iPhone Flashlight: 5 Essential Tips

An iPhone flashlight is a small but awesome part of what the iPhone can do. You don’t need a new iPhone for this to work, but if you own an iPhone 4 or newer you can use your iPhone flashlight fast and turn it off faster with a few essential tips.

We use the iPhone flashlight as our go to flashlight for walks, finding small things we dropped, calling attention to our position and much more. The flashlight is as useful as many of the apps we keep on our iPhone.

This short guide will show you how to use the iPhone flashlight, how to turn off the iPhone flashlight fast and what you need to know about iPhone flashlight apps.

Unless you are using a very old iPhone with very old software you already have a flashlight installed and ready to use without the need to unlock your iPhone.

Here are five essential iPhone flashlight tips for every iPhone user to remember. This works on iOS 7, iOS 8 and iOS 9 on the iPhone 4 and newer all the way up to the iPhone 6s. In iOS 10 you can use 3D Touch to change the brightness of the iPhone flashlight. The iOS 10 release date is in fall 2016.

How to Use the iPhone Flashlight

You can use the iPhone flashlight without unlocking the iPhone. Apple includes a shortcut to turn the iPhone flashlight on in a second. Once you know where it is you will be ready to use the flashlight without even looking at your iPhone.

With the iPhone screen on swipe up from the bottom edge of the iPhone.

Now you are looking at Control Center. This offers an array of shortcuts to common tasks and activities, including the iPhone flashlight.

Tap on the iPhone flashlight icon in the bottom left. When the icon is white the flashlight is on and when it is grey it is off.

After you tap on it once, turn the iPhone towards you to see the flash on at full brightness that allows you to use the iPhone as a flashlight. You can turn the iPhone screen off and use the iPhone flashlight as long as you need it.

When you done, you need to turn the screen on, swipe up and tap on the flashlight icon to turn it off. Make sure you don’t leave the iPhone flashlight on for long periods as it can quickly drain your iPhone battery.

Can My iPhone Flashlight Burn Out?

A common question we hear is, “Can my iPhone flashlight burn out?” The only way your iPhone flashlight will stop working is if the iPhone battery dies, and then only until you charge the iPhone back up.

The iPhone flashlight uses the iPhone flash to illuminate your path. This uses an LED to provide the light, which lasts longer than a bulb you would place in your house or one that you would find in a cheap flashlight.

According to Bulbs.com, “Many LEDs have a rated life of up to 50,000 hours.” To put that in perspective, a typical LED can last almost six years of constant use. It is unlikely that you will use the iPhone flashlight for six year’s straight, so there is little chance of the iPhone flashlight burning out or damaging your iPhone camera flash.

How to Turn the iPhone Flashlight Off Fast

You can always turn the iPhone flashlight off with the Control Center, but there is a faster way to turn off the iPhone flashlight. You just need to activate the iPhone camera, or almost activate the iPhone camera. On the home screen there is a small icon that lets you open the camera app. If you swipe it halfway up, the camera app starts to open. This turns off the iPhone flashlight immediately.

You can then slide the camera icon back down to stop from opening the camera. If you slide it all the way up, you can just press the power button to close the camera app and turn the screen off.

Turn the iPhone Flashlight Into a Lantern

You can turn the single beam from the iPhone flashlight into a lantern with a bottle of water. You need a full plastic bottle of water and a rubber band for this to work.

Take the iPhone and rubber band it to the bottle of water with the flash pointing into the water, and not into the label. Turn the flashlight on and you’ll see the water sends the light into a broader area like a lantern would. Check out other uses for the iPhone flash.

iPhone Flashlight Apps

“Do I need an iPhone flashlight app?” and “Are iPhone flashlight apps safe?” are two common questions we hear from friends, family and readers.

If you are on iOS 7, iOS 8 and iOS 9 you don’t need a special iPhone flashlight app to use your phone as a flashlight. Apple builds this in to the phone as we’ve shown above.

In 2014 we heard a lot of concerns about flashlight apps spying on users, but for the most part this is not a major concern. Yes, there are opportunities for apps to ask for access to your personal information, but before a flashlight app can use most of your data it will need your permission. Don’t give it permission and you will not need to worry about it.

Unless you need special features like a flashing iPhone flashlight or something to automate morse code, you can just use the built-in iPhone flashlight app from Apple.

What's New in iOS 10.1

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This is a list of what's new in iOS 10.1, including new features like Portrait mode on the iPhone 7 Plus and a number of important fixes for the iPhone and iPad.  Camera and Photos Introduces Portrait Camera for iPhone 7 Plus that creates a depth effect that keeps your subject sharp while creating a beautifully blurred background (beta) People names in the Photos app are saved in iCloud backups Improved the display of wide color gamut photos in the grid views of the Photos app Fixes an issue where opening the Camera app would show a blurred or flashing screen for some users Fixes an issue that caused Photos to quit for some users when turning on iCloud Photo Library Maps Transit support for every major train, subway, ferry, and national bus line, as well as local bus systems for Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya Sign-based transit navigation including layouts of all underground structures and walkways that connect large transit stations Transit fare comparison when viewing alternative transit routes Messages New option to replay bubble and full screen effects Messages effects can play with Reduce Motion enabled Fixes an issue that could lead to contact names appearing incorrectly in Messages Addresses an issue where Messages could open to a white screen Addresses an issue that could prevent the report junk option from displaying with unknown senders Fixes an issue where videos captured and sent in the Messages app could be missing audio Apple Watch Adds distance and average pace to workout summaries in the Activity app for outdoor wheelchair run pace and outdoor wheelchair walk pace Fixes issues that may have prevented Music playlists from syncing to Apple Watch Addresses an issue that was preventing invitations and data to appear in Activity Sharing Fixes an issue that was allowing Activity Sharing to update over cellular when manually disabled Resolves an issue that was causing some third-party apps to crash when inputting text Other improvements and fixes Improves Bluetooth connectivity with 3rd party accessories Improves AirPlay Mirroring performance when waking a device from sleep Fixes an issue where playback would not work for iTunes purchased content when the "Show iTunes Purchases" setting is turned off Fixes an issue where certain selfie apps and face filters used with the FaceTime HD Camera on iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus did not display a live preview Fixes an issue in Health where individual strokes are converted to separate characters when using the Chinese handwriting keyboard Improves performance of sharing websites from Safari to Messages Fixes an issue in Safari that caused web previews in tab view to not display correctly Fixes an issue that caused certain Mail messages to be reformatted with very small text Fixes an issue that caused some HTML email to be formatted incorrectly Fixes an issue that in some cases caused the search field to disappear in Mail Fixes an issue that could prevent Today View Widgets from updating when launched Fixes an issue where Weather widget sometimes failed to load data Fixes an issue on iPhone 7 where Home Button click settings would not appear in search results Fixes an issue that prevented spam alert extensions from blocking calls Resolves an issue that could prevent alarm sounds from going off Fixes an issue where audio playback via Bluetooth would cause the Taptic engine to stop providing feedback for some users Resolves an issue preventing some users from restoring from iCloud Backup For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website:  https://support.apple.com/HT201222  Keep reading to check out the iOS 10 features and iOS 10.1 features that these updates offer.

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