If your plan is to go travelling sometime soon, you’re going to use your iPhone a lot throughout the trip. iPhones are the best friend of every traveller, helping them stay in contact with friends and family, navigate their way around different places, and translate to communicate with people who speak different languages (just to name a few benefits).
Interestingly, iPhones have a secret goldmine of features that most fans don’t know about it. The reason Apple doesn’t tell you about these features is because there’s no time – iPhones are so complex and feature-rich that it would take a 10,000-page book to cover everything.
So, here are some of the best iPhone hacks and features you need to know before you set off on your travels.
Back tap
‘Back tap’ is one of the best and most unknown iPhone hacks that – once you start using it – you’ll wish you had discovered it years ago. Not only is it perfect for everyday life, but it’s also extremely helpful whilst you’re travelling.
The concept is simple: you tap the back of your iPhone with your finger to trigger certain commands. Example commands include:
- Taking screenshots
- Activating Siri
- Locking the screen
There’s also a tap option to increase or decrease volume, which is particularly useful when gaming. Let’s say you’re playing slots on Spin Casino, and you want the volume to be louder. You can simply double or triple tap the back of your iPhone to do this.
Now, if you’re reading this article on your iPhone, don’t tap the back yet – it won’t work, as you haven’t turned this feature on. Here’s what you need to do:
- Settings
- ‘Accessibility’
- ‘Touch’
- ‘Back tap’
- Choose a command for ‘Double Tap’ and ‘Triple Tap’
Remember to be reasonably firm with your finger tap; tapping too softly might not be picked up by your iPhone.
Record video in 4K
When you’re travelling, you need to take high-quality videos and photos.
Great news: all iPhones (from iPhone 6s onwards) are capable of recording videos in 4K. For some reason, iPhones don’t automatically record in 4K by default – you need to go into the settings to turn this on:
- Settings
- Camera
- Record video
- 4K at 60 fps
There are also several other quality options for recording video. For example, you can record 4K at 30 fps. However, if you want to get the best quality footage possible, 4K at 60 fps is the best option. This way, your recordings at the beach will look beautiful and stunning.
You’ll then be able to share them on Instagram and your other social media pages. But if you care more about privacy– that’s OK, too. You can simply keep your personal recordings in your gallery for your eyes only.
Track your daily water intake
Whilst travelling, it’s important to stay hydrated – particularly if you’re active every day. A lot of people don’t know that there are numerous water tracking apps in the App Store that you can download.
One of the available apps, ‘WaterMinder’, even syncs with your health data on iOS. It also comes available with a home screen widget. So, let’s say you drink most of your water from a 200ml bottle. You can add this 200ml bottle to the app and tap it whenever you finish drinking a bottle, which will add that amount to your daily hydration goal. For example, if your daily hydration goal is 1L, you will need to drink five 200ml bottles per day.
