35 brilliant iOS 7 tips and tricks

31. Brightness: Reduce the glare

You know that feeling when your iPhone or iPad screen flicks to life in a darkened room and instantly melts your eyeballs?

Apple's love of a clean white aesthetic can be painful at times, but with iOS 7.1 you can do something about it. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Increase Contrast and toggle Reduce White Point to 'On'.

You'll find the glaring white has been dialled down a notch. Wizard.

32. Button shapes: press here

Not everyone is a fan of iOS 7's minimalist look and the lack of outlines on buttons can make it harder to tap your target. Well, now you can bring them back.

Just go to Settings > General > Accessibility, scroll down to Button Shapes and toggle it on.

You'll get grey outlines on buttons in the menu bar and tappable text will be underlined - although it does make everything look a little less refined compared to the usual Apple fluidity.

33. Siri: stop listening

There's a pause when you've finished speaking before Siri realises that you're done and it can be annoying having to wait.

Sometimes Siri decides you're done because you paused for a moment too long, but actually you aren't. If you were done, you could always tap the screen to tell Siri to stop listening, but that's a bit convoluted.

With iOS 7.1 you can hold down the Home button while you speak and let go when you are finished so Siri knows exactly when you're done. This is especially handy if you only have one hand free.

34. Perspective Zoom: Kill the parallax

Whether it gives you motion sickness or you just don't like it, there is thankfully now a way to get rid of the parallax effect on your wallpaper without having to kill the zooming transition animations coming in and out of apps.

If you have Reduce Motion off in Settings > General > Accessibility, then you can go to Settings > Wallpapers & Brightness, choose your lock screen and home screen wallpapers and toggle Perspective Zoom to the 'Off' position.

35. Contrast: Reduce transparency and darken colours

If you don't like the transparent menus with blurred backgrounds underneath then good news: you can tweak them. Head into Settings > General > Accessibility > Increase Contrast and turn on Reduce Transparency.

It will make the dock, keyboard, Notification Centre and everything else opaque. You may also want to toggle on Darken Colours to make everything a little easier to read.

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Carrie Marshall
Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.