How to stop your iPhone screen locking while you cook

You're halfway through a recipe, hands covered in raw chicken or bread dough, and the screen goes black. Now it's a knuckle-tap, a wrist-swipe, or washing your hands for the fourth time to unlock your phone and find your place again.

Here are three ways to fix it, from a quick setting change to not touching your phone at all.

Option 1: change Auto-Lock

Auto-Lock is what turns your screen off after a short time without a touch. To change it on iPhone:

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Display & Brightness.
3. Tap Auto-Lock and choose a longer time, or Never.

Apple's guide to keeping the iPhone display on longer covers the same steps, and warns that delaying Auto-Lock can increase power use.

The catch: Auto-Lock applies to the whole phone. If you set it to Never and forget to change it back, your phone will sit unlocked on the table or in your pocket. Set a reminder, or pick five minutes rather than Never.

Why Auto-Lock is stuck on 30 seconds

If the Auto-Lock option is greyed out, Low Power Mode is on. Apple's Low Power Mode article lists setting Auto-Lock to 30 seconds as one of the things it does to save battery. Turn Low Power Mode off in Settings > Battery, or from Control Centre, and you can change Auto-Lock again. If your battery is low, put the phone on charge while you cook instead.

Option 2: use a recipe app's cooking mode

Many recipe apps have a cooking view that keeps the screen awake only while you're cooking, then lets it lock normally afterwards. It's the tidiest fix: nothing to change in Settings, nothing to forget to change back. Most also show one step at a time in large text, which is easier to read from across the kitchen than a long web page.

Option 3: go hands-free

Keeping the screen on solves half the problem. You still have to scroll or tap to move to the next step. Voice control solves the other half:

• A recipe app with voice commands lets you say "next" or "back" to move between steps.
• Read the recipe aloud first. Not a tech fix, but reading the whole method before you start means you'll look at the screen far less.
• Prep everything before you start. Weighing and chopping everything first (cooks call it mise en place) means the phone only matters for timings and order.

If you're cooking from a video

Videos are the hardest thing to cook from: you can't skim them, and pausing with messy hands is fiddly. Turn the video into a written recipe before you start. Our guide to getting a written recipe from a cooking video shows where to look and how to write it up.

Cook Mode in DinnerSorted

I make DinnerSorted, and its Cook Mode is built for exactly this. Open a recipe and start Cook Mode: the screen stays on while it's open, the method is shown one step at a time, and you can say "next", "back", "repeat" or "stop" instead of touching the phone. When you close it, your normal Auto-Lock comes back.

Cook Mode is free, along with weekly meal planning and the grocery list. Recipes can be typed in or imported from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, websites and photos, with three free imports a month and unlimited imports on DinnerSorted Pro. iPhone only for now.