Six secret games hidden behind taps, swipes and codewords on almost every iPhone

The iPhone might be a definitively Apple product, but that doesn't stop millions of us from using Google apps on it.

In fact, some people might argue that the iPhone is at its best when you pair Apple's superb hardware with the convenience of a Google account and all of its apps, from Gmail to Chrome.

Well, it turns out that if you use a couple of Google apps on your iPhone, then you've got some secret games that you can activate any time you like.

Google

The first one is hidden in the Chrome browser, and it's familiar to many people - but you can only find it if you have no internet connection at all.

So, pop your iPhone into airplane mode (since this is the quickest way to cut off your connection), and then try to load any page in Chrome. This will get you an error message accompanied by a famous image of a dinosaur.

Tap on that dinosaur and it'll start a fun little jumping game - the beast will run from left to right, and when you tap it'll jump over obstacles. See how far you can get before it starts to get pretty impossible!

If you want another game, though, you'll need the main Google app, one that lets you search the web and explore results.

Once you have this, open it up and tap on the Tabs button at the bottom right of your display. From here, wait until you see some shapes at the bottom of your screen, then swipe up on them to change to a screen with pinball paddles at the bottom.

Your goal is to use these paddles to keep the little ball in the air, with bonus points if you can use it to break shapes, and with three lives to rely on.

milorad kravic / Getty

If those two aren't enough for you, Chrome actually holds four more games that you can access, although these aren't so much hidden as they are just waiting for people to search them out.

All you have to do is search for the name of each game on Google.com and you'll be taken to a version of each.

The four games are Snake, Solitaire, Tic Tac Toe and Pac-Man. In each case, you'll have access to simple swipe and tap controls, and the games won't exactly blow you away with their complexity.

Still, they're really fun ways to pass some time, so if you're stuck without anything to do and want to kill a few minutes, there's a lot to be said for getting stuck into one of them.