Full transcript of “10 AMAZING things your iPhone can do RIGHT now!”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 Now that all the hype around iOS 26 has started to settle, I figured this was the perfect time to go back and take a look at some of the brilliant things your iPhone can already do with iOS 18. These are features that have been available for a while now, but I still think the majority of iPhone users either don't know about them or just haven't made the most of them yet. So, in this video, I'm going to walk you through 10 of those tips. Okay, let's get into it. If you're reading an email and you want to set a reminder that links to that email using the reminders app, there's no built-in option. And the way that I've shown people how to do this in the past is to use drag and drop. And while this does work, it is a little bit fiddly. There is actually a workaround that doesn't require drag and drop. While you're in the email, just tap and hold on a sentence or a paragraph to bring up the text selection
0:46 tool. Then use the drag bars to select the text that you want. Once you've selected it, you'll see this menu appear above the text. Tap the right arrow on the menu until you see the share option. Then from the share sheet, choose reminders. This creates a brand new reminder with the selected text. And when you save that reminder, it even includes a link back to the original email so you can jump straight into it later. If you paste a link into an email in the mail app, it usually appears as the full URL. But what if you want it to show as custom text? Maybe you want the URL to appear halfway through a sentence, for example. The way that you would do this is first of all, write the text that you want to turn into a link. Then go to Safari and grab the URL that you want to insert by selecting it in
1:32 the address bar and choosing copy. Then go back to the email and long press on the text and use the selection tool to select the word or sentence that you'd like to turn into a URL link. Once you've selected it, you'll see a contextual menu appear just above the text. Choose paste from this menu, and the URL that you'd copied to your clipboard will be pasted in, but the text will stay intact, meaning it will be a clickable link whilst keeping all of the original text. Did you know there is an option in the messages app that's been there for a really long time that I reckon most people have no idea about that allows you to send a handwritten message to somebody? The next time you're in a message and you want to try this with the keyboard showing down at the bottom of your screen, simply turn your phone on its side so that you're
2:18 holding it in landscape mode. You'll now notice down in the bottom right corner of your keyboard, there's a button that wasn't there before, a little circle squiggle button. Tap on this and a large white space will appear across the entirety of your iPhone screen. You can then use your finger to handw write whatever you like in here or you can choose from some of the predefined messages down at the bottom of the screen. Press done when you're happy with your choice, and you'll be able to send a handwritten message to anyone that you like using your iPhone. Tips and tricks for the iPhone are all well and good, but what about when you're faced with real life problems that they can't solve? Like you're on a train and you want to watch Netflix, but there's nowhere to prop your phone, or you need to jump on a FaceTime call, but you don't want to sit there holding your phone the whole time. For situations like that, what you need is a really
3:05 good case, like the Ostand 03 fitness case from Taurus, who are sponsoring today's video. It's a super rugged case that doesn't add too much bulk to my iPhone 16 Pro Max, and it held up brilliantly when I accidentally dropped it the other day while carrying my kids to the car. It's got military-grade drop protection, reinforced polycarbonate, and textured sides that give you loads more grip. What makes it really versatile, though, is the built-in ring O stand on the back. You can use it like a finger loop for one-handed use or twist it out to turn it into a kickstand. It props your phone up perfectly whether you're in portrait for Netflix or landscape for a FaceTime call. And it's magnetic, too, so you can attach it to gym equipment, a fridge, whatever. It also supports MagSafe and pairs perfectly with this Loop Go lanyard, which is a great way to keep
3:51 your phone safely attached while you're on the move. Whether you wear it crossbody or around your neck, the phone hangs comfortably but securely but always in easy reach. And look, all those FaceTime calls and Netflix sessions are going to drain your battery. So that's where this Mini Mag power bank comes in. It's ultra thin, thinner than my iPhone. In fact, snaps on with MagSafe and gives you a really lightweight, portable way to keep charged while you're out and about. If you want to check out any of these accessories for yourself, just follow the link in the description. And thanks again to Taurus for sponsoring today's video. If you're using your iPhone for a research project, there's a really handy tip that uses a combination of Safari and the Notes app that allows you to create a searchable PDF archive in Notes. The way that you would do this is
4:37 you would open Safari and navigate to a page that you want to add to your archive. Tap the share button down at the bottom of the screen. Then scroll down and choose print. When the preview appears, pinch out on the actual preview as if you're trying to zoom in on a photo. That turns the page into a PDF. From there, tap the share icon again, which you can find in the bottom left corner, and then choose notes. Fill in any additional information that you want in the note, like a title for example, and then press save, and your notes will be created with a PDF of that particular web page already inserted into it. There's a couple of reasons why this is really useful. one, you can use the markup tool to annotate a PDF within the notes app. So, if you want to circle things or highlight, you can do all of
5:23 that. But the other really useful thing here is that PDFs are searchable within the notes app, meaning all of the text contained within that PDF is now searchable within your very own PDF archive. If you have an iPhone with an always on display, I've already talked on the channel about how you can disable it if you want to, especially if you find it distracting. When you do that, you just get a dark background with the date and the time and any widgets that you maybe choose to keep on there as well. But what if you'd prefer to have the always on display switch off when you're working, for example, but switch back on when you're not working? To do this, you would link it to a work focus mode. So, if you go into settings and then scroll down and choose focus, the first thing you would need to do is to create a work focus mode. I've covered that in lots of
6:10 different videos here on the channel, so I won't cover it again here. I've already got a work focus mode set up. But if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the work focus mode, you'll see a section at the bottom called focus filters. If you choose add filter, you can then go down to system filters at the bottom and tap into always on display. You would then toggle this off and press add. And now when your work focus mode switches on, your always on display will switch off. But so long as you haven't disabled the always on display at a systemwide level, when your work focus mode switches off, the always on display will switch back on. Meaning you can enjoy all the benefits of it when you're not working whilst maintaining your focus when you are. By the way, if you ever find yourself watching iPhone tips videos
6:56 like this and thinking, "How am I supposed to remember all of this?" Then you should definitely take a look at iPhone Essentials Plus. It's my dedicated iPhone training portal with more than 150 lessons covering every aspect of your device, and I'm adding new content all the time. Each lesson includes a short video, a step-by-step guide with screenshots, and a downloadable PDF. So, no matter how you like to learn, you're sorted. There are no ads, no sponsors, just content. And it's all available for a onetime payment, no subscription. And if you're a Mac user, I've just launched a Mac version, too. You can pick that up on its own or bundle it with the iPhone course to get the best value. If you're interested, just scan the QR code on screen or follow the link in the description. If you go into the mail app and go all the way back to the main
7:42 mailbox's view, you should have an inbox in here called VIP. If you don't, you can press the edit button in the upper right corner, select VIP, and then press done. Your VIP inbox is an inbox where anyone that you've added to your VIP list will show, allowing you to separate them from everyone else. And the way that you would add someone to your VIP inbox, you would simply find an email that they've sent, tap on their name up at the top of the screen, then tap again and choose add to VIP from the contact card that appears. This by itself is a really handy feature, but you can take this one step further if you like and you can customize the alert so that when you receive an email from a VIP sender, you'll know because your iPhone can play a different sound and it can even make a custom vibration. To do this, tap the I
8:29 or info button next to the VIP mailbox. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page and tap on VIP alerts. Then ensure that alerts and badges are enabled on this page and tap into where it says sounds. You can choose any sound that you like from the available options on this page. And then at the top of the screen, if you tap into where it says haptics, you can choose from any of the standard haptic options that are available if you like. Or you can choose create new vibration where you can then tap your own custom vibration on the screen to make this completely customizable. That way, the next time that someone sends you an email from your VIP list, you'll immediately know that it's them without even having to look at your phone. If you go into the photos app and then scroll down into collections, you'll see the people and
9:14 pets section. This is where your phone automatically creates mini albums of the people and pets in your life that it's been able to identify. But it is reasonable that there could be someone in here that you'd rather not see featured. And if that's the case, you do have a few different options. Just tap into their album here in the people and pets section and then tap the three dots button up in the top right corner. You can choose to not feature this person by tapping on don't feature. And if you do that, you've got a couple of options. You can choose to feature this person less, which means that individual photos and videos of this person will not be featured or included in memories, but group photos including them would still be shown. Or you can choose to never feature this person. And that means that no photos of this person will be featured or included in memories. And
10:01 that includes group photos. Or alternatively, you have the option to hide this person by pressing the hide button. And when you do that, this person will be hidden entirely from the people and pets album. If you normally refer to somebody by a nickname and you don't know whether you should put their real name or their nickname into your phone, you can actually do both. What you would do is create the contact using their real name. Then go into their contact card and press the edit button in the upper right corner of the screen. Scroll to the bottom of this page and almost all of the way down at the bottom there is a button called add field. Tap into this, then choose nickname, and a new nickname field will be added directly below their name at the top of the contact card. Tap into it and you can give them a nickname. Press done and
10:47 you'll see their nickname appear just above their name in the contact card. But more importantly, when you're searching through your phone or when you're using Siri to do anything, you can use their nickname or their real name, and both of them will work. If you have a phone that supports Apple Intelligence, you probably already know that you can go into the photos app, select a photo, then press the edit button down at the bottom of the screen, and you'll see a cleanup option down at the bottom right. You can tap on this, and then clean up items in your photo. And the way that people tend to use this is they use it to remove items from the background of a photo. But if you've got a photo of a person and you want to blur their face out, you can zoom in on the face, select cleanup, and then just circle that person's face. Your phone will identify the fact that you're trying to secure someone's privacy and
11:34 it will automatically apply pixelation to that person's face. You can even use this on things like receipts or documents where it will jumble the text that you select to make it completely unreadable, making it a really quick way to redact content in a scan of an image before you send it on. If there's an app on your phone where you wish you could use a different icon instead of the icon that it comes with, you can do this really easily using the Shortcuts app. So, to do this, you'll need to do a couple of things first. First of all, save the icon that you would like to use instead to your photos app. Then open the Shortcuts app. If you don't have the Shortcuts app installed on your phone, go to the App Store and download it. It's an Apple app and it's free. Then open the Shortcuts app. Press the plus button in the upper right corner of the
12:20 screen. In the action section, which is in the bottom half of the window that appears, choose open app. Then tap into where it says app and choose the app that you would like to replace the icon of. So for this example, I'm using clock. Now what you've done here is essentially created a quick and easy shortcut that when enabled will simply open the clock app. All we now need to do is rename it and add it to our home screen with the image that we saved earlier on. So first of all, press the downpointing arrow next to the open app phrase at the top of this window and choose rename. And I'll call this clock. Then tap back into the downward pointing arrow and choose add to home screen. Tap on the photos option. Press choose photo and then select the icon that you saved to the photos app earlier on. Then press
13:07 choose and finally press add. Your icon will be added to the home screen. And when you press on it, you'll see that the shortcut runs, which in this case opens the clock app. So there you go. 10 tips for the iPhone that I reckon most owners have no idea about. What about you? Anything in here that caught you by surprise or anything that you think I should have added? Drop me a comment and let me know. And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future. See you on the next video.
