As was widely expected and predictable at Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2022, Apple unveiled iOS 16, the operating system that, once the beta phase is over, not before September, will end up on the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro, as well as on all existing iPhone, from iPhone 8 onwards.
What’s new in the iOS 16 update?
- The most visible novelty is the new lock screen , “more personal, beautiful and useful“. Thanks to a new multilevel effect, the subjects of your photos will appear around the time creating a sense of depth. The font and colour of the date and time can be changed, and widgets that resemble those of the Apple Watch arrive: “They will be very useful for gathering information at a glance” such as upcoming events on the calendar, the weather, the level of battery or progress in the Activity rings.
The lock screen gallery includes Apple collections, Weather wallpapers, Astronomy, emojis and colour schemes.
- There are also new notifications called Activities in real time to stay updated on live events, matches or workouts, but the music player will also be part of this category, ie a mix between a “classic” notification and a widget. Notifications have been redesigned to appear from the bottom of the display , leaving the custom lock screen free.
- Full Immersions become part of the lock screen. There comes the possibility of associating a particular background and widgets to a specific Full Immersion, which can be activated simply by scrolling to the corresponding lock screen. Thanks to the Full Immersion filters , apps such as Calendar, Mail, Messages and Safari will only show the content relevant to the chosen option, helping the user to find the right balance.
- Speaking of photos, Apple introduced the iCloud Shared Photo Library, an iCloud library that allows up to six users to contribute, collaborate and access the shared library. Each user can choose to share all the photos in their personal library, or only those starting from a particular date or in which specific people appear, but the smart suggestions will still invite the user to share the photos in which there are other members of the group.
There is also a new virtual key integrated into the shooting app, Camera, which allows you to set that all new photos automatically go to a shared album. A review of a feature that Apple has been trying for some time to “push”: it will be interesting to see if this new attempt will break into customer habits.
- The Messages app earns the edit key before WhatsApp and Twitter, along with an additional virtual key to cancel the sending of a message, which also arrives on the Mail app on the condition – of course – that the email is not already arrived at the recipient.
- With the Remind Later function , you can ensure that an email is shown again at a set date and time, while the Follow Up suggestions automatically advise you to follow up on a message if the recipient has not replied. Optimizations for the search function too, for more relevant, accurate and complete results: recent messages, contacts, documents and links appear instantly as soon as you start searching.
- Active Text uses the intelligence and computing power of the iPhone – it doesn’t use the internet – to recognise text in saved images, and now it works with videos too : just pause them to be able to interact with the text that appears in the frame. And it will also be possible to quickly convert the amounts into another currency, translate the writings and much more.
- Visual Search offers “a new world of possibilities in photos”: now you can touch and hold the subject of an image to separate it from the background and insert it into the app as Messages. Plus, it recognizes even more types of birds, insects, and statues.
Other updates on iOS 16
- The dictation mode of iOS 16 will be hybrid, in the sense that the keyboard will remain open at the same time as the voice dictation, so as to quickly switch from one input to another; there is also the possibility of dictating an emoticon with the voice, describing it, which is an important novelty in the area of accessibility.
- It also includes updates for those who use public transport , allowing you to easily see the cost of the ticket for a given route, add and reload transport cards in Wallet, and keep track of the balance without ever having to leave the app.
- Family Sharing gets new parental controls for sharing content and a revamped setup process that simplifies the previous one.
- There comes a great chance to have better control over your privacy. It is Safety Check , which can now offer better protection to people who have a “toxic” relationship: it will allow us to know who owns our passwords and therefore our information.
iOS 16: when does it come out?
Apple has traditionally previewed new versions of iOS in June, during the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), to give app developers time to update software to work best with the update. On that occasion, Apple distributes a beta version of iOS for developers.
After the announcement on June 6, 2022, the public beta of iOS 16 is released between June and July, available for all users who want to participate in the beta tester program.
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