iPhone users are only just learning what this mysterious icon means

Have you ever looked at your phone and realised you have no idea what a certain icon means?

That's what happened to one Reddit user, and they were keen to get to the bottom of it.

They posted on Reddit that they've been using an iPhone since 2011, and was wondering what this mysterious new icon meant:

The icon, which looks like a blue circle with sound waves in between two triangles, appeared on their phone for the first time around four months ago, and they were baffled with what it meant.

Of course, conspiracy theories started coming thick and fast.

Someone commented: “It’s for the FBI surveillance van outside your home.”

Another user wrote: “Doppler effect”, thinking it had something to do with a change in wave frequency.

But, the mystery has officially been solved - the unusual icon actually means that voice control is on.

When the user who posted about it on the subreddit r/iOSBeta discovered this, they said: “Thank you. Before this beta update I think it used to be a blue microphone icon so I had never seen this before.”

According to Apple Support, this function means that you can control your iPhone with just your voice.

When on, you can say things such as “take a screenshot”, “turn up volume” or “open Instagram” - and quite literally your wish is its command.

You can even go into settings and set a specific phrase to do certain commands.

For example, you could come up with a secret phrase which unlocks your phone - this only works when Face ID or Touch ID are disabled, but how cool is that?

Just be careful that anyone who knows the password could say the phrase and unlock your phone.

To activate voice control, just go to Settings > Accessibility > Voice Control.

You can then alter the language and play around with the different commands.

For those of us who scroll way too much and our thumbs are beginning to hurt, you can even set voice control to automatically scroll for you.

@princetechofficial on TikTok recently shared this hack in a video - go to Voice Control > Commands > Create New Command and create a custom gesture for scrolling.

So, now you know what this unusual icon does, and it may even come in use next time you want to scroll handsfree - such as when you are cooking and need to read through a recipe, or when you want to look through Instagram while working out.