iPhone users have just discovered a little-known shortcut that allows you to quickly swap between open apps – and it could revolutionise the way you use your phone
When you use your iPhone, it’s not uncommon to have multiple apps open at once. While it’s good to get into the habit of properly closing down apps you’re not using, most of us will do that at the end of the day and won’t bother swiping to shut down every app we open during a 30-minute scroll on our devices.
Sometimes, you need more than one app open at a time. For example, if you’re trying to save a photo from Google Images and want to send it to a friend on WhatsApp, or you’re scrolling on social media and want to skip a song on your music app. This can be an arduous task involving bringing up your list of apps and navigating to the next one you want to open.
But what if we told you there’s an easier way? iPhone users have been left “mind-blown” after discovering a quick way to swap between open apps with just one subtle movement.
In a video shared on TikTok by Sidney Raz, he said he didn’t discover the hack until recently, and it left him gobsmacked when he finally figured it out – so he shared it with the world.
To do this, place your thumb at the very bottom left of your iPhone screen, next to the bar where you would swipe up to close the app you’re currently using.
Then, simply swipe left and right to swap between all the apps that you currently have open.
Sidney said: “You can easily scroll between apps on your iPhone. Bottom of the screen, thumb, swipe.”
Commenters on the post were left “mind-blown” by the hack, as many said they had owned iPhones for years but had never known about the easy trick for switching apps.
One person said: “How many of us just tried and had our minds blown?”
Another added: “Why does nobody teach us these things? It never occurred to me to touch that line.”
A third baffled iPhone user asked: “That’s how I did that by accident? I always thought it was my phone randomly acting up. It’s a feature?!”
Other commenters pointed out that the feature doesn’t work on older phones, most notably those that still have a button at the bottom of the screen, like the iPhone SE and any numbered iPhone released before the iPhone X in 2017.
It’s not just iPhones that have the feature, either. Many Android phones also do the same thing in exactly the same spot, as tested with my Google Pixel 7 Pro, making it easy for almost any mobile user to quickly swap between their open apps.
Try it yourself to see if your phone has the feature!