage of all the excellent features of the update. In many new software iterations, it’s easy to miss some of the numerous incredible features that Apple included. Let’s look at some of my favorite valuable additions that you may have missed recently or even in the past.
Customize control center
Control Centre provides quick and easy access to valuable controls such as airplane mode or screen brightness. To access this on your iPhone, swipe downwards from the top right-hand corner of the screen, and a collection of controls and apps will appear. You will likely know what ‘Control Centre’ is even if you don’t know it by name.
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Now that you know how to access this, I can let you in on my favorite hidden feature – you can customize what appears in Control Centre. Just go to Settings > Control Centre on your iPhone. Once you’re there, you can see most of the controls already appearing on this menu and additional commands you can include. Click the green plus or red minus button to add remote controls. Now you can access more of your favorite apps and features even faster on the fly.
Easy Timer
Speaking of quick and easy, I’ll often use the timer feature to ensure everything is cooked to perfection when I’m cooking in the kitchen, so I’ve added the Timer to my Control Centre. If you tap the timer icon in Control Centre, it will usually take you to the clock app to set up the Timer. However, did you know that you can press and hold this icon to set the Timer in a couple of seconds? Tapping and holding the icon will allow you to quickly swipe up or down to select the Timer’s duration.
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You can reaccess this Timer by pressing the timer icon in ‘Control Centre’ or going into the clock app and pressing ‘timer’ on the bottom right corner of your screen. Once you set it off, you can press anywhere on the screen to exit, and you will see it’s activated as the icon will have turned white and yellow. If you love this, try pressing and holding the other heroes and apps in Control Centre – you’ll be amazed at the different shortcuts built-in.
Hidden folder
I know we all take a lot of photos these days. Sometimes taking ten selfies in a row (or more!) is embarrassing to get the right one. Did you know you can hide photos from appearing in your main photo album? It’s easy, tap on an image you want to hide, press the icon that looks like a box with an arrow pointing upwards inside it (the share button), scroll down, and click the word ‘Hide’. Once this is enabled, all your hidden photos will appear in a folder called ‘Hidden’, which can be found in your Photos app under Albums, under ‘Utilities’. Arguably this isn’t hidden because you can still find and see the ‘Hidden’ album – so here’s how to hide that too. Head to settings > photos > turn off hidden albums. Now the ‘Hidden’ album will be nowhere to be found. Toggle this setting off or on as desired.
LED flash alerts
Did you know you can make your device’s flash go off (in addition to the tone) when you receive a notification? This is a thoughtfully included accessibility feature. To turn this on, head to Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual. Next, turn on LED Flash for Alerts (also turn on Flash on Silent if you want LED flash alerts only when your phone is silent).
