I was recently invited by the Monroe County Bar Association in Rochester, NY to participate in a CLE panel discussion called Phone Tips for Mobile Lawyers. That gave me an opportunity to come up with a list of some of my favorite iPhone tips for 2020. New York attorney Nicole Black, a lawyer and Legal Technology Evangelist with MyCase law practice management software, joined me to present iPhone tips. Android tips were provided by Pamela Gratzer, the President/CEO of Mindware Connections, and New York attorney Steven Feder of Pirrello, Personte & Feder. In today’s post, I’m sharing the iPhone tips that I discussed along with some of the tips that Niki described. And a few of the tips shared by Pam and Steven have relevance to the iPhone as well, so I’ve included some of them. Here are 20 iPhone tips for 2020:
(1) Use widgets to create a custom iPhone and iPad home screen.
Widgets are my favorite new feature of iOS 14, and I discussed how useful they are for lawyers in this post. I love widgets because they provide the information that I need at a quick glance on my home screen. And since I look at my home screen countless times every day, I am constantly receiving that key information without having to open an app first.
To create a widget, press down on an empty space on the home screen to enter “jiggle mode,” then press the + at the top left corner. Choose an app, choose a widget size, and place the widget on the home screen. After you place a widget, you may want to rearrange your icons around that widget.
You can create multiple widgets from a single app, and you can stack widgets and enable Smart Rotate.
(2) What’s My Update?
Ask Siri “What’s my update” to get a personalized update of your weather, reminders, upcoming calendar items, and the latest edition of the news from NPR (updated hourly). If you don’t want the news in your update, you can tell Siri “remove news from my daily update.”
(3) Read the fine print.
Your iPhone works great as a magnifying glass whenever you want to read the fine print, whether it be in a contract or a menu. To use this tip, you need to enable using the side button for the magnification feature by Settings -> Accessibility and then under Vision turn on Magnifier. Next, in Settings -> Accessibility, under General, set the Accessibility Shortcut to Magnifier.
Now, you can triple-press the side button on your iPhone to launch the Magnifier. You can slide the button along the bottom to change the amount of magnification. Once the text is in focus, you can (optionally) tap the big circle to maintain that focus.
(4) Move the cursor around on the iPhone while you are typing.
This is an oldie but definitely a goodie. Hold down on the space bar for a second, and then the keyboard changes to a trackpad. Then you can move the cursor wherever you want it in the text that you have already typed so that you can make edits.
(5) What’s that song that goes…
If you are trying to figure out what a song is and all that you remember is a line from the lyrics, fear not, even if you don’t remember the name of the artist. You can just ask Siri. For example, you can say: “Hey Siri, what’s that song that goes ‘all my troubles seemed so far away?’” and Siri will quickly tell you that the song is Yesterday by the Beatles. Siri will also present you with a card that you can tap to bring up the song in the Music app.
You don’t need to use Siri to do this. You can also use the search bar in Apple Music to type a line of lyrics and the search results will include songs with those lyrics.
A related tip is to have your iPhone identify any song that is playing. Go to Settings -> Control Center and then add Music Recognition (using the Shazam service) to your Control Center. Now, if a song is currently playing, you can just swipe down and tap one button to identify the song. I often use this if I’m watching a TV show or movie and a song starts to play that I like but I cannot identify.
(6) I’m almost there.
If you want to let someone know that you are on your way, you can certainly send them a quick text message and then give them an estimate of where you are located and how long it will take you to get someplace. But if you want to be more precise, the Messages app has two helpful features.
First, you can type “I’m at” and then hit the spacebar. The iPhone will give you a suggestion of sending your current location on the map. Note that as soon as you tap the current location suggestion it immediately gets sent, even before you hit the blue send arrow.
Second, you can type “I’ll be there in” and then hit the spacebar. If the iPhone thinks it knows where you are going (for example, if you are using Maps to navigate or you recently looked up a location), the iPhone will suggest how long it will take you to get there. Just tap the suggestion and the other person will know where to expect you.
Another option is to let the person track you on the way there. In Messages, tap the face(s) at the top so that you can see the info button at the top right, then tap the info button, then tap Share My Location. You can share for one hour, until the end of the day, or indefinitely. This is a useful feature if you are spending the day working with someone else such that it will be helpful for you to each to know where each other is located, and you don’t have to worry about remembering to turn off the feature when the day is over to maintain your privacy.
(7) Where have I been?
Trying to remember the name of that restaurant you went to last week in Boston? Or trying to figure out how long you were at a location such as a courthouse, to help you to do your time sheets? Your iPhone keeps a log of many of the places that you visit, and how long you were there. Sometimes it is useful for you to go back and see where you have been. But whether you use this feature or not, you should know that it is there in case someone else gets access to your iPhone and you don’t want them to know where you have been.
Go to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services [all the way at the bottom] -> Significant Locations. Your iPhone will confirm your identity before going to the next screen, which is a nice privacy check. On that next screen, when Significant Locations is turned on, you will see a list of many (although probably not all) of the cities that you have been to recently. Tap a city to see specific locations with the city and the specific times that you were there. Sometimes it is missing items, and I wouldn’t say it is 100% accurate. But it is typically accurate enough.
Your iPhone uses this log of significant locations for providing location-related information to some of the built-in apps on the iPhone. Apple tells you in the Settings app that “Significant Locations are encrypted and cannot be read by Apple.” Nevertheless, if you find this feature to be more creepy than useful, feel free to turn off Significant Locations.
(8) Back Tap.
This is an accessibility tip that anyone might find useful. iOS 14 allows you to assign specific functions to a double-tap or triple-tap on the back of your iPhone. I’ve learned that it isn’t very hard to accidentally trigger the double-tap feature so I haven’t been using that one, but I find the triple-tap feature useful and I have never activated that one by accident.
Head to Settings -> Accessibility -> Touch -> Back Tap. There’s a set list of system and accessibility functions you can assign to double or triple taps, such as taking a screenshot or activating Siri. Better yet, you can assign any shortcut in your Shortcuts app, which opens up the feature to all kinds of powerful capabilities. You can make a Back Tap turn on the camera in video mode. You can use the Back Tap to open a specific app. You can use it to send someone a specific message. And there are countless other useful shortcuts that you can trigger.
(9) Long-press back button.
If you are many menus deep in an app and you want to go back to the top, it used to be that you would have to tap the back button in the upper left again, and again, and again, to get back to the top of the menu structure. With iOS 14, you can press and hold the standard upper-left Back button to get a list of all the previous pages.
(10) Fixing a bad connection.
If you have trouble getting a good Wi-Fi or cellular connection, here are two tips that will sometimes fix it. First, put your iPhone in Airplane Mode, wait about 10 seconds, and then turn Airplane Mode off again. Second, if you are having trouble with a Wi-Fi connection, go to Settings -> Wi-Fi and then locate the name of your network. Don’t tap the network name, but instead tap the info button (the “i” in a circle) to the right of the network name. Then tap Forget this Network. Now, connect to the same network again, which means entering the password. This will often fix the problem you were previously having with that Wi-Fi network.
(11) VIP notifications.
I don’t let my iPhone or Apple Watch notify me every time I get a new email. If I did, the notifications would often be non-stop. But there are always a few people in my life who are important to me, and for them, I want to know right away if they send me a message. My wife is always on that list. And depending upon what project I’m working on, a client or another attorney may end up on that list for a period of time. You can tell your iPhone to notify you only if those VIPs send you an email, and you can always add or remove folks from the VIP list depending upon the circumstances.
In Settings -> Notifications -> Mail, you can adjust how you want to receive mail notifications, both from normal new messages in your Inbox and from a VIP. You can make someone a VIP by tapping on their name at the top of an email and then making them a VIP. From your List of Mailboxes, if you enable the VIP mailbox, you can tap the information button to see a list of all of your VIPs.
(12) CarPlay icons.
You can control which icons appear on which screen of your CarPlay screen by going to Settings -> General -> CarPlay -> [your car name]. I put all of the apps I use on my main screen, and move the ones that I never use (such as the built-in app for my car) to the second screen. And the apps that I use the most, such as Now Playing and Overcast, are on the left side of the screen so that they are easier to reach from the driver’s seat.
(13) Mail previews.
In my Mail app, when I am looking at a list of messages, I prefer to just see the sender and the subject line, so that I can see even more messages on the screen at one time. I know that others prefer to also see a preview of the beginning of the message. You can adjust what you see in Settings -> Mail -> Preview [under Message List] and then select from None to 5 Lines. Mine is set to None.
There are lots of other things that you can control in Settings -> Mail such as whether to organize your emails by thread, swipe options, etc. Spend a little time poking around there to configure your Mail app in a way that makes the most sense for you.
(14) Use a parking app.
If you live in a community in which there is an app that you can use to pay for parking on a public street, download that app and configure your payment information so that it is ready to use whenever you want to use it. These apps are useful while parking, but they are especially useful if you start to run out of time on your meter because you can add more time using the app, without having to go back to your car. No need to take a break in a deposition to go feed the meter.
The app that I use in New Orleans is called Park Mobile, and it works in a large number of other cities. Two years ago, I used the app to challenge and successfully beat a parking ticket.
(15) Use a Bluetooth keyboard that lets you quickly switch devices.
The device that Pam recommended during our CLE was the Logitech K480, which is a small, compact keyboard with a slot to hold up an iPad. The one that I prefer is a full-size keyboard called the Logitech MX Keys (my review). When you use this keyboard with your computer (PC or Mac), you can press a button or flip a switch to quickly have the keyboard start working with your iPad or iPhone. This is one of my favorite purchases of 2020.
(16) Tap to Top.
When you are looking at a list of items on your iPhone, such as a long list of emails or most any other list, you can quickly jump to the top of the list by tapping the middle of the top of the iPhone screen.
(17) Take a photo while you are taking a video.
The videocamera on the iPhone is incredibly powerful, so much so that I no longer see a reason for most folks to purchase a stand-alone videocamera. But sometimes, while you are taking a video, you also want to take a photo of whatever your iPhone is seeing. To do this, just tap the camera button on the screen while you are taking a video, which appears next to the shutter button.
(18) Change Siri’s accent.
In the Settings app, go to Siri & Search -> Siri Voice. You can select a Male or Female voice, with accents of American, Australian, British, Indian, Irish, or South African.
(19) Stop apps from asking for ratings and reviews.
Does it annoy you when one of your apps asks you to rate and review the app in the App Store? You can turn that off. Go to Settings -> App Store and turn off In-App Ratings & Reviews.
(20) Offload apps.
Your iPhone gives you the ability to remove an app from your device while keeping all of your documents and data associated with the app. That way, if you don’t use an app very often, you can save space on your iPhone, but you can always restore the app later when you are ready to use it again (unless the developer removes it from the App Store).
You can have this process happen automatically by going to Settings -> App Store and then turn on Offload Unused Apps. Or you can do it manually for an app by going to the Settings app, tap General and then tap iPhone Storage. You will see all of your apps listed, sorted by how much space each app takes. Tap on the app at issue and then select Offload App.
Another reason to offload an app is to stop your iPhone from giving you the error message that “This app is no longer shared with you,” as I discussed in this post.
BONUS TIP: Use a password manager.
You need to use complex passwords for all of the online services that you access. Otherwise, a hacker can guess your password. And you need to use unique passwords for every service. Otherwise, if a hacker learns about your password from one website, the hacker can use it to access your account on another website. But nobody can remember a large number of complex, unique passwords. That’s why you need to use a password manager. Not only does it remember your passwords, it can create complex ones for you, and it can automatically enter the passwords on your iPhone (and iPad and computer) so it actually saves your time.
The password manager that I use and recommend is 1Password. You may have seen me mention it on iPhone J.D. in the past, such as on 1/22/13, 2/3/14, 2/11/15, 6/18/15, 2/27/16, 5/2/17, 6/1/17, 7/20/17, 7/26/18, 5/6/19, and/or 6/17/19. You know, just a few times. Use a password manager!
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This article won the BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award on November 24, 2020. The editors of BlawgWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for lawyers and law firm administrators, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.
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