In this video and tutorial, we go over several specific settings you should change on your iPhone for optimal experience, convenience, performance, and battery life.
Apple’s default settings for the iPhone are optimized for ease of use, but with a few simple tweaks, you can make your iPhone run faster and smarter. That means spending some time in one of Apple’s most-used stock apps, Settings, to make the necessary adjustments.
Here’s a quick video tutorial from our videographer Michael Billig discussing the settings on your Apple smartphone that you should change to enjoy faster performance, better battery life, and improved productivity.
The same tips Michael covers in his video are here in listicle form:
1) Turn off personalized advertising: You will still see ads, but they won’t be personalized to you.
2) Don’t help Apple improve Siri and dictation: Your audio won’t be used by Apple to improve its voice assistant.
3) Don’t share iPhone analytics: Super privacy-sensitive users can choose to stop their iPhone from sharing their usage and diagnostics data with Apple.
4) Don’t allow apps to request to track: This is an excellent way to stop apps from tracking you across their partners.
5) Turn off location-based suggestions and significant locations: You should use this if you do not want your iPhone to show you suggestions based on your location. It also stops your iPhone from logging all the places you have frequently visited.
6) Set auto-lock to “Never”: This prevents your iPhone from locking automatically. It can be a good idea if you keep your iPhone on a stand on your office desk and use its screen to view documents or use an app for very long durations. Just remember to lock your iPhone manually when leaving it unattended or keeping it in your pocket or bag.
7) Disable repeat alerts for messages: The iPhone annoyingly alerts you twice of texts. This is one of the first things to do after you set up a new iPhone.
8) Enable protection for mail activity: You can secure your email experience with this handy built-in feature.
9) Always allow app downloads via cellular: Given affordable data plans and super fast 5G speeds, it makes sense to download big apps quickly using mobile data.
10) Change voice memo quality to lossless: If you use your audio recordings in videos, podcasts, and elsewhere, having them in lossless quality compared to compressed is the way to go. You also have the option to enhance your voice recordings.
11) Turn off location-based voice memo naming: The Voice Memos app automatically names the audio recordings based on location, provided you have given it location access. But if you do not like this, you can choose the regular “New Recording N” naming format.
12) Hide expired passes: Expired tickets and passes can clutter your Wallet app, so consider hiding them to keep things clean.
13) Use the volume up button to take burst photos: Burst photos are a great way to capture several images in quick succession, and holding the volume button when in the Camera app is the best way to take burst photos.
14) Turn on the camera grid: Lines over the camera interface let you frame the shot perfectly.
15) Set up your lines and grid settings in Notes: If you draw, sketch, or write in the Notes app, turning on lines and grids can be helpful. Note that these lines are only for your assistance, and they do not show up when you export your drawing.
16) Choose the primary method of travel in Maps: You can define your preferred mode of travel, such as driving, walking, public transit, or cycling, in the Apple Maps app settings. You can even choose preferred modes of public transit, like bus, subway, rail, or ferry, in Apple Maps.
17) Choose an EQ profile for music listening: Spice up your media experience by choosing one of the 23 built-in equalizer options. They range from Acoustic and Classical to Hip Hop, Increase Bass, Jazz, Pop, Rock, and Vocal Booster.
So, what are your thoughts on these tips? Care to share your own advice on how to make the iPhone experience even better? If so, hit us in the comments.