iOS 16 review: Customization unlocked

For the past two years, Apple’s annual iOS updates have focused on one feature for an overhaul and minor tweaks on everything else. Last year, focus was the focus. Last year it was the home screen.

This time it’s the lock screen. You can now change fonts, add widgets, customize the information displayed, and choose from a variety of wallpapers. Apple also deepened the integration of Focus Mode and Lock Screen fleshed out in iOS 15. It also laid the groundwork for more than just notifications that third-party apps can display before unlocking your phone.

Given the increasingly iterative nature of today’s iOS releases (many important features don’t arrive until months after the new integer version’s first ship date), the more wasteful No transition to early iOS review. time. Today we’re going to take a look at the major new features in iOS 16, but we’ll also touch on some other key features and changes.

lock screen

iOS 16 touches most aspects of using the iPhone in many small ways, but it’s all about “lock screen updates.” It makes sense: Apple has made a lot of noise about shipping features that integrate hardware and software, with the iPhone 14 Pro’s new always-on display highlighting the lock screen.

But for users of other iPhone models that don’t have the always-on feature, there are plenty of features here. Following last year’s emphasis on Focus Mode and last year’s home screen customization, this is the most significant move Apple has made in terms of iPhone customization.

I know what you mean. All of these features are basically part of Android and have been around forever, haven’t they?

Yes, that’s right. Most of the time. In typical Apple fashion, there are some fancy features here that his Android hasn’t touched upon, but feature wise, this is mostly yesterday’s news for his Android diehards. But what’s already good for Android users is great for iOS users as well.

It’s easy to see the impact of the Apple Watch on this update. A new widget works like a complication and a new lock screen works like a watch face. This sentence tells you almost everything you need to know about your new lock screen. Imagine an Apple Watch and all the customizations, features and limitations that watch faces offer. Now make it all phone sized. Look, this is the new iOS lock screen.

Press and hold your finger on the lock screen to initiate these customizations. This presents a horizontally scrolling interface of cards, each representing one of your custom screens.

At the bottom are three important buttons. Tap “Focus” to change the focus mode that is on when this lock screen is active. Tap Customize to change widgets, fonts, wallpaper, and more. There is also a “+” button for adding new custom lock screens in the card column.

starting with wallpaper

Pressing the + button pops up a panel offering different wallpaper possibilities. These options fall into several buckets. There is a color gradient wallpaper that selects a common color theme and defines some attributes of a simple gradient. (It actually looks better than it sounds.)

There’s a collection that’s a bit like Apple’s previous approach to iPhone wallpapers. It’s a pre-made pattern with several different color options.

You can also create wallpapers from emojis on a grid or in patterns across the screen, and you can choose which emojis to display. Using Apple’s standard emoji selection interface, you can select up to six emojis to include in your wallpaper.

My personal favorite wallpaper is the “weather and astronomy” category. These offer few ways to customize, but are very snazzy. The obvious thing here is to change the wallpaper visuals to match the actual weather conditions in your area. These visuals are similar to the ones we have already painted for the Weather app.

There are also dynamic wallpapers of the Earth, Moon and Solar System. The Solar System’s shows the actual current relative positions of the planets orbiting the Sun, and the Earth’s shows their positions on Earth with green dots in live-updated cloud cover that reflects conditions on Earth. increase.

Go from the always-on display to the active lock screen and swipe the home screen to see an animated moon and earth at different angles. This is a fun effect, especially the moon wallpaper looks great on his OLED his iPhone screen.

But as neat as they are, I think most people choose wallpapers that use photos from the Photos app’s library. Tap Photos to choose from individual photos on your phone.

Using machine learning, iPhone analyzes all the photos in your library and allows you to offer “recommended” suggestions. These featured suggestions also have subcategories such as people, pets, nature, and cities. Of course, you can also browse your entire photo library and select the image you like.

There’s also a “Photo Shuffle,” which is “a dynamic set of photos to shuffle your iPhone through the day,” according to the tooltip. You can change the shuffle frequency to On Tap, On Lock, Hourly, or Daily. Again, it shows you featured photos and lets you choose which categories to include, but you can also manually select each photo from your library.

This is because for photo wallpapers, Apple used some clever AI tricks to cut out the main objects in the image, such as faces and buildings, and overlay a bit of the current-time indicator for a clever effect. A great place to note that you can create. In fact, it’s shocking how well this works. Unfortunately adding a widget under the time doesn’t work. Except for that restriction, you can turn it on and off at will.

Selecting a wallpaper takes you to the full lock screen customization view.