You spend a lot of time on your iPhone every day, most of it doing routine tasks. Here are some efficiency tweaks you can use to save time.
1 Adding frequently used controls to the Control Center
In iOS 18, Control Center has become more customizable than ever. There are plenty of dedicated controls to choose from, so you can put what you use most where you need it. You can also add controls for supported third-party apps, giving you access to actions like adding events to calendar apps or starting a Pomodoro timer.
Once you’ve set up the controls you want, accessing them with a single swipe quickly becomes second nature, making common iPhone tasks much quicker to complete. To add a new control, swipe from the upper right corner of the screen to open Control Center. Long-press the screen and tap “Add Control” at the bottom of the screen.
You can then choose the control you want to add and reposition it where you want it.
2 Use Siri for more complex tasks
Siri arrived on the scene with much fanfare, but since then it’s been somewhat of a disappointment. Instead of the intelligent personal assistant we were hoping for, Siri is still quite limited in what it can do. However, some tasks can be accomplished much faster by asking Siri.
For example, if you want to start a timer for 12 minutes, you would open the Clock app, select Timers, change the time to 12 minutes, then tap Start. Or you can simply say “Siri, start a 12 minute timer” and the timer will start immediately. In fact, you can shorten this to “Siri, 12 minutes” and the Assistant will take care of it.
Other things you can do much faster with Siri include setting reminders, toggling settings, launching apps, triggering shortcuts workflows, checking the weather, adding items to a shopping list and sending messages.
3 Using Quick Actions for Apps
If you tap and hold the app icons for certain apps, you’ll see a list of quick actions that you can use to quickly complete specific tasks. For example, if you want to see what you were doing a year ago, long-press the Photos app icon and select “A year ago.” You will immediately be taken to photos from the same date last year.
If you want to take a quick selfie, long-press the Camera app icon, then select Selfie. Your camera will open using the front camera.
Not all apps have Quick Actions, but it’s worth knowing which ones do, as they can save you a lot of time.
Widgets are another useful time-saving tool on your iPhone. Adding widgets to your home screen can provide information at a glance and you can even interact with apps without needing to open them.
I have a large Calendar widget on my iPhone’s second home screen so I can see what’s happening today and what’s coming up just by swiping right. I also have a Battery widget that I can use to easily see if my Apple Watch or AirPods need charging right from my iPhone screen.
Third-party apps also offer useful widgets; I have a widget for Todoist, a useful productivity app, on my home screen that lets me see my next four tasks every time I look at my iPhone.
5 Creating shortcuts for repetitive tasks
The Shortcuts app is an incredibly powerful tool that you can use to create shortcuts to do almost anything you want. The hardest part is often trying to think about what shortcuts you want to create.
A good way to use the Shortcuts app to save time is to think about the actions you perform often. For example, you can send many messages to the same group chat in Messages. If so, you can create a shortcut to open messages to that group chat, which will save you a click or two.
6 Using the action button and backspace gesture
If you have an iPhone with an action button, it’s a great way to trigger an action you do often. If you find that you spend much of your day opening the ChatGPT app to ask for help in every aspect of your life, you can configure the action button to open the ChatGPT app so you can access it with a simple touch.
The action button is highly configurable outside of Apple’s own controls. You can use it to trigger multiple actions by selecting them from a menu, or have the button perform different actions based on criteria like location, orientation, time, etc.
If your iPhone doesn’t have an action button, there are other options instead. For example, you can configure the Back Tap gesture to launch the ChatGPT app. This way, whenever you want to ask ChatGPT something, just tap the back of your iPhone three times and the app will open.
7 Creating text replacements for frequently entered information
This tip was a real game changer for me. Much of our lives are spent entering our details on websites when registering or providing our payment information or address. If you’re tired of typing your name and address, you can create text replacements that will automatically enter the appropriate text when you type a short combination of letters or symbols.
For example, if I type “@@”, it is replaced with my email address. If I type “qf”, it is replaced by my first name and “qs” is replaced by my last name. This saved me a lot of typing on my iPhone keyboard.
Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement. Tap the “+” (plus) icon at the top right of the screen.
Enter the phrase you want to display and the shortcut you want to use, then tap “Save.”
Now, every time you type your shortcut and press the spacebar, your text will be replaced.
Make sure you don’t use a combination of letters or symbols that you might otherwise type in a normal message. Using “name” as a shortcut for typing your first name, for example, will quickly get boring, because every time you try to type the word “last name” in a message, it will be replaced with your first name.
8 Use Spotlight
Spotlight Search on iPhone can be incredibly useful because it can do much more than just search for things on your iPhone. If you want to open an app, just start typing the name and tap the result that appears. Your most frequently used apps will magically appear before you even start typing.
However, you can do so much more with Spotlight. Do you want to convert dollars to euros? Simply type a dollar amount into Spotlight and watch it magically happen. Do you want to convert 100 British Pounds to Japanese Yen? Just type “100 GBP to JPY” instead.
You can also view sports scores, search photos, run shortcuts, start timers and much more, often much faster than other methods.
9 Learn useful gestures on iPhone
You can do a lot of things on your iPhone using gestures, like zooming in and out, opening Control Center, or returning to the Home screen. I was embarrassingly late to the party before learning that you could switch between open apps by swiping your finger left and right along the bottom edge of the screen, and it’s now one gestures that I use the most.
You can swipe from the left edge of the screen to the right to go back through apps and Safari. You can long-press the “Emoji” or “Globe” icon on a keyboard to use one-handed typing or quickly select other languages. You can even undo a mistake by tapping with three fingers.
Sometimes new gestures are also added. In iOS 18, if you have an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence, you can double-tap the bottom of the screen to tap Siri.
10 Voice shortcuts
Before iOS 18, it was already possible to run shortcuts by speaking the name of the shortcut to Siri. However, this still requires you to say “Hey Siri” or “Siri” first, or hold down the side button.
In iOS 18, it is now possible to create voice shortcuts. These are custom phrases that your iPhone will listen to and can be used to trigger actions without needing to say “Hey Siri” or “Siri” first. If you trigger shortcuts through Siri several times a day, creating a voice shortcut can save you time by removing the need to use the Siri wake word each time.
Hopefully the tips above can help you speed up your boring daily tasks so that you spend more time achieving the things you’re trying to do.
