10 BRILLIANT things your iPhone can do RIGHT NOW!

0:00 It's late July as I'm making this video, and we're patiently waiting for Apple to release iOS 26 to the public in about a month and a half's time. But while we wait, I thought now would be as good a time as any to look at some of the tips and tricks for the iPhone that have actually been around for a while, yet somehow most iPhone owners still have no idea they exist. So, in this video, I'm going to share 10 of them with you that I think are genuinely worth knowing. Okay, let's get into it. I honestly thought I knew every Siri tip and trick out there for the iPhone. So, I was genuinely surprised when I stumbled across this one recently. Credit to Reddit user Jeff Jaffer for alerting me to this one. I'm sure you already know that if you want to set an alarm for, say, 1:00 this afternoon, you just ask Siri to set an alarm for 1:00 and your iPhone would do exactly that. But what

0:47 if you want more than just a notification at that time? Maybe you're working on something and you'd like to see at a glance how much time you've got left before that deadline hits without having to do the maths in your head. All you need to do is say, "Set a timer to end at 1:00." Your iPhone will work out how much time there is between now and 1:00 and automatically start a countdown for that exact amount of time. You'll still get the notification when it ends, just like you would with a regular alarm. But now you can also glance at your phone at any point and see exactly how long you've got left. Emojis are a quick and simple way to get your message across. Nothing says okay, quite like a thumbs up emoji. And the usual way of getting to them is pretty straightforward. Just tap the smiley face button in the bottom left corner of

1:33 the keyboard and your emoji menu opens up. If you use the thumbs up often, chances are it will already be showing in your recents. But there's actually an even quicker way to do this, one that doesn't even involve opening the emoji menu. Just tap the microphone button either in the text input field or down at the bottom right of the keyboard and say the name of the emoji that you want. So, in this case, you'd simply say thumbs up emoji, and it will drop it straight into your message. The only catch is that you need to know the exact name of the emoji for this to work. I'll include a link in the description to a full list of emoji and their official names if you want to explore more. By the way, do you ever find yourself watching tips and tricks videos like this and thinking, "How am I supposed to remember all of this?" If that sounds like you, you should definitely check

2:19 out iPhone Essentials Plus. It's my dedicated training portal for the iPhone. More than 150 lessons with more content on the way. It's broken down into modules with each one covering a different part of your iPhone. Inside each module, you'll find lessons. And every lesson comes with a short video showing you exactly what to do, a step-by-step guide with screenshots, and a downloadable PDF. So, no matter how you like to learn, you're covered. You can go through everything at your own pace, or just use the search tool to jump straight to the thing that you're trying to figure out. There are no ads, no sponsors, just content. And it's all available for a single price. No ongoing subscription. That one-time purchase also includes all future updates, including the iOS 26 updates that I'm working on right now. And if you've got

3:06 a Mac, I've recently launched Mac Essentials Plus as well. It works exactly the same way, just for your Mac instead. You can buy either one on its own, or you can bundle the two together for the best possible price. If that sounds good to you, scan the QR code that you can see on screen or check the link in the description or the pinned comment. Let's say you've been at an event, maybe a wedding or a trip with friends, and you've taken a load of photos and videos that you want to share with everyone who is there. Most people would create a shared album. But the problem with that is that you then have a shared album sitting in your iCloud account forever when really all you wanted to do was give people temporary access to the photos. And it doesn't work for Android users. Everyone has to have an iPhone to join a shared album.

3:51 There is a better way to handle this that works for everyone, even those with Android. Just open the Photos app, press select at the top, and choose all the photos and videos that you want to share. Then tap the share box in the bottom left corner of the screen. Scroll down and choose copy iCloud link. Your phone will prepare a temporary iCloud link in the background. And once it's ready, that link will be copied to your clipboard. From there, just paste it into a message, email, WhatsApp, whatever you like, and send it to whoever you want. Anyone with the link can open it in a web browser, and they'll have 30 days to view and download the photos and videos. Your messages app has a ton of extra features thanks to the mini apps that are built into it. And chances are, if you've downloaded apps to your iPhone over the last couple of years, you've probably

4:38 picked up a few messaging mini apps without even realizing it. Some of them are quite useful. A lot of them, to be honest, are a bit pointless. There are a couple of things that you can do to tidy this menu up. First, go to settings. Scroll all the way to the bottom and choose apps. Then, tap on messages. Scroll down and tap into iMessage apps. Everything that you see in this list relates to a messaging mini app installed on your device. So, if any of these look like something that you won't use, I would recommend switching them off. I can say with absolute honesty, I've never personally found any value in most of these. You'll notice an immediate difference in your messages app after doing this. That said, there are some mini apps, typically the ones that Apple has built in that you can't disable. But what you can do is change

5:23 the order that they appear in to make sure that the ones that you care about the most are at the top and the ones that you don't care about are down at the bottom. You do this using drag and drop. Just press and hold on one of the mini apps and move it up or down the list until you're happy. It's not quite the same as cleaning the menu up completely, but it's enough to get all of your important apps onto the first page and make things much easier to navigate. By the way, if you're enjoying the content here, you should definitely check out the proper weekly. It's my free weekly newsletter that lands in your inbox every Friday, packed with tech news from the week, content I've been enjoying, and a handy tip for the Apple ecosystem. Just scan the QR code on screen to sign up or follow the link in the description. The Mail app on your Mac has this brilliant feature called smart mailboxes where you can set up

6:10 custom filters that automatically sort your email for you. Unfortunately, Apple hasn't brought full smart mailboxes to the iPhone, but what they have added is a whole bunch of built-in smart mailboxes that you can enable with just a tap. And I think most people don't even realize that they're there. To access them, open the mail app and go back to your main mailboxes view. Then tap the edit button in the top right corner. you'll see a list of mailboxes with tick boxes next to them. These are essentially pre-built smart mailboxes that Apple has already created for you. So, for example, if you want a quick way to view all of the emails that you've set a reminder for, just tick the box next to remind me and then hit done. A new Remind me box will now show up in your list and any emails that you've asked Mail to remind you about will

6:56 appear in there automatically. This doesn't move the emails from your main inbox, by the way. It's more like a smart filter that gives you quick access to the stuff that matters. And if you go back into edit, there's loads more to choose from. You can add a VIP's mailbox to only show messages from your most important contacts. You can create a flagged mailbox to quickly review anything that you've marked for follow-up. The today mailbox is another great one. It filters your inbox to show only emails that have arrived today, which is perfect if you're dealing with a cluttered inbox and just want to focus on what's new. You can also use the little drag bars on the right hand side to reorder your mailboxes however you like. It only takes a second to set this up and it can genuinely make a really big difference to how easily you manage your inbox on the iPhone. Definitely

7:43 worth checking out. The people and pets feature on your iPhone is great, but one thing that isn't so great is how your iPhone automatically chooses the key photo for each album. That's the photo that you see representing each person or pet when you tap into the section. doesn't always pick the most flattering image or it might just be out of date and it's not immediately obvious how to change it. So to update the key photo, tap into the album for the person or pet that you want to update and scroll through until you find a photo that you prefer. Instead of tapping on the photo, long press on it and choose make key photo from the menu that appears. Your iPhone will then update the album with the new key photo. Subscriptions on your Apple devices can get a little out of control if you're

8:28 not careful, especially if you tend to sign up for annual subscriptions and then forget about them only to get build a year later. But there is a quick and easy way to view all of your active subscriptions so you can make smarter decisions about what to keep and what to cancel. Go to settings and tap on your name at the top to access your Apple account. Then tap on subscriptions. This will show you a full list of your active subscriptions. You can tap on any subscription to find out more about it. If you see a see all plans button, tap that to check if there's a cheaper option that you could switch to. If you've set up family sharing and you're the organizer, you'll also see an option to share the subscription with your family. And of course, you can choose to cancel any subscription from this screen. If you do cancel, you'll still

9:15 have access for the remainder of the billing period. It just won't autorenew. This is a great screen to get into the habit of checking now and again to avoid any surprise charges later on down the line. If you're unfamiliar with it, haptic touch is essentially the long press gesture on your iPhone. When you press and hold on something for a moment, you'll feel a small vibration under your finger and then a menu or an action will appear. So, for example, if you press and hold on a message in the messages app, you'll see the tapback options pop up. It's a really handy gesture once you get used to it. But what a lot of people don't realize is that the speed of haptic touch isn't fixed. You can actually customize how fast it responds. To do this, go into settings, then tap into accessibility, choose touch, and then tap into haptic

10:02 touch. In here, you'll see three different speed options. Default, fast, and slow. Fast means the action will trigger more quickly with a shorter press, and slow gives you a bit more time before anything happens. This is one of those settings that's entirely based on personal preference. So, it is worth playing around with all three to see which one feels best to you. And the nice thing is you can try them out right here on the same screen. Just use the little flower image at the bottom to test how responsive each option feels. Personally, I prefer fast, but I know plenty of people who find default or even slow more comfortable. Try it for yourself and pick what feels right. If you've got a bunch of apps on your home screen that you want to keep but don't want cluttering up your home screen, there is a much quicker way to clean them up than removing each one

10:48 individually. Most people tend to long press on an app, choose remove app, then remove from home screen. That works fine, but doing it one by one takes forever if you've got loads to move. Here's how to do it much quicker. Long press on one of the apps to enter jiggle mode and start dragging it around. Then with another finger, start tapping on the other apps that you want to move. Each one will get added to a stack that you're holding. Once you've selected everything, swipe across to your app library and just let go of the stack. All of the apps will instantly disappear from your home screen and they'll stay safely in your app library, ready to access whenever you need them. Much quicker, much tidier, and no apps get deleted. One of the standout features of iOS 26 for me is the ability to run a

11:34 Google image search natively right after taking a screenshot. It's a really smart addition, but the reality is it's only available in iOS 26. So, as I'm making this video now at the end of July, we're still a couple of months away from everyone getting access to that. But here's the good news. You can access that same functionality right now. And it's really easy to do. First, if you haven't already, download the Google app from the App Store. Just search for Google and install the standard Google app. Once that's done, either take a new screenshot or find an existing one in your photos library. Tap the share button in the bottom left corner of the screen. Scroll down into the more actions section and you'll see an option that says search on Google. Tap this and a pop-up will appear asking if you want

12:19 to use Google Lens to search the image. Hit search with Google Lens and it will jump straight over to the Google app and run a reverse image search for you. It's a brilliant tool, especially if you're trying to track down a particular product or find out more about something that you've spotted online. I use this all the time and I will definitely be using it even more when it becomes native in iOS 26. So, there you go. Those were 10 iPhone tips that you can use right now. Features that I still think most people don't realize are even there. What about you? Were any of these new to you? Or is there a favorite tip that you use all the time that I didn't mention here? 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

13:05 on the next video.