The iPhone’s Camera app looks simple, but Apple has tucked plenty of useful controls into Settings. That makes some of the most helpful camera features easy to miss.
These settings can change how your iPhone captures photos and video, from how the camera opens to how it saves your shots.
If you want more control over your iPhone camera without downloading another app, these five settings are worth checking.
Stop the Camera from Resetting Every Time You Open It
The most immediately useful setting for regular shooters is Preserve Settings, found under Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings.
By default, the iPhone resets to its baseline configuration each time the Camera app closes, which means Live Photos turns back on, exposure compensation reverts to zero, and any shooting mode you selected disappears.
Turning on the appropriate toggles inside Preserve Settings tells the iPhone to remember your preferred choices between sessions.
This is particularly useful for anyone who consistently shoots with Live Photos off or with a consistent exposure adjustment dialed in.
Speed Up the Shutter and Take Control of Macro
Under Settings > Camera, a toggle called Prioritize Faster Shooting changes how the camera handles image processing when you’re shooting quickly.
The phone captures frames faster by streamlining that processing, which makes a noticeable difference when photographing children, animals, or anything else that refuses to stay still.
Image processing may differ slightly from Apple’s default, but for action situations the tradeoff is generally worthwhile.
Close-up photographers often run into a separate frustration: the iPhone switching lenses automatically when you move near a subject, sometimes disrupting a carefully framed shot.
Enabling Macro Control in Settings > Camera puts that decision back in the photographer’s hands.
A flower icon appears when you’re close enough for macro photography, letting you activate or skip the lens switch rather than having the phone decide for you.
Cleaner Images Without Any Editing
Wide-angle lenses, including the iPhone’s Ultra Wide camera and the front-facing camera, naturally bend straight lines and can stretch faces near the edges of the frame.
Lens Correction, also located in Settings > Camera, applies automatic distortion correction to compatible cameras.
The adjustment is subtle but tends to show up clearly in architectural shots, group photos, and interior scenes where straight lines matter.
The front camera has its own quirk worth addressing. The live preview acts like a mirror, but the saved photo has traditionally been flipped, so text appears reversed, and compositions can shift from what you saw on screen.
Settings > Camera > Mirror Front Camera makes the saved image match the preview exactly, which matters most when a shot includes text, logos, or any element where orientation is visible.
None of these adjustments require third-party apps or accessories. They’re all present on current iPhone models and accessible in a single Settings menu, though Apple hasn’t done much to surface them in the Camera app itself.
Checking which ones are enabled takes only a few minutes and changes how the camera behaves on every subsequent shot.
