This hidden iPhone feature lets you perform one of 6 secret functions in an instant

With millions of new people continuing to Buy Apple's iPhone 6 , iPhone 6 Plus and other iPhone models each month, it’s important for us to remember that there are tons of great tips and tricks newer users simply don’t know about. Even when we cover handy tips and tricks on the site, it can be important to address them again down the road for these new users. It also helps existing users, of course, who can often forget about cool iPhone features because there’s just so much to remember in iOS.

Today, we want to bring one simple hidden iPhone feature to your attention that can be used to perform any one of six different functions in a fraction of a second.

The Accessibility section within Apple’s Settings app on iPhones and iPads likely makes the iOS platform the best on the planet for people with a wide range of disabilities. This subsection of the Settings app is also a treasure trove of secret features that many iOS users would never uncover on their own.

Of course, that’s why we’re here.

In the past, we have covered a range of hidden functionality that can be unlocked in an iPhone’s Accessibility settings. For example, we told you about a secret trick that could dramatically improve your iPhone’s battery life, as well as a tip that adds a nifty dimming effect to the screen to help with viewing the phone in low light.

Now, it’s time to wrap a bunch of those individual posts into one nifty how-to: It’s high time you met the Accessibility Shortcut section in your iPhone’s Settings app.

1. Open the Settings app
2. Tap General
3. Tap Accessibility
4. Scroll all the way to the bottom and tap Accessibility Shortcut

In this section of the iPhone’s Accessibility settings, you’ll find six options listed. By selecting any of them, you’ll enable a hidden iPhone shortcut — the home button triple-tap — that will give you access to any of those functions in an instant.

Here are the six options:

1. VoiceOver
2. Invert Colors
3. Grayscale
4. Zoom
5. Switch Control
6. AssitiveTouch

So, for example, if you select the “Invert Colors” option, the colors of everything on your display will be inverted anytime you triple-click your iPhone’s home button while on any screen.

VoiceOver will make Siri describe everything happening on any given screen, grayscale will remove all color from the screen and display only shades of gray, and Zoom adds a built-in magnifier. Finally, Switch Control lets you navigate your phone with simple head gestures, and AssistiveTouch makes the iPhone simpler to use for people with motor control problems.

iPhone 6 and iOS 8: 16 hidden features

With the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus comes a brand new mobile operating system, iOS 8, available to download for older devices from today. Currently, iOS is one of the most popular operating systems in the world, playing second fiddle only to Android. Now upgraded to include a raft of new features, Apple will be hoping that the updated system will help in closing this gap. Here are some of the features that might not be immediately obvious, but could certainly help their cause.

1) ‘Send Last Location’ setting

A Send Last Location feature has been added to Find my iPhone so that your GPS coordinates are backed up to iCloud whenever your battery life is close to running out.

Just before the battery shuts down, the last thing the device does is pinpoint exactly where you left it, so there’ll be no need to turn the house upside down for your phone when it’s sitting pretty in the office.

2) Detailed battery usage breakdown

Is Kim Kardashian (or more specifically, her mobile game) responsible for running down your battery life? A new option in the usage menu under Settings will be able to tell you; it provides a breakdown of how much battery each app has used in the last 24 hours or seven days.

3) Leave Group Conversation option

Good news for those with already quite enough Whatsapp and Facebook group messages to contend with. Under Details in a group conversation on iMessage, there’s now the option to exit the conversation. Alternatively, if you’re not watching the same programme your friends are live messaging and fancy a little respite, you can also select the Do Not Disturb option to stay in the conversation, but silence it.

4) Grayscale mode

A little ostentatious perhaps, but for anyone interested in giving their device a vintage twist, the Accessibility menu now offers a ‘grayscale’ option, that gives the entire operating system a black and white hue.

5) Reply to messages without changing screens

Previously, if you were using an app and received a text message, you’d need to exit the screen you were on in order to reply. iOS8 eliminates this irritating feature; simply swipe down on the banner that appears when a message comes through, and enter a quick response without leaving the screen.

6) Self-destructing photos

Apple appears to have taken a leaf out of Snapchat’s book with this new feature. When using iOS 8’s messages app, holding down on the camera icon opens the camera app, and any pictures or videos sent from here will self-destruct two minutes after being sent.

7) Send multiple pictures at a time

If you tap on the keyboard’s camera icon, a preview of up to 20 recent photos comes up, giving you the option to easily choose multiple photos at the same time.

8) View all attachments from a conversation without scrolling up

Instead of having to scroll back through eons of messages to relocate a photo or video previously sent by a friend, with iOS 8, you can go to a ‘Details’ icon and scroll down to view all of the attachments that any conversations has garnered.

Press down on the attachment, and you can choose to either save or delete them too. This should save photos automatically cluttering your photo stream.

9) Share your location in Messages

iOS8 allows users to share their location directly through Messages. Under Details, you can choose the option to ‘Send My Current Location’, and a mapped image will be sent to the recipient – useful for when your friend asks where to meet you.

10) Faster access to contacts

Double tapping the home button will result in your most contacted people appearing as a line of icons. Clicking on one of the faces will provide you with the option to call, chat or FaceTime this contact.

11) Upgraded Mail

With iOS 8 comes gesture based message manipulation in the Mail app. Now, users will be able to swipe to the left to reply to a message or delete a flag, or, with a harder swipe, delete the message altogether.

12) Keyboard enhancements

The new iOS 8 software sees Apple upgrade its keyboard for the first time. It now offers context-sensitive predictive typing, which claims to pick up on how you write, and subsequently provide a list of words to make texting a lot faster.

Apple claims that this feature is sensitive enough to decipher who exactly you are talking with and adjust the suggestions accordingly, so should, in theory, be able to pick up on the differences when texting your boss, as opposed to your best friend.

13) Siri listens at all times

Not as creepy as this might suggest; Apple has upgraded Siri to listen constantly in order for it to be activated simply by you saying ‘Hey Siri’, and without the need to touch the home button.

14) Siri and Shazam have integrated

Siri will now be able to recognise songs being played in the vicinity, eliminating the need to open the Shazam app used for the same purpose. You will then be able to purchase songs from the results screen.

15) Quick access to apps according to your location

Apple has built subtle notifications into the lock screen, based on location, so that if you’re near to a particular shop or business, a tiny icon for this business will appear. If you pull this up, you’ll be automatically transported into the relevant app.

16) Easily recover deleted photos

In iOS 8, when the preview icon at the bottom of the screen in the camera app is tapped, it opens up a view that allows you to recover deleted photos. To clear this menu, you can simply empty the ‘Recently Deleted’ album in the Photos app.

iOS 8 beta versions: All the features and design elements added in each beta version of iOS 8

iOS 8, the next version of Apple's iOS operating system software for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, is expected to launch alongside the iPhone 6 and iPad 6 in September or October. But a series of preliminary versions of iOS 8 - beta versions, for testing and optimisation work by app developers - have been released to those who’ve signed up to the beta programme.

In this article we’ll look at the various beta versions of iOS 8 that have been launched so far, and at the beta versions still to come. We'll discuss the tweaks and fixes added in each iOS 8 beta, and the new features and design elements that have been added.

We look at these in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent/newest iOS 8 betas come first.

iOS 8 beta version 6: Launch date

BGR.com reports that iOS 8 beta 6 will be the final beta version of the operating system, to be followed several weeks later by the full public release. Fairly obviously, we expect beta 6 to be very close to the finished product (unless something goes drastically wrong!).

According to BGR's sources, iOS 8 beta 6 would be released to testers on 15 August, but it's now expected to appear next week: quite possibly on the 18th. (If you want to join the beta programme and get access to iOS before the general public, take a look at our article: How to join the iOS 8 beta)

iOS 8 beta version 5: Features and design updates

As of our latest update, iOS 8 beta 5 is the most recent version of iOS 8, having been seeded to testers on the 4th of August.

The iOS keyboard now has an easy-access switch to let you toggle iOS 8's QuickType predictive text feature on or off. Instead of having to go into the Settings app, you simply hold down the International keyboards button and slide the green button to go to non-predictve typing.

There's a new setting in the Health app that makes your health ID information available on the lock screen - a potential lifesaver if you have a long-term condition in need of medication.

And there are some cosmetic tweaks, too, with some changes to the iCloud app icons to make them seem like more of a coherent group. The icons are all a blue cloud on a white background, each sporting a different white icon in the middle.

iOS 8 beta version 4: Features and design updates

iOS 8 beta 4 fixes many of the large number of bugs found in beta 3.

For example, it had been reported that "swiping or tapping a Game Center friend request notification anywhere automatically accepts the friend request" - this is now fixed. Apple has also dealt with an issue that caused the Messages app to periodically become unresponsive if you have Send As SMS enabled in the settings, and another that was creating duplicate images in Photos if both iCloud Photos and Photo Stream are enabled; Siri’s ‘Hey Siri’ activation command has been tweaked to make it less likely to fail.

On the features front, iOS 8 beta 4 removes the Bug Reporter app that was present in iOS 8 beta 3 ("We've received wonderful feedback on previous betas via the Bug Reporter app. Thank you! However, this app has been removed in beta 4."), adds a Display and Brightness Settings menu (and new settings to customise swipe actions), and entirely alters the look of Control Center.

But these all pale next to the two most appealing additions in iOS 8 beta 4: a Suggested App feature, and a new Tips app.

iOS 8 beta version 3: Features and design updates

iOS 8 beta 3, which was released on 7 July, featured some minor tweaks to the previous version. These included a toggle to switch QuickType on or off, a new wallpaper (a grey/white gradient), changes to the way information is presented in the Weather app, and updated settings for Handoff and iCloud Drive. The Health app can now track your movement (steps, etc) using the M7 co-processor in the most recent generation of iDevices. Many users also reported that it felt faster than beta 2. Oh, and Shared Photo Streams were renamed to Shared Albums.

Beta 3 also included a long list of fixes. Perhaps the most interesting was that previously the feature in Family Sharing whereby a youngster could ask permission from the credit card holder to download a piece of content hadn’t really worked - it was apparently possible, among other issues, for the requester to approve their own request. That’s now been fixed.

(It still seemed to be a work in progress at this point, however - it remained impossible to create accounts for under 13s, previously purchased family content is only free to redownload if you download from the Purchased page, rather than the store page itself, and "a blank screen may be seen after creating a family on iPad".)

iOS 8 beta version 2: Features and design updates

iOS 8 beta 2 saw various updates on the initial version. The Podcasts app was made a mandatory pre-install, just as iBooks had been in the first beta (this means you don’t need to install Podcasts or iBooks any more, but you can’t delete them from your device if you don’t like them). And Safari gained an auto-blocking feature to prevent adverts on web pages pushing the user to the App Store.

QuickType, the promising and eerie-looking predictive keyboard system unveiled at WWDC but only previously made available for the iPhone, was rolled out to iPads with iOS 8 beta 2.

Beta 2 also saw some minor cosmetic tweaks - some buttons in Messages switched from blue to grey - and like all the beta versions above, beta 2 included a number of fixes to address problems encountered by testers. One of the more noteworthy dealt with crashes that sometimes happened when users installed third-party keyboards.

iOS 8 beta version 1: Features and design updates

This was the preliminary version of iOS 8 showcased at WWDC 2014. While visually it's hardly changed at all, iOS 8 beta 1 offers many new features (and significant tweaks too existing features) to set itself apart from iOS 7. To read all about iOS 8's features and design changes, check out our iOS 8 preview, or read our iOS 8 FAQs article from the launch night.

10 awesome Google features you should be using

BY Varun Raj

The reason the Google home page is so bare is that, way back when it was just starting out in a Silicon Valley garage, no one working there knew how to program a web page to make it look pretty.

In fact, even the word Google was a mistake. The founders really wanted “Googol” – the digit 1 followed by 100 zeroes.

Of course, Google is now a noun, a verb and a massive global company loved as much for its innovation as it is hated for its user tracking. It has many tricks and products that you don’t need to spend money on, some of which will make your life easier, and others that will just blow your mind.

Let’s take a look at 10 of them:

Google Flight Search

Need to find the best price on a flight? Google Flight Search is one of the easiest price-comparison sites around. Pick your start point and destination – or destinations – on the map, and then pick your dates. When you pick the dates, be sure to pay attention to the prices on each date and Google's graph of days with the cheapest tickets.

Then you can filter the results by flight length, airline, price, stops and more. When you find a flight you like, you can book it directly on the airline's site. Click here to learn three more secrets to getting the lowest airfare.

Atari Breakout

Need to take a quick break? Thanks to Google, you can play a version of the classicAtari Breakout game on your computer whenever you want. Simply go to the Google Image Search page – www.google.com/images – and search for "Atari Breakout." Then wait for the fun to begin.

Google Public Data Explorer

Google's normal search site is great for most searches, but Google has more specialized search sites as well. For example, the Google Public Data Explorer is a treasure chest full of information on public statistics.

Go to the Google Public Data page and type in a topic. Keep your searches simple, like "Unemployment in the U.S." Google will return results from sources like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. You'll end up with an easy-to-read graph, and you can even tweak it with options like gender, age and state.

Google translations

Need a quick translation of a word? Go to the normal Google search page and type in "translate (word) to (language)" in the search bar. For instance, you could type "translate apple to French."

Google will let you know in less than a second that "pomme" is the French word for apple. It also includes a small speaker icon that will let you hear the word if you aren't sure how to pronounce it. For longer translations, check out Google Translate.

Google nutrition comparison search

What's healthier, an orange or a banana? Type "compare" into Google's search bar, along with the foods you want to look at, such as "compare broccoli and asparagus." Google will do the rest.

Google definitions

When you don't know what a word means, don't reach for the dictionary. Type "define (word)" into the Google search bar, such as "define tintinnabulation" and you'll have the definition instantly (it's "a ringing or tinkling sound," if you were wondering).

You'll also get pronunciation and part of speech, and you can click the gray arrow for more information, including word origins.

Google Conversions

Whether you're cooking or helping your child with math homework, odds are you're going to have to convert units of measurement. On the Google search page, enter a search like "convert eight ounces to cups" or "convert 10km to mi." You'll have your answer instantly, and you can even tweak the numbers and units after the fact.

Google nGrams

Google nGrams is a great research tool that lets you search how many times specific words occur in more than 5 million books written since 1800. You can see how words get more or less popular over time.

You can put in multiple words separated by commas to compare two or more words at once. Google lets you adjust the time period and language of the books, and you can see what books contain the words.

Google Sky

If you think Google Earth is great, then Google Sky is going to blow your mind. It lets you search the heavens and see images of stars, planets and galaxies taken from telescopes, probes and satellites.

It includes infrared and microwave images as well as a historic map of the stars made by Giovanni Maria Cassini in 1792. If you don't know where to start, the site has some suggestions that you'll love.