Sunday, October 16, 2011

Home and Sleep buttons of iOS devices: What do they do?


I just bought an iPad 2 few days back and accidentally clicked on the sleep & home button simultaneously. To my surprise (offcourse I did not know this feature), it took a screenshot of the movie I was watching then. I immediately searched it on google and found many more uses of these 2 buttons. Listing hem below. Do let me know if you know any more uses of them :). By the way it works on all iOS devices viz. iPhone, iPad, etc.






1) How to take Screenshot :

Same as listed above. Press home and sleep button at the same time as if you are clicking the button of camera. It will take a screenshot of whatever there is on your iOS device at that time.

2) How to Hard Reset:

If you continue to hold the sleep and home button for about 10 seconds (until apple logo appears), your iOS device will hard reset itself. It's similar to holding your boot-up button on your PC or Laptop. Thankfully, unlike windows systems, apple does not close your applications while it is hard-reset. You will find all your applications as they were before the hard reset.

3) How to put the device in Sleep Mode: 

As the name suggests, it puts the iOS device in sleep mode. The screen will black out. This is a power saving mode of the device. Note that you did not shut the device down. If you now click the Sleep button once again (or even the Home button), you wake the device up from its sleep. No application gets closed while it was sleeping. The wake up time of apple devices is pretty fast and impressive.
Note that some apps continue to run even in sleep mode. Like you music player! Which is a good thing - you can continue to listen to your favorite music even in sleep mode!

4) How to Switch Off the device:

Hold the Sleep button for about 3 seconds. On your screen a slider appears  that says something like 'Slide to Power Off' on  the top of your iOS screen. Slide it to your right to Switch the device off. If you changed your mind, press the Cancel button the bottom of the screen. Do nothing at this stage and after 2 seconds the slider will go away.

5) Home Button:

This is equivalent to the 'Show Desktop' icon on Windows task bar. No matter how many apps are open, when you press the Home button once, it will take you to the root / main screen of iPad (or any iOS device). If you click it one again now, it will take you the 'Search' screen. 
If you click the Home button twice continuously, the bottom tray of application shows up. You can now slide the tray to left/right to see how many apps are open.
Press and hold any app to see all the apps dancing :). You can now click on the red minus which appears on the top-left of each app to close the particular app.

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