Apple has always been a leader in clear, simple user-interface design, but in the early days of iOS, there seemed to be a shortage of fully detailed documentation on how every little feature worked. iPhones were supposed to be so easy to use that a manual was superfluous. And it mostly was. But as iOS has matured and evolved, Apple has also beefed up its informational efforts. The “Tips” app offers great regularly-scheduled pointers on less-obvious iOS features, but their new iPod Touch User Guide for iOS 8.3, available in the iBooks Store, really ups the game with a detailed runthrough of every single feature and interface option.

However, as a so-called “power user” who is often answering “how do I…?” questions and sharing little usage tips with people, I frankly was in no rush to read the User Guide – I was sure it would be almost entirely stuff I already knew. But when I finally hunkered down and went through it, I actually learned quite a few nifty things about iOS and my iPod Touch that I hadn’t known. (Note that this is all from the iPod Touch guide, so although everything applies on the iPhone, there’s no iPhone-only tips here.)

I pared the list down to only those items that made me jump a little and go, “Cool, I’ve got to try that!” The non-obvious little things that actually make a certain task slightly easier, or reveal a useful detail I wasn’t aware of.

So check these out and you’ll become an instant power user — without having to slog through all The 934 pages (on an itouch screen, that is) of the User Guide!

The tips

Triple-click for instant night mode
When reading at night, I sometimes like to use the “Invert Colors” Accessibility feature, making everything light on a dark background. Most text-reading apps like Simplenote or Instapaper offer a “night mode”, but using the Accessibility setting instead gives you night mode for everything. However, it’s quite a few clicks to access it. Instead, go to Settings > General >  Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut, and select “Invert Colors” as the action to take for a triple-click.

Hold on to Siri
Instead of releasing the Home button and waiting for Siri to notice you stopped talking, just keep holding down the Home button while you talk, and release it when you finish.

Dictation shortcuts
I love Dictation, except when I can’t remember how to do some fine-tuned formatting, like capitalizing certain words. Here’s the commands I have in mind:

• cap—capitalizes the next word
• all caps—makes the next word all uppercase
• caps on … caps off—capitalizes the first character of each word
• all caps on … all caps off—to make the enclosed words all uppercase
• no caps on … no caps off—to make the enclosed words all lowercase

And here’s a couple that are handy when you’re texting:

• “smiley—to insert 🙂
• frowny—to insert :-(”

Take a text photo or video.

Video text message
I knew you could send audio via text with the little “record” icon, but I thought the camera icon was only for taking or selecting a photo. it didn’t occur to me that you can also take or record video just by holding that icon and sliding to the camera, or the red dot. Well, you can.

I bet you email that to all the girls
Want to screen out messages you were merely cc’d on? Easy peasy. View your mailboxes and hit “Edit” and behold: a bunch of optional mailboxes, including one called “To or CC” which only shows the ones addressed directly to you. (Still uncertain about the “or CC” part of the mailbox name, but…)

Search email for more than words
You can search Mail by timeframe, or for certain kinds of messages, all with text keywords. Scroll to or tap the top of the message list to reveal the search field, then type something like “February meeting” to find all messages from February with the word “meeting.” To find all flagged, unread messages from people in your VIP list, type “flag unread vip.” You can also search for other message attributes, such as “attachment.”

The two-swipe delete
After swiping left on a mail message in list view, you see various options like “Flag” or “Archive”. But to just delete the message, swipe left… twice. No need to tap right on the red “Delete” option (if it’s there; these options are also customizable.). I was swiping only on the relatively tiny white area still visible on the left, outside the action buttons – but the second swipe can happen anywhere on the message.

Quick site-specific search
In Safari, enter a name or shortcut of a site first, then your search terms, to search that site only. Thus: “wiki einstein” or “imdb oklahoma”.

Zap that tab
Viewing your “tabs” in Safari, you can delete one by clicking the little “x”… or just swipe the whole tab to the left. Much easier!

One-tap bookmark
To bookmark a page in Safari, you can just hold down the bookmark icon.

Share only the text
Go to the Reader view by clicking the Reader icon in the address bar… then hit . The  stripped-down text will be shared.

Late Night with iPhone
The “Late Night” audio EQ setting compresses the music by bringing up the lows and suppressing the highs – it can help when listening to music on an airplane or in some noisy locations. It applies to all audio, including podcasts and videos.

Lock down that focus
I knew you could touch the screen to focus on, or optimize the exposure for, a particular area. But I didn’t realize that holding down on the spot for a moment locks the focus and exposure (the “focus square” vibrates for a moment to confirm this).

Make a backwards panorama
When taking a panoramic picture, the “guide arrow” is on the left, expecting you guide you as you pan to the right. Want to pan right-to-left instead? Touch the arrow and it reverses direction (with a nice little animation). Oh, and you can pan vertically (either direction) too.

More weather info down below
The Weather info screen gives plenty of key info right away, which must be why I never tried swiping the hourly temperatures to the left (they continue), or swiping the whole screen up to reveal things like today’s sunrise and sunset times.

You can go your own way
Once you find your directions in Maps, note that there’s three tabs – Drive, Walk and… Apps. Tap that, and you can use Google Maps or one of your transit apps to finish the job.

Take a flyover tour
This is one of the niftier and more dramatic “easter eggs” hidden in iOS; unfortunately, it could be easier to get to it. In any Map view (Standard, Hybrid or Satellite), zoom out and you’ll see a “3D” icon next to certain major cities’ names. Tap it, and a popup lets you start a “Flyover Tour”. You switch to 3D view and start flying! Key features are identified with a title at the bottom of the screen. You may rarely use this, but it’s very cool (and a fun way to get an overview of a city).

Siri can do that?
You can tell Siri to: “Purchase song name by band name”; or to “Redeem an iTunes Gift Card”.

Squeeze your book closed
Sure, you can close a book and return to your library in iBooks by tapping “Library”. But you can just pinch the book closed for the same result.

Share a great quote in iBooks
Highlight some deathless prose in your book, then tap the  icon in the popup menu. You can email the quote, which will include a link to the book in iBooks.

Passbook
If you use Passbook, and find that a purchase isn’t showing up on a particular pass, you can refresh it. Just tap the  and then, on the screen that appears, drag down.

And just one more thing…

Buy music without a credit card

There’s something called an iTunes Pass that you can use instead of a credit card to make purchases in the iTunes or App Store. The catch? You have to add money to it in person at an Apple Store. Bypassing the credit card process can certainly have advantages for those who either don’t have or don’t wish to use that method. Like the other items in this list, I was totally unaware of this and while I wouldn’t be using it myself, it’s an interesting option to be aware of.