15 Must-Do Steps to Make Your iPhone Work Best for You!

The estimated reading time for this post is 7 minutes

Whether you’re getting your first iPhone or you’ve had many over the years, you can make your iPhone work better for you if you take a few minutes to adjust your settings. In just a few minutes you can make sure you’re making the most of your phone!

Of course, you could start using your phone right away without doing any of these things. Hey, I get it, you want to play with your shiny new toy.

Or you’ve had iPhones for years and they’ve been working fine for you. Why bother messing with your settings?

But after the excitement of your new phone has worn off a bit, or a lot, make sure to go through this checklist to adjust your settings. Chances are there are some settings you might have missed that could make a big difference in the way you use your phone.

By taking a few minutes to adjust your settings you’ll improve how your phone works for you. You’ll:

• increase your battery life
• protect your privacy
• minimize cellular data usage

Find My iPhone

The very first thing you should do after you get your phone is set up Find My iPhone. No one expects to lose their phone but when it happens you’ll be in much better shape if you’ve set up Find My iPhone.

To learn more check out => Find My iPhone – The Very First App You Should Get

Find Your iPhone Even If the Battery Dies

Another step you should take in setting up your iPhone is to activate Send Last Location. This helps you to find your iPhone even if the battery is dead.

Find out how to turn this feature on at How to Find Your iPhone Even After the Battery Dies

Set Text Size and Bold

Eliminate squinting at your screen by increasing the size of text, and making it bold. Take just a minute to make the text easier to read.

Go to:

Settings => Display & Brightness => Text Size

Use the slider to adjust the text to the size that works best for you.

You can also make the text Bold in this setting for even easier visibility.

Note that making the text larger and bold means that fewer words will fit on your screen.

Also note that adjusting this setting means your phone will restart. I don’t know why. It just is that way.

Touch ID

Save time by setting up Touch ID. This handy feature lets you unlock your phone without entering your passcode. Just touch the home button and your iPhone unlocks.

You can set up to five different fingerprints to unlock your phone. You can use fingers on both hands and/or let a trusted friend use a fingerprint to unlock your phone.

Follow the instructions on the Apple website to set up Touch ID.

Apple Pay

Scan a credit card to use Apple Pay on your iPhone (and Apple Watch) to pay at participating retailers and online. You can go shopping without needing your wallet or credit card and save time at checkout.

Find out more about Apple Pay at the Apple Website.

Apple Health

Enter your emergency information in the Medical ID section of Apple Health. This is information that can be accessed by first responders even if your phone is locked with a passcode.

Note that anyone can access your Medical ID information so don’t put private information in there such as your insurance policy number.

Read about how to set up Apple Health at ICE: How the Apple Health App May Save Your Life.

Set Your Favorite Contacts

You can set your family, best friends and other important people as your Favorites. This gives you quicker access to calling, texting and connecting via FaceTime.

To set someone as a Favorite, open your Contacts app and find your friend. Scroll down to the bottom of the entry and tap Add to Favorites.

You can then get in touch with your Favorites quickly by opening your Phone app and selecting Favorites on the left of your bottom menu bar.

You can rearrange the order of your Favorites. Open the Phone app, tap Favorites, then Edit in the upper left corner of the screen.

Your Favorites will show three stacked bars to the right. Drag and drop the bar to the position you want your favorites to be in. Tap Done.

Note that you can call and text your iPhone Favorites on your Apple Watch.

Do Not Disturb

If you’ve ever been woken up in the middle of the night by someone calling a wrong number, you’ll appreciate Do Not Disturb. You can set this feature to automatically turn on every night and off every morning.

Worried about someone not being able to get through in case of emergency? You can let your Favorites get through in Settings. You can also let anyone get through if they call you three times in a row.

Find out more at: Do Not Disturb – The iPhone Feature You Should Be Using.

Background App Refresh

You can have apps update information in the background, even when you’re not using them. Set Background App Refresh for the apps you want ready to go as soon as you open them.

Turn on Background App Refresh for the apps you use most or whose current information you want as soon as you open the app.

Check out Background App Refresh — Make the Best Use of Your Apps.

Dock

Put the apps you want into the dock at the bottom of your screen. You can put up to four apps into your dock to keep them handy.

Press and hold your favorite app then drag it to the bottom of the screen to put it in your dock.

Folders

Organize your apps into folders to find them easily and fit more apps onto your home screen. You can even put folders into your dock to have them handy on each screen.

See, How to Create App Folders for Your iPhone and iPad to learn more.

Privacy Settings

Go to Settings => Privacy to make sure your app permissions suit your needs. Do the apps that have access to your phone really need that access?

Check:

Microphone — if an app doesn’t need to hear the sound of your voice, turn off Microphone for that app.

Location Services — an app can follow your location if you give it permission to. Look for the triangle icon at the top of your phone screen. The icon will be blue if your location is being tracked.

In addition to concerns about privacy, you should also be aware that using location services can drain your battery quickly.

Camera — Some apps may need to use your camera, but if they don’t then you should turn this off.

Contacts — Only let apps who need your list of contacts have access to this information.

Photos — Apps may need access to your photos so you can add filters or post them on social media. If not, turn this off.

Health — If you’re using your iPhone to track your fitness, you may want to give permission to apps to access Apple Health.

Spotlight Search

You can swipe down from the center of the home screen to search websites, your apps, contacts, locations and more with Spotlight Search. See, How to Use Spotlight Search on iPhone and iPad.

But maybe you don’t want to search all your apps with Spotlight search. Perhaps you only want to search your favorite apps.

You can control what you search for in Spotlight. Go to:

Settings => General => Spotlight Search and turn off any apps you don’t want Spotlight to search for.

Introduce Yourself to Siri

Siri, the iPhone voice assistant, will work much better for you if you help Siri get to know you. Go to:

Settings => General => Siri => My Info and select yourself as a contact. Then Siri will know you’re the boss.

Set up your relationships in Contacts to tell Siri who you are. Tell Siri that “[Name] is my [relationship].”

You can then ask Siri to call, text or read a message from that person by saying their relationship to you.

“Siri, call my sister.”

Look at Tech-Knowledgy: Why Does Siri Hate Me? to find out more.

Turn Off Wi-Fi Assist

Wi-Fi Assist changes your iPhone’s Internet connection from Wi-Fi to cellular data when your Wi-Fi network is slow. This setting is turned on by default.

But if you don’t have an unlimited data plan, you could be using up your monthly data allotment much more quickly than you realize.

Be sure to take a moment to turn off Wi-Fi Assist (unless you have an unlimited data plan). You can always turn off Wi-Fi manually if your connection is slow.

Don’t miss The New iPhone Setting You Should Turn Off Now!

Your Thoughts

Have you taken these steps to set up your phone? Which steps made a big difference in the way you used your iPhone? Are there any steps you would recommend?

Share Your Thoughts in the Comments section below!