How to set up an iPhone if you're new to smartphones

This guide is for anyone who has just bought their first iPhone, or who has been given one by a family member and isn't quite sure where to start. By the time you reach the end, you'll have a phone that's comfortable to read, properly secured, backed up automatically, and ready for you to install whichever apps you actually want. The whole process takes roughly an hour, and you don't need any technical knowledge to follow it.

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Step 1: Adjust the display so it's comfortable to read

The single most useful thing you can do before anything else is make the screen easier on your eyes. Apple ships iPhones with fairly small default text, which suits a twenty-five-year-old but is needlessly squinty for many of us.

Go to Settings (the grey icon with cog-wheels on the home screen), then tap Display & Brightness, then Display Zoom. Select Larger Text and confirm the change. The phone will restart briefly. When it comes back, everything on screen, icons included, will be noticeably larger.

For the text size specifically, go back to Settings, tap Accessibility, then Display & Text Size, then Larger Text. Drag the slider to the right until the sample text at the top looks comfortable. You can always adjust this later.

While you're in Accessibility, it's worth turning on Bold Text too. The toggle is just above the text size slider. Bold text makes a surprisingly big difference to readability, particularly on news apps and websites.

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Step 2: Set up Face ID or a passcode

Your iPhone will ask you to set up a passcode early in the initial setup process. If it hasn't asked you yet, go to Settings, then Face ID & Passcode.

Face ID lets the phone recognise your face to open it, which is convenient, no typing needed each time. To set it up, tap Set Up Face ID, hold the phone at arm's length, and slowly move your head in a circle as prompted. It's less fiddly than it sounds. Do it twice (the phone will ask for a second scan), and you're done.

If Face ID doesn't suit you, a six-digit passcode is perfectly fine. Write it down somewhere safe at home. Not on a sticky note attached to the phone, obviously, but in a notebook kept in a drawer.

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Step 3: Create or sign in to an Apple ID

An Apple ID is simply an account you have with Apple. It's what lets you download apps, receive iMessages, and back up your phone. You need an email address to create one.

If you already have an Apple ID from a previous device, tap Sign In when prompted and enter your existing email and password. If you've forgotten the password, tap Forgot password? and follow the steps to reset it via email.

If you're starting fresh, tap Create Apple ID. You'll be asked for your date of birth, a name, an email address, and a password. Use an email address you actually check regularly. Apple will send a verification code to that address, so have it open on a computer or tablet nearby if you can.

The process takes about five minutes. Once it's done, your iPhone is fully registered to you.

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Step 4: Turn on iCloud backup

iCloud is Apple's online storage service. The most useful thing it does is quietly back up your phone each night while it charges, so that if your iPhone is ever lost, stolen or broken, you can restore everything onto a new one.

Go to Settings, tap your name at the very top of the screen, then tap iCloud, then iCloud Backup. Make sure the toggle next to Back Up This iPhone is switched on (it turns green). Tap Back Up Now to run your first backup immediately.

Apple gives you 5GB of free iCloud storage, which is usually enough for contacts, messages and settings. If you take a lot of photos, you may eventually need to pay for more storage. The first paid tier (50GB) costs 99p a month from Apple directly. That's worth knowing, but it's not something you need to decide today.

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Step 5: Learn your way around the basic controls

Before you install anything, spend a few minutes getting comfortable with how the phone works physically.

On most modern iPhones (anything from the iPhone X onwards, so from 2017), there is no home button at the bottom. Instead:

• Swipe up from the very bottom of the screen to go to the home screen.
• Swipe up and pause in the middle of the screen to see all your open apps.
• Press the side button (on the right edge) once to wake the screen, and press it twice quickly to bring up Apple Pay if you've set that up.

If your iPhone does have a round home button at the bottom (the older SE models, for instance), press it once to return to the home screen.

I'd suggest spending five or ten minutes just tapping around. Open the Clock app, then swipe up to close it. Open Photos (it may be empty for now). The goal isn't to learn everything at once, just to get a feel for how things respond to your touch. The screen is quite sensitive, you don't need to press hard, a light tap is enough.

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Step 6: Install your first app

Apps are programs you download onto your phone. The App Store, the blue icon with a white letter A, is where you find them. Everything in the App Store has been checked by Apple, so it's safer than downloading software from random websites on a computer.

Tap the App Store icon. At the bottom of the screen, tap Search. Type the name of something familiar. BBC iPlayer is a good first choice if you watch television; WhatsApp if you want to message family. Both are free.

Tap the app when it appears in the results. Tap the blue Get button (or a price, if the app costs money). The phone will ask you to confirm with Face ID or your passcode. After a few seconds, the app will appear on your home screen.

That's genuinely all there is to it.

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