Did you know about these handy iPhone tricks? Talking Tech podcast

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

More: Daily news, true crime, and more Paste BN podcasts

Hey there, listeners. Happy Monday. It's Brett Molina. Welcome back to Talking Tech. Obviously, if you own an iPhone, you own any smartphone really, you know that it does a zillion different great things. Take pictures, keep in touch with family, check social media, you play games, you can make phone calls, which apparently nobody does, but there's still a handful of us that make phone calls. But obviously your phone, your iPhone in particular, can do a lot of different things. But there are also some cool hidden tricks that you may not know about. My colleague Kim Komando writes about this in her most recent column that you can read on tech.usatoday.com. It's called, Want to draw on photos or check your heart rate? 10 iPhone tricks to use every day. Let's go through a couple. I've used some of these two, and I find them really useful.

There are one or two in here though that I didn't even try and didn't even realize, so this is definitely worth reading. Let's start with Markup, which is a really great tool, especially if you're taking screenshots, or you need to do other stuff. Basically what you'll do is if you go to a photo, you'll tap edit, there's a Markup button. It looks like a pencil that's inside a circle, and once you're there, you can start adding things. If you want to make a little note on a picture, if there's a document and you want to make a little note, if you want to add a signature. There's a zillion different things you can do with Markup. It is super useful. It's really great. And yeah, I highly recommend it if say you want to send a photo to someone with a little detail or again, working with documents, it's super helpful.

Another cool feature, and I used this actually about a week or two ago, is checking whether a surface is level. If you go to the Measure app, this is the really cool app that involves AR, and you can basically move your phone and measure a certain distance, the length of something or whatever you need. In that app is a level, and what you'll do is tap the level. You'll hold your phone against the object and basically use it as a level. I actually was hanging up a mirror for my wife, and I wanted to double check whether it was level. Took my phone out, took the level, rested the phone on top of the mirror. And yes, the mirror is level, so it worked out wonderfully, but it's super great. And it's great too, because with something like that, where maybe if you're like me, your level might be anywhere in your house. So a garage, whatever. So, it's nice to just have the phone if you just need to do a quick hit. Like, "Yep. It's level." You're good.

Let's do one more real quick. This is one I never knew about, and I'm honestly shocked. And frankly, I want to see this in a lot more other platforms. FaceTime. They have this really cool feature where you can basically make it look like you're keeping eye contact even if you're not. It's called Eye Contact. It came out in iOS 14, and basically it makes it look like you're looking at the person talking even if you're not. So, say you had to type a quick message or in a lot of cases, maybe you're not looking right at the camera. I've done this, where instead of looking at the camera, I might look at the screen. It makes it look like you're looking directly at the person you're talking to. Super helpful, super useful. You go to settings, FaceTime, and then you go to Eye Contact and toggle it, and you're all set.

You can read more of Kim's tips and all the other fun tricks that you can use to get the most out of your iPhone on tech.usatoday.com. Listeners. Let's hear from you. Do you have any comments, questions, show ideas, any tech problems you want us to try to address? Also, what's your favorite iPhone trick? Like one of those little hidden things that maybe not a lot of people know about, or maybe it's just something you didn't realize you use a lot, but it's more useful than you expected. Let me know on Twitter. I'm @BrettMolina23. Please don't forget to subscribe and rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcasts. You've been listening to Talking Tech. We'll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.