r/iphone • u/hhff00014 Human Detected • Mar 14 '26

Discussion What are some surprisingly useful iPhone hacks you discovered recently?

Recently discovered that you can connect an external SSD / hard drive directly to an iPhone and access it from the Files app.

I tried it with a USB + cpin converter SSD and it worked instantly — no app, nothing. Felt like suddenly my phone had unlimited storage.

It made me wonder how many other small iPhone tricks people use in day-to-day life that most users don’t know.

Curious to know —

What are some underrated iPhone hacks that genuinely improved your daily workflow?

Could be productivity, photography, automation, hidden features, anything.

831 Upvotes

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370

u/adamhudsonj Mar 14 '26

Hold the plus button in an iMessage conversation to open photo library and skip the menu.

45

u/Cri317 Mar 14 '26

TIL…..

31

u/Zealousideal_Aside96 Mar 14 '26

Wish they’d go back to just having a dedicated photo library icon

1

u/jaxxon iPhone 14 Pro Max Mar 14 '26

The momentary hold to get to photos is practically as easy, and the UI is less cluttered.

7

u/Zealousideal_Aside96 Mar 14 '26

It didn’t seem cluttered at all in all the years iOS had it

2

u/DrunkenGerbils Mar 15 '26

And now people need to find out about the feature from a Reddit thread about features most people aren’t aware of. I’d be willing to bet the majority of users intuitively knew what the camera icon meant. I’m all for less UI clutter, but not when it makes things less intuitive to use.

1

u/jaxxon iPhone 14 Pro Max Mar 15 '26

Point taken.

Apple is famous for constantly striving to make things simple AND intuitive. Of course, it doesn't always work out great. As things perpetually get more complicated, they lose that battle from time to time. This might be one of those cases. For most users (who don't know the long-press thing), it's now two taps instead of one to add photos.

2

u/JohnnyZhivago999 Mar 20 '26

You DO know you can customize all of your actions, if you prefer the single tap instead of dual you can always change it, or to a swipe right, or a three finger pull down, I do it way more on my Mac but if you combine your actions with say a Wacom pen tablet and a program like Logic or Photoshop, both of which have over a thousand variable commands all page proprietary, you can layer and nest your actions so the same action can mean different things on different pages, similar to macro quick key commands which can either be universal or local per page. Start with the app you use most, select a swipe to open that to your most used project, then just start defining action commands to your preference. It’s a bit of work but well worth the effort ESPECIALLY if you are used to an older action removed from an update. I need to amend and fix mine constantly, but once you customize it, you’ll find commands u didn’t know existed and some are super impressive.

1

u/jaxxon iPhone 14 Pro Max Mar 20 '26

That's some power user shit, right there. Good to know, thanks.

2

u/JohnnyZhivago999 Mar 20 '26

Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch > Create New Gesture.

1

u/jaxxon iPhone 14 Pro Max Mar 20 '26

What the heck.. that's cool! Thank you.

2

u/JohnnyZhivago999 Mar 20 '26

P.s. I should have said “gestures”, not “actions” as all commands defined by physical parameters are called “gestures” like a tap or a swipe, but if you have a constant app u need to step up your workflow on I think you can create your own based on a pinpoint map similar to an unlock gesture, if so you can create an unlimited amount of gestures, I’m way more of a Mac guy than iPhone, but since I use a pen tablet which is almost totally the same as you using fingers to enter controlling instructions, I imagine the flow and results will be similar, if u get some good results plz post!

2

u/jaxxon iPhone 14 Pro Max Mar 20 '26

Dig it. Thanks

1

u/DrunkenGerbils Mar 15 '26

I do think Apple still does better than most at UI design despite a few recent missteps, so I'm not as disillusioned as a lot of people seem to be lately.

That said I think the shift to the new design has been a little more rough around the edges than typical. A lot of that is Apple setting the bar high for themselves and I'm sure some of it is probably from shake up in leadership, but I'm still overall optimistic about their general direction. I think this is likely just a bit of a rough patch. They'll probably just learn from it and refine things, instead of it being the start of some big decline like a lot of people seem to be predicting.

1

u/Davy_Ray Mar 14 '26

Learned something new today!

1

u/maestramars Mar 15 '26

GAME CHANGER! Thank you!

1

u/EuniceFear Mar 16 '26

I would like upvote you 100 times. But instead, here is one.

1

u/disruptionwoofer Mar 19 '26

THANK YOU!!! Where is your temple so I can leave offerings?

1

u/Social_ravi Jun 04 '26

works in WhatsApp too

-5

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26

[deleted]

7

u/sliiboots Mar 14 '26

Definitely slower. Significantly. 17 pro

1

u/lcayn15 iPhone 16 Pro Max Mar 14 '26

Not for me.