Featured Image Credit: Oscar Wong/ Getty / Apple
Your iPhone has plenty of tips and tricks up its sleeve, some of them well-known and others a bit more surprising.
This week one tip in particular has been going viral on TikTok, and it's pretty remarkable - it basically turns your iPhone into a device for eavesdropping.
Before we get into it, you need a pair of AirPods for it to work, then you're off to the races.
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Basically, in your Control Center (a quick menu accessed by pulling down from the top-right of your iPhone screen) there's an ear icon that accesses 'Hearing' settings.
You might not have this button there by default, but you can add it in the iPhone's Settings app, under the Control Center heading about halfway down the list.
Once you do, you can tap on Hearing at any time to access a few quick options, including one called Background Sounds which lets your iPhone make soothing sounds like white noise or raindrops to help you concentrate or fall asleep - which is a nice bonus to know before we get to the real heart of the matter.
The star of the show, and the one that's been doing the rounds on TikTok, is called Live Listen (a typically clean Apple name for a feature). It's only available when you have headphones connected.
The feature lets you hear through the iPhone's microphones, piped into your AirPods over Bluetooth - it's an incredibly handy sound magnification tool for those who have difficulty hearing, but can be used for other purposes.
In particular, if you turn it on and then leave your iPhone behind while you walk into another room, your AirPods should stay connected while you're in range, and you'll be left able to listen in on whatever is happening in that other room.
The microphones are impressively sensitive, too - we tried it out and found it really easy to pick things up even though we were behind a closed door. The more you hide your iPhone (under a pillow, for example) the more muffled it'll sound, though.
This can be a pretty devious tool in the wrong hands, and once people found out about it they became keen to put it to use, as you can see in the comments under one tips and tricks video that mentions it from TikToker Tyler Morgan.
One commenter said: "I’m using that AirPods spying thing" and garnered over 150 likes to agree with the sentiment, demonstrating just how interested people are in exploring what they can find out using Live Listen.
