THE IPHONE has a hidden feature to help users avoid being caught off guard by a dead battery.
You can easily change your settings to get the most out of the iPhone and its virtual assistant Siri.
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The iPhone has loads of customizable features for creating a device that’s unique to the user.
While a new background or rearranged home screen can excite, the Automations feature will level up the iPhone to cater to your needs.
Users can set up a Siri voice announcement to stay in the loop on the phone’s battery level when plugging and unplugging the charger.
To get started, navigate to the Shortcuts app.
The Shortcuts app is divided into two sections: Personal and Home Hub.
For this battery tip, click the Create Personal Automation tab and select the clock icon in the lower middle of the screen.
Users will see a wide variety of potential commands – for the purposes of this guide, scroll to the sixth block of tabs, which are dedicated to the battery.
Within this group of battery-related commands, click Charger, which is signified with the green battery icon.
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Following directions to this point will land you on a screen with the heading New Automation.
Toggle on both the Connected and Disconnected tabs and hit Next in the upper right-hand corner to go to the Actions page.
Select Add Action and type “Get Battery Level” in the search bar.
On the following page, the search bar has moved to the bottom of the page – click it and type “Speak Text”.
The next page will show your new, customized command in full which should read: When iPhone is connected or disconnected from power, Get Battery Level and Speak Text.
The default setting will ping users with a notification asking if they want to “run” the automation.
Toggle off the Ask Before Running tab on the Edit Automation screen if you want Siri to announce your percentage without having to swipe to give the device approval.
Under these conditions, Siri will simply state the battery’s percentage and nothing else.
To add a bit of flavor, tap to the left of the green battery icon to put the cursor between Speak and Battery Level.
Type whatever you’d like Siri to preface your battery level with – Gadget Hacks gives the example “My current battery level is”.
With these parameters, Siri will say “My current battery level is” followed by the percentage.
This iPhone tip is a deep cut, buried away in an app that many users delete due to a lack of use.
But this example shows just how customizable the iPhone is, and more personalization is coming to the device with the release of iOS 16 this fall.
