9 iPad Tricks You Can't Live Without
Do you think you're getting the most out of your iPad? Do you use it every day and think you know all there is to it? I'm sorry to break it to you, that's probably not the case. Apple's tablet has a lot of "hidden" features which can help you with your productivity.
These iPad tricks will help you fall in love with your device and iOS system all over again.
We will uncover how to type faster, select text more accurately, use gestures to be more productive, or even scan documents without installing any apps or extra accessories. All this is possible with the iPad, although some options are too hidden so they remain unknown to many...
Let's see the 9 iPad tricks recommended from Todoappleblog:
Here’s a little trick that will allow you to be much more productive with the iPad and give the home button a rest.
To switch between apps on the device, instead of double-clicking the home button or using the Dock, you can simply slide four or five fingers horizontally over the tablet screen and voila!
If you have an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil, you can take quick notes without unlocking the device screen.
All you have to do is tap on the Pencil that appears on your screen and then write the note you want to save. The note will automatically be saved and you can view it later in the Notes app.
By default this function is active on all iPad Pro, but if you want to change its behavior or is not active for some reason you can do so from Settings - Notes - Access to notes from locked screen.
One of the advantages of having multiple Apple devices is that the link between all your devices is efficient. One of the best examples of this is the Universal Clipboard function. It lets you copy text to your iPhone and paste it to your iPad, or copy it to your iPad and paste it to your Mac.
The operation is very simple, simply copy text on one device and paste it on the other. There's no more, there's no intermediate step. Easy, isn't it?
The only requirement for it to work properly is that you have both devices configured with the same iCloud account, something you probably already have if you have more than one Apple device.
If you use the iPad to edit text you'll know that sometimes selecting a certain text is quite tedious, at least if you don't use this little trick.
iOS hides a secret virtual trackpad and in order to use it you just have to keep two fingers on the virtual keyboard. Doing this will change the keyboard and allow you to scroll through the text as if it were a trackpad or mouse, simply sliding your fingers across the screen to move the cursor.
In addition, you can use a second finger to select a particular part of the text, whether it's a few words, an entire phrase, a paragraph, etc...
Typing on an iPad, iPad Mini, or iPad Pro isn't always comfortable, especially if you need to enter large amounts of text. Luckily there are always tricks to be a little faster and recover time and one of them is to use text substitution.
To be perfectly clear, this function is only useful if you need to enter the same text very often or if you like to write with abbreviations that will automatically transform into the full word.
To give you an idea, with text substitution you can create different shortcuts to write certain things. For example, you can create the mid-direction shortcut and when you type it, your address will automatically appear. Another common example is to create a shortcut so that when you type @@ your full email address appears. The possibilities are endless and everything depends on how much time you take to configure this feature.
To do this, go to Settings - General - Keyboard - Text substitution and add all the shortcuts you need.
You closed a tab on Safari by mistake and need to retrieve it anyway? Don't worry, this is very simple and has been natively present in the iOS browser for a long time, but Apple keeps it somewhat hidden.
To recover them all you have to do is hold your finger for a few moments on the icon with the + symbol. When you do it you will see a list with the last closed tabs and you will be able to recover the one you just closed by mistake simply touching on it.
Another useful trick that can help you be more productive is to use the iPad's camera to scan documents.
And we're not just talking about taking a photo, but about making a scan in full detail and perfectly legible.
To do this, open the Notes app, create a new note, and touch the + icon on the iPad virtual keyboard. When you tap on the icon you will see a drop-down menu appear and you will have to choose the option Scan documents to automatically activate the camera.
Once scanned you can save it directly in the notes or export the resulting file to send by email, upload to a cloud, etc., etc ...
When you open the iPad keyboard, you will see that above the main letter or symbol of each key, another one appears in a light grey colour. The usual way is to use the .?123 and shift keys to type these symbols, but there is a way to do it much faster.
To be able to quickly type in those numbers or symbols that appear in light grey all you have to do is press the key and drag your finger down.
This way you will be much faster when you need to enter numbers or symbols in a text.
This feature came to iPad with iOS 11 and is tremendously useful for turning the device into a tool for creating content.
Thanks to this function you can, for example, easily insert an image that you have saved in iCloud in a Word or Pages document or copy a text from a website to a note.
For the function to be really comfortable you must combine it with Split View, that is, the split screen option of the tablet. When you have two apps open, simply click on the item you want to insert and drag it to the place where you want to leave it (for example a photo that is on a website to a Word document.