iPhone 13 tips and tricks. The iPhone 13 is seriously one of the most fun phones that I have ever used and it comes packed with features that you really need to know about to take full advantage of this device in this article.
Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash
Hey, what's going on everyone. I want to go over 13 yes 13 I'm sure you can figure out why 13 tips and tricks for the iPhone 13 pro with some specific features only available on this iPhone and also a few old tricks that I love that I think everyone should know about that could apply to some older iPhones.
Hardware-Specific Features
First of all, let's start with some hardware-specific features found only on the iPhone 13 pro and I can't think of a better place to start than with everyone's favorite feature the camera the iPhone 13 pro has plenty of new hardware camera improvements and one of my favorites is a trick with the new ultra-wide-angle lens which now has a macro mode built
into it and apple made this super simple to activate all you have to do is get your phone close to something you want to take a photo of and the iPhone will automatically switch to the ultra-wide-angle camera and go into this new macro mode.
1. Macro Mode
The new macro mode you can also activate this yourself I guess by just going into the ultra-wide lens by pressing the 0.5 x on your iPhone and then composing your own shot from there and the iPhone 13 pro can focus really close with macro mode and you can get some really detailed close-up pictures this way.
I also recommend trying this feature out when recording video because the ultra-wide can focus just as closely when recording video and you can really get a different and cool perspective when filming like this speaking of cameras another feature you're definitely going to want to try out is apple's new cinematic video mode which is on the 13 and the 13 Pro.
So if you have an iPhone 13 this trick also applies to you and what you can do is now you can actually, blur the background or the foreground of videos and kind of guide the viewer's focus.
2. Change Focus in Cinematic Video
However, the real power of this feature or trick is when you go to edit these videos because now you with any footage you record it with the cinematic mode you can change the focus point in the video to anything you want so even if you messed up the original shot you can choose to focus on something else or switch focus between different subjects.
All you have to do is just tap around on the screen and the iPhone will focus on whatever you tap on furthermore you can also, tap on the F symbol in the top left corner and from here you can change the amount of blur or bokeh in the video so you can increase the blur to have it super blurred out or if you make a mistake and you want everything to be in focus you can change the aperture number up all the way and you can keep everything in focus.
Alright now while I love these new camera improvements on the iPhone 13 pro and I love the way that pictures come out straight out of the camera we need to recognize that what makes a good photo for me might not necessarily make a good photo for you, we all have different opinions on what makes a good photo.
At this point on the iPhone, you are kind of stuck with whatever apple's default processing thought was a good photo sure you can go in and edit your own photos later and try and create your own style but doing that for every picture it's just a huge hassle well with the iPhone 13 and the 13 Pro.
3. Photo Styles
You don't have to do that anymore you can now select your own iPhone photo processing style to suit your own tastes or if you're trying to achieve a specific look to change the style open the camera app and then access a hidden menu by swiping up just above the shutter button and from here you'll see a lot of different photo settings from here.
Tap on the one that kind of looks like three squares with a line going through it after that you can swipe through and see different photo styles including rich contrast vibrant warm or cool obviously these styles do exactly what they say they'll do by adding either more contrast or more saturation or by making the photos appear warmer or cooler in tone.
If you still can't find a style you like with these default settings you can actually customize these styles to be more contrasty or saturated with different color temperatures to fit your own personal style just make sure that you really like the style you're picking or you remember to switch back to the standard you know picture profile.
If this is just for a specific set of photos because these decisions will be baked into the iPhone's camera processing and can not be turned off after the photo is taken this isn't like applying a photo filter after you've taken a photo these are baked into the photo processing. One of the things I didn't like about previous iPhones was the lack of a night mode.
When using the telephoto lens thankfully that is no longer the case with the iPhone 13 Pro.
4. Night Mode Telephoto Lens
Now you can access night mode on any lens including the 3x telephoto lens so you don't have to fear low light photos anymore when using the telephoto lens to do this is simple just use your camera on your iPhone as you normally would and then when the scene is dark apple will automatically turn on night mode.
If you'd like to toggle this manually when it's dark enough you can toggle the night mode on or off by pressing the night mode icon in the top left of the camera app.
5. Photo Details
Another quick tip is the ability to look at your photos and see what iPhone and specifically which lens actually took that photo to do this just select the photo you want more information on and then swipe up from here. You can see a bunch of information about this photo including the location in which it was taken and which phone used it and down to which actual lens took the shot alright there are even more tips and tricks.
I want to cover but before we do that we need to talk about the ultimate trick to use on your iPhone. All alright now one of the newest features on the iPhone 13 pro is the faster 120hz promotion display and while my 13 pro is probably the best iPhone that I have ever used in terms of battery life what if I told you it could be better well it actually can be by sacrificing the smoother adaptive 120hz display refresh rate and limiting that frame rate to 60.
6. Save iPhone Battery Life(Turn off 120HZ)
Now to be clear this isn't just limiting the display to 60 Hz it's still using the promotion technology to adapt the refresh rate so it can still go as low as 10 Hz like when you're not interacting with your phone like when you're looking at a photo or something like that not interacting with the display so you can actually get better battery life by doing this.
So to do this go to settings scroll down to accessibility and then tap on a motion from here you can toggle the limit frame rate option now your iPhone will display 60 frames per second at a max meaning the top refresh rate is locked to 60 Hz and this could lead to even better battery life on the pro iPhones than they already have now if you want the ultimate battery life.
7. Ultimate iPhone Battery Life
Another way to do this is to use apple's low power mode to do this pull-down control center and then tap on the battery icon and then it will go into this kind of yellow color mode the battery icon will turn yellow okay don't mock me for saying that this will send your iPhone into low power mode which will then also limit the max frame rate to 60 Hz.
Now, this is different than just using that other option I talked about because this will also reduce additional effects on the iPhones including email fetching background app refresh automatic downloads reducing visual effects and it will auto-lock to 30 seconds pause iCloud photo uploading and 5g will be limited to just video streaming.
If you want the ultimate battery life on your iPhone 13 Pro this is the way to get it.
8. Drag & Drop Photos to Different apps
Let's turn our attention to some software tricks that can be done on iPhones running ios 15. One of these is a trick taken right from the iPad with iPad os and that is the ability to drag and drop between apps and this works with the kind of like using photos.
For Example,
You wanted to share a photo with someone or put it into your notes app all you have to do is hold your finger on the photo and as soon as you feel the haptic vibration immediately drag your finger and the photo will come with you.
Now you can just navigate your iPhone as you normally would and drag and drop this photo between apps whether you want to share it with your friends in messages or add it to your notes or whatever I don't know I don't make the rules here it's your phone you do whatever you want with that photo.
You deserve it all right another trick I really like has to do with youtube obviously everyone watching this video right now is uh is using youtube unless it's on a pirated site or something like that and in that case why are you watching this on a pirated site anyway this trick should be useful to anyone that uses youtube and is also a youtube premium member.
9. Enable PIP in Youtube App
Although if you're not I'm going to tell you a way to bypass this at the end of this section is to enable picture and picture video on youtube. So to do this make sure you're a youtube premium member youtube actually has it it's like a secret setting. I think they're gonna enable it for everyone sometime in October.
Now it's a secret setting and what this does is when you're watching a youtube video on your iPhone when you swipe up it will enter into a picture-in-picture mode they should have at this like a long time ago but it's here now if you aren't a premium member and you know that's cool. I appreciate it thanks for watching the ads.
You can also access this feature natively by just using youtube on the safari web browser it may not be as nice as using the youtube app but you can access the picture-in-picture video mode from safari without being a youtube premium subscriber which feels right like youtube should not be limiting this feature it's a basic feature it's like more people can spend more time on youtube.
Why wouldn't you want that why limit its preview members youtube comes to talk to me I got a lot of good ideas I'm an idea kind of guy.
10. Cursor Trackpad
I love to use is a popular one before and that is how to use your iPhone's keyboard as a trackpad to select and edit text easier and every time. So to do this all you have to do is long-press on the spacebar on the keyboard and when the keys disappear you are now in the trackpad mode.
You can move the text cursor around this is super helpful for precise text selection and for going back and fixing spelling or grammar mistakes furthermore while you're moving this cursor around. If you tap again on the keyboard you can actually start to select text as well so this is really handy this is definitely a feature you have to remember.
11. Enable Reachability
Another ios trick that you should enable is reachability especially on the bigger phones like the iPhone 13 and the 13 pro max, especially it makes it easier to use them one-handed now to do this you go into settings you scroll down to accessibility and then you select touch from that menu and from here you toggle on reachability.
Now when you're using your phone one-handed and you need to reach to the top part of the screen just swipe down on the bottom of your iPhone screen just above the home bar and the phone's display will shift down to make it easier to reach the top selection of the display.
12. Blur FaceTime Video
I want to take it back to camera features but this time in facetime I didn't plan that out and this time in facetime and this is similar to the cinematic mode we cover towards the start of this video and that is the ability to blur your background during a facetime call to do this open facetime.
Right there in the center, there should be a new button on iPhones as old as the iPhone 10s press this and you will get a blurred background. So it's much easier to hide your messy room when talking to your mom so my room's clean mom don't worry about it.
13. Change MicroPhone Mode
Photo by Jukka Aalho on Unsplash
To change your microphone mode to either voice isolation so the microphone will just try to pick up your voice and leave out background sounds and other voices or change it to a wide spectrum. If you have a group call and you want the microphone to pick up every voice in the room really awesome bet you didn't know that one I'm good at this stuff yeah yeah I am good at this stuff.
Bonus Tip & Trick
Also as a bonus tip when you're on the video call you can actually swipe down from the control center to access this video effect.
All right these are my iPhone 13 tips and tricks and I hope you found them helpful and if you did let me know your favorite tip or trick in the comments below.