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Feature Request: Do this to end the guessing game with iPhone app settings

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Why This Matters

This article highlights the frustrating user experience caused by the disjointed process of changing app settings on the iPhone, which often requires guesswork and navigating multiple menus. A third-party shortcut offers a promising solution to streamline this process, improving usability for consumers and encouraging more intuitive app customization. Addressing this issue could lead to more user-friendly interfaces and better integration within iOS, benefiting both developers and users.

Key Takeaways

One of the most annoying elements of the iPhone user interface is the guessing game we have to play when changing settings for an app.

Some of the time we open the app itself and go to its built-in settings menu. Other times we have to exit the app and open the completely separate Apple Settings app, which is a clunky experience to say the least (though a free shortcut helps) …

The problem with Settings

We’ve all been there. We want to change a setting for an app, so we go to the hamburger menu, select Settings and search for the one we want. We fail to find it and then realize we need to exit the app, open Apple’s own Settings app, search for the app, and make the change there before finally reopening the app we wanted to use.

It’s a clunky process to start with, and the fact that we have to begin it by making a guess as to where we should be looking in the first place makes it even worse.

Take Apple’s own Camera app as an example. Recent iPhones offer what Apple calls a Fusion Camera for the 1x lens. This defaults to 24mm, but we could instead have it default to either 28mm or 35mm. This is done by the app applying an automatic crop. Additionally, we can choose whether or not to tap the one times button in order to cycle between the different focal lengths.

But unless it’s tucked away somewhere I haven’t yet spotted, we can’t do this from within the Camera app itself. Instead, we have to open the Settings app, scroll down to Camera*, then scroll down to the Photo Capture section, tap Fusion Camera – and only then can we make our choice.

*Don’t even get me started on also having to guess whether an Apple app will have its own section in Settings or be within the Apps section …

A shortcut provides a partial fix

We can’t avoid the guesswork, but there is at least a handy third-party shortcut created by Snazzy Labs’ Quinn Nelson to take away some of the pain.

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