The new release of iPhone’s operating system, iOS 16, is packed with so many new features, there’s no way to comment on all of them. Some of the leading iPhone experts have yet to unpack all of the personalization goodies hidden in gestures and long screen-presses.

This series, Make Your iPhone Work For You, hosted by The Internet Patrol, is here to keep you up to date on new iOS releases and the features that come with them. We’ve compiled our favorite tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your iPhone. From productivity hacks to hidden features, we’ll go over everything you need to know to make your iPhone work for you.

Do you have your own catch phrase? Or a by-line? Maybe it’s your signature or maybe it’s stuff like “I’m on the way home!” even stuff like “I love you all the way past the moon and back again!” Don’t get caught up trying to type out the entire phrase every time. Buy some time by creating a shortcut for your signature line. (You can even use this fun trick to type out a phrase in a string of emoji characters!)

While in the Keyboard Settings menu on your iPhone, go to “Text Replacement” then click  on the + sign at the top of your screen to enter  the phrase and what you want the shortcut to be.  After you’ve created the text replacement shortcut and saved it, whenever you type in the shortcut  (like “otw”), instead of the letters you just typed, the full phrase will appear on your keyboard’s text preview. Depending on your settings, you may have to tap on the phrase in the text preview window to enter it. For most iPhone users though, the default is to automatically enter it upon clicking the space bar. (If your shortcut isn’t magically changing after hitting the space key,  you may have to tap on it in the predictive preview bar. If you don’t have the Predictive Text feature on, it’s a toggle in the Keyboard Settings, as well. 

The text replacement feature is one of my favorites. It makes my life a lot easier by streamlining phrases I use frequently so I don’t have to spend so much time staring into my screen. My biggest use of this feature isn’t for key phrases though… I mostly use this shortcut to fix my commonly misspelled words. If there are any words that for some reason, every single time, you spell it wrong? Whether it’s by accidentally pressing the wrong keys or your inability to recall the spelling of it, it comes out wrong every time. This is where text replacement really shines in my iPhonebook.