Apple Introduces iOS 16 with All-New Lock Screen, Sharing Features, and More

Apple has just previewed iOS 16 during its WWDC 2022 keynote event, introducing an all-new Lock Screen experience, new sharing, communication, and intelligence features, including updates to Messages and Mail, and much more.

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“iOS 16 is a big release with updates that will change the way you experience iPhone,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “We have reimagined how the Lock Screen looks and works with exciting new features that make it more personal and helpful.”

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With a new multilayered effect, the iOS 16 Lock Screen features widgets that take inspiration from Apple Watch complications, making it easy to get information at a glance, such as upcoming calendar events, the weather, battery levels, alarms, time zones, Activity ring progress, and more.

Users can also create Lock Screens using their favorite emoji or color combinations. With multiple Lock Screens, users can switch between their favorites with just a swipe.

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Notifications have been redesigned to roll up from the bottom, ensuring that users have a clear view of their personalized Lock Screen. Focus is more powerful, easier to set up, and now connects to the Lock Screen, offering users a way to tie a Lock Screen wallpaper and widgets to a particular Focus.

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The new iCloud Shared Photo Library gives families a new way to share photos seamlessly with a separate iCloud library that up to six users can collaborate on, contribute to, and enjoy. Users can choose to share existing photos from their personal libraries or share based on a start date or people in the photos.

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In iOS 16, users can now finally edit or recall recently sent messages, recover recently deleted messages, and mark conversations as unread so they can come back to them later.

In addition, SharePlay is coming to Messages, making it possible to enjoy synced content like movies or songs and shared playback controls all while chatting in Messages. Mail also receives its biggest overhaul to search, delivering more relevant, accurate, and complete results.

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Live Text uses on-device intelligence to recognize text in images across iOS, and it is now expanding to include video. Users can pause a video on any frame and interact with the text.

Visual Look Up takes photos further by introducing a new feature that allows users to tap and hold on the subject of an image to lift it from the background and place it in apps like Messages.

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New Apple Pay Order Tracking gives users can receive detailed receipts and order tracking information in the Wallet for Apple Pay purchases with participating merchants. Keys and IDs in Wallet also get expanded support. Users can use their ID in Wallet for apps requiring identity and age verification.

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CarPlay can now provide content for multiple screens within the vehicle. Deeper integration with the vehicle will allow users to do things like controlling the radio or changing the climate directly through CarPlay and using the vehicle data, CarPlay will seamlessly render the speed, fuel level, temperature, and more on the instrument cluster.

The developer preview of iOS 16 is available to download to Apple Developer Program members starting today, and a public beta will be available to iOS users next month at beta.apple.com.

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