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There is a whole section of your phone's settings you have probably never opened. It is called Accessibility, and the name puts almost everyone off. Most people assume it is only for those with disabilities. It is where some of the most useful features are kept. Six of them are worth turning on this week. …

Your phone can do a handful of things that nobody ever told you about. They are not in any manual and they do not appear on any menu. You either get shown them by a friend, or you go years without knowing. Each one saves a few taps, which sounds small until it becomes muscle …

How many times a day do you swipe through pages of apps looking for one? You know it is there somewhere, probably inside a folder. Thirty seconds later you find it and forget it happened. There is a single search bar on your phone that finds everything. It is much faster, and most people never …

There is a printed Wi-Fi password on a card at the café. You squint at it, type it in wrong, and try again. Or a serial number on a router, a phone number on a poster, a menu you cannot read. Your phone can read text inside any photo and hand it to you. Once …

Somebody has asked for a scanned copy of a form. So you flatten it on the dining table and take a photo. The result is crooked, half in shadow, and clearly a photograph. Then you go looking for a scanner app. Most of them want a subscription. You do not need any of that. The …

You have turned off the notifications and cleaned up the home screen. For about a week, the phone feels wonderfully quiet. Then a new app gets installed, and the buzzing creeps back. The settings are only the starting point. What keeps a phone calm is a handful of small daily habits. Which habits actually matter? …

You picked up the phone to check one small thing before bed. It is now past midnight and you are still scrolling. The light, the colour, the endless feed. Your phone is practically engineered to keep you awake. A few settings flip that around. Set them to switch on by themselves each evening, and the …

You are in a meeting and a group chat lights up your screen. You are at dinner and work email arrives. Your phone has no idea whether you are working, eating or sleeping. So it treats every moment exactly the same. Focus modes fix that. You set them up once, and the phone becomes a …

You unlock your phone to check the time. Four minutes later you are inside an app you never meant to open. Your home screen is the first thing you see every time you pick the phone up. That happens dozens of times a day. If it is a wall of colourful, attention-grabbing icons, every glance …

Your phone buzzes and you reach for it straight away. It is a shopping app telling you about a sale you did not ask about. That happens to most of us all day long. So it is worth asking the honest question: how much of it actually matters? For most people the answer is almost …