11 great iPhone pranks to fool your friends
iPhone pranks
For many of us, our iPhone is the hub of a digital life and contains important information like pictures, text messages, and much more. That makes it an easy target if you’re looking to play a prank on someone.
Everyone is a fan of a good prank, until a prank gets pulled on them. But when it comes to someone’s iPhone, these pranks can be pulled off quickly and are very harmless, which saves the pranked and the prankster from any unwanted headaches if you catch my drift.
We’re highlighting 11 harmless pranks to play on friends who have an iPhone.
Auto-correct Treachery
COPYRIGHT_NOVA: Published on https://www.novabach.com/i/11-great-iphone-pranks-to-fool-your-friends/ by Daniel Barrett on 2020-08-29T14:31:07.000Z
This is probably one of the most well-known iPhone pranks out there. If you ever have one of your friends unlocked iPhones, using auto-correct is a very slick prank premise. Go to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Add Shortcut. For users on iOS 9 beta, you may see Text Replacement instead of “Add Shortcut.”
Enter a common word like “Okay” or “Thanks” in the Shortcut section and enter in a funny word in the Phrase section.
With this prank, you can have as much fun as you like. Perhaps “you’re” gets autocorrected to “your” or their partner’s name gets changed to someone else’s. Maybe when they type “I love you” their iPhone autocorrects it to “We need to talk.
Silly Siri Nicknames
When conversing with Siri, the voice assistant will call you by name. That makes it more personal when doing a wide variety of tasks with just your voice, like creating shopping lists, composing a text message, or ordering a pizza. What you might not realize is that it’s easy to change what name Siri refers to someone by. All you need to do is ask.
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Just hold down the Home button, or Side button on the right side of the iPhone X and later, to activate Siri. Then you can say something like “Siri, call me Angus, Lord of Unicorns.” Whatever moniker you choose, Siri will call the victim that until they catch on and figure out how to change it back to their real name.
Never-ending Typing
Text messaging is my preferred method of communication. It just makes things easier, plus I can use emojis. But there is nothing more annoying than texting with a friend and constantly waiting for him or her to finish typing. You know what I am talking about; waiting for this darn symbol to finally go away:
Well now you can punish friends and family with the typing GIF, so everyone will think you are still typing when in fact they are just staring at a looping GIF. It’s hilarious and best used right after a declaration of important news. “I just went to the hospital and the doctor gave me some pretty tough news.” “[INSERT GIF],” and watch the panicking ensue.
Accessibility Lockout
Guided Access locks a user into one application. This is usually used so that children can use one app without messing around with anything else on the device. To enable this function on your victims phone go to, Settings -> Accessibility -> Learning -> and enable Guided Access. Then add Guided Access via the Accessibility Shortcut. Open an app like Stocks, Weather, or Game Center and triple-click the home button. You will create a Passcode and Start Guided Access. In order to leave the application, they will need to know your secret passcode.
Dots and More Dots
You can even have fun with friends from thousands of miles away using iMessage. Anytime iPhone users chat using Apple’s service, three small dots inside of a chat bubble appear when you’re typing a message to the recipient. This is officially called the typing awareness indicator, and shows the other party that you’re currently responding to their message.
But you can turn that into an advantage when looking to play a prank. Just download this GIF. And in the middle of a conversation, send it to your friend just like a normal photo from your album. They’ll be waiting patiently for your response—hopefully for some time.
Home Screen of Death
When your phone freezes there is very little that you can do about it and it can be extremely annoying. But tricking someone into thinking that their iPhone is frozen is pretty funny. For this prank you’ll need to have at least a minute or so to complete.
Next, move all the items from that homepage to another page or folder so that the page is free of all apps. Tap and hold any app until they begin to jiggle to move apps around.
When they pick up their iPhone to open an app, they will be confused as to why it’s not working, not knowing that they are tapping on a picture and not the actual application.
Parlez-Vous Français?
There’s always room for this timeless prank on a list like this. Once again, you’ll need full access to a friend’s phone.
Go to Settings > General > Language and Region > iPhone Language and change it to something they don’t speak. Exit the Settings and watch as they try to navigate their iPhone in a foreign language.
If you’re feeling benevolent, set their phone to something like French or Spanish. It might take your friend a while, but they’ll probably be able to figure out how to change the language back to English.
iPhone Prank
For something evil, change the language to something that has no connection to English like Chinese, Japanese, or even Hebrew. Everything will become completely unreadable.
Contact Switch
The classic contact switch prank. Go to Contacts and change the name of an important contact. Family members and significant others are the best targets. With your number swapped with your victim’s girlfriend’s you can very quickly make someone’s life very miserable.
Cracked Screen
Find a nice resolution image of a broken screen using Google search. Then head to Settings -> Wallpaper and replace their wallpaper with that of a broken screen. While they will eventually realize that their screen isn’t broken, the reactions are truly priceless.
Invert Colors
Go to Settings -> General -> Accessibility and turn on the Invert Colors toggle. If you have another Accessibility feature enabled you may want to uncheck that option. Then, triple-click the home button to invert the colors on the device.
Awkward Alarms
Open the Clock app and tap on the alarm tab. Create an alarm for a very inconvenient time, let’s say 3:30 AM and choose the worst sound possible and DISABLE snooze. I’d suggest the standard Alarm which is located in the Classic section of Sounds. Make the alarm repeating if you’re really an ass. In their confusion of being woken up in the middle of the night, they probably won’t remember to delete the alarm you have created.
Thanks to technology, it’s fun and easy to play a prank on friends. As you can see, after just a few minutes with your victim’s iPhone, they’ll be going mad trying to undo all of the different pranks you can play.
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