Did you know that you can actually make your iPhone work faster just by making a few adjustments on your phone? The trick is to make the OS work as little as possible so that your apps run and load faster once prompted. This also helps in making your content load faster when you’re browsing the Internet or watching videos on your phone.
Organize your apps
Use dock folders to organize your apps to speed up your OS. Not only does it make your iPhone load faster, it also minimizes the clutter.
Activate “Reduce motion”
Changing your setting this way will change transitions in your iPhone into a simpler cross-fade effect instead of the zooming effect.
To activate this feature go to:
Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion > Turn On
Utilize the iCloud
One of the ways you can make your operating system work smoother and faster is by freeing up space. Consider using the iCloud photo stream to share your photos.
Touch ID fingerprints
If you’re going to be registering your finger ID, we recommend that you input both your left and right hand’s thumb and index fingers, this lets you access your phone faster.
Remove distractions & disconnect
One of the ways you can get more things done is by removing distractions. We all know how the sound of a text message alert or the vibrating of a ringing call alert can easily distract us from the task at hand. Turn on your phone’s Do Not Disturb feature by going to Settings > Do Not Disturb > Manual > Turn on, and attend to those messages and calls when you’re ready.
Access your camera ASAP
Even if your iPhone is in lock screen mode, you can access the camera by simply swiping up the camera icon located at the bottom right of your screen.
Need to find something?
Accessing Spotlight has now become so much easier. Simply swipe down your home screen where your apps are located and, voilà, you’re free to find anything in a jiffy.
Makes sense, just like with the classic desktop / laptop OS. It will save on battery too. A lot of people of people don’t realise this so this is great advise for all smartphone users.
Very lean and efficient! But good fortune is everywhere for the masters of technology. Out of the seven points, accessing the camera is a bit tough for me because sometimes my fingers just freeze and I would need to get one of the tools like a small tripod or a good assistant to help me take a picture. Removing distractions can really be a time savior, for when you are busy with the tasks.
I should add that, exactly like you mention “using iCloud”, one could use cloud storage services for all of his personal files (say, like Dropbox or Google Drive), setting them to “keep files on the cloud but NOT synced on the device) on a case-by-case scenario, keeping “locally” only the files he needs the most.
And although I don’t have an iPhone, I’m sure that if it’s jailbroken, there MUST exist an app that allows applying one trick we see in Android custom ROMs as well: speeding up the OSes animations. If you set the “minimizing window / closing” animations to “0.5” scale instead of “1”, they play two times faster (although not as smooth), making your device feel more “speedy”.
Whenever I did have an iPhone, I jailbroke it, and there definitely was an addon that did this. You could change the speed of the animations, change what they looked like, or even turn them off. It was very handy, because in all honesty I wouldn’t use an iPhone if I couldn’t jailbreak and tweak it.
Removing distractions/disconnecting is a great tip. I sometimes do this when I have a lot day of work ahead of me. Thanks for the spotlight tip. I always forget that the feature is there!
These tips are pretty useful, especially if you have an old iPhone like a 4 or 4S that’s starting to slow down a bit. I’ve never really liked the parallax motion in iOS 7 or 8, because it’s just annoying and doesn’t really contribute much except make it look cool. One would think that it would also eat up a lot of battery too. Also, speaking of battery, put the phone in airplane mode when you think you won’t use it for long periods of time. But if you happen to use it constantly, don’t toggle airplane mode each time you use it, that will just eat up battery because turning on a radio and finding a signal takes a lot of energy initially, and you can imagine that would add up if you keep on doing it over and over again.
Some very useful points on efficiency. I often think we misuse our smartphones in terms of efficiency and effectiveness in a way that we would never allow if it was a laptop. And ultimately a lot of these tips can be applied to Android phones after a little bit of tinkering.
A followup: I did some of these tips/tricks and it has improved the life on my phone. Many thanks! Having a dead iphone all day is the worst 🙂
I love all of these tips! Activating “Reduce motion” will also stop the screensaver from adjusting depending on your phone’s angle, saving a little bit of confusion about screensaver positioning. Additionally, for the iPhone 6, if you can’t reach something at the top of the screen because the screen is now too big for your hands, you can double tap (not double click! just tap) the home button, and the whole screen will be dragged down until you tap what you want on the screen. Finally, reducing font sizes will let you fit more things on the screen at once and therefore minimize scrolling.
Thanks for this!
I’ve got an iPhone 4S and since some of the OS updates it’s slow as hell sometimes. I’ve done a few little fixes to speed up the phone but sometimes it’s still slow.
Your tips are useful though, so thanks again! 🙂
I use the cloud all the time and it’s really convenient. All of your data is basically available anywhere at anytime even without lugging your external drives with you. I usually only keep important files in the cloud; files that may be needed at a moment’s notice.
Very cool article, I had no idea I could access the camera asap by just doing that! It’s also possible to do that with a Moto G. It’s good to know, because there are times you just need to get your camera on asap, or else you might miss on capturing an important moment or just something interesting.