Five of Apple’s key features in the upcoming iOS 16 upgrade

Apple unveiled iOS 16 today (Jun 7) at the annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference.

iOS 16 introduces a number of design and accessibility upgrades, including changes to the look of the phone lock screen, editing and recalling sent messages, upgrades to Live Text and the all-new Visual Look Up feature.

Here are some of the new features you can look forward to under iOS 16:

As iOS 14 introduced home screen widgets and allowed for the personalisation and customisation of one’s home screen, it’s only natural for Apple to extend such features to iPhone’s lock screen.

Being the first point of visual contact when you pick up your phone, the iPhone’s lock screen will soon see an upgrade to help users access what they need without having to unlock their phone entirely.

With iOS 16, widgets will now be introduced to the lock screen, making it easy to get all the information you require at a glance.

You may even change the look of your lock screen’s date and time by selecting different fonts, colours or placements. Curated wallpapers are also available where you can view live weather conditions as they change throughout the day, or astronomy views of the solar system.

With multiple lock screens available, users don’t have to stick to just one design or layout, and are able to switch between different layouts as they please. 

Notifications will now roll up from the bottom, allowing an unobstructed view of one’s personalised lock screen and widgets, and letting users choose to view their notifications via an expanded list view, stacked view, or count view.

Under the new iOS, the messaging application has been updated to introduce new features where users can edit and recall a sent text message for up to 15 minutes after sending it, and recover recently deleted messages for up to 30 days after deleting them.

SharePlay is a new feature to be introduced where you can synchronise content like movies, songs or games, and share playback controls with friends, all while chatting in Messages.

Live Text was first introduced in iOS 15, a feature that automatically recognises and transcribes or translates text in your photos. But in iOS 16, Live Text now works on videos where users can pause a video on any frame and interact with the text displayed on it.

Visual Look Up is a new feature that takes photos further by allowing users to tap and hold on the subject of an image, separating it from the background and placing it in apps like Messages.

Visual Look Up works in Photos, Screenshot, Quick Look, Safari, and more.

With iOS 15’s first introduction of Focus, the iOS 16 version will see a more powerful and easier to set up upgrade to the feature.

Recommended home screen pages with apps and widgets that are most relevant to the Focus you are setting up will also pop up on your phone.

Apps like Calendar, Mail, Messages, and Safari can employ Focus filters to show only notifications and updates relevant to your current Focus.

You can even schedule Focus modes to automatically turn on at specific times of the day.

You can now schedule emails in advance and even cancel delivery of an email before it reaches the inbox of a recipient. Mail also senses and detects if important information has not been included in the email such as an attachment, and issue an alert.

With Remind Later, you can resurface a previously received email at any moment to remind yourself, and Follow Up automatically prompts users to reply to an email if a response has not yet been received.

Shared tab groups have been added to Safari, allowing the sharing of a collection of websites with various people across devices, encouraging seamless sharing of tabs with others and seeing what others are viewing.

The new iCloud Shared Photo Library gives families and friend groups a new way to seamlessly share photos through a separate iCloud library that up to six users can collaborate on.

A full list of all the new iOS features to be introduced can be found here.

iOS 16 will require an iPhone 8 or later. While the specific date of the release has not yet been announced, the beta version will be available to the public in July 2022.