IOS 16 iOS 16 in all its glory
Straight off the bat, Apple unveiled the latest version of their mobile operating system iOS 16. Starting things off with the lockscreen, iOS 16 will now allow users to add widgets like the weather. Furthermore, you can also customize the font and color of elements on the screen. We’ve seen this on Android for a while now with skins such as MIUI and EMUI, and Apple seems to have joined the fray as well. iOS 16 also has a gallery of wallpapers that you can pick and choose from too.
If you’re bothered by the plethora of notifications on your lockscreen from various apps you use, fear not, as notifications will simply roll up from the bottom or you can choose just to hide them as well. In addition, activities such as your currently playing music or your workout progress will also appear at the bottom of your lockscreen (similar to how Android does it).
In terms of focusing on productivity during work hours, iOS’s Focus Mode also got a bit of a facelift. While previously Focus mode could cut down on notifications, the new and improved focus mode extends this to apps as well. So you can basically filter out unwanted content from apps such as Messages, Calendar, and Mail. You can even have Safari filter out tabs that are not related to your work.
Messages now has the ability to edit sent messages (especially useful if you made typos in work or official messages) and you can also unsend a message if you sent one by mistake. Lastly, you can also mark an entire message thread as unread. While that might not be a mind
blowing feature, if you find it useful, then by all means, you can make use of it. Speaking of messages, iOS 16 is also improving dictation, where you can now seamlessly switch between typing and voice dictation.
One cool thing to note is that dictation can also pick up on emoji detection just by the tone of your voice. Adding to this, Live Text allows you to select text from images (akin to how Google Lens works) and improves on it by giving you quick actions such as translations and even currency conversions.
Improvements to Apple Pay were also shown. One particular improvement was how Apple Wallet can authenticate your identity to apps that need it. For example, it can authenticate your age and check if you’re old enough to buy alcohol via Uber Eats. In addition, Apple Pay is slated to support payment installments and even order tracking with shipping tracking information.