24 iPhone Tips That'll Speed Up Your Whole Workflow

Have you ever tried to place your cursor in exactly the right spot in a long message and ended up typing in the wrong place? Hold down the space bar and your entire keyboard turns into a trackpad. Slide your finger and the cursor moves with pixel-perfect precision.

That's just one of a load of little tips and tricks like this. Here's a proper rundown of the old-school shortcuts you might have missed, plus a full second half on what's coming with iOS 27.

Core Time-Savers ⚡

Type Faster With Text Replacement ⌨️

You can set up shortcuts for phrases you type constantly, so typing "em" instantly expands into your full email address. I've got about fifteen of these set up now, and it saves me typing the same boring stuff dozens of times a day.

How to do it: Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement, tap the plus icon, then add your shortcut and the phrase you want it to expand into.

Swipe to Type 👆

Did you know you can swipe instead of type on your keyboard? I love this one as I find I can get words out a lot quicker by not having to release my finger from the screen.

Swipe Between Apps 🔄

Instead of swiping up to bring up the app switcher, just swipe left and right along the home bar at the bottom of your screen and it jumps you straight between your recent apps.

Schedule a Text Message 💬

Did you know you can schedule messages in iMessage? Brilliant for batching your communications so you're not pinging people at 10pm just because that's when you happened to think of something.

How to do it: Type your message, tap the plus sign and hit Send Later, then pick a time.

Shorter Siri Commands 🗣️

You don't need to speak in full sentences to Siri. Just activate it and say "5am" or "15 minutes" and it'll infer you want an alarm or a timer. Cuts out all the unnecessary words.

Back Tap Shortcuts 👆

You can assign a double or triple tap on the back of your phone to instantly launch a shortcut or app. I've got mine set to create a new task in my task manager, so from any screen, two taps and I'm straight in.

How to do it: Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap, choose Double Tap or Triple Tap, then assign your shortcut.

Two-Finger Swipe to Select Multiple Items ✌️

In Mail, Messages, Notes or Files, put two fingers on the screen and swipe down over a list. It selects everything in one smooth motion instead of you tapping edit and ticking boxes one by one.

Screenshot Drag and Drop 🖼️

If you take a screenshot, you can drag and drop it straight into an app without having to find it in your photo album. Great for attaching something to a message or email, or in my case, when I want to ask Gemini stuff.

Long-Press the Back Button ↩️

Deep inside an app's settings and dreading tapping back six times to get out? Press and hold the back button in the top-left corner. It brings up a breadcrumb trail so you can jump straight back to the main menu in one tap. Works great in apps where you're going deep into folders or menus, like Settings or the Files app.

Notification Summary for Task Batching 🔕

If notifications are constantly pulling you out of deep work, this batches your non-essential notifications to land at set times, say 8am and 6pm, so your phone isn't buzzing every five minutes. I gather all my breaking news into one summary at the start and end of each day.

How to do it: Go to Settings > Notifications > Scheduled Summary, turn it on and choose which apps, then set your delivery times.

Quick Calculator Conversions 🧮

Small one, but really useful. When calculating something in the Calculator app, you can convert the sum you've got into whatever metric you want, from currency to distance.

How to do it: Open Calculator and start a calculation, tap the calculator icon at the top, then choose Convert and pick the metric you want.

Quick App Actions With Haptic Touch 👉

Long-press an app icon on your Home Screen and you can launch straight into specific tasks, like a private Safari tab or a pinned Messages chat, without ever opening the app's actual interface.

Camera QuickTake Video 🎥

In standard Photo mode, hold the shutter button and it instantly starts recording video. Drag it to the right to lock the recording hands-free. No need to flick over to video mode at all.

iOS 27 Features 🤖

With iOS 27 landing shortly, there's genuinely a huge amount packed into this update. I'm using the beta right now, but the full version with all of these features lands on compatible iPhones in September.

System-Wide Proofreading ✍️

Grammar and spelling checks are now powered by Apple Intelligence and built into the entire operating system, not just Apple's own apps. So third-party apps get the benefit too. Misspellings get underlined in red, and there's a new grammar tool that underlines suggested word replacements and grammar issues in blue.

Advanced Dictation Preview 🎙️

Dictation has finally caught up too. It uses an on-device model to handle rapid speech properly, get your commas right, understand prices, and manage complex formatting without you having to slow down or speak awkwardly. I've found this streets better than the previous version, though not quite as good as the dedicated AI dictation apps out there, Willow being the one I currently rate highest.

Siri in the Keyboard ⌨️

Siri can now generate instant reply suggestions and full AI drafts directly inside the keyboard menu. So instead of staring at a blank message thinking of what to say, you get options served up right there as you type. Or press the Siri icon and ask it to write a reply for you.

Siri Search With Camera Control 📸

Open the Camera app and you'll find a new Siri button by default when you hold down the camera button. Snap a photo and ask questions about whatever's in it, or hit search for a fast translation or object identification. Genuinely useful when you're out and about and need an instant answer. Unfortunately, if you're in the EU, this one won't work for you.

Timer in Control Center ⏱️

Small but so satisfying. Tap the timer icon in Control Center and you get a direct drag-to-set slider with haptics, right there. No need to open the Clock app at all.

On-Screen Awareness 👁️

You can ask Siri to summarise whatever's on your screen right now, or draft a contextual reply based on it, all with a single prompt. If you're reading a long article or an email thread, you don't need to copy anything out. It just knows what you're looking at.

Photo Insight Buttons 🖼️

One-tap contextual actions now show up directly on photos. Take a picture of a poster and it'll offer to add the event straight to your Calendar. Snap a business card and it offers to save it as a Contact. Different buttons show up for different things, so you can organise your screenshots and photos easily before deleting them.

Siri Cross-App Control 🗣️

You can now give Siri direct voice commands inside third-party apps, so something like "open Amazon and search for desk organisers" just executes. It bypasses all the manual tapping and navigating you'd normally do yourself.

Personal Context Siri 🧠

Siri can now crawl your personal data across apps to answer questions pulled from buried Messages or Mail threads. This is the feature that's actually made me start trusting Siri with things I never would have before.

Auto-Organise Tabs in Safari 🌐

If your Safari tabs look like a crime scene, this sorts a cluttered mess into clean, searchable categories in seconds.

How to do it: In Safari, tap the tab overview icon, then tap Organise Tabs > Automatically Create Topics.

Natural Language Shortcuts 🔍

Instead of building an automation block by block, you can now just describe what you want in plain English. Something like:

"When I take a screenshot of a receipt, save it to my Expenses folder in Apple Notes and rename it with today's date"

And Siri builds the entire multi-step automation for you. You can go even further too, something like "every time I plug my phone in to charge, turn off the light and open the Sleep Cycle app for me to set an alarm" works just as well.

How to do it: Open Shortcuts and tap the plus icon, choose Describe with Siri, then type or say what you want it to do.