The iMom Project, Day Eight

Updated April 13th, 2020.

Ten tips in ten days. It’s the iMom Project, Day Eight.

If this were Jeopardy! they’d call it “Potpourri.” But, it’s not Jeopardy!, so I’m calling it “My Favorite iPhone Tips.” Try ’em all.

Favorite Tip #1: The Home Button.
The Home button is very important. If you’re using an app (Mail, maybe) and you press the Home button you’ll be taken to the Home screen that you were last looking at. You can have more than one Home screen, as you have probably noticed– some of your apps are on “this” Home screen and some of them are on “that” Home screen and some of them are on “the other” Home screen, etc. But, when you press Home, you come back to the one you were last on.

If you press the Home button when you’re already looking at a Home screen, you are taken to the first Home screen (the one at the far left). That’s handier than swipe-swipe-swipe. And, if you’re already on the first Home screen, and you press the Home button, you are taken to the Search screen, which we talked about a few days ago.

Favorite Tip #2: Take a Screen Shot
There are plenty of times when you’re going to see something funny on your iPhone and you want me to tell you what it is. But, since I’m not always going to be in the neighborhood your best bet is to take a picture of the iPhone’s screen and email it to me. It is very easy to do. Just press the Home button and the Sleep button (at the top right edge of the iPhone) at the same time. (They’re not super-strict about “at the same time.” You can be a little late with one button or the other and it will still work.) When you do it right, you’ll hear a sound, the same one you hear when you use the iPhone to take a picture. You will also see the screen sort of “flash” a little. After that, nothing happens, but the screen’s been captured. Go to the Photos app and you’ll see it in the “Camera Roll” (which is where all of the photos taken with the iPhone are). From there, you touch the picture, then touch the “Sharing” button at bottom left (rectangle with a curvy arrow flying out of it), just as you do with photos that you want to email. The rest you already know how to do– just address it, title it, and send it.

Bonus to Favorite Tip #2: if you take too long to hit the Sharing button, it disappears. That’s not a problem. Just touch the picture to bring the Sharing button back. Touch the picture again to make it disappear.

Favorite Tip #3: Scroll to the Top
Lots of iPhone apps have more information than fits on one little screen. The Contacts app, the Mail App, the Calendar app, Safari– all of those, and many more, involve a bit of scrolling. Sometimes you end up way way down and you want to scroll back to the top. You could do the swipe-swipe swipe method, but better and faster is to just touch the time at the very top of the iPhone’s screen. That will take you straight to the top, in one quick move.

Bonus to Favorite Tip #3: if you use this “touch the time” method in Mail, it not only takes you to the top, but it reveals a Search box where you can type and find a particular message. If you do it in Safari it takes you to the top and reveals the address box plus the Google search box. Do it in Contacts and you get a search box too. Very handy.

That’s eight.

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