You can do a lot more than just pin stuff with the Pinterest app. It actually has a ton of neat features you can use to organize and access pins better.
You probably already know you can save a pin to a board by holding down your finger on a pin and dragging it to the Save button (a little bonus tip if you didn’t know that already), or by tapping the red save button. But the Pinterest app also lets youdownload images to your device, although the download button is tucked into a menu. Simply tap the three dots and click “Download image.”
You Can Save Pins From Outside Pinterest Without Opening the App
Say you have an image in your gallery or found one while browsing the internet, and you want to pin it to a board of your choice. Usually, you’d think you will have to download the image, open the Pinterest app, then your board, and upload it as a pin to it. Let me show you a shortcut that avoids that scenic route.
Tap the share button if you see one, or hold your finger down on an image until you see a share button. Look for the Pinterest app in theShare menu(you might have to swipe through the pages) and tap it. It’ll instantly show you the Save To Board menu. Tap the board you want to pin that image to and with just two taps, you’ve sent an image from your browser straight to your Pinterest board.
Boards Can Have Sections
I only recently found out about this feature when I was curating my Pinterest boards. When you save a lot of pins to a board (like I do), they quickly grow unmanageable. You have to scroll endlessly just to find that one specific pin.
That’s where sections come in. Instead of dumping every pin onto one board, you’re able to slice up boards into neat little sections, each with its own label. Every pin goes into its own section, and your huge board becomes more browse-able with manageable chunks.
You can even merge two or more sections later on if you feel the need to. Just tap the three buttons on top of the section header and select Merge. Choose Edit Section if you want to change its label. There’s also a button for deleting sections, but be careful with it. Deleting a section alsodeletes the pinsinside it.
You Can Jazz Up Your Boards With Organizing Tools
Boards aren’t just static boxes that hold your pins. Pinterest lets you personalize them with a couple of neat tools. First, there’s a hovering Organize button at the bottom of every board. Tap it, it’ll take you to the board organizer. Here you can tap any pin to select it and from there you can move those pins to a different board or section, create a new section out of them, or evendelete them en masse.
Just like sections, you can also merge two or more boards together. On top of the board, tap the three dots and choose Merge Boards to move all the pins on that board to a different board.
Finally, you can add a header image to your boards (kind of like Notion does). Tap the three dots and then Edit Board and Header. Pinterest will show you a selection of your pins that you can use as the header for this board. Here you can also add other people as collaborators, so you can co-create and co-manage a board with your friend.
You Can Create Cutouts From Pins
Sometimes you don’t want to save the whole pin, just something specific that catches your eye. That’s what the cutout feature in the Pinterest app is for. Tap the pin to load it and then find the magic search button floating in the corner. Tap it and a little scissors icon will appear in the corner. Tapping it pulls up the cutout window.
Sometimes Pinterest will auto-select areas of interest for you, just double tap it to confirm the selection. Alternatively, you may trace the selection with your fingertips yourself. Then tap Save and choose the board you’re pinning the cutout to. Now your boards never have to be cluttered with irrelevant information!
You Can Curate Your Home Feed Without Messing With Boards
The Pinterest app has a dedicated “Home feed tuner” tucked into the Settings menu. To access it, tap your profile icon and then Home Feed Tuner. Here you’ll see a bunch of tabs: Pins, Interests, Boards, and Following. Here you may train the Pinterest algorithm to show you pins you care about, and only those.
On the Pins tab, you can flag pins as uninteresting. Just hold down on any of them and they’ll be axed from recommendations. On the interest board, you’ll see a bunch of categories (which you first saw when you signed up for Pinterest). You can add more or remove existing ones.
Pinterest boards heavily inform the recommendation engine. On the boards tab, you can include or exclude boards from recommendations.
If you follow people on Pinterest, you can manage your following on the last tab. You can exclude or include individual people and brands from your home feed here.
The Pinterest app has a bunch of other neat (but not obvious) features too. If you find these useful, I’ll share more.
