13 Settings To Customize On Your Brand New iPhone

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. If you got a new iPhone as a gift this year here are some settings that you may want to customize right away.

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So there are a ton of ways to customize your iPhone. Let's start by looking at the Control Center. The Control Center is what you get if you swipe down from the top right corner of your iPhone. You see all these different controls here. You can customize these controls and add useful functions by going to Settings and then Control Center. Then see Customize Controls. Go into there. You'll going to see a list of things at the top that are already there and a list of things at the bottom that you can add. Just tap the Plus button to add it and you'll see it goes to the top. The minus button will remove it and then you can drag the right side, those three lines, to change the order. There are a lot of cool useful things that you can add here. Be sure to go through them and add things you want or remove things you don't think you'll ever use. 

Also when you're on the Home screen if you swipe left to right it will bring up these widgets here. You can go through these widgets and they have useful information and sometimes they have controls. You can hit the Edit button at the bottom of the list and you get a similar list of things that you can customize. Everything at the top is already there and you can switch the order by using those three lines. Everything at the bottom are extra widgets that you can add to this view. Notice I have a lot of them. That's because that some apps also have widgets. When you install the app you get an extra widget or two and now you can add to that screen. So go through here and customize them. Check every once in awhile to see if some of the new apps that you've added have also added widgets that could be useful.

Now your iPhone could help you in an emergency but you have to set some things up in advance. What you want to do is under Settings go to Emergency SOS and first review what's shown here because different iPhones have different ways of triggering the Emergency SOS feature. This will call 911 basically. It can also call emergency contacts or send them a message. So you can do Setup Emergency Contacts in Help. Tap that and it will allow you to not only setup all your health information, like for instance allergies and blood type and things like that, but also to assign an emergency contact that will then be notified when you use this emergency feature.

You can also go to setup your medical ID by going in Settings to the Health settings and you can setup Medical ID which will be available to emergency responders. They can get to that through the lock screen on your phone without having to unlock your phone. So you can set things like your blood type here and other medical notes so that they have the information they need to help you even if you're not able to respond to their questions.

So you can customize how your iPhone screen looks in a number of ways. One of the most dramatic differences you can make is by going to Dark Mode. If you go into Settings and then go to Display & Brightness you can see Light and Dark Mode. You can see Dark Mode is significantly different than Light Mode. You can set it to be automatic as well with options for things like Sunset to Sunrise or customize it with some times. Then your phone will change so that it's dark mode at night and light mode during the day.

On a more practical note you should setup Do Not Disturb. In Settings under Do Not Disturb you can set it to be scheduled from certain time to another time. Then Notifications, Messages, even phone calls won't sound on your iPhone so you won't get woken up early by a telemarketer for instance. Notice that there are Settings here to make sure important calls come through. You can set it to Allow Calls from Favorites or choose Everyone if you want phone calls to always be allowed but other types of Notifications not to be. You can also allow Repeated Calls which means you can tell people that if they really need to get to you and it's an emergency just call twice and the second call will go through even if you have Do Not Disturb turned on.

Now I think a very important setting is the one that is actually right here. Do Not Disturb While Driving. You can turn that on automatically which means it will just text when you're in the car based on the motion. Or when you connect to the Bluetooth in your car so then when somebody text's you, you won't be bothered by it. But they will automatically get a response from your phone saying that you're driving and they will get a real response later on when you've stopped.

Now if you just got a new iPhone and you're using the default ringtone which means if you're in a room full of people and you hear that ringtone is it your phone, is it somebody else's phone. Everybody is going to be reaching for their iPhone. So instead go right away into Sounds and Haptics and go to Ringtone and setup a ringtone. Just pick one from any of the ones that come with your iPhone to get started. Something that won't be the same as everybody else's ringtone. 

Now you can also go into the Contacts app. Once you're in there you can view a contact and if you hit Edit you can set a ringtone. You can customize a ringtone for that person. So you have your default ringtone for any phone call that comes through but you can also set a custom ringtone for a specific person. So if you hear that ringtone you know who's calling without even looking at your phone.

Back at Sounds & Haptics in those settings there's Keyboard Clicks. I find it incredibly annoying to hear those little clicks everytime you type on the keyboard. So you could just turn those off right there. Further down in Settings there is Reminders. Go into there and there is a setting there you should look at. It's the Time for All-Day Reminders. So when you setup a reminder to remind you on a certain day of something this is that time that you'll get a notification if you haven't it set to a specific time. So if 9 a.m. isn't ideal for you, say you're an early riser and you want to get those notifications at 7 you can set it for that. Or you decide you don't want to deal with those kind of things until later in the day you could set it later. 

Now also down in this section of Settings is your phone settings. A really useful feature that is kind of new. Look for Silence Unknown Callers. Turn that on so what this does is if somebody calls you and they're in your Contacts then it will behave normally. Probably play the ringtone so you'll know they are calling. But if they're not listed in your Contacts at all it just goes straight to voicemail. You don't even know you're calling. So this is a great way to avoid telemarketer calls while still making sure that normal calls get through. If a real call comes in it will still be there in your voicemails. You won't completely miss it.

So a variety of different things can happen if you press the side button on your iPhone three times quickly. You can customize what happens there by going to Accessibility and then go to the bottom to Accessibility Shortcut. The triple click is called the Accessibility to shortcuts. There's all these different things. You can bring up a Magnifier, Zoom, you can go to Color Filters, you can turn on Voice Control. All sorts of different things that can happen. If you've checked more than one then triple clicking will simply bring up a list of those items and you can select one. Or just leave it a one and then the function will automatically happen when you triple click. I find the magnifier to be the most useful of these. It takes your camera from your iPhone and turns your iPhone into a magnifying glass. It's really useful for reading really tiny print.

So there's some ways you can customize your new iPhone to make it even more useful.