Have you ever wanted to temporarily disable your iPhone from auto-syncing when you hook it to your computer? No? Well, you may want to one day, and here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Open iTunes and connect your iPhone to your computer.

Step 2: Quickly press and hold down the OPTION and the COMMAND keys simultaneously. (On the PC you would hold down SHIFT and CONTROL)

Step 3: Once your iPhone shows up in the iTunes sidebar, you can let go.

(Note, this key combination also disables autosync for iPods).

I actually do this quite often. My wife and I both sync our iPhones to a smart-playlist which contains the most recent unlistened to radio recordings of our favorite show. The problem is, once one of us listens to an episode and then syncs their iPhone, the recording disappears from the playlist. By temporarily disabling syncing, I can still charge my iPhone and not “lose” any episodes. It’s also great for when you want to change which playlists sync with your iPhone, but don’t want to cancel out of an autosync/backup (I have had a couple unwanted restores when interrupting a backup/sync on the iPhone).

Of course, if you never want your iPhone to autosync, you can uncheck the Auto Sync pref in the iPhone’s Summary Screen.