Most drivers open their owner’s manual when a warning light comes on, or they need to figure out what oil to use. After that, it usually gets shoved into the glovebox and forgotten. That’s a shame, because modern owner’s manuals can reveal a surprising number of features that aren’t obvious from the dashboard.
We’re not talking about secret James Bond gadgets, either. Things like remotely opening the windows, changing which doors unlock, automatically folding the mirrors, customizing lighting behavior, or putting the infotainment system into valet mode can all be buried in menus or explained in a few easily missed paragraphs.
The exact features vary by vehicle, but your owner’s manual is often the best place to find out what your particular car can actually do.
Your Key Fob Might Do More Than You Think
That little remote in your pocket is one of the first places to look. Depending on the vehicle, the key fob can do considerably more than lock and unlock the doors.
Some vehicles allow drivers to open or close the windows remotely using a button combination. Certain models can also control the liftgate, activate the panic alarm, turn on exterior lights, or trigger other convenience functions. Consumer Reports recently highlighted several key-fob functions that owners may not realize their vehicles have.
The important catch is that these tricks aren’t universal. A button combination that works on one model might do absolutely nothing on another. Some features are also disabled until they’re turned on through the vehicle’s settings.
That’s why the owner’s manual matters. Instead of randomly holding buttons and hoping for the best, look under sections such as Keys, Remote Keyless Entry, or Remote Lock, Unlock, and Start. For example, GM owner’s manuals describe a Remote Window Operation setting that can allow the windows to be opened with the remote.
Your Car May Have A Whole Menu Of Customization Options
The other gold mine is the vehicle’s customization menu. Automakers increasingly let drivers change small behaviors that aren’t necessarily obvious when you first buy the car.
Toyota’s owner’s information, for example, describes customizable vehicle features that can be changed through the instrument cluster or center display, with some functions also requiring dealer intervention. Depending on the vehicle, those settings can affect everything from how the doors lock and unlock to lighting behavior and the way certain convenience features operate.
Some vehicles even let you choose whether the doors automatically lock or unlock under particular circumstances. Others can change the feedback you receive when locking the car, such as whether the vehicle flashes its lights or sounds the horn. GM’s documentation provides examples of these settings, including passive locking, selective unlocking, and remote-lock feedback.
That means two otherwise identical cars can behave differently simply because one owner has changed settings that the other never knew existed.
Here’s What Your Owner’s Manual Might Be Hiding
The exact list depends on the make, model, year, and trim, but these are some of the features worth searching for:
Remote window operation: Some vehicles let you open or close multiple windows using the key fob.
Automatic mirror folding: Certain cars can fold their exterior mirrors automatically when locked or based on other vehicle settings.
Selective door unlocking: You may be able to choose whether the remote unlocks just the driver’s door or all doors.
Passive locking: Some vehicles can automatically lock when you walk away with the key fob.
Remote-start climate settings: Equipped vehicles may automatically activate heated or ventilated seats during remote start.
Valet mode: Some cars can restrict access to parts of the infotainment system or other functions when someone else has the vehicle.
Lighting customization: Certain vehicles allow things such as automatic light sensitivity or other lighting behavior to be adjusted.
Convenience features: Some models can change how mirrors, windows, doors, and other systems behave when you lock, unlock or start the vehicle.
None of these should be assumed to work on every car. Even within the same model family, equipment and trim levels can make a major difference.
Some “Hidden” Features Are Actually Safety Systems
Not everything buried in the manual is a convenience trick. Some of the most important information concerns technology that can intervene, warn you, or change how the car behaves.
Modern vehicles can have systems for forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking, lane-departure warning, lane-keeping assistance, blind-spot monitoring, and rear cross-traffic alerts. NHTSA specifically recommends that drivers review their owner’s manuals to understand how the technologies equipped on their vehicles work.
The manual can also explain the conditions under which these systems work, when they may be unavailable, and what their warnings actually mean. That’s considerably more useful than simply knowing that a particular icon exists on the dashboard.
This is especially important because automakers use different names for similar technologies, and the capabilities aren’t necessarily identical from one vehicle to another. NHTSA notes that different manufacturers use different names for driver-assistance technologies, which makes the owner’s manual an important source for understanding what’s actually installed in your car.
Owners Keep Discovering Features They Didn’t Know Their Cars Had
Reddit has plenty of stories from drivers who discovered their cars could do things they had never tried. In a 2022 r/cars thread asking about features people discovered years after buying their vehicles, one commenter said they had owned a car for seven years before discovering a dashboard button they had never used. Another driver said simply reading the owner’s manual revealed tricks such as rolling down the windows by holding the unlock button on the key fob.
A 2024 r/cars discussion took the idea even further, with owners sharing genuinely useful features they had overlooked. One driver pointed out a mirror-dipping function that automatically moves the passenger-side mirror into a better position when reversing, then returns it to its normal setting afterward. Others mentioned things like hidden trunk-entry codes, heated mirrors and unusual storage features.
The owner’s manual itself came up repeatedly as the source people should check. In the 2022 discussion, one commenter noted that manuals contain plenty of “if equipped” information, which can make it easy to miss features that aren’t installed on every version of a car. In a r/TeslaModel3 thread from 2026 an owner shared that he discovered after almost three years that his Tesla had two USB-C connectors inside the front center console.
Some of the discoveries can be surprisingly specific to certain models. In a 2026 r/PriusPrime discussion, owners were looking for a list of lesser-known functions such as holding the key-fob unlock button to lower the windows and changing the number of turn-signal flashes. Commenters noted that some of these functions were covered in the owner’s manual, while others could require dealer or OBD-based activation depending on the vehicle.
Your Owner’s Manual Is Basically A Feature List You Already Paid For
The biggest surprise may be how much functionality is already sitting inside a car you thought you knew.
You don’t necessarily need an app, aftermarket gadget or trip to the dealership to discover it. Sometimes the answer is simply buried under Vehicle Settings, Customization, Keys, Convenience, or Remote Functions in the owner’s manual.
So the next time you’re sitting in your car with a few minutes to spare, don’t just scroll through the infotainment screen. Open the manual and search for words like customize, remote, convenience, key fob, settings, and if equipped.
You might discover that your car has been capable of doing something useful and unexpected all along—you just never knew which buttons to press.
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