A dozen iOS 10 feature gems that Apple forgot to mention

Last month, when Apple (AAPL) released iOS 10, the latest system software for the iPhone/iPad, it made a big deal out of the major features, like a redesigned Music app and contextual predictions in Autocorrect.

But Apple’s engineer elves worked for a year to overhaul iOS 10, and they’ve planted lots of hidden gems. In today’s video, all in one 12-minute lesson, I’m happy to present a dozen of the best iOS 10 features that Apple forgot to mention.

(In this crash course, I didn’t say anything about the new Messages app. That one gets awhole lesson unto itself!)

Take a picture—fast

The tiny camera icon in the lower-right corner of the Lock screen—for quick access to the Camera app—is gone. In iOS 10, getting to the point of taking a photo is even faster. Click the Home button to wake the phone—and then swipe left anywhere on the screen. In under a second, you’re ready to take a photo.

Collaborative Notes

You and your buddies can now edit a page in Notes simultaneously, wirelessly, across the internet. Fantastic for planning an event, building a wish list, working together on a little brainstorming document, and so on.

Open the Notes app. Find the page you want to share, and then tap the round Person icon at the top. You’re asked to share the page using any of the usual methods: by message, email, AirDrop, and so on.

Once your colleague accepts your invite, you’ll briefly see yellow highlighting appear on the note to indicate where that person is making changes.

New magnifier

Oh man, this is great: You can triple-click the Home button to turn the iPhone into the world’s best electronic magnifying glass. Perfect for dim restaurants, tiny type on packages, and theater programs. You can zoom in, turn on the flashlight, tweak the contrast—the works.

To set this up, open Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Magnifier, and proceed as shown in the video above.

Color blindness filter

For the first time, the iPhone can help you if you’re color-blind. The Color Accommodations now lets you turn on special screen modes that substitute colors you can see for colors you can’t.

To set this up, open Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Color Accommodations -> Display Filters, and turn on the kind of color-blindness you have (red/green, for example).

The phone’s colors may now look funny to other people, but you should have an easier time picking out the colors when it counts.

Eliminate the click

You can get an extra efficiency when it comes to waking up your phone by eliminating the requirement to click the Home button.

Instead, you can just touch your finger to it. That wakes the phone and unlocks it in a single motion.

To find this feature, open Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Home Button. Turn on “Rest finger to open.”

That’s all there is to it.

Control center trix

You know the Control Center? It’s that half-page of essential settings controls that opens when you swipe upward from the bottom of the screen.

If you have an iPhone 6s, 6s Plus, 7 or 7 Plus, iOS 10 lets you hold your finger down on some of the icons to produce shortcut menus. The Flashlight now lets you choose from three different brightness levels. The Timer button offers presets for 1 minute, 5 minutes, 20 minutes, and so on. The Camera button offers Take Photo, Record Slo-mo, Record Video, and Take Selfie. That kind of thing.

Photos movies

In iOS 10, the new Photos app introduces Memories: beautiful, automatic, musical slideshows made of all the pix and videos from a certain trip or weekend. Most people are pleasantly surprised at how coherent and well-created these are, even though they’re totally automatic.

Open Photos; at the bottom, tap Memories. There they are. You can tap one to play it; you can also adjust the musical style, the length, and even which photos and videos are in it.

And once you’re satisfied, you can share it or post it online.

Photos search

Photos’s Search box lets you find images according to what they show. You can search your photos for “dog,” or “beach,” or whatever.

You can’t type anything you want—you have to choose a noun from one of Apple’s canned categories—but you can combine a noun search with, for example, a place search, making it much easier to find a certain photo. 

by  David Pogue