1166 – Additional Tips For Speed: Tom talks Phone Tips

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Episode 1166 of Screw the Commute continues Tom Antion’s series of iPhone productivity tips, focusing on shortcuts that can save time when editing text, moving content between apps, responding to messages, using Siri, and working with photos.
• Precisely select text with the keyboard: Hold Shift, then press and hold the spacebar to use the keyboard like a trackpad and adjust a text selection more precisely instead of struggling with the blue selection handles.
• Drag and drop text between apps: After selecting text, press and hold it until it “floats.” Keep one finger on it while using your other hand to switch apps, then drag and drop the text into the destination instead of using traditional copy and paste.
• Call directly from a text conversation: From an iMessage/text conversation, tap the contact controls near the top to quickly access options such as phone calls, FaceTime, or other available communication methods without leaving the conversation and searching Contacts.
• Use Siri to add items to existing Reminders lists: If you already have a list in the Reminders app, tell Siri to add an item to that specific list—for example, adding something to an Office Depot shopping list—without opening Reminders and typing it manually.
• Remove photo backgrounds and reuse subjects: In Photos, press and hold a clearly defined subject such as a person, pet, or object. The iPhone can isolate the subject from the background so you can copy it, turn it into a sticker, or insert it into messages or emails. Images can also be dragged and dropped between compatible apps similarly to text.
Bottom line
Tom's message is that learning a collection of small, lesser-known iPhone gestures can eliminate repetitive steps and make everyday phone use considerably faster. Episode 1166 builds directly on Episode 1165's tip about holding the spacebar to move the cursor, extending the idea to text selection and cross-app drag-and-drop.

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Episode 1166 – Phone Tips
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.
[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1166 of Screw the Commute podcast. I've got so many phone tips. I did some on Friday, so I'm doing another episode today. Short episode. These things will make you lightning fast and make you wonder why you didn't learn this stuff a long time ago. So more phone tips today. And of course, you Android folks take the idea and look up how to do it on Google because I don't know. I got an iPhone now. Episode 1165 that was another phone tips, but we have all kinds of phone tips episodes. So if you go to screwthecommute.com/training and then hit control F or command F, just put in the word phone and you'll see all the back episodes. And if you took them one at a time and say, oh my God, I didn't know you could do that. Oh, I've been fighting with this forever. Oh my goodness. You'll, you'll just go crazy and you'll be lightning fast on your cell phone. All right, pick up a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And also check out my mentor program, greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org, certified to operate by SCHEV. And I forgot to tell you on my automation book. Screwthecommute.com/automatefree version 4.0 is out for 2026. Even if you have 3.0, this one's going to blow you away. Grab it. All right. And I hope you didn't miss episode 1165. If you did, you're going to learn.
[00:02:02] The last tip on that episode is just amazing how how it'll make your life easier. And so this one kind of plays off of it. So my first, uh, the one on 1165 was how to move the cursor with your spacebar. So this one goes a step further by selecting text. Did you ever try to grab those little blue handles and move them exactly where you want them? Well, I have, and I'm sure you have too. So here's what you do. You hold down the shift key. That's the little up arrow that you can make all caps and everything. Hold that down with your left hand, and then hold down the spacebar for at least a second with your right hand. And then that will allow you to select or, and or deselect, you know, run it right exactly where you want the text selection. So you hold down the shift key, hold down the spacebar for a second and then you can make the selection perfectly the first time of the text you want to select. All right. Great. Now let's take that a step further. You know how you want to copy and paste things all the time, right? So once you have something selected, you don't really have to do the copy and paste thing. This amazed me when I first learned this. If you hold down the selected text, it's going to start floating where you can move it around the screen even.
[00:03:36] And then listen to this folks. You can take your other hand, close that program, go pick another program, find where you want to paste it, and then drag the selected text that's still under your thumb or your finger on on the screen and drop it and drag it wherever you want. You didn't have to do the copy and paste thing I never dreamed you could do something like that. So just to recap, you hold down the selected text, it's going to float, and then you got to keep your finger on it or it'll disappear. And then you go with your other hand to move the screen or go to a different program. Whatever you want to do, drag it and drop it where you want it. Go give it a try. All right. Next thing is you get a text and you want to call directly back to the person from the text. You don't want to text back because you have too much to say. Let's say so right underneath their icon. Even if they're not in your your contacts, they usually have there's a big circle icon, but underneath it is a little oval circle, and it has a little like arrow in it, right hand arrow, or it's commonly called a carrot. If you tap that, it's going to open up options that you can WhatsApp them, you can call them directly, you can FaceTime them.
[00:05:03] Anything right there from the text. All right. So that's the little oval underneath the text. All right. Did you know that Siri can add things to a list for you? Now if you have a list, the list has to already be made in your reminders app. But if it's already made and you have hey Siri turned on, or if you hold your power button in, that'll turn on Siri. You could say, Hey Siri, add uh oh, because my phone is right near me. Hey, you say, Hey Siri, add pencil erasers onto my list for Office Depot and it'll put them on there. It'll come up with a confirmation that it did the right thing. And there you go. So you can add things to list without opening up the reminders app and then typing them in. All these things just, you know, a few seconds here, a few seconds there can just, you know, like make you lightning fast with your iPhone. Then the last one for today will be removing backgrounds from photos. So if you open your photos app and then open a photo, but the photo needs to have a pretty clear subject. It can't just be a hodgepodge of a bunch of stuff, because the it'll never know what you want to remove the background from. But if it's got a clear photo of your dog or, you know, whatever, you hold your finger on it and a kind of a light circle will circle the thing that you're highlighting, and then you can take that and paste it somewhere, wherever you want.
[00:06:49] You can make stickers out of it. You can paste it into a text or an email or whatever you want to do. So that's removing background. And then, oh, speaking of like, if it was a picture of your dog back in the copy and paste thing where I told you you could hold your finger on it and slide it and float it around everywhere to different programs. That also works for graphics. So a picture, you can hold your finger on it, and then that selects it and removes it from wherever or doesn't remove it. It copies it from your wherever you're at, and you got to keep your finger on it and then move to where you want it to drop and drag it in there and drop it. And there you go. So there's four, one, two, five new things for this episode that'll help you be lightning fast with your cell phone. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program, greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org, certified to operate by SCHEV. All right. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.