Our phones can be draining and distracting devices –– but there are small, surprising ways their built-in settings can actually be pleasantly fun.

One of my favorite iPhone features is a simple sentimental feature you might not know about: iPhone’s Photo Shuffle feature, which has been available for phone lock screens since the iOS 16 software update.

Once you use it, your phone’s background wallpaper is not just a static portal –– it can be a nostalgic living photo album of your favourite memories. Your phone background can toggle among your beloved pets or family members as often as you wish.

This is one small tweak you can do to make your phone a little more fun to look at each day.

To use Photo Shuffle, go to your iPhone Settings, then select Wallpaper and choose to “Add New Wallpaper.” From there, you will tap the Photo Shuffle feature and pick among the preselected options of featured people, like your kids, pets, nature, cities or whole albums that your phone has highlighted from your camera roll. You also have the option to select photos manually.

This way, you can customise the feature to be as strict as you want about what people or photos you do and don’t want popping up on your home screen if an ex or memory would be an unwanted surprise. If you end up seeing a photo that is no longer sweetly sentimental, you can also go back to this Photo Shuffle feature to unselect the album or photo.

Before the Photo Shuffle goes live, you will also choose Shuffle Frequency options of “on tap,” “on lock,” “hourly” or “daily.” So if you are a grandparent and want to give each of your grandchildren their day to shine on your lock screen, you can choose “daily,” or if you want to remember past sunnier vacations during stormier seasons, you could go with “on tap” and be surprised each time you use your phone. If you choose an album you update frequently, your wallpaper can become a live slideshow of your recent past. You might even be pleasantly surprised about what family vacation or new hobby will come across your screen.

Android users have a similar photo-shuffling feature known as “Screen Saver” in Settings. To turn it on, go to “Display & Touch” and then select “Screen Saver,” where you can choose photos or photo albums that your phone can cycle through when your phone is charging.

Of course, some people want to purposefully make their phone less pleasant to use in order to reduce screen time. There are merits in making your phone display only black and white if you want to use your phone as little as possible, for example.

But for those of us who must use our devices regularly, it can be fun to inject some whimsical surprise into our days. So if you find yourself bracing to see bad news on your latest notification alert, try switching up your lock screen background with something that you would look forward to seeing in stressful times.