Little-known iPhone shortcut adds time saving button to your lock screen
You’d be surprised at quite how many hidden features and tools there are in your iPhone, and while you won’t necessarily need to be using every single one all the time, you never know when they might come in handy.
These can include secret codes that can even protect your phone from being stolen, alongside a simple yet effective setting change that’ll transform your experience using Safari.
One under-used tool that everyone should at the very least be aware of, however, involves a button that quickly restarts your iPhone — as you never know when this could save your skin.
Most people don’t even turn their phones off these days, and restarts are therefore even more uncommon, yet it’s surprising how effective it can be to fix any issues that crop up.
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You’ve likely heard of the age old advice that turning something off and on again fixes all issues, but it’s surprisingly true as it effectively flushes your device and resets everything back to ‘normal’.
Having that in an easy to access button is incredibly handy if your phone every gets stuck, frozen, or simply stops working, as it’s far more reliable than having to go through several processes that could create further issues.
As reported by iDownloadBlog, this feature is also used a lot by developers and testers of apps and websites, as they’ll often find themselves restarting their Apple devices on the regular.
Once this feature is activated it can be enabled in two easy taps, so here’s all the steps you should follow to set it up:
- Open the Apple Shortcuts app
- Press the plus button (+) in the top right once the app has opened
- Search for ‘Shut Down’ in the bar that appears
- Select the blue Shut Down option and change it so it’s set to Restart
- Press the Restart shortcut again and select ‘Add to Home Screen’
- Choose the symbol you want this to show as, and then press ‘Add’ to complete the process
You can also add this to your lock screen by press and holding anywhere on the screen while your phone is locked and adding a widget, using the same Restart shortcut that you just set up.
This will ask you to confirm whether you want your phone to be restarted every time you press it, but thankfully this is a helpful addition as there’s bound to be moments when you’d accidentally press it without meaning to.