Over the last few years iOS updates have been a lot like Fast and Furious movies… more or less the same look, same plot with ever diminishing levels of interest.
But iOS16 is a real update – its like the Fast and Furious writers decided to concentrate on character and study a book or five on realistic movie making. This update is worth downloading, worth any new app downloads, hell even worth a new phone if needs be.
The levels of customisation without losing stability or performance (I am looking at you haemorrhoid – sorry – Android phones) is awesome.
What follows is a short guide around some of the features that might make you want to download it or, if you have already, might see you start to use some of the great new features locked within.
Unsend or edit a Text
So remember that time you messaged your wife with “Hey Diane” and her name is actually Karyn? My wife does.
Remember that time your wife sent a message to the police confessing to a murder and then regretted it? My wife does.
Well now you can edit a message within 15 minutes of sending it or you can unsend a message within 2 minutes of sending it. However, this only works if the recipient has also upgraded to iOS16. However, regardless, they will be notified that you deleted a text and with a tap of a button they can see your unedited version… so it won’t save you every time.
Here is how it works.
- Send a text and then instantly regret it.
- Long press on the text bubble and choose Unsend or Edit.
- If you choose Unsend the text will explode light a balloon filled with confetti.
- If you choose Edit, you get the text in a bubble with a X and a tick on either end.
- Make your edits and then top on the tick
Lock screens
This is a tricky thing to convey in writing because it is, at its very heart, visual. If this little tid bit whets your appetite I strongly recommend a YouTube tutorial. But for what it is worth, here goes.
If you open your phone and long press on the Lock Screen you’ll be given a customise option to change the current layout and a plus button to add a new screen.
Let’s click on the + button and create a new screen.
This gives you a whole heap of wallpaper themes to choose from including Photos, People, Photo Shuffle, Emojis, Weather and so on. Or, if you are feeling lazy you can choose the Featured themes or Suggested Photos.
If, for example, you choose Photo Shuffle you’ll be shown a number of curated photos from your library that, by default, include People, Pets, Nature and Cities. These photos are curated using Artificial intelligence so God help us all.
If you’d like to focus on one thing or another feel free to uncheck any categories you aren’t interested in.
You can also select what interval you’d like these pictures to rotate; Hourly, On Tap, On Lock or Daily.
See here for a visual guide
Focus
This has been around for a while but to be honest it was something of a dumpster fire and didn’t work very well at all. This time around it has been refined, expanded and works very well.
I don’t reinvent the wheel when Apple have put so much effort into it already. So for a really good guide on getting started with Focus mode, go here:
https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iphd6288a67f/16.0/ios/16.0
Photo enhancements
Probably the best feature of the new Photo is app is it now finds those hundreds, no, thousands of duplicated photos. Upon installing the new update (and lets face it, this article is sooooo late you are bound to have done it by now) the phone will take a while to scan all your photos to find the duplicates.
But given enough time, you can quickly search your Library to see if any have been located.
- Open Photos
- Tap on Albums at the bottom of the screen
- Scroll down until you see the Media Types heading and there, if indeed you have any, you’ll see Duplicates. If the album doesn’t appear it means you don’t have any duplicates or, at the very least, the phone hasn’t had time to find any. If you are sure that you have duplicates, check in a while later.
- Tapping on this will display all your copies.
- From here you can manually delete the one you don’t want or, as is often going to be the case I am sure, you can choose to Merge them. This function will take all the meta data (location, time, etc) from all the version of that photo and pick the best version of the photo and kill the others.
I will admit, this is a bit like putting your private parts in the hands of a scissor wielding robot and hoping for the best… but it is amazing how far we are willing to go for an easy life.
I’ve done it many times (the merging thing not the robot thing) and so far have not regretted it.
The other feature, and I am not sure how useful it is, is being able to remove a subject from a photo and paste them elsewhere.
If you locate a photo of a person and you long press on the person you’ll see a glowing aura (the kind those folks in Nimbin always claim to see) appear around the subject.
From there you can copy and paste them into another file or Share via email or text.
As I say, not sure how useful but its a bit of fun I guess.
I have never been as excited or as positive about an iOS update as I have been with this one.
It feels polished and it truly seems to give your phone a new breath of life.
I guess an indication of how much I love this update is that I have been spending that last month or so playing with it instead of writing about it. Sorry
