There are a ton of brand new and totally fresh features you need to check out, downloadable from iPhone 8 all the way to iPhone 14. These iOS 16 features are sure to please users. Perhaps the most notable addition is the ability to send money using Apple Pay. This feature allows users to easily make payments by scanning their fingerprints at the point of sale. Another popular addition is Screen Time, which gives parents more control over how their children use their devices.
Table of Contents
1. Wallpaper Customisation:
We have some epic customization options. There are so many different and cool options to choose from, including one from suggested Photos. So once you’ve chosen the picture you want to use, you can actually adjust it a bit to have the time in front or behind your subject. Then we also have super popular emoji wallpaper that everyone seems to be loving at the moment.
You can customize the different emoji options by clicking on a button. So decided to go with a bit of a space theme. Then if you click the three dots, you can actually choose a different background color. Once you’re happy with the background color, you can then choose a different style just by swiping left. So there are a ton of different ones, six in total.
- Change Font:
Then you can also change the fonts of the clock just by clicking on it. There are six different options to choose from and they’re pretty wicked. You can also change the color just by tapping on one of these preselected ones, or the rainbow wheel, then you can get any color.
- Adding Widgets:
If all that wasn’t cool enough, we can even add widgets. And I’m so excited to see how this develops over time. You can add a battery widget, a weather widget, or your fitness tracking widget, and when you’re happy with the widgets, don’t forget to swipe left or right to just see if there are any other wallpaper options. But finally, when you’re done, you can save that as your beautiful new lock screen. And you can even set any one of these lock screens to change when you choose a new focus mode.
2. Auto Cropping:
If you take a picture of anything and then click and hold it down in Photos, look at how it instantly separates your subject from the background. So what you do is just tap and hold on to the picture you want to cut out. You’ll actually see it to trace the outline. It’s so cool. Then click Share.
Now tap Save Image. And what this will actually do is save that cut-out as a freaking PNG image. If you zoom in, the lights are actually really crisp. Even if you have a fairly busy picture with a lot going on, you can still do this. But you will sometimes see it doesn’t always work the best. You can take pictures of coaches, dogs, people, chairs, or just about anything you can think of and completely remove that background.
3. Upgraded Photos:
So the Photos app also got three major additions. The first one is to do with editing. So if you select any picture in the photo application, then add some saturation or contrast whatever type of style it is you like. What you can do is click on the three dots and say Copy Edit. Then you can go and select any picture in your gallery, click on those three little dots, and now paste that exact same edit to all those pictures in one bow.
The second one is equally amazing. If you’re in the Albums tab and scroll right down to the bottom, you will see this new option that says Duplicates. And in here it shows you every single image or video you have a duplicate up. So if you click Merge it will get rid of the duplicate but keep the highest quality picture or video. You can select all of them at once, click merge, and in a couple of seconds, it’ll do its thing.
Get rid of them. Probably would have sat for about a decade trying to get rid of that one by one. And then by far the best updates in Photos are hidden and recently deleted albums that are now permanently locked. You can only unlock them with your phone passcode or Face ID.
4. Vibration:
You cannot believe this iOS 16 Features took this long to arrive, but thank you Apple. You’re going to want to do this. Head into Settings, then down to Sound and Haptics. Then click on Keyboard Feedback. And there it is Haptics. We finally have typing vibrations. So whether you open WhatsApp or notes or your emails.
5. iMessage:
iMessage received some brilliant updates because now if you send a message to a friend and decide, oh you want to unsend that you can actually just tap and hold down the message. Then click Undo Send and it undoes its sending or if you want you can just edit the send a message by tapping and holding down, clicking the edit button, then making a correction, and when you’re done, just click the blue tick and your message will officially be edited.
6. Add Medication:
Did you know around 66% of adults take prescription medication? So if you head into the Health application and click on that browse icon, you will see this new option that says Medication. This honestly is just so smart because what you can do is now keep track of all the medicine or vitamins you need to take on a daily basis.
You can add your medication in two ways. So you can just take a picture of it, or you can manually just type it in. This is where it gets even better because you can set reminders for what time of the day you need to take a specific medication. There are so many different options and variables to choose from. But now, most importantly, when you receive a medication reminder and tap on it, you’ll be reminded of what you should be taking as well as the dosage. You can pop in whether you’ve taken it or not. It also keeps a log of every single time you’ve taken your medication. You can also see what medication you took.
7. Improved Dictation:
You might be never used Dictation on iPhone, because of one missing feature until now. So with the previous iOS, you didn’t really have grammar correction and you couldn’t even say emojis. But now with the new update, if you ask a question like, are you happy? It should add in all the grammar, question marks, you name it. You can also say coop emoji, laugh emoji, heart emoji, or eggplant emoji. So as you can see, this update makes a pretty big difference.
8. Thumb Search:
To be honest, whoever decided on this feature at Apple needs a race. The brand new search button is on the home screen. Now, it’s just in such a smart spot, and look at how easy you can access it. Just swipe back home, click that button and you’re already searching. No, wait, you go into the Photos app. You want to search for something. Click the button. It’s just in such an intuitive spot. Spotlight is even smarter because it searches an app. Mails, maps, notes, contact messages, Safaris, all with a simple thumbs-up.
9. Deeper Weather Data:
How many of you use the weather app, but it got a big update if you know where to look. So in the Weather app, you can now select the day and then get a bunch more information for every hour, of every day, for the next ten days.
10. Copy Video Text:
You guys know that you can extract text from any picture, but it’s been taken to a whole new level because if you have a video and that video has any text in it, you can just pause at any point, tap, and highlight the text and just like that it has extracted everything from a video. It’s also really accurate. It can also extract handwritten text.
11. Maps Pit-Stops:
Then Apple Maps received this brand new feature that 99% of us will actually use. If you’re planning a long road trip or any destination for that matter. Once you swipe up under directions, you’ll see Add Stop genius as the name would suggest. You can add any stop along the way. You just type in the destination and you can add as many stops as you want. You can also reposition the stops in the right order then just click Go and you’re good to go. This is just perfect for long road trips or short ones. It’s actually good for a lot of things.
12. Custom Sound Recognition:
This is actually a very unique feature in iOS 16. If you head into Accessibility and scroll down to sound recognition, which is not new, but if you go into sound recognition you will now see these options that say custom alarm and custom appliance or doorbell. What that means is you can actually add a custom sound, to sound recognition. So if you have a customer appliance or doorbell that you want to add to sound recognition, just run through the setup process. It will show you exactly what to do.
