We love to learn new iPhone tips and tricks, and we consistently find new ones, despite our best efforts to stop searching. We love an iPhone tip that claims to make our lives easier, whether it's how to use the hidden mouse pad, add widgets, or retrieve deleted texts. The volume controls on your iPhone are capable of much more than just changing the sound, as evidenced by the most current one.
You're losing out on a lot of useful shortcuts if you've just ever used the volume controls on your iPhone to adjust the volume up and down. Not sure where to begin? These are the greatest applications for those volume buttons outside of music.
How to use your iPhone’s volume buttons
Take photos
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If you need an extra hand to take photos, this handy hack can help. It works with portrait, traditional photo and panorama modes when shooting from the rear camera, and with portrait and traditional photo modes for the front camera. Just open the Camera app and press either volume button to take a photo or start a panorama. You can end the panorama with another tap of the button, or you can hold the button down the entire time to take the panorama. Accidentally delete one of those photos? Don’t fret. Here’s how to recover deleted iPhone photos.
Take videos
You can use the same trick to take a video. Just switch to video mode in the Camera app, then press either of the volume buttons to start taking a video. You can press it again to stop, or you can hold down the button the entire time to take a video—it’ll stop recording once you release the button.
Take photo bursts
A photo burst makes editing iPhone photos easier because it gives you more options to choose from. If you have an iPhone XS, iPhone XR or newer, you can press and hold the volume up button to take burst shots. To allow for that, go to Settings > Camera, then turn on “Use Volume Up for Burst.” If you’re using the burst mode already, learning how to delete duplicate photos on your iPhone is important.
Scan documents
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Your iPhone’s built-in document scanner will work in apps such as Files, Mail, Notes and Reminders. Since this function uses the Camera app, you can press either volume button to snap a scan of the document you need instead of pressing the shutter button on the screen.
Snooze an alarm clock
For those who use their iPhone instead of a traditional alarm clock, this is the trick you need to know. If you’re half asleep and can’t be bothered to find the “Snooze” on your phone screen in the morning, just press either volume button to snooze your alarm—just make sure you have the “Snooze” function enabled for that particular alarm.
Turn off an alarm clock
If you have toggled off the “Snooze” option for your alarm, clicking either volume button will turn off the alarm.
Call emergency services
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When you’re in an actual emergency and can’t spend time unlocking your iPhone to call 911, Apple has made things easier. To quickly get ahold of emergency services, just hold down the side lock button and either volume button (or all three buttons) until the “Emergency Call” slider pops up. Swipe the SOS icon to the right to place the call.
Force a restart
If your phone is frozen and there’s no way to restart it, you might be forced to complete a factory reset. To do so, press the volume up button, then volume down button, then the side lock button until you see the Apple logo on a black background. Once your lock screen reappears, it means a hard reset has been performed. Unlike a regular restart, which happens at the software level, a hard reset happens at the hardware level, which can help when your phone is frozen or buggy. Keep in mind that a factory reset wipes your entire phone, so make sure you have backed it up on the cloud recently.
Turn off Face ID or Touch ID quickly
You can temporarily prevent Face ID from unlocking your iPhone. Press and hold the side lock button and either volume button for two seconds. You’ll see the same screen as when you’re calling emergency services. After the sliders appear, press the side button to immediately lock your iPhone, which will lock automatically if you don’t touch the screen for a minute or so.
Silence an incoming call
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Want to quickly silence a call when you’re busy? Pressing either volume button will silence incoming regular calls as well as FaceTime calls, and will also stop vibrations if your phone is on vibrate mode.