If you just purchased a new iPhone 12, there are quite a number of hidden features to take advantage off that’ll help make using your device that bit more convenient.
So, whether you have iPhone 12 or 12 Pro Max, , there’s plenty to sink your teeth into. In this article we’ll walk you through some of the best iPhone 12 hidden features we’ve discovered since using the new software and device. Below are the best hands-on iPhone 12 tips and tricks you can use to make your life easier. These iPhone 12 hidden features will help you to use your phone in a most efficient way possible in 2021.
See also: 5 iPhone 12 Pro Tips and Tricks Everyone Should Know
Best iPhone 12 Hidden Features
Here are the best iPhone 12 hidden features everyone should know:
1 – Tap the back for screenshot
With iOS 14, the Cupertino-based brand has introduced many great accessibility features, and one of the more recent ones is the ability to tap the back of your phone to perform specific functions, like taking a screenshot.
To enable it, launch Settings, then tap ‘Accessibility’, now select ‘Touch’ and press ‘Back Tap. Choose either double or triple tap and then select ‘Screenshot’. Now when you double or triple tap the back of your iPhone, it’ll capture a screenshot.
One other cool one to choose is notification centre, so you can double or triple tap to quickly launch the notification centre. Very cool. Right?
2 – Change your default browser and email apps
Another iPhone 12 hidden feature is being able to use your favorite apps as default for things like your internet browser or email app. So, if you want to use Microsoft edge as your default browser, download Edge from the App Store and then launch your iPhone Settings app and find Edge in the list at the bottom. Tap it and then choose ‘default browser’ from the next screen, and choose ‘Edge’ on the following one. Now Edge will be the default browser.
You can do the same with email apps, so if you want to use Outlook or Gmail instead of Mail as your default, you navigate to Settings, find your favorite party email app, tap on it, then choose ‘default mail app’ on the next screen, and then choose Outlook (or whatever email app you’re using).
See also: 5 iPhone 12 mini Tips and Tricks Everyone Should Know
3 – Stop new apps appearing on your home screen
With iOS 14, Apple introduced an App Library, which stores those apps you don’t use all the time. But by default whenever you download a new app it appears on your home screen. If you’d rather it went straight to the App Library instead and didn’t fill up your home screen, head over to Settings > Home Screen and then choose ‘App Library only’ under the ‘newly downloaded apps’ section.
4 – See all your apps in a list
By default, App Library automatically sorts apps into folders for you, but if you’d rather see them in a list, there is an iPhone 12 hidden feature that allows you to do exactly that. Simply drag down on the screen in App Library, and now all your apps are listed alphabetically.
You can search using the search bar at the top if you want to, or scroll quickly to the app you want by tapping the tiny corresponding first letter in the column down the right side (you can also scroll down this column).
5 – Add widgets to your home screen
With iOS 14, Apple has changed things up quite a lot by allowing you to add widgets to your home screen, to add them, simply long-press on an app icon on your home screen and tap ‘edit home screen’. Or, for a quicker method, just long-press a blank area on your home screen.
Now tap the plus sign in the top corner and find the widget you want to add. To see all the apps that support them that you have installed, scroll all the way down to the bottom and select the app from the list. Now choose which size widget you want and tap the ‘Add Widget’ button at the bottom of the pop-up window that appears.
6 – Create custom widget smart stacks
One of the widgets you can create is a smart stack, which allows you to scroll through multiple widgets in the same widget on the screen. To create your own all you have to do is drag and drop individual widgets on top of each other. Now they can be set to auto rotate, or you can scroll through them manually.
7 – Get rid of entire home screens.
Long press a blank area on your home screen, and now tap the page indicator on the bottom of the screen. Tap the tick or check mark at the bottom of each screen you want to move. It doesn’t delete the apps, just hides them away in the app library.
8 – Create a custom dark mode schedule
Dark mode has been around a while, and it’s easy to activate by heading into Settings > Display and then choosing the dark mode at the top. But if you want it to activate automatically to a custom schedule set by you, toggle the ‘Automatic’ option on and then tap on the ‘Options’ tab beneath that. On the next screen, select ‘Custom Schedule’ and set a light and dark time. Now it’ll activate and deactivate when you’ve set it to.
9 – Edit your Today view.
As well as having widgets on your home screen, there’s the ‘Today’ view that lives to the left of your first home screen. To customise this just swip over to it and then scroll down until you see the edit button. Tap that and now you can remove any widgets from the top, to edit the window at the bottom of the screen that has the old-style widgets in it, tap ‘customise’ at the bottom of the screen to add and remove widgets from there
10 – Search for your emoji
Using Apple’s built-in keyboard, you can now search for emoji easily. Just launch the emoji keyboard and tap the ‘search emoji’ field to search for eggplants, smiley faces and poops. Or whatever else you’re after.
11 – Fake eye contact in Facetime
So this is one of the best iPhone 12 hidden features. If you head to Settings > Facetime > Eye Contact, you can enable that toggle and whenever you’re making FaceTime calls, it’ll make it look like you’re looking directly at the camera or person on the other side of the call, even when you’re looking at the screen.
12 – Bring up camera controls
When you load up the camera app, the controls are quite basic, but if you want to, there are others hidden and easily revealed.
Launch the camera app and then if you’re holding it vertically, swipe up on the camera shooting modes row. If you’re holding it horizontally, swipe left. Now you’ll get a whole new set of controls, which changes depending on the shooting mode you’re in.
If you’re in the regular stills mode you’ll see a night mode option, live photos, photo aspect ratio and exposure as well as flash. To change exposure, for instance, just tap on the little plus/minus sign and then slide the slider on-screen until it’s exposed the way you want.
13 – Quickly scan a QR code
If you want to quickly launch the phone’s inbuilt QR code scanning feature, just swipe down from the top right of the screen to launch Control Centre. Here you can find the small QR code button. Tap on that, and you can quickly scan a code.
14 – Burst photo button
You can use your volume up button to take a burst photo. Just head to Settings > Camera and then toggle on the ‘Use Volume Up for Burst’ option and when you hold the volume up button down in the photo mode, it’ll automatically shoot a burst of photos.
See also: 40+ Best iOS 15 Tips and Tricks You’ll Want to Try
Your favorite iPhone 12 hidden features?
And that covers everything about iPhone 12 hidden features everyone should try. Have we missed some cool iPhone 12 features here? let us know in the comments box below.