5 Ways to Get the Most Out of iOS

My apartment is both organized, and not-so-organized.

I have books neatly arranged by topic and author; I have clothes filed away by type in a dresser in my bedroom; I have a medicine cabinet in the bathroom stocked with deodorants and sunscreen and bandaids each with a shelf of their own.

But underneath the veneer of neatness, is quite frankly, a mess. I have a nightstand next to my bed stuffed with random cords and connectors for devices long-gone; I have a filing cabinet with disorganized documents and birthday cards; and then I have The Closet. The Closet is just stuffed willy-nilly with everything else. I shiver when I pass by it. It’s a wreck.

Most of this stuff is junk. But every once in a while I find a small miracle in there. Something lost; something hidden; something that I truly need.

iOS is like this too.

It contains everything: our feats and foibles; our triumphs and our travails. And mostly it’s organized: we know where to find things when we need them.

But iOS has a few disorganized closets of its own. These are the little corners of the system that are mostly filled with useless junk — but that also contain some hidden gems.

I’ve been collecting a few of these gems for myself — and they make using my phone just a little easier every day.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Automatic sleep timer 

I often listen to audiobooks, podcasts, or music as I’m falling asleep.

Listening to something makes it easier for me to drift off, but the problem is that if that thing keeps playing after I’m asleep, it often wakes me up again. Some apps have sleep timers to automatically shut the sound off after a few minutes, but many don’t.

What’s an insomniac to do? Well it turns out that iOS has a hidden feature built to help with exactly this. Here’s what you do.

Next time you’re listening to something that you want to automatically turn off after a set period of time, open up your Clock app and navigate to your alarm.

There’s this little thing at the bottom that everyone always ignores that says, “When Timer Ends.”

Don’t ignore it this time! Click it. Then scroll all the way to the bottom until you see a little thing that says, “Stop Playing.”