Lifehacks are these little tricks and tips that we can use to make life easier for ourselves. They’re cognitive shortcuts, smart ways of doing things, and unique applications for everyday items and if you use them well they can make life much easier and simpler.
In that regard the iPhone is essentially a ‘lifehack tool’ that can help you to make everything quicker and easier. It provides apps and tricks to pretty much handle any job you can think of and it definitely makes life easier and simpler.
But that isn’t to say that the iPhone can’t be improved upon, or that you can’t get even more out of your device by being smart with it. By using the right life hacks alongside an iPhone and all its power, you can double its impact and have even more of an effect on your workflow and your day-to-day errands. Read on and we’ll look at some of the top lifehacks for iPhone users.
Never Upload Facebook Photos Again!
Uploading Facebook photos is annoying right? And especially so on an iPhone which doesn’t have the inter-app sharing that Android boasts.
Fortunately though, there’s a web app you can use that specialises in inter-app sharing and it’s called IFTTT. This stands for ‘If This, Then That’, and essentially it’s a website that lets you set up interactions between apps. So for instance, you could set it so that moving your photos into a particular DropBox folder would instantly upload them to their own photo album on Facebook. This could potentially save you hours of uploading and the best part is your phone doesn’t even need to be connected to the web – it’s all happening in ‘the cloud’.
There are many other uses for IFTTT too, from setting it up to e-mail you when the weather changes, to getting your contacts to be backed up in Google Drive.
Use Kingsoft Office to Create Your Own ‘Apps’
Want a way to collect all your wedding contacts? Or to calculate how much tax you owe this year? Well if you can’t find an app to handle your specific jobs, then you can always try ‘making’ your own by creating a spreadsheet. It’s easy to get seduced by apps and to thus forget just how powerful spreadsheet software is. Whether you want to create your own budget, a table for finding items in storage or a place for retrieving specific contacts quickly, there are countless uses for spreadsheets so it’s a skill well-worth learning.
Custom Speakers
This one is more a bit of fun, but if you ever want to amplify the sound from your iPhone and don’t have speakers handy, then you can make your own by using a toilet roll and two plastic cups. Cut a slit alongside the side of one and slide your iPhone into that so that it covers the speakers. Now cut a hole in the side of either cup, and then slide them onto the ends of the toilet role. Now sound will be channelled down the role and then amplified outwards by the cups creating quite a bit of extra volume!
Card Holding Cases
This is less a hack and more just a useful purchase – but another great way your iPhone can make life easier is through the purchase of a case that also has a pocket for your bank cards etc. This comes in especially handy when you’re going to the gym and don’t want to stuff your pockets with a wallet on top of your phone. At the same time though it can also be used for countless other things besides cards, from bookmarks, to small notepads, to photos of your family to pens. And by using a club card alongside the flip case you can also create a custom stand for your phone.
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