Little-known iPhone shortcut adds time saving button to your lock screen

Published 12:12 20 Feb 2026 GMT

This could be incredibly handy in certain situations

You’d be surprised at quite how many hidden features and tools there are in your iPhone, and while you won’t necessarily need to be using every single one all the time, you never know when they might come in handy.

These can include secret codes that can even protect your phone from being stolen, alongside a simple yet effective setting change that’ll transform your experience using Safari.

One under-used tool that everyone should at the very least be aware of, however, involves a button that quickly restarts your iPhone — as you never know when this could save your skin.

Most people don’t even turn their phones off these days, and restarts are therefore even more uncommon, yet it’s surprising how effective it can be to fix any issues that crop up.

Your iPhone has a number of hidden settings that you should definitely take advantage of (Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)

You’ve likely heard of the age old advice that turning something off and on again fixes all issues, but it’s surprisingly true as it effectively flushes your device and resets everything back to ‘normal’.

Having that in an easy to access button is incredibly handy if your phone every gets stuck, frozen, or simply stops working, as it’s far more reliable than having to go through several processes that could create further issues.

As reported by iDownloadBlog, this feature is also used a lot by developers and testers of apps and websites, as they’ll often find themselves restarting their Apple devices on the regular.

This feature allows you to quickly restart your iPhone with a single button press (Annice Lyn/Getty Images)