Last month I posted a list of my 10 favorite iPhone shortcuts and asked readers to tell me about others. Many of you e-mailed or commented with great ones, especially after my original post got a lot of traffic due to links on Daring Fireball (one of my favorite blogs -- thanks John Gruber!) and TechnoLawyer (their free e-mail newsletters are essential reading for any attorney interested in technology). So here is a list of more great iPhone shortcuts submitted by readers, some of which were new to me:
- Ringer silence. If you want to quickly stop your iPhone from ringing, I pointed out that you can press the sleep/wake button at the top of the iPhone. Christian Eager reminded me that you can also push the volume button.
- Alarm silence. Your iPhone will not ring if you flip the switch and put it in vibrate mode. But Paul points out that even when you are in vibrate mode, if you have an alarm set using the built-in Clock app, that alarm will make noise regardless of the vibrate setting. I should add that the alarm can be dangerous if you are in court or someplace that you need to stay quiet -- you can quickly shut up the alarm by pressing the sleep/wake or volume button, but that will just act as a "snooze" button unless you turned off that default when you set the alarm and thus the alarm will go off again 9 minutes later. You need to actually turn off the alarm to end it.
- Calendar silence. A related note: An alarm triggered by your Calendar will remain silent when you are in vibrate mode. It is just the Clock app's alarm that ignores the vibrate switch. Thanks BJ Nemeth.
- iPod controls. I should have mentioned this because I use it all the time when I listen to music or a podcast on my iPhone. When the screen is off press the home button once to wake the screen, then quickly press it twice to bring up iPod controls (RW, Play, FF) to control what is currently playing on your iPhone. If you are not already playing music, your iPhone will start to play whatever audio you were listening to last (which is useful if you were listening to a podcast because it will resume where you left off) or if it can't do that it will play in Suffle Songs mode. Note that this will work even if you have already set a double-click of the home button to do something else when the iPhone is being used. (Settings --> General --> Home Button). Thanks to Daniel Sandler and Steve Hyde.
Audio of video. if you want to listen to just the audio portion of a video (movie, podcast, etc.) on the iPhone, start up the video, then press the sleep/wake button which will turn off the screen and stop the video from playing, then press the home button once followed by a double-click of the home button. This will play only the audio of the video you were watching. Thanks to Ben Coombs.
- Headphone button 1, 2, 3. And don't forget these headphone button tips -- one click on the microphone button will answer a phone call or hang up, two clicks will skip to the next track (just like the FF button), and three clicks will bring you to the start of the track or the last track (just like the RW button).
- Screenshot. You can take a picture of whatever is on your iPhone's screen by holding down the sleep/wake button and then pressing your Home button. The picture will be added to your Camera Roll.
- Picture save. In Safari or Mail, hold your finger down on an image for a few seconds and you will have the option to save the picture to your Camera Roll.
- Better zoom. In Safari, if you want to zoom, instead of doing a reverse-pinch with both fingers, hold one finger down on the page and then just move the other finger back and forth to zoom in and out. This tip was new to me and it allows you to be much more precise when you zoom. Thanks bg!
- Frame scroll. If you are looking at a webpage in Safari that has a frame and you are only seeing the top of of the frame, use two fingers to scroll instead of one. That will scroll just the frame, not the whole page.
- Shut down. If your iPhone starts acting wacky, I pointed out that you can do a full shutdown by holding down both the Home button and the sleep/wake button for about 10 seconds. But llahsram clarifies that while that is a last resort way of resetting the iPhone, you should first try to hold down just the sleep/wake button for a few seconds to do a clean shut down. llahsram explains: "Holding down the sleep/wake button by itself for several seconds will allow you to shut down the iPhone cleanly. This is the equivalent of shutting down a computer: it closes any running programs, saves data, and turns off. You can then press the sleep/wake button again to turn it back on. Holding down both the sleep/wake button and the Home button, on the other hand, is like yanking the power cord from the computer and plugging it back in: it does an immediate hardware reset, with no cleanup. If the iPhone has gone unresponsive and can't be shut down normally, it's a useful way to break out of it, but it's not something you want to do all the time."
- Scientific calculator. Ever since the iPhone 2.0 software update on July 10, 2008, if you are using the built-in Calculator app and turn your iPhone, it switches to a scientific calculator.
- Remaining minutes. To see how many minutes you have remaining in a month, in the Phone app press the Keypad and then type *646# and then Call. In a few seconds you will get a text message reporting your minutes remaining. [UPDATE: As noted by Timmie in the comments, this tip only works in the U.S., although there are similar codes for other carriers.] [UPDATE 5/11/09: An even easier way to check your minutes is to download the free AT&T myWireless Mobile app.]
- Steadicam. It is difficult to take a non-fuzzy picture with the iPhone's so-so camera, but this makes it easier. Just before you are ready to take the picture, press but do not release the button at the bottom of the touch screen. Then hold your hand as steady as possible and when the on-screen image looks as good as you think it will get, let go of the button.
These tips and shortcuts are great, and thanks to everyone for sending them in. I would love to hear about more!
