Apple iOS 16 Preview | PCMag

iOS 16 was first revealed during Apple’s June WWDC event, but the upcoming mobile operating system is now available in beta form to all iPhone users with compatible devices (iPhones 8 and up). With it, Apple builds upon iOS 15 to create a phone OS with highly customizable Lock Screen elements, convenient Messages app improvements, awesome Live Text enhancements, and a suite of small, impactful changes that make it a refreshing evolution of the system iPhone users know and love. 

How to Upgrade to Apple iOS 16

There is no need to rush headlong into this beta, as iOS 16 will only get more stable and polished as its official release approaches this fall. That said, it contains impressive, new features that you may find enticing. If you must have iOS 16 right now, check out our guide: Ready to Upgrade? How to Get iOS 16.

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A Fresh Façade

The most immediate and notable iOS 16 changes involve the overhauled Lock Screen. It’s no longer a static image you set as your phone’s background. Instead, it features several customizable elements that you can personalize to your liking. This includes the clock font, widget placement, and even how notifications are displayed. If you’re at all familiar with Android’s Material You design, Apple’s take on the lock screen should look plenty familiar.

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The iOS 16 Lock Screen has original features, too, including a multilayered effect with compatible photos. Powerful object-recognition capabilities let the system identify and isolate a photograph’s subject. As a result, photo subjects (like, say, your cat) are dynamically positioned in front of the time, creating a cool layer of depth. Unfortunately, it has somewhat limited functionality, so it won’t work if you also have widgets under the clock. It’s important to find the right image size and angle, since the subject needs to be large enough to take up a prominent space on the screen, but not so much that it obscures the time display. It takes some finagling, but when it works, the added image depth is a great-looking flourish.

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You don’t need to fuss over this too much, however. You can select from a pre-made, Apple-designed gallery of Lock Screen images that nicely leverage this layering functionality. The gallery options include emoji-laden wallpapers, a vast color palette of backgrounds, dynamic astronomy images, and even cultural themes (Pride, for example). A personal favorite is the simple Weather Lock Screen that dynamically changes throughout the day to reflect the time and weather in a given area. You can customize numerous Lock Screens, and swap between them with a simple swipe, much like Faces on an Apple Watch.

You can also personalize the widgets that appear under the clock to include calendar events, weather, alarms, stocks, news, and other useful information. Or, if you wish to soak in the beauty of the layered wallpaper, you can opt not to add any at all. Notifications can be customized in Settings to display as a list, count, or stack. In a nice touch, notifications roll up from the screen’s bottom, taking up much less space than they do in iOS 15. The new Live Activity, a feature that keeps you on top of real-time events, has notifications that appear there, too. So, if you’re listening to music or waiting for an Uber Eats delivery, you’ll receive updates at the bottom of the screen. 

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The Lock Screen can tap your iPhone’s Focus system tool. Focus, which debuted in IOS 15, is a specialized set of parameters that silences calls and notifications based on your specifications. These include activities like Driving, Fitness, Gaming, Reading, Sleep, and Work. You can customize them to display notifications however you wish, and with their own custom Lock Screen. Overall, the system feels tighter, but with more customization freedom. You can easily sink hours of time creating various Lock Screen looks.

Major Improvements to Messages

Apple’s iMessage platform gets new functionality with iOS 16, bringing it in line with what Facebook Messenger offers. You now have a 15 minute window to edit a sent message or delete it outright. Note, however, that you and your recipient both get an alert stating that a message was deleted or edited (the recipient cannot see the edit history, though). More importantly, this function only works with Apple devices. Editing or deleting messages sent to an Android user does not remove the message from their inbox. 

Another useful feature is the ability to mark messages as unread. This is perfect for moments when you can’t immediately respond to someone, but want to make sure to reply when you’re free. This mark is user-side only, so the sender still knows that you received and read the message.

Live Text Is Magic

Live Text isn’t a new feature, but it’s an extremely convenient and impressive function. With this tool, you can copy text in images or photos, and paste them wherever you want. In iOS 16, this feature now works with video. If you pause a video that has a frame with text in it, you can long-press the text and lift it from the video.

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Even better, Apple has expanded this tech to identify subjects within a photo. When used with a photo or image that features a clear subject and background, you can copy the subject and paste it in the same way as you do text. In our tests, iOS 16 does a surprisingly good job of capturing the object, and cleaning up background noise. It’s a fantastic tool for making stickers or creating memes. 

Turn Your iPhone Into a Webcam

Smartphone cameras have become extraordinarily powerful in recent years, letting you take superb photographs and high-quality video with ease. Unfortunately, the rinky-dink webcam built into your laptop cannot come close to competing with your handset. So, why not just use your iPhone as your webcam instead? Enter Continuity Camera.

In order for this awesome tech to work, you need an iPhone with iOS 16, as well as a computer running the latest version of MacOS Ventura. When your iPhone is clipped to the top of your laptop, your Mac switches from its built-in camera to the phone’s camera. Having dealt with the grief of from-home recording during this extended work-from-home period, I found this feature truly convenient. I placed my iPhone 13 Pro Max on an inexpensive phone stand and wirelessly connected it to my MacBook Air to use it as a webcam. The software did most of the setup work, making the process convenient. 

With Continuity Camera, you can use Center Stage to keep yourself in frame as you move around the room; Portrait Mode to blur the background; and Studio Light to dim the background and highlight your face.

A particularly useful feature is Desk View. By using the iPhone’s ultra-wide camera while it’s mounted on your laptop, you can split the video feed to show your face, as well as whatever is on the desk in front of your laptop. There are many situations where this may be useful, such as video game streaming. For example, you may want the camera on your face as you speak, as well as on your hands as you demonstrate controller or arcade stick inputs.

Handoff is a useful feature tied to Camera Continuity. With it, you can seamlessly move FaceTime calls between iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices. In our tests, a Bluetooth headset connected to a call seamlessly transitioned between devices. 

Apple iOS 16’s Improved Privacy and Safeguards

New privacy features are constantly introduced to IOS to keep people safe as technology moves towards a more unified, always-connected infrastructure. Safety Check is one such feature iOS 16 introduces, and it’s designed as an emergency reset when you find yourself in danger. 

We hope you’re never in a situation where you need to avoid the people you’ve connected with. That said, Safety Check lets you immediately reset access for all people across all apps, change your Apple ID password, and review your emergency contacts. Thankfully, Apple doesn’t notify anyone that you’ve stopped sharing with, for added personal security. 

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Other Cool iOS 16 Features

There are many small changes within iOS 16 that greatly improve the user experience, and they’re too numerous to list here. Depending on your preferences, these changes can range from minimal to absolute game changers. Here are a few examples.

• We love that Face ID now works in Landscape mode on supported iPhone models—you no longer need to flip your phone around to unlock the handset. 

• The beta introduces haptic feedback for keyboard presses. Haptics have been in iPhones for several generations, but with iOS 16 you now receive satisfying feedback with every keystroke. This subtle change makes typing much more tactile and intuitive.

• The Weather app displays forecasts for each day of the week, with detailed graphs revealing how the temperature, humidity, precipitation, and wind will move through your area.

• The Home screen now features a Search/Spotlight button. Tapping an icon is so much more intuitive than swiping right on the home screen.

Apple iOS 16 Beta Is an Excellent Update

With the beta open to the public, everyone with a compatible iPhone can explore iOS 16’s new features. The OS doesn’t shake things up too much, but its cool Lock Screen additions, useful webcam functionality, and security enhancements expand the kit to make iPhones more convenient, safe, and fun. The operating system will undoubtedly receive further refinements as it approaches its official release later this fall, but we recommend checking out iOS 16 now if you want to give the OS a test drive.

If you’re in the public beta, head down to our comment section and share what you’re most enjoying about iOS 16. For more on Apple software, check out Hands On With Apple’s WatchOS 9 Beta: New Fitness Features Stand Out and our macOS Ventura preview.