Here’s a situation we’ve all been in. You’ve set up your shot perfectly with the aspect ratio, exposure, and zoom level you want, but then you have to exit the camera app to check a notification. If you reopen the camera app, your settings will be completely erased and you’ll have to set everything up again.
It’s a common complaint among iPhone owners, but the good news is that you can save camera settings on iPhone. However, it is not immediately obvious where to find it.
That’s because Apple didn’t hide these settings in the Camera app, but in the Settings app. Here you can not only save your settings, but you can choose exactly which settings should be saved. It’s a versatile feature that every iPhone camera user needs to know about.
We wrote this guide to show you how to save camera settings on iPhone. Follow these few steps and this common disappearing settings issue will soon be a thing of the past.
How to save camera settings on iPhone
We can’t tell you why Apple thinks resetting all camera settings to default is the best way to do things. But we can tell you how to change it. Here is the step-by-step guide.
1. The first thing to do is open yours settings App and scroll down to Camera.
2. Now you need to tap keep settings
3. Here you have switches that allow you to save certain settings; The number of items available depends on your iPhone. For example, the following screenshot is from a iPhone 13 Pro max; If you have an older iPhone, you only get options for that model. Enabling any of these toggles means that the specific setting will persist even after you quit the app, rather than reverting to the default.
Here’s what they all do:
Camera mode: Save the last used mode, e.g. B. video, portrait or slow motion instead of opening in photo mode every time.
Creative Controls: This saves settings like aspect ratio or filters instead of defaulting to 4:3 and no filters. This is not available on iPhones older than the iPhone 8 Plus
Macro Control: If you have an iPhone 13 Pro or iPhone 13 Pro Max, this setting will keep the camera in either the main or ultra-wide camera mode when you’re taking close-up photos, instead of defaulting to the ultra-wide camera when you’re shooting move the phone close to an object.
exposure setting: You can set how light or dark you want your photo exposure to be if you have an iPhone 11 or newer, instead of resetting it to automatic.
night mode: On the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 models, you can turn the night mode function on or off instead of going back to automatic mode
Portrait zoom: If you have an iPhone with a telephoto camera, this setting will keep the last camera you used in portrait mode active instead of defaulting to the 2x or 3x telephoto camera.
Apple ProRAW and Apple ProRes: Prevents ProRAW (on iPhone 12 Pro or later Pro models) or ProRes (iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max) from turning off every time you quit the camera app.
Live photo: Prevents Live Photo from automatically turning on every time you open the Camera app.
Need more iPhone tips? Check out our guide How to organize your iPhone apps in a much more efficient way, or learn How to enable hidden trackpad on iPhone and iPad for easier text navigation. Also knowledge how to copy and paste on iPhone and iPad with universal clipboard is another trick that will save you a lot of time.