We are officially the most technologically advanced civilization in the known universe, and yet, despite having an incredible amount of power at our fingertips, most of us don’t know how to use it best. I will be the first to admit that I don’t know all the ins and outs of my phone, let alone my computer.
But gradually, it’s getting better — and with tips and tricks like this spreading across social media, it all helps.
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For such revolutionary devices, iPhones have some notable shortcomings.
You know, things that should be obvious.
For example, what dark magics have people been doing to summon degree symbols when trying to describe the unreal weather outside instead of typing out “degrees” like a schmuck?
Friends, it’s been there the whole time, and we never knew.
At least, I didn’t know — you just hold down the zero button and hey presto, the little ° shows up all prompt and polite, like it’s been waiting all this time for you to show up.
If you feel as foolish as I do for not knowing, give yourself a break because we’re all in good company.
It’s blowing people’s minds to discover that they could have been lazier this whole time. Go ahead and try it for yourself — it’s right there, under the zero!
The reactions have been surprisingly intense for such a simple trick.
Given how often you actually type in a temperature when you’re sending a message, is it really worth going back through all those messages, or should you maybe just live your new life with the fresh knowledge of what to do the next time it comes up?
It’s definitely cool, but it also begs the question of what happens when you hold down other buttons?
What else is hiding on your keypad, waiting for a heavy thumb to find it? Fractions, mostly.
If you hold down the ‘1’ button, you unlock the option of using fractions instead of decimal points, which is a huge deal when you’re trying to type out a recipe for someone.
For those of you who long to use your iPhone calculators to do exponents, you’ll be happy to know there is indeed a way.
Plus you get brackets to let you do order of operations problems. Math students rejoice!
Also, if you have a bad habit of opening new tabs without closing the other ones first, try giving the tab button a long press.
Hopefully you haven’t opened up tabs into the hundreds, but if you have, this is an easy way to shut them all down and get some speed back on your phone.
And if you need fancy accents to turn your fiancee into a fiancée or your latte into a latté, hold down the letter you want accented.
You’ll get a whole host of accent options!
Who knew?
