After the release of iOS 14.3, I’ve been doing a little more digging into iOS 14, and I stumbled across a little trick I never knew about before, even though I’ve been using iPhones since their 2007 launch. Such is the joy of technology.
It isn’t life-changing, but it’ll save you a few precious seconds when you’re configuring iOS or iPadOS on your device. Here’s how it works. Pull up the Settings app and navigate around—jump a few screens’ deep into your menus, as you normally might while trying to set a new DNS for your wifi, adjust accessibility options, or check out your iPhone’s storage.
When you’re ready to bump your way back to another screen to continue your configuring, don’t tap on the back button in the upper-left corner. Sure, that’ll pull you one level out of your Inception-like dream, but you can do better. Instead, press and hold your finger on the button. This will then pull up a context menu that will allow you to move immediately to any previous screen in your nested tree of menus, like so:
That’s it: a tiny time-saver that will come in handy whenever you’re adjusting the settings on your device. Even tiny 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 those 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 could just sticky those that are most relevant to me.
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I know you can kind-of get this functionality by long-pressing on the Settings icon on your home screen to bring up the Context Menu, but you can’t configure that with the settings menus you most care about. So, there you go.
