phase input button on mixer

I had never used this before, I recently had a crash and had to get rid of all my saved settings.
I am using an project before crash.

I couldn’t get the solo button to work. When I hit the phase button it worked and also the whole mix sounded fuller, I hit all the phase input buttons on the mixer.

I guess I should just start over with a new template instead of using a pre crash one,

but my question is , does any one use this button and have you found it to be better or worse, or is this just some anomaly
with my crash , like it set it back to some default setting, I did notice the global setting was on for some reason , when I turned it off It seemed to correct some of the things . thanks