iPhone 11 Tips and Tricks: 25 Settings & Features You Need To Know

How To Force Restart Your iPhone 11

The iPhone 11, with its lack of a home button, has remapped many of the past iPhone’s functions to other hardware or software controls. One of these is the ability to force restart the device. Here’s how:

• Press and quickly release the Volume Up button.
• Press and quickly release the Volume Down button.
• Press and hold the Side button.

How To Trigger SOS on iPhone 11

SOS is a mode on the iPhone that allows you to quickly call emergency services. To trigger SOS:

• Hold the Side button and either Volume button for six seconds.
• Alternatively, press the Side button five times in succession to trigger SOS.

Control What Apps Face ID Unlocks

Face ID replaces the way you unlock your iPhone. Now you simply look at the device instead of placing your finger on a home button. But Face ID can also be used to make purchases in the App Store and in apps, authenticate Apple Pay payments, and autofill forms in Safari. However, you can choose what Face ID can do:

• Go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode.
• Toggle each Face ID feature on or off as per your preference.

Always Show Notification Preview Inside iOS 13

A cool feature of the iPhone 11 is that notifications are automatically hidden and will only display their content if you are looking at the device. This ability means other people who have access to your phone can’t see the details of the notifications you receive on your lock screen. But you can disable this if you want to:

• Go to Settings > Notifications > Show Previews.
• Choose Always, When Unlocked, or Never.

Customize iOS 13’s Control Center

Control Center got a major overhaul in back in iOS 11. Actions are now much easier to implement and have a better layout. But you can also further customize Control Center on your iPhone 11 if you wish:

• Go to Settings > Control Center > Customize Controls.
• Here you can add, subtract or rearrange controls in Control Center.

How To Use iPhone 11 One-Handed Keyboard

The iPhone 11 has a large screen, which sometimes makes one-handed use a bit hard if your hands are on the smaller size. To combat this, Apple has built-in a one-handed software keyboard:

• Tap the emoji keyboard icon in any app that uses the keyboard.
• Select the left or right-handed keyboard icon to shift all the keyboard keys to one side.

Bring Back The Home Button on iPhone 11

While you can’t bring back the physical Home button, there is a way you can kind of replicate it using software in iOS:

• Go to General > Accessibility > Assistive Touch and toggle it on.
• You’ll now see a virtual Home button on your screen that you can customize to activate shortcuts.

How To Force Quit Apps on iPhone 11

With no Home button, you might think you can’t force quit apps anymore–but you can:

• Bring up the app switcher by swiping up and holding on the home bar from the bottom of any screen.
• Once the apps appear, swipe to the one you want to force quit and then simply swipe up on the app to force quit it.

How To Activate Apple Pay on iPhone 11

Many people wonder how to bring up Apple Pay on the iPhone 11. Apple has made this easy:

• Simply double-press the home button and the iPhone 11 will bring up your default card and authenticate you using Face ID.
• Now just hold your iPhone 11 by theNFC reader to pay.

How To Open The App Switcher on iPhone 11

Without a Home button, you might wonder how to bring up the app switcher. It’s simple:

• Swipe up on the Home bar at the bottom of any screen, but hold it in place once you get about an inch up the screen.
• You’ll see other apps populate your iPhone’s display as if they were cards in the deck. This is the App Switcher and from here you can quickly jump to another app or force quit one.

How To Take A Screenshot With iPhone 11

Taking a screenshot on the iPhone 11 is very simple:

• Hold down the Side button and the Volume Up button at the same time.
• You’ll hear the familiar camera shutter sound and then see a thumbnail of the screenshot you just took in the corner of the display.

Quickly Edit A Screenshot

Once you’ve taken a screenshot, you can quickly edit it:

• Tap the thumbnail to bring up screenshot edit mode.
• In this mode, you’ll find tools that allow you to mark up the screenshot or crop it–and additional tools for sharing it.

How To Force Reset Your iPhone 11

If your iPhone 11 ever freezes, you can force reset it, which will force it to shut down and restart. Here’s how:

• Press and release the volume up button.
• Press and release the volume down button.
• Hold down the Side button.

How To Rearrange Apps on iPhone 11

We all know that you press and hold an app icon until it wiggles to enter your iPhone into app delete or rearrangement mode. But after you’ve made your changes how do you exit this wiggling mode now that the Home button is gone?

• Tap the small “Done” button in the right-hand notch of the screen in wiggle mode.
• Alternatively, simply swipe up on the Home bar at the bottom of the screen and you’ll exit wiggle mode.

How To Slide Between Recent Apps on iPhone 11

While you can use the app switcher to toggle through your apps, there’s a much quicker way to move from one app to the next:

• Simply swipe left or right on the Home bar at the bottom of the iPhone’s screen and you’ll progress forwards or backward in the line of apps you’ve recently opened.

Control Your Apple TV With iPhone 11

The Control Center on the iPhone 11 has a cool trick: it allows you to control your Apple TV if you have one. As long as your iPhone 11 and Apple TV are on the same wireless network, it’ll work:

• Go into Control Center and then look for the Apple TV button that appears.
• Tap it and begin controlling your Apple TV.

How To Quiet iPhone 11 Alarms With Your Face

A really cool feature of the iPhone 11 is Face ID. It allows you to unlock your phone just by looking at it. Face ID also has some other cool features–like this one:

• When your iPhone 11 alarm goes off, you can quiet it simply by picking up your iPhone and looking at it. This tells your iPhone you know about the alarm and it will quiet it.

How To Send Animojis As Stickers on iPhone 11

Animojis are the animated faces the iPhone 11 allows you to create thanks to the Face ID camera. They are really fun ways to send audio text messages. But you can also use Animojis as stickers in messages if you don’t want to send animated ones:

• Open up the Animojis app inside of messages and then make the face you want to. -Instead of pressing the record button to record a short Animoji clip, simply tap the Animoji face itself and it will be inserted into the text box as a sticker.

How To Enable USB Restricted Mode on iPhone 11

Apple has built a powerful new security feature into the iPhone 11 with the latest version of iOS. This introduced what is known as USB Restricted Mode. To protect against this:

• Go to the Settings app and tap Face ID & Passcode.
• Enter your passcode and then swipe down until you see a section titled “Allow Access When Locked”.
• The last toggle in this section will be a field that says “USB Accessories”. The toggle next to this should be switched to OFF (white). This means USB Restricted Mode is enabled.

How To Slow Down The Double Click Needed For Apple Pay

Now that the iPhone 11 has jettisoned the Touch ID sensor, you confirm your Apple Pay payments by using Face ID and double pressing the Side button. You can actually slow this down:

• Go to Settings > General > Accessibility.
• Scroll down to Side Button. On the Side Button screen, you can select between default, slow, or slowest. Choose the speed that works best for you.

Tap To Wake

With the Home button gone, there’s one less way the iPhone 11 has to wake itself up. Yes, you can still press the side button–but there’s also another way:

• Simply tap the iPhone 11’s display once to wake it up.

Reachability Is Still There

When Apple introduced the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus they added a feature called Reachability that lets the user drop the screen down on the iPhone’s display so they could more easily tap buttons at the top. This feature is still available on the iPhone 11:

• Go to Settings > General > Accessibility and under the Interaction section toggle on Reachability.
• Then from inside any app just swipe down on the new home bar (about half an inch above it) and your entire screen will slide down so you can reach the top elements.

Dim Your Screen When Not Looking At It

Since the iPhone 11 knows when you are looking at your display or not, it has the ability to instantly dim your screen the second you look away from it and it also automatically returns the brightness to your standard settings once you look at your screen again. This is great for saving battery life.

Quickly Disable Face ID

Depending on where you live, the police may be able to legally insist you unlock your smartphone on the spot via its facial recognition features. For some reason, facial biometrics aren’t protected in the way fingerprints and passcodes are in some localities. That’s why Apple has built-in a feature that lets you quickly disable Face ID:

• Press the side button five times and Face ID will be disabled and you’ll need to enter your passcode instead to gain access to your phone.

Use Two Pane Landscape View

This tip only applies to the iPhone 11 Pro Max but is cool nonetheless. If you hold your iPhone horizontally while using specific apps you’ll see many of the built-in apps will change to a two-pane mode, including Mail and Notes. This mode is the one you see on an iPad where, for example, you can see a list of all your notes in the Notes app while actively reading or editing a single note.