Apple’s latest major software update to its iPhone range just came out and there are some seriously cool new additions this year, especially when it comes to your lock screen.
If you haven’t received a notification to update to iOS 16 yet, go to Settings > General > Software Update of your iPhone and let it refresh. Then you should be able to update. Make sure your phone is plugged in or more than 50% charged when you install it.
If you have any questions before you take the plunge, read on and hopefully we’ll answer them for you.
Let’s take a look at what’s new in iOS 16 and how we can make the most of it. But first, check if your iPhone is one of the below. If it’s an iPhone 8 or newer, it’s probably compatible with iOS 16 — or if you just got a shiny new iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Pro, it’s already installed.
iOS 16 is compatible with these devices.
The first four things to do in iOS 16
There are dozens of new features in iOS 16 to make your iPhone even more useful, but there are a handful that you’ll really want to play with once the update is installed.
Set your new personalized lock screen, wallpaper and widgets
Perhaps the biggest update in iOS 16 is how it handles your lock screen. You can show your favorite photos, customize font styles, and display a set of widgets to get information at a glance.
Lock screen widgets give you a quick glance at data like weather, calendar events, date, time zones, alarms, battery level, activity ring progress, and more from your favorite apps.
You can also now create different lock screens, each with a unique background and style, and easily switch between them. Browse a gallery of wallpapers with suggested photos and themed collections for inspiration. It is very easy to long press on your lock screen.
Customize your focus modes
Focus filters allow apps like Calendar, Mail, Messages, and Safari to display only the content that’s relevant to your Focus, helping you strike a better balance.
A new, streamlined setup for Focus lets you select the apps and people you want to receive notifications from by allowing or muting them. Connect your lock screen to your Focus so that the appearance of your iPhone matches how you want to use it at the time.
And to switch between your Focus modes, just swipe – go from your personal focus to your work focus with widgets that display upcoming meetings and to-do lists.
Try turning on your battery percentage
This one is purely personal preference. If you’re the type who needs to know exactly how much power they have left for the day, give this a try.
jump in you Settings > Battery and turn on Battery percentage. Or if you’re like me and like living on the edge, leave everything as it is.
Feel haptic feedback while typing
If you’re someone who still misses the feel of the keys while typing on your old BlackBerry, adding haptic feedback to your iPhone’s keyboard could help fill some of that gap. With the same little vibration motors that alert you to notifications, your iPhone gives small vibrations around the virtual key you’re typing on to provide some tactile feedback. It is disabled by default, but can be enabled by going to . to go Settings > Sounds and haptics > keyboard feedback and switch whether you want sound, haptics or no feedback while typing.
Hidden iOS 16 Features You May Not Know
Now that you’ve sorted out the new headline feature updates, you can dig a little deeper, and with iOS 16 there are quite a few new useful “oh that’s cool!” updates across the board that may not be so immediately obvious.
live text
Using on-device intelligence, Live Text can now recognize text in videos throughout the system. You can pause a video at any frame to interact with text and take quick action such as copy and paste, translate, currency converter, and more. Perfect for taking notes of a lecture or presentation.
Visual Lookup
Tap and hold part of an image to remove it from the background and place it in apps like Messages. It can also recognize birds, insects, spiders and statues to quickly extract objects and information from an image.
Tracking Apple Pay orders
It allows you to receive detailed receipts and order tracking information in Wallet for Apple Pay purchases from participating merchants, so you can now have your payment and orders in one place.
Edit and send with iMessage
You can now edit a message you just sent or undo a recent message altogether. And you can mark a post as unread if you can’t reply at the time and want to get back to it later
Find and remove duplicate images
The latest Photos app in iOS 16 can find duplicate photos and videos in your photo library and place them in a new Duplicates album. You can then merge duplicate photos and videos to save a lot of space on your iPhone and clean up your library. Just tap the Duplicates album under Utilities in Photos and tap Merge to combine the duplicates.
