Many of the things I have talked about with my tinkering so far have been inaccessible to people without specific interest or desire and at times specific tools or skills. One thing that is accessible to anyone who has an iPhone are settings that you can employ to activate features and customize your experience. This post will outline several features that you can use to make small tweaks to the experience of using an iPhone. 

 

Accessibility shortcut:

You can go through the menu by clicking: Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility shortcut

Or search in the settings app: “Accessibility shortcut”

The accessibility shortcut is intended to toggle accessibility features at the click of a button, the accessibility shortcut can complete an action from the list below by triple clicking on the home button on iPhones with a home button or on the side button on iPhones without a home button.

I have the accessibility shortcut set to “Reduce White Point,” which is useful to darken my phone screen at night, making it less straining on my eyes, but there are many other options you can select to toggle with the Accessibility shortcut. 

 

Back Tap:

You can go through the menu by clicking: Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap

Similar to the accessibility shortcut, “back tap” offers a variety of different actions which can be completed by tapping on the back of your phone (not a button) two or three times. Different actions can be assigned to two taps or three taps. Unlike the accessibility shortcut, however, you can complete a much greater assortment of actions, not limited to those chosen for accessibility. This includes Shortcuts created in the Shortcuts app (like the ones that open apps I used to customize my home screen)!

 

 

 

I configured this setting to open the control center with two taps and three taps to run a shortcut with three taps. Particularly on larger phones where the Control Center is somewhat inconveniently accessed by swiping down from the right corner, it is nice to be able to tap on the back, rather than adjust your grip to reach the top of the phone.

 

Control Center:

Speaking of the Control Center. You can add to the buttons at the bottom and access a wider array of options by long-pressing on buttons in Control Center. 

First, to change the buttons in Control Center, you can go through the menu by clicking: Settings > Control Center

This will show a menu of the controls you already have set and of controls you can add to the control center. Tap one of the controls you already have to remove it, and tap one that you don’t already have to add it. When you swipe to access Control Center, you will see the new, added options.

There is also a lot of hidden functionality for buttons in the Control Center accessed by long-pressing. For example, long-pressing on the audio button will bring up the album artwork and draggable bar for volume and song progress and long-pressing on the flashlight button lets you adjust the brightness of the flashlight. 

There are many ways to tinker without having to make physical changes to a device. I recommend taking advantage of those changes and tinker your devices to make them your own.