iOS 16 is 2022’s major iPhone update, which Apple first previewed during WWDC22. This excellent iPhone update comes packed with new features and changes, including some highly-requested ones. Notably, it redesigns the Lock Screen with support for advanced customizations, along with boosting the tools offered by Mail and Messages. Below you will find a list of everything new in iOS 16, the devices that support it, and how to install the update.
Does my iPhone support iOS 16?
This question is one of the first that crosses a person’s mind when thinking of a new iOS release. Here’s a list of supported iPhone models:
- iPhone 14
- iPhone 14 Plus
- iPhone 14 Pro
- iPhone 14 Pro Max
- iPhone SE 3
- iPhone 13
- iPhone 13 Mini
- iPhone 13 Pro
- iPhone 13 Pro Max
- iPhone 12
- iPhone 12 Mini
- iPhone 12 Pro
- iPhone 12 Pro Max
- iPhone SE 2
- iPhone 11
- iPhone 11 Pro
- iPhone 11 Pro Max
- iPhone XS
- iPhone XS Max
- iPhone XR
- iPhone X
- iPhone 8
- iPhone 8 Plus
When was iOS 16 released?
After three months of beta-testing with developers and enthusiastic users, Apple released iOS 16 to the public on Sept.12, 2022.
How can I install iOS 16?
To install iOS 16 on your compatible iPhone:
- Launch the Settings app.
- Tap on General.
- Click on the Software Update section.
- Give the page a few seconds to refresh. Once the update appears, tap on Download and Install.
- Agree to the updated Terms of Service after reading them carefully.
Voila! Your iPhone will download and install the iOS 16 update. Make sure to keep your device connected to a power source at all times during the update.
What’s new in iOS 16?
iOS 16 introduces a ton of new features, including a highly-customizable Lock Screen, editing and un-sending iMessages, and more. Those running this version will also get their hands on an updated Mail app, better collaboration tools, and improved Maps. We will highlight all the new additions this OS version brings in the section below.
iOS 16 Changelog
Home
- Redesigned Home app makes it easier to navigate, organize, view, and control your smart home accessories
- Home tab now integrates all your accessories, rooms, and scenes into a single tab for a whole-house view, allowing you to see your entire home at a glance
- Categories for lights, climate, security, speakers and TVs, and water let you quickly access all the relevant accessories organized by room and display more detailed status information
- New camera view displays up to four cameras front and center in the Home tab, scroll to see any additional camera views in your home
- Redesigned accessory tiles feature more visually recognizable icons that are color-matched to their category, along with new behaviors for more precise accessory controls
Health
- Medications feature helps you track and manage your medications, vitamins, and supplements by creating a list, custom schedules, and reminders. Then you can view the logs over time
- Add medications using your iPhone camera (iPhone XS, iPhone XR, and later)
- Interaction alerts inform you if there is a critical interaction when you add a new medication
- Cycle deviation notifications alert you if your logged menstrual cycles show a pattern of infrequent periods, irregular periods, prolonged periods, or persistent spotting
- Invitations for Health Sharing allow loved ones to easily and securely share their health data with you
- Health Sharing reminders give you transparency and control over the health data you are sharing with loved ones
News
- My Sports enables you to easily follow your favorite teams and leagues and watch highlights right in the News app
- Favorites give you easy access to the channels and topics you read the most in a consistent place near the top of your Today feed
- New homepages deliver visually updated and easier-to-navigate topic feeds for local news locales, sports teams and leagues, and more
Family Sharing
- Improved child account setup makes it easier to create an account for a child with the right parental controls, including age‑appropriate media restrictions
- Device setup for a child lets you use Quick Start to easily set up a new iOS or iPadOS device for your child with your selected parental controls in place
- Screen Time requests in Messages make it even easier to approve or decline requests from your child
- Family Checklist gives you tips and suggestions like updating a child’s parental control settings, turning on location sharing, or just reminding you to share your iCloud+ subscription with everyone
Safety Check
- Safety Check is a new section in Settings to help people in domestic or intimate partner violence situations quickly reset the access they’ve granted to others
- Emergency reset lets you quickly take action to reset access across all people and apps, including disabling location sharing via Find My, resetting privacy permissions for apps, and more
- Manage sharing and access helps you review and customize which apps and people can access your information
Accessibility
- Door detection in Magnifier locates a door, reads signs and symbols around it, and gives you instructions for how to open the door (iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro)
- Apple Watch mirroring provides full control of Apple Watch from iPhone and supports use of Switch Control, Voice Control, or any other assistive features on iPhone to get the most out of your Apple Watch
- Live Captions (beta) automatically converts audio into text for users who are Deaf or hard of hearing to follow along more easily with calls and media content (iPhone 11 and later)
- Buddy controller helps users with cognitive disabilities get support from a caregiver or friend while playing a game by combining inputs from multiple game controllers into one
- VoiceOver is now available in over 20 new languages and locales, including Bangla (India), Bulgarian, Catalan, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese
- Voice Control spelling mode gives you the option to dictate names, addresses, or other custom spellings letter by letter
This release also includes other features and improvements:
- The Fitness app lets you track and meet your fitness goals even if you don’t yet have an Apple Watch, using iPhone motion sensors to give you an estimate of your calories to contribute to your daily Move goal
- AirPods Pro (2nd Gen) support
- Personalized Spatial Audio uses the TrueDepth camera on iPhone to create a personal profile for Spatial Audio that delivers a more precise and immersive listening experience on AirPods (3rd Gen), AirPods Pro (1st and 2nd Gen), AirPods Max
- Handoff in FaceTime allows you to move FaceTime calls seamlessly from your iPhone to your iPad or Mac, and vice versa
- Memoji updates include more sticker poses, hairstyles, headwear, noses, and lip colors
- Quick Note adds support for taking a note in any app on your iPhone and adding links to create context and easily find content
- Translate camera lets you translate text around you using the camera in the Translate app
- Duplicate detection in Photos identifies duplicate photos so you can quickly clean up your library
- Foreground blur for portrait photos in Camera blurs objects in the foreground for a more realistic-looking depth-of-field effect (iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 13 Pro Max)
- Pinned lists in Reminders help you quickly navigate to your favorite lists
- Search on the Home Screen enables Spotlight to be accessed directly from the bottom of the Home Screen, making it easy to open apps, find contacts, or get information from the web
- Automatically send messages in CarPlay to skip the confirmation step when sending messages
- Rapid Security Response gets important security improvements to your devices even faster, as they can be applied automatically between standard software updates
iOS 16: All the new features
Redesigned Lock Screen
Apple refreshed the iPhone Home Screen back in iOS 14 — introducing widgets in the process. iOS 16 shifts the attention to the Lock Screen, bringing advanced customizations that let users personalize it beyond just setting wallpapers. This version allows users to change the time’s font and color, add widgets, set richer wallpapers, and more.
Expectedly, Apple has provided developers with the Lock Screen widget API, allowing them to build their own. So users aren’t limited to utilizing first-party ones only. It’s also worth mentioning that users can create several Lock Screens and shift through them.
Notification updates
Besides the major Lock Screen redesign, Apple is changing how notifications appear on iOS 16. Instead of coming through from the top, they’re now focused at the bottom. Additionally, users get to view them as a list, stack, or as a mere number. This makes the Lock Screen a cleaner space that isn’t as cluttered with spammy notification banners. It also concentrates on the wallpaper and new widgets. iOS 16 also support Live Activities — which are basically persistent notifications for relevant, ongoing events.
Focus enhancements
iOS 15 introduced Focus, or Do Not Disturb 2.0. iOS 16 improves this feature by allowing users to assign certain Lock Screens to specific Focus modes. Additionally, it makes it easier for users to choose which apps and people they want to white- or black-list.
More notably, though, Focus is now better integrated into apps, even third-party ones. Users can hide certain elements or filter out content they don’t want to see inside an app when using a certain Focus mode. This makes separating our work and personal lives even more doable.
Advanced photo sharing
iOS 16 brings a photo library-sharing tool that makes it easy to share moments with the people we care about. Once set up, iOS will automatically send relevant shots to those who should receive them based on location, identified faces, and other factors. This new addition makes sense for families and groups of close friends who are tired of manually sending every photo or video they take to each other. It’s also worth noting that edits made to these shots sync to the devices of all participants.
Messages upgrades
Users have been requesting a lot of features when it comes to the Messages app. The service remains somewhat basic when compared to other popular instant messaging platforms, like Telegram. Fortunately, iOS 16 ticks a few of the most-requested checkboxes.
Users on this version can now edit and unsend iMessages within 15 minutes. Additionally, they get to mark a chat as unread as a bookmark to get back to it later. Also, Messages catches up with other Apple apps and introduces a trash bin. Those on iOS 16 can retrieve deleted messages within 30 days of binning them.
In the collaboration department, Messages get some love, as well. Users can now use SharePlay through iMessage — not just FaceTime. This allows you to consume digital goods with others without being in an audio/video call. And finally, there are new collaboration tools that automatically add iMessage recipients. This makes being productive with other people a simpler process.
Mail starts to catch up
The Apple Mail app is ancient when it comes to features and functionalities. Power users often find themselves struggling to get basic tasks done and end up depending on other clients. iOS 16 gives Mail a little push forward, introducing some handy additions that make it a richer app.
Users can now undo-send fresh emails, schedule drafts to auto-send later on, get follow-up reminders, and more. The search bar also gets a boost, introducing richer results and an auto-correct functionality for misspelled search terms, Last but not least, Mail will now remind you to attach a document if you attempt to send the email without including it. Gmail has had a similar feature for a while now. It’s refreshing to see Apple catching up — even if slowly.
Apple’s web browser gets some love on iOS 16. This comes in the form of collaboration that makes the web browser social. Users can easily now view and collaborate on tab groups to plan together or work on projects. The mechanism is built into FaceTime and iMessage and allows users to connect easily in different ways while planning ahead. Apart from this social tool, Safari now supports the FIDO password-less standard. Users can sign up on compatible websites without setting a password.
Live Text boosts
Apple introduced Live Text last year, allowing users to select text on photos, identify animal and plant breeds, and more. This year, iOS 16 users will be able to select text on videos, too. They can also select subjects in photos and separate them from their backgrounds — through on-device machine learning.
Versatile text input
iOS 16 allows users to take advantage of Dictation while typing with the keyboard. So you can use both input methods at once. Additionally, Dictation is now capable of inputting emojis and punctuating your input automatically. These changes make it easy to depend on the speech-to-text tool in a more natural way.
Richer Maps
When compared to Google Maps, Apple Maps still lacks plenty of features. For starters, there is no offline map support, and many businesses are missing in countries that aren’t the U.S., Canada, or the EU. This makes solely depending on it a challenge for most users worldwide. Fortunately, iOS 16 brings some improvements to this navigation app. Users can now add several stops before reaching a certain destination. Additionally, users in select regions can add transit cards to their Wallet, refill their balance, and do more, all from right in Apple Maps.
Apple Pay additions
Apple Pay makes buying things a seamless process. Whether you’re doing it online or in person, you tap a button, authenticate, and you’re good to go. iOS 16 introduces some handy additions to Apple’s contactless payment system. Users can now make payments over the course of six weeks through four interest-free installments. So the company will basically lend users money for no additional fee. Also, when you use Apple Pay, supported shops can display the package tracking info right in the Wallet app.
Speaking of Wallet, users can also share their saved keys with others through first- and third-party apps. This allows you to give smart home access to your family, for example. And lastly, those who add their IDs to Wallet can now share certain info with apps for verification purposes, such as being over 21 years old.
Overhauled Home
Smart homes are becoming more popular, and Apple wants to make users’ lives easier. iOS 16 overhauls the Home app — introducing a more efficient design that is simpler to use. The company will also be supporting the Matter standard later this year. This would allow users to conveniently communicate with smart appliances no matter which OS they’re using.
A healthier OS
Apple’s dedication to better health and fitness shines in iOS 16. Users can now share their activities with others without needing an Apple Watch — through the Fitness app. Of course, the stats are limited, but they could encourage people to be more active nonetheless. Additionally, users can get more accurate data about their sleep and how deep it is. And finally, there’s a new medication feature that allows users to track their meds and log them in.
Family Sharing tweaks
Family Sharing is a great way to share purchases across a household and control minors’ devices. iOS 16 introduces clearer settings and checklists that further clarify what each option does. Additionally, parents will get to grant their kids additional screen time right in Messages easily. That’s not to mention that setting up a new Apple device for a child is even simpler now and applies the restrictions automatically.
Revamped CarPlay
CarPlay in iOS 16 supports different screen sizes and integrates into the car’s hardware. This allows users to view relevant information, like speed and temperature, thanks to the data shared from the iPhone. Additionally, you will get to control your car through the CarPlay interface — such as adjusting the air conditioner — without needing to launch the car’s native interface. The list of supported vehicles will go live in late 2023.
Other iOS 16 tidbits
iOS 16 is PACKED with changes and features that truly enrich the OS. These include:
- Safety Check for domestic abuse survivors.
- Accessibility features, such as Door Detect and live captions across the system.
- Mirroring the Apple Watch to the iPhone through AirPlay.
- Using two Bluetooth controllers for single-player input.
- Sports-focused content in Apple News.
- Freeform — a whiteboard app for brainstorming.
- Handoff support for FaceTime across Apple devices.
- Templates in the Reminder apps.
- New Memoji styles and stickers.
- Live camera translation in Apple Translate.
- Apple Music Sing, an iOS 16.2 addition that turns the iPhone into a karaoke machine through a dedicated lyric view and de-emphasized vocals.
- Advanced Data Protection, an optional iOS 16.2 feature that allows you to end-to-end encrypt up to 23 iCloud data types instead of just 14.
- FIDO key support, which allows iOS 16.3 users to optionally add a stronger layer of security to their Apple IDs. If set up, it replaces the traditional two-factor authentication mechanism required to log into an Apple ID.
- Safari push notification support, which enables iOS 16.4 users who have added web apps to the iPhone Home Screen to optionally receive timely alerts through iOS push notifications.
We can safely say that iOS 16 didn’t disappoint with new features. After all, we got some pretty big additions, such as the overhauled Lock Screen, the Freeform app, Apple Music Sing, unsending messages/emails, and much more. We can only hope that iOS 17 brings as many changes when it launches later this year.
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