iPhone 12 Tips and Tricks
1. Recognize Music in Control Center
Apple owns the popular music recognition service, Shazam, and integrates it well within the iOS ecosystem. Usually, you have to bring your iPhone closer to the audio source playing the music but what if the music is playing on your iPhone itself? Well, this feature does exactly that. Simply turn it on from the Control Center and open the app where the music was playing, it analyzes everything in the background and presents the song name with a notification. It’s really handy when you can’t remember which song is playing in the background of your favorite TikTok video. To enable Music recognition, navigate to Settings> Control Center> Tap + Music Recognition.
2. Remove Clutter from the Control Center
Here’s another iPhone 12 tip. The Control Center offers a quick way to access options that would otherwise require you to go through the Settings app. With iOS 14, you would get a Home Accessories section that constantly takes up space and if you don’t have any HomeKit devices connected to your account, the buttons don’t even do anything. You can actually disable that panel from showing up in the Control Center so that it doesn’t clutter it. Simply navigate to the Settings app> Control Center> Turn the Switch off next to “Show Home Controls”.
3. Pull the Screen down for One Hand Use
I rock the iPhone 12 Mini for this precise reason that iPhones have gotten out of reach and using those with one hand is almost impossible with the bigger iPhones. Fortunately, iPhone has this feature enabled by default and you can actually pull down the screen which makes it easier to reach the top parts of the iPhone display. Simply swipe down on the navigation bar at the bottom of the display to pull the screen down. It works great and I use it all the time to pull down the Control Center.
4. Tap the Back of your iPhone to Trigger Actions
One of the coolest iPhone 12 tricks. It is an under-appreciated feature on the iPhone that most people dismiss as a ‘gimmick’ but if you customize it for your specific needs, it’s extremely convenient. Back Tap gives you the ability to trigger custom actions which you can activate by either tapping the back of your iPhone twice or thrice. Ranging from system actions such as taking a screenshot, locking the screen, calling Siri, etc to custom shortcuts created in the Shortcuts app, you can bind an action to anything. I mostly use it to run Google Assistant on the iPhone as it becomes just as seamless as calling Siri. To set Back Tap, navigate to Settings> Accessibility> Touch> Back Tap> Double-Tap> Choose Action.
5. Hide Photos on iPhone
The Photos app although doesn’t have the ability to lock your photos behind Face ID natively, you do have other ways to password protect your photos and get some degree of privacy. You can now hide any number of pictures in a hidden album that won’t show up with the rest of your pictures. However, you can still access those pictures by scrolling down and finding the hidden album, plain as day. You can completely hide the album so that it won’t show up in the Photos app at all. To Hide the pictures, select the pictures you want hidden, tap the Share button, select Hide. To hide the Hidden album from the Photos app, navigate to Settings> Photos> Turn Off the switch next to “Hidden Albums”.
6. Get an Alert When Your iPhone Is Sufficiently Charged
Siri Shortcuts and Automations open up an endless world of opportunities that can automate your entire workflows. One of the ways I use Siri Shortcuts is to set up an automation that would trigger a notification to tell me that the iPhone is charged to 80% so that I can unplug it. This little thing goes a long way in extending the battery life of the iPhone.
7. Use NFC Tags to Run Shortcuts
NFC may not have lived up to its potential but you can still do a ton of cool things with it. The latest iPhones natively recognize NFC tags and you can even program them with an iPhone. One of my favorite uses of an NFC tag is the ability to run shortcuts. You can assign a shortcut to run whenever your iPhone comes in contact with an NFC tag. There is no limit to which shortcuts you can or can’t run with NFC but to give you a heads up, I use NFC tags to set up timers around the kitchen which makes it so much easier for me.
8. Watch Any Video in Picture In Picture
Even though PIP has been around for a while, it finally made it to the iPhone with iOS 14 and allows you to play any video in PIP mode. It is usually enabled out of the box and all you have to do is play a video in full screen and swipe to go to the Home Screen. If the app supports it, the video will continue in the PIP mode. There are even clever workarounds to get YouTube to play in PIP mode which is disabled in the official YouTube app.
9. A New Way to Copy and Paste
Originally introduced for the iPadOS, this new way of copying and pasting is also available on iPhones running iOS 13 and above. Instead of tapping on the text field to bring up the paste button, you can simply pinch out with three fingers anywhere on the screen to paste whatever was on the clipboard. Similarly, you can select a text on your iPhone and pinch inward with three fingers to copy it to the Clipboard.
Closing Words- iPhone 12 Tips & Tricks
These were a few of the best tips, tricks, and hidden features that I regularly use on the iPhone and you should too. All of these tricks enhance the user experience in some way and makes my workflow a little smoother. If you have a nifty trick that isn’t mentioned above, don’t shy from sharing it with me on Twitter.
