These iPhone Tricks Should Probably Be Illegal
You know that feeling when you discover a shortcut so good it feels like you're getting away with something? Like finding a twenty-dollar bill in an old jacket, or realizing your coffee shop has been giving you a large when you ordered a medium? That's exactly how these five iPhone tricks feel. They're completely legitimate, built right into iOS (or available through the App Store), but they're so powerful and so unknown that using them feels like cheating.
We've scoured every corner of iOS, tested dozens of hidden features, and talked to productivity experts who live on their iPhones. These aren't your basic "did you know you can use the calculator" tips. These are genuine game-changers that will make you look at your iPhone differently. Some of them have been hiding in plain sight for years. Others are newer additions that Apple barely promoted. All of them will make you wonder why nobody told you sooner.
Fair warning: once you learn these tricks, you'll become that person who grabs friends' phones to show them what they're missing. You'll become insufferable at dinner parties. You'll start sentences with "Actually, did you know your iPhone can..." and people will either love you or avoid you. Worth it.
Trick #1: Get a Full Clipboard History (Yes, Really)
Let's start with the big one. The trick that, when people discover it, consistently produces the most dramatic reaction. Ready? You can have a complete history of everything you've ever copied on your iPhone. Every link, every text, every phone number, every OTP code — all searchable, all categorized, all instantly accessible.
"But wait," you're saying, "iPhone doesn't have clipboard history!" And you're right — it doesn't, natively. But Clipboard AI adds this functionality so seamlessly that it feels like a built-in feature Apple forgot to ship. Install the app, and it silently saves everything you copy in the background. No extra steps, no workflow changes. Just copy stuff like you normally would, and when you need to find something you copied three hours (or three days) ago, open the app or use the keyboard extension.
Why does this feel illegal? Because once you have clipboard history, you realize how insane it was to live without it. You'll never again lose a copied link to an accidental overwrite. You'll never re-copy your email address for the fifteenth time this week. You'll never lose an OTP code because you copied something else before pasting it. It's the iPhone clipboard upgrade that should have existed since day one. The fact that it took a third-party app to deliver it makes Apple look like they've been holding out on us.
Trick #2: Turn the Back of Your Phone Into a Secret Button
This one has been hiding in Accessibility settings since iOS 14, and somehow most people still don't know about it. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. You can assign custom actions to double-tapping or triple-tapping the back of your iPhone. And the list of available actions is genuinely impressive.
You can set a double-tap to take a screenshot (way easier than the button combo). Triple-tap to toggle the flashlight. Or — and this is where it gets really good — assign it to a Shortcut, which means you can make tapping the back of your phone do literally almost anything. Open a specific app. Send a pre-written text message. Start a timer. Toggle Do Not Disturb. The possibilities are nearly endless.
The best Back Tap setup we've found for productivity: double-tap to open Clipboard AI (instant access to your clipboard history), triple-tap to take a screenshot. This combo means you can capture and access information faster than anyone who doesn't know this trick. Pair it with iPhone automation shortcuts and you've essentially turned your iPhone's back into a programmable button. Your friends will think you're a wizard.
Trick #3: Drag and Drop Between Apps Like a Pro
Here's a feature Apple added years ago and then apparently forgot to tell anyone about: you can drag and drop content between apps on iPhone. Not just on iPad — on iPhone. And it works with text, images, links, files, and more. It's like copy-paste but without the middle step.
Here's how it works: long-press on a piece of content (a photo, a link, some text) until it "lifts" off the screen. Keep holding it with one finger. Now, with another finger, swipe up to go home or switch to another app. The content stays floating under your first finger. Navigate to where you want to drop it, position it, and let go. The content is now in the new app. No copying, no pasting, no clipboard involved.
This is particularly powerful for moving images from Safari or Photos into messages, emails, or documents. It also works brilliantly with links — drag a link from Safari directly into a Notes document or a Messages conversation. The gesture takes a little practice (it's a two-hand operation), but once you get it, you'll feel like you've unlocked a superpower. For more on this technique, check out our full guide on how to use drag and drop on iPhone. Combined with a clipboard manager for the times when drag-and-drop isn't practical, you've got the ultimate content-moving toolkit.
Trick #4: Copy Text From Any Image or Video
Live Text might be the most underrated feature Apple has ever shipped. Point your camera at any text — a sign, a book, a receipt, a whiteboard, a business card — and your iPhone can recognize and copy that text instantly. No typing, no transcription apps, no OCR scanner needed. Just point, tap, copy. It even works in photos you've already taken and in paused video frames.
But here's where it gets truly "feels illegal" territory: Live Text works across the entire system. See a phone number in a photo? Tap it to call. See an address? Tap it to open in Maps. See a URL? Tap it to open in Safari. And all of this happens with text recognition that's fast, accurate, and entirely on-device — your images aren't being sent to any server for processing. For a deep dive, read our guide on how to use Live Text on iPhone.
The power move: combine Live Text with a clipboard manager. Copy text from a whiteboard photo after a meeting. Copy a quote from a book you're reading. Copy a recipe from a cookbook. All of those copies are automatically saved in your Clipboard AI history, categorized and searchable. A week later, when you need that recipe or that whiteboard note, you don't have to find the photo again — just search your clipboard history. The combination of Live Text's capture ability and clipboard history's retention creates a workflow that feels almost unfairly efficient.
Trick #5: Turn Your Keyboard Into a Precision Trackpad
Selecting text on a phone has always been an exercise in frustration. The little magnifying glass, the cursors that never land where you want them, the accidental selection of entire paragraphs when you just wanted one word. It's enough to make you miss physical keyboards. But there's a trick that transforms text selection from painful to precise, and almost nobody uses it.
Long-press the space bar on your iPhone keyboard. The keys will go blank, and the keyboard becomes a trackpad. Move your finger around, and the cursor follows with pixel-perfect precision. Need to select text? While in trackpad mode, tap with a second finger (or on older phones with 3D Touch, press harder) to start a selection, then drag to select exactly the text you want. It's smooth, it's precise, and it makes editing text on iPhone approximately 500% less infuriating. Pair this with the other text selection tips we've documented and you'll be editing text faster on your phone than some people do on a laptop.
Here's the full suite of keyboard text tricks that nobody teaches you: double-tap a word to select it. Triple-tap to select a sentence. Quadruple-tap (yes, four taps) to select an entire paragraph. Swipe three fingers left to undo. Swipe three fingers right to redo. Pinch three fingers to copy. Spread three fingers to paste. These gestures have been in iOS for years, but Apple never made them discoverable. Now combine all of these with a clipboard manager that saves everything you copy, and you've got a text manipulation setup that genuinely rivals a desktop. Check out our complete guide to iPhone keyboard shortcuts for more.
Bonus: Three More Tricks That Almost Made the List
We couldn't resist including a few honorable mentions that were almost too good to leave out. Shake to Undo: If you accidentally delete text, paste the wrong thing, or make any text editing mistake, shake your iPhone and it'll offer to undo the last action. It works in most text fields across iOS. Is it dignified? No. Does it work? Absolutely.
Spotlight as Calculator: Pull down Spotlight search and type any math equation. 15% of 83? Type "15% of 83" and get the answer instantly without opening the Calculator app. It also handles unit conversions ("5 miles in km"), currency conversions, and basic arithmetic. It's faster than opening the calculator for quick computations, and the results are copyable — which means they go straight into your clipboard history if you have a clipboard manager running.
Safari Tab Groups as Read-It-Later: Instead of bookmarking articles or sending yourself links (we've all done it), create a "Read Later" Tab Group in Safari. Long-press any link and select "Open in Tab Group," then choose your Read Later group. The tabs persist across devices via iCloud sync, and you can organize them by topic. It's a more visual and accessible alternative to bookmark folders. And if you're someone who copies article links with the intent to read them later, a clipboard manager captures those links too — even if you forget to add them to a Tab Group. Speaking of organizing links, our guide on how to organize copied links has more tips for staying on top of your saved content.
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