After the release of iOS 14.3, I’ve been getting into iOS 14 a bit more, and I came across a little trick that I never knew before, even though I’ve been using iPhones since their launch in 2007. That’s the joy of technology.
It’s not life-changing, but it will save you a few precious seconds when you set up iOS or iPadOS on your device. This is how it works. Pull it Settings app and navigate around – jump a few screens deep into your menus, as you normally would when trying to set up a new DNS for your Wi-Fi, adjust accessibility options, or view your iPhone’s storage.
When you’re ready to return to another screen to continue with your setup, don’t tap the back button in the top left corner. Sure, that pulls you one level out of you Inception-like dreams, but you can do better. Instead, press and to keep your finger on the button. This will then bring up a context menu that will immediately take you to a previous screen in your nested menu structure, such as:
That’s it – a little time saver that will come in handy when adjusting the settings on your device. Even small hacks are productivity hacks, right?
Now that I know this option exists, I think it’s time for Apple to take it to the next level: give me a way to favorite the settings screens I use the most and prioritize them in the list above the screens that I never touch, like VPN, for example, or Wallpaper. Yes, it would mess up the “flow” of Settings, but that’s fine; I get tired of searching for specific frequently used screens when I can just paste the screens that are most relevant to me.
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I know you can do it kind of get this functionality by long pressing the Settings icon on your home screen open the context menu, but you can’t configure that with the setup menus you care about most. There you go then.