iOS 16 introduced not entirely new features, but also several new settings that you might have not known about.
in this article. I am going to show you 17 brand new settings that is only found in iOS 16 that you should strongly consider changing
RAPID UPDATES
rapid security response updates will be the first setting you would want to do. when you go to settings, general, software update, automatic updates you will see down at the bottom that we have a brand-new toggle that says security responses and system files and you want to make sure this toggle is turned on.
This facilitates Apple’s rapid and simple deployment of security updates to your device without requiring a complete iOS update, and it will take place automatically in the background. Sometimes it will need to be restarted, but an iOS upgrade won’t be necessary.
Apple also mentioned that if you choose, you can uninstall security updates after they have been installed. To do this, navigate to settings, general, and then about, select iOS version, and then select remove security updates.
CHANGE THE WAY YOU CHARGE YOUR IPHONE
The next point is how your device charges. As a result, if you go to settings, battery, battery health, and charging, you will notice a new setting called clean energy charging at the very bottom. This setting states that “your iPhone is going to try to reduce your carbon footprint by selectively charging when lower carbon emission electricity is available,” and then, similar to the optimized battery charging, it will learn how often you charge it so it can reach full charging faster. So, you might want to continue with this.
Remember that this function is only compatible with iOS 16.1 and later; you may want to leave it on purely out of concern for the environment and to lessen your carbon footprint.
AUTO PUNCTUATION
Now, dictation, and more specifically the auto punctuation that has been added to dictation, is one of my favourite features of iOS 16.
So, if we go to settings, select General, then scroll down to keyboard, you will see that we have auto punctuationunder dictation, and you need make sure that it is switched on.
When you speak to Siri, it will make sure that punctuation is included automatically without you having to say what punctuation you want to use.
MOST REPLAYED
Now, if you go to iCloud settings, select password and security, and then scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll see that automatic verification is listed under advanced.
By allowing iCloud to automatically and secretly validate your device and accounts, you can effectively avoid captures and web apps, according to Apple. Since Cloudflare and Fastly have both already announced support for private access tokens, this feature will already be available on many websites right away. Apple has added private access to tokens to iOS 16, which will enable applications and websites to verify the legitimacy of your request based on your device and your Apple ID.
NOTES
The next setting you need to change has to do with notes and the password that you used to lock your notes. so before, you would only be able to use your Notes password like a standalone password for Notes but now you can unlock and lock notes with your own device passcode and Face ID.
To do this, go into your settings and then go to Notes and then you’ll see a new section for password. From there we can see use device passcode or use a custom password. I think most people will want to make sure this is on use device passcode. That way you don’t forget a password that you only made for your notes and also down you will see use Face ID. You do want to turn that on to make sure you can lock and unlock your notes quickly
RANDOM PHOTOS
Next is a setting in photos. so, if you go to your Photos settings and scroll down, you’ll see that we have a new toggle for show featured content, and I personally like to have this turned on. so, you could see it says, “allow featured photos and memories to automatically appear on this device in places such as for you and search in Photos and in widgets”. So basically, if you are like me and you like random Photos just appearing throughout your device, photos from like four or five years ago I would go ahead and turn it on.
Previously, apple didn’t have that settings so we could not control those old memories from automatically appearing, but now if you don’t want old photos to be appearing, you can turn it off.
MAKE YOUR KEYPAD EXPERIENCE BETTER
I cannot talk about keyboards without mentioning the fact that IOS 16 introduces a haptic keyboard. So now if you go to your settings and go to sounds and haptics and then scroll down a little bit., you’ll see keyboard feedback, and from there simply tap on that and you have a toggle in there for Haptic. so now every time you press on a key on the keyboard, you feel that keyboard feedback, and it feels fabulous and then right below that, you do also have the option to play haptics in ring mode or in silent mode, you can turn than on and off for each of them.
The next setting is how to put the battery percentage in your status bar. so, if you go to settings and then go to battery, you will see up top we have a new toggle for battery percentage and when you turn it on you, will see your battery percentage inside your battery status bar. these settings can only be found in IOS 16 and later.
NOTIFICATIONS STYLE
The next setting you need to change is how your notification appear on your Lock Screens. If you go to your settings and go to notifications, you’ll see right up top under display that we have a different layout for notifications that you can choose from. we have to stack, list and we have accounts, which is a very clean look that just shows the number of notifications that you have, and that it doesn’t show you any context about them. That is the one I use on my device.
SPOTLIGHT
Another setting you might want to change is the spotlight search on the Home Screen. so before, in all previous IOS versions, what you had to do was swipe down to invoke the spotlight search but now, with IOS 16, you have an additional button on the screen that doesn’t require you to swipe. You simply tap on that and it’ll allow you to search via spotlight search and when you change pages, you can see it changes to the page shots right before going back to saying search.
if you don’t like that, you can turn it off. You just have to go to your settings and then go to home screen, you’ll see right there under search, it says show on home screen and you can turn that off and then it’ll go back to just the classic page Dots
ANNOUNCE NOTIFICATION
The next settings you might want to change has to do with AirPods. If you connect your AirPods to your device and you go into settings, you will see we have a little panel there for our AirPods and if we scroll down on that section, you’ll see we have a spacial audio. right below that we have personalized spacial audio. If you tap on that you might want to go ahead and configure your own personalized spacial audio. when you do this, basically it is going to use your TrueDepth Camera, your front-facing camera on your iPhone to take pictures of your head and your ear shape and then Apple’s algorithm is going to fine tune the audio experience to sound the best that it possibly can, given the shape of your ears. So, I did notice a difference in this personally and the audio quality, so it is definitely worth giving a try here on iOS 16.
HANG UP
Next is Siri. Go to settings and accessibility and then all the way down to the bottom to Siri and then all the way down to the bottom of Siri, you will see that we now have a new toggle for announce notification on speaker and you can see it says “Siri announces their notifications to you over your devices speaker”. So, it no longer requires only AirPods to announce notifications and you will see once you enable that you do have another menu for announce notification where you can choose which notifications you want to be read out to you.
We also have some additional Siri settings. Now we have call hang up. so, you can just say “hey Siri, hung up” and it’s will actually hang up a phone call or a FaceTime call without having to press any buttons and you can do this on an iPhone 11 and newer.
BEST ACCESSIBILITY FEATURE
The next setting has to do with an accessibility feature, called live caption, and I think this is the best accessibility feature in iOS system. so, if you go to your settings and go to accessibility and you scroll down, you will see that we have live captions.
I would recommend turning it on if you are somebody who would benefit from something like captions. If you do that, and you start playing a video from a place like YouTube, you will see that it will show the captions for everything being said in the YouTube video, even if the video is on mute, and if you enable live caption and you go to appearance, you can change everything in there like the test and the test size, the test colour and the test background. You can you change the opacity too.
SAFARI SHARE
The next setting you need to change is inside of Safari. If you go to your Safari settings and you go down to extensions, look all the way down to the bottom and you want to make sure that share across devices is turned on, so what this means is, it will pick up on all of the other extensions on all your other devices, and it will put them in the little section that says ‘on other devices’
You also want to make sure that share across devices is turn on your settings as well, so when you go down to the bottom of the section, you can see that settings for websites.
DEPTH EFFECT ON LOCK SCREEN
The next thing you want to change is the depth effect on the Lock Screen, if you want to get a really cool effect, where it is like your subject is in front of the time. You can do that by pressing the three dots down in the bottom right-hand corner and you will see you have a death effect right there. Keep in mind that you cannot do this if you have widgets on your screen and it does not also work for every image.
