Sometimes I feel like I’ve been living in the dark ages when it comes to using my iPhone. Despite having owned one consistently for well over a decade, I always feel like I’m the last one to find out about clever tips and tricks that make them even more intuitive.
Yesterday I had a bit of a clear-out binge on my iPhone 11 Pro (opens in new tab), deleting any apps I didn’t use or that were taking up unnecessary space. While I felt cleansed at the end of it, my home screen was now a complete and utter mess. There were gaps in rows and entire pages that were now only half-full, and the perfectionist in me couldn't leave it like that.
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I started meticulously moving app by app to fill up the spaces but, considering there were five pages of apps, it was taking way longer than I would’ve liked. Then, by complete mistake, while the apps were "jittering", I tapped a second app while still holding my finger on another and it created a stack. I tapped another, and another, and managed to drag 12 apps in one go to fill up the previous pages.
Now, this might not seem like a very important hack, but it’s one of the most useful ones I’ve discovered recently – and I have no idea why Apple doesn’t make these features better known. Having told all my housemates about my new discovery, I realized I wasn’t the only one who had no idea that this was a thing – none of them did, either.
I also didn’t know that you don’t even have to have all your apps on your home screen – you can just keep the ones you use most often and the rest can be stored in your App Library. This means you’re a lot less likely to click on apps by mistake because they look similar, and you don’t have to scroll through so many homepages of apps you use once in a blue moon.
Call me easily pleased, but it’s these kinds of findings that make me wonder how much more I don’t know about my iPhone and if it is actually much smarter than I thought. Whether you have a slightly older model such as the iPhone XS (opens in new tab) or the latest and greatest iPhone 13 Pro Max (opens in new tab), there are bound to be lots of hidden tricks you still don't know about.
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