The iMom Project, Day Four

Updated December 3rd, 2015.

Ten tips in ten days. Day Four.

Today’s tip: use the “search” screen. It looks like this:

Once you get to this screen (I will tell you how in a minute), you can search for just about anything on your iPhone (or iPad). Here’s a partial list:

• Apps
• People
• Notes
• Emails
• Calendar events

I say “partial list” because you can also search, right from this screen, the web (using Google), or the famous Wikipedia. But that stuff’s not actually “on” your phone, and the list was about stuff on your phone, so we have to make that distinction.

Let’s talk about how to get to this screen. There are two ways that I know of:

1. You can, from any of the home screens, swipe from left to right until you get there, or…
2. You can, from any home screen, press the Home button (which takes you to the first home screen), and then press the Home button again. If you’re already at the first home screen when you press “Home” so much the better.

Note: do not press the Home button multiple times quickly. Press it once, see what happens, and then (if necessary) press it again.

So… let’s say you want to call me on your fancy new iPhone. Yes, you could go to Contacts, and then you could search for me, and then you could touch my phone number to call me. But, now that you know how to search the whole iPhone, you can press the Home button a time or two to get there, type in a few letters, and voila, there I am. You save yourself the trouble of going to the Contacts, and the result is just as good. See below.

Just touch my name, which brings up all of my numbers, and touch the one you want to call. By the way, I got rid of the old 310-927-3711 phone number so you can take that out of your address book. There are enough ways to contact me without having a second cell phone.

Notice, when you find stuff this way, that you don’t have to specify WHERE you want to look. The search automatically in all of the places listed above, all at once. That’s cool. Also, you don’t even have to touch the blue Search button. The iPhone will search as soon as you stop typing. Everything should be so easy.

So that’s it. Play around with this. I think you will be surprised at how handy it is. You might even find things that you didn’t know were there!

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