At WWDC this year, Apple showed off iOS 16, which will add a bunch of cool new features to your iPhone. With iOS 16, you’ll be able to go into the Messages app and change messages you’ve already sent. You’ll also get new ways to customise your iPhone, like being able to change how your lock screen looks. Also new are ways for people in abusive relationships to keep their privacy. iOS 16 is likely to come out in September, around the same time as the heavily rumoured iPhone 14. For the iPhone 8 and subsequent versions, it will be released. Developers can now get the software, though.
After iOS 15.5 came out on May 16, which had updates to Apple Cash, Photos Memories, and the Podcasts app, Apple released iOS 16. Apple also just released a developer beta for iOS 15.6, which doesn’t have any big new features at the moment and seems to be mostly about fixing bugs.
Messages may be edited and ‘unsent’ with iOS 16
Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, was demonstrating three of the most-requested enhancements for the Messages app when he remarked, “Embarrassing errors are a thing of the past.” This was one of the things that Federighi demonstrated.
First, in iOS 16, you’ll be able to change messages you’ve already sent. So, if you see a typo after you send a message, you’ll be able to fix it. Under the message, the status says “edited” in a very small font.
Next, and this might be my favourite new feature, you can instantly take back a message that you sent. If you accidentally sent a message that wasn’t finished, you can use the Undo Send tool to stop it from being read and, hopefully, make your friends and family think you’re less crazy.
Messages and threads can be marked as unread. This could be a great tool for when you don’t have time to answer a message right away but want to make sure you get to it later.
Your iPhone now has a new lock screen that you can change
The lock screen is one of the things you look at most on your iPhone, especially if it has a Face ID. With iOS 16, the iPhone’s lock screen gets its most important update to date. Hold down to change your lock screen. You can swipe to try out a variety of looks. Each style changes the background photo’s colour filter and the font on the lock screen so that everything matches. This seems like Apple’s version of Google’s Material You, which came out with Android 12 last year.
You can also change the fonts for the time and date and add widgets to the lock screen, such as a calendar, temperature, and activity rings. The widgets are like complications on the lock screen of the Apple Watch.
You can even set up multiple lock screens with different widgets that you can switch between with a simple swipe. There’s even a feature that changes the pictures on your lock screen automatically.
We hoped that Apple would add a screen that stays on all the time. Almost every Android phone has it, and so does the Apple Watch. There is hope that it will be available with the iPhone 14.
Notifications and happenings in real-time
Because notifications can sometimes cover up the picture on your lock screen, iOS 16 moves them to the bottom of your screen. As you get them, they don’t get put into a list. Instead, they look like a vertical carousel. This makes your iPhone look better and should make it much easier to use with one hand.
iOS 16 also aims to fix another problem with notifications. You might get a bunch of alerts from the same app at once, like the score of a basketball game. Live Activity is a new tool for developers that makes it easier to keep up with what’s going on in real-time from your lock screen, so you don’t have to keep getting interrupted.
Live Activities should make it easier to track the progress of things like sports games, workouts, or even an Uber ride.
After Wallet and Apple Pay
Your Wallet app will have more security and privacy features, and it will be able to store ID cards from more states. With iOS 16, you can also hide your age and identity. So the Wallet app will show your ID and that you’re over 21 instead of your exact birth date.
With iOS 16, apps like Mail and Messages make it easier to share keys. When your friend gets the key, they can put it in their iPhone’s Wallet app. Apple said that it is working to make shared keys a standard in the industry and free for everyone.
Apple Pay will accept new kinds of payments and add a new feature called Apple Pay Later. This is a service similar to Klarna that lets you split the cost of an Apple Pay purchase into four equal payments over six weeks, with no interest and no fees. The Wallet app takes care of payments that are coming up. This makes it easy to remember dates and payments.
Apple Pay doesn’t end there, though. You’ll also be able to track Apple Pay orders with this new feature, and merchants will be able to send detailed receipts and tracking information. This should make it easier for you to know how your orders are doing.
Tap and drag to look at photos on Visual Lookup
In iOS 15, Visual Look Up looks at your photos to figure out what things like plants, landmarks, and pets are. With iOS 16, this gets even better. When you touch a photo’s subject, like the dog in the image above, you can separate it from the background and add it to apps like Messages. It’s a tool that lets you tap and hold to remove a photo’s background.
Apple uses the word “magic” a lot, but this feature does seem like magic.
Messages will now have SharePlay
SharePlay is a new feature in iOS 15 that lets you play games together with someone over FaceTime. You can do things like watch TV shows and listen to music in sync. With iOS 16, you can now use FaceTime to find more apps that support SharePlay.
But making SharePlay work in the Messages app might be the coolest thing Apple did for it. Apple said that this was one of the things app developers asked for most. Now, if you want to watch a Disney Plus movie with a friend, you can start SharePlay while chatting in Messages.
The goal of the Safety Check is to help people who are in bad relationships
Safety Check is a new feature that is meant to help people who are in relationships with people who hurt them. It lets you see who can see your location information, passwords, messages, and other apps on an iPhone and change that.
Changes to Focus mode and Focus filters
Focus mode gets several updates. The first one changes how widgets and the lock screen look when Focus is on them. So you could set a different lock screen for workouts and a different one for when Work Focus is on.
Apple added Focus filters to apps that let you use your iPhone’s Focus mode. For instance, in Safari, you can control which tabs are shown based on which Focus mode you are using.
see also
- Apple announced iOS 16 and everything else at WWDC 2022.
- The Apple M2 MacBook Air has a bigger screen but costs more.
- The best things about iOS 16 for iPhone users are:
Adding transit fare cards to Apple Maps
There will be several changes to the maps. You can make plans for trips with up to 15 different stops. If you use the Maps app on your Mac to start planning a trip, you can send that information to your iPhone.
And, like what Google announced for Google Wallet in Android 13, you’ll be able to estimate transit fares and add money to a fare card right from Apple Maps.
iCloud’s list of family members
iCloud is getting a bunch of new features. The option to quickly set up a new device for your child is one of the more interesting ones. When Quick Start comes up, you can choose a user for the new device and use all the parental controls you’ve already chosen and set up. But this isn’t what many of us still want: we want to be able to set up different users for the same device.
There’s a new family checklist with ideas for changing settings for your kids as they become older, such as a reminder to check location-sharing settings or to share your iCloud Plus subscriptions.
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