Have you ever heard of iPhone hidden features? An iPhone user was revealed how shocked he was to find out that his iPhone 7 could do amazing things he never thought of. He was taken aback when he learned of the secret magnifying glass, the voicemail transcription, the ability to ask Siri to snap a selfie, and more wonders he never knew were inside his own smartphone.
In this case, we are going to look at five amazing hidden features in your iOS 15 device. We have listed some of these below for you to carefully take a look at. Brace yourself for these are some of the best features ever on your device. Take note that the features listed below can be found in all devices running the iOS 15 operating system.
It is possible that you know some of these features. Read on to find those you are yet to know about.
Use camera to scan text
Isn’t it cool if you could just point your iPhone’s camera to a sign along the road, or to a piece of paper and then the device automatically scans and recognizes it? If your device is iOS 15 you could copy the text into an email and send it as you wish. This feature is known as “scan text.”
To use this feature, do the following:
- Long-press inside a text field (only this time, you’re not doing the copy-and-paste thing.)
- A Scan Text button will appear. In other cases, you may see a scan icon – a piece of paper with brackets around it.
- Tap the button – and you’ll see your iPhone camera viewfinder.
- At this point, you can point your camera at anything you want to scan. Once you do that, just follow the prompt on the screen. For example, your iPhone could tell you to slow down if you’re moving the camera too fast.
- Once you think that you’ve gotten the document right, tap the Insert
Best way to use the Scan Text feature
It is a very good way for you to fish out an email or a phone number among a litter of text.
Move Safari’s address bar to the top of the screen
Apple has changed things a bit with the new iOS 15 updates. You may be surprised that for the iPhone and iPad, the address bar and some other functionality have been moved to the bottom of the screen.
You may want to move it back up the screen. That’s good if that’s the normal way to work on the device. This change will not be the best for everyone because we differ in the way we prefer things. If you need to move the address bar back to the top, it only takes a few simple steps.
- Visit the Safari screen on your iPhone.
- Tap Aa button on the address bar at the bottom of the screen.
- A menu will show that’s labeled Show Top Address Bar. Tap it to move the address bar up again.
Translate text
There’s a new feature on iPhone that now lets you do that from anywhere on your device. This feature lets you do the translating without resorting to using the iOS 14 Translate app. In fact, this is the easiest way to translate text on your iPhone.
- Long-press the text you want to translate. You should see editing tools shown.
- Tap the arrow to the right. This should reveal the Translate
- A window will appear below the screen. Swipe it up to show the words you’ve highlighted, and also the translation.
- Choose the language you want to translate to. These include Chinese, French, German, Korean, and Spanish.
- The translated text will show below the original, which is English.
- Other options will also show, such as Replace with Translation, Copy Translation, Change Language, Listen to Translation.
Send your personal iCloud data to someone else (if you die)
Data such as photos, messages, notes, passwords, etc can be transferred to someone else. They don’t have to be locked away forever in the event of death, whereas no one else can retrieve the information.
A new feature called Legacy Contact allows the iPhone owner to choose any of his contact already saved on the phone as a Legacy Contact. That gives the person access to all the iCloud data upon his death.
Follow the instructions below to set up your Legacy Contact.
- Go to Settings first to begin.
- Tap Your Name.
- Next, select Password & Security.
- Tap Legacy Contact.
- Tap Add Legacy Contact. Tap it twice. Enter your credentials and choose someone from your contacts.
Apple will generate an access key that your Legacy Contact will need in order to access your data. However, this feature is available in iOS 15.2, and it is only available to developers.
Drag/Drop between apps
iPhone is now able to do what the iPad has long been doing in the sense that now iPhone owners don’t have to be going back and forth between Messages and Photos to share pictures. Let’s say that you need a photo to be in a message. Now, all you need to do is simply drag the photo from the Photo app to the Message app.
- Open the Photos app.
- Place a finger on the right photo (Don’t open it fully) and start to drag it across the screen.
- Make sure the thumbnail is floating over the other photos.
- Quickly switch back to the Messages app.
- You’ll see a green circle with a plus sign on the thumbnail. It is an indication that you can raise your finger from the photo you were dragging.
- The photo will be placed in the text field.
To go further, you can use this same technique to attach a document from the Files app to an email.
Conclusion
As you can see, some of these features can help you transform your device. They definitely make life easy for you if your iPhone is iOS 15 enabled. For me, dragging photos between apps is amazing enough. However, other people may find that the scan text feature or the feature that lets one move the Safari bar back to the top is cute. Of course, iOS 15.2 will bring more fun features for Apple fans. They will be able to change some settings as they’ve never been able to do in previous versions of iOS.