12 iPhone Tricks You Might Not Have Known

Update: When you're done reading this, check out 8 More iPhone Tricks You Might Not Know.

Whether you're an iPhone rookie or a weathered pro, take a look at these quick-and-easy iPhone tips and tricks which not only save you time, but ease your overall iPhone experience.

(These items are listed in no particular order.)

1. Scroll to Top of Page  -

In any application, Safari included, you can automatically scroll to the top of the page by tapping on the "top bar", which has the time, service bars, and battery. In Safari, this not only brings you to the top of the page, but also brings up the URL bar.

     2.  Domain Resolution -

When typing a URL in Safari, you don't have to type the "www" or the ".com".For instance, for www.cnn.com just type "cnn" in the URL box. Note: Your search engine must be set to Google, not Yahoo.

      3.   Domain Suffix - [On firmware 2.0 only]

Hold down the ".com" key for ".net, .edu, .org" keys. Note: Slide your finger from .com to .net/.edu/.org, rather than lifting and pressing.

      4.   Press & Hold For Alternate Characters -

Hold a letter for a popup of various versions of the character (i.e. to type España with the "ñ" simply hold "n" and simply slide/release to the appropriate character).

      5.   Click & Hold URL's -

In Safari, hold a link to see the URL and site name.

      6.   Soft Reset -

Press and hold the Home button and the Sleep button to restart your iPhone. A white light will flash, the screen will shut off and then turn back on. Keep holding until the screen turns back on.

      7.   Take a Screenshot -

To take a screenshot, hold the home button and click the sleep button. The screen will flash white and the screenshot will be stored in your camera roll.

      8.   Set Parental Controls -

You can enable certain restrictions or parental controls on your iPhone. You can block explicit lyrics, Safari, YouTube, iTunes, or the App Store. Just go to Settings, General, Restrictions.

      9.   Save Any Image from Safari -

To save any image from the web to your camera roll, simply press and hold the image. A menu will appear asking "Save Image" or "Cancel". Once the image is in your camera roll, you can set it as your wallpaper.

      10.  Fast Forward/Rewind Music & Video -

Press and hold the skip forward/back arrows to fast forward or rewind rather than skip tracks. Also, press on the album art to manually FF/rewind.

      11.   Delete Emails -

You can do both "bulk deletes" and "individual deletes" when browsing email. To do a bulk delete, simply click Edit, check off the desired emails, and then choose delete or move. To delete a single email, simply "cross it out" by swiping your finger across the email, then press delete.

      12.  Double Tap Home Button -

Double tapping the home button has several useful functions, which are described here.

Although some of these tricks seem elementary to some iPhone users, I'm willing to bet there's atleast one item on this list you weren't aware of. And if that's not the case, then congratulations iPhone Pro - you have graduated from iPhone 101.

Enjoy the more productive and enhanced iPhone experience these tricks will provide you!

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How to Get Free iPhone Ringtones in Under One Minute No more SSH, no more jailbreaking, and no more useless utilities. Heck, if you want to add music from youtube video - no problem.

8 More iPhone Tricks You Might Not Have Known Due to all the great feedback our readers gave us, and some further iPhone experimentation (a.k.a. iPerimentation) on our part, we've found some other tips and tricks that can enhance your iPhone experience.

iBiblia - The Ultimate iPhone Glossary As an iPhone user, you've probably found yourself in lots of "iPhone" conversations, especially lately with the release of the App Store and iPhone 3G. If throughout those conversations you've found yourself thinking, "Wait, isn't jailbreaking and unlocking the same thing?" or "What does he mean by Pwnage", then this glossary is for you.

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See also:

• How to Get Free iPhone Ringtones in Under One Minute


• The iPhone Appears All Over The World Photoshop Contest


• 8 More iPhone Tricks You Might Not Have Known


• iBiblia - The Ultimate iPhone Glossary


• How to Revive Your iPhone If 2.0.1 Crashed It


• Getting Things Done With Your iPhone: A Who's Who in To Dos


• 1Password for iPhone: Review


• Beat Maker for iPhone by Intua - Demo and Review


• How to get Playboy and Penthouse Free On Your iPhone


• All The iPhone 3G Cases

Comments

[buddy]

I find the "press and hold for accent characters" annoying as I don't typically need those characters. I wish there was a way to disable it and insted access accents through the alt characters palette.

The problem occurs when I miss a character and want to slide my finger over to hit the right one. The accents pop up before I have time to move my finger.

[erichansa]

Wow I never knew you could save an image...this makes changing my wallpaper so much easier...I used to have to sync with iTunes to transfer pics...good to know!

[Fireglo]

Awesome article. The pictures will really help people as well because there are no names as such for the two physical buttons on the iPod / iPhone or none that most people are familiar with.

Remember, all of these tips work for the iPod Touch as well.

[Jeremy Adams]

if you have multiple home screens, you can tap the lower corner just above the doc left or right to move one screen in that direction.

[helpful guy]

Hitting the space bar twice will also insert a period while typing.

[Drew Ferrandini]

Another really helpful tip is to set-up the home button as a shortcut to your ipod. That way you don't have to exit out of whatever you're doing to change the song. Just go Setting>General>Home button, then set it to ipod. That way if you double click the home button, you get a little pop-up ipod menu. It's a lifesaver.

[Cris]

Double click the home button from the sleep/locked window and you get the ipod control, this way you don't have to unlock the iphone.

[Magibon]

i did not anything about that before! thank you somuch for this

[Sean O]

One-hundred-and-fifty internets to 'helpful guy' for the double-space/period trick.

[Ram]

Don't know if anyone already posted this but you can rearrange the icons on the home screen. Here is how:
1). Press and hold the icon until all the icons wiggle.
2). Once the wiggling starts, you can move the icons around to where you want them.

[Amanda]

I had no idea you could take a screenshot, that's awesome. Great article!

[Tom Howard]

I've got another tip for you. Press and hold in body, when composing an email and a magnifying glass will appear :)

[Lepton]

Number 6 is not a soft reset, it is a hard reset, equivalent to holding down the Power button on your PowerBook until the computer rudely shuts down. To do a soft reset, just power it off by holding only the sleep/wake button down until you see the "Slide to power off" control. Then turn it back on by touching the sleep/wake button. This is equivalent to doing a Shutdown and then restarting a PowerBook. For info on the ways to restart, interrupt or restore an iPhone, check my http://www.myallo.com/blog where I just wrote an article on it.

[grooveh]

Is the screenshot feature a v2.0 thing? I cant figure out how to capture a screenshot on my device. Anyone? Bueller?

[Styyl]

Swiping your finger to the right over the album artwork while listening to a song moves you back to your song list.

[iPaul Pro]

A few of these "tricks" are 2.0 only, including screenshots.

[thebza]

i have a tip i just found (on accident) today...

sometimes i bookmark a site and add it as an icon to my home screen.. some sites (like digg, google reader) have a custom icon just for that, so it looks nice when it's added to your home screen.. if you bookmark a site to your home screen & it doesn't have a custom icon, it'll just put a thumbnail picture of the site as the icon, and usually it's pretty ugly and almost always unreadable. today while messing around i found that if you want to add a bookmark to a site that doesn't have a custom icon & you don't like the ugly thumbnail, you can first zoom in on any image on the website, then hit "add to home screen" and it'll make the icon whatever it was you were zoomed in on. pretty cool trick, i've never seen this posted anywhere else.

[iSmashPhone]

@thebza

Very cool trick, great find.

[Name:? Coward]

I knew every single one of those you are not helpful at all

[James p]

"Press and hold the skip forward/back arrows to fast forward or rewind rather than skip tracks" is a feature most media products have, i find it hilarious anyone who's ever used a cd player/dvd player/iTunes/ipod/Etc. wouldn't know this was a feature

[james p]

also if you swipe videos/ things in alot of other apps t will bring up delete button, and if you swipe album art when the playback bar is not on then it will bring you back to the last music list you were on

[Eric Moritz]

The screenshot functionality is awesome for getting images for your contacts. Just fire up the Facebook app, find contact, load an image of them, snap screenshot and you have a contact image.

[TnMz6i]

You can use the same method for saving images in Safari with Mail. Just tap and hold on an image and you get the option to save the image. If there are multiple images, you get the option to save all of them!

[Rick]

This is interesting, but I accidentally came across one (probably related to #10) that I can't repeat and would love to know how to do. I was cleaning the front with a cloth and suddenly noticed that the display showed the rewind, play/pause and forward buttons on the top of the screen against my wallpaper. I would love to have this feature since it would allow me to control my iPod function without having to go to iPod separately. Also, the headphones only allow you to play/pause and skip forward, but not go back. Does anyone know what key combo causes this display to appear?

[eobet]

Interesting, but how do you delete an individual SMS?