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Hidden Tips for Mastering iOS 10

Apple's iOS 10 has arrived. These tips will help you make the most of it.

By Eric Griffith
March 22, 2017
Apple iOS 10 Tips

With the release of every new mobile operating system—especially Apple's iOS—there comes a slew of new features. Like iOS 9 and iOS 8 before it, iOS 10 is no exception. Apple packed a lot of improvements and tricks into its latest OS, and now—a few months after its release—we revisit those tips and add a few new ones.

Apple review, Apple commentary, Apple news... Everything Apple Apple's iOS 10 didn't have the smoothest of rollouts; there were some unique quirks. Not Samsung Galaxy Note 7 bad, but iPhone owners encountered bricked iPhones, or at the very least, updates that malfunctioned and required iTunes to complete. In PC Labs, our analysts updated five iPhones to iOS 10 last fall and it worked great—on four of them.

At this point, you're probably in the clear when it comes to iOS problems. Apple says 79 percent of all the iPhones and iPads out there now are running iOS 10 (with 16 percent on iOS 9, and 5 percent apparently not caring about their security at all.) But it's possible that even as an iPhone power user, you missed out on a few great new features. These tips cover iOS 10's unique offerings.

1. Kill Unused Apple Apps

Kill Unused Apple Apps
The greatest news from iOS 10 is you no longer have to keep the apps that Apple pre-loads on all its iPhones but inevitably end up in a folder marked "crap." Delete them the same way you delete any app you don't want (hold a finger on the icon until they all go wiggly, then click the X that appears in the upper left of the app). You can reinstall them anytime via the App Store.

As Apple outlines on its support page, removing some apps will affect others. Delete the iBooks, Maps, Music, or Podcast apps, for example, and they won't work with CarPlay.

2. Easy Notification Clearance

Easy Notification Clearance
This one is loooong overdue: When your notifications are overwhelming, you can clear them all at once—not just per app. However, this works best with an iPhone 6s or higher with 3D Touch—you tap and hold the X at the top, then select "Clear All Notifications." On the older iPhones without 3D Touch, you can still click the X, but you have to then delete items day by day (instead of app by app like in iOS 9). You can also swipe an individual notification left to delete them one by one.

3. Home App Automates

Home App Automates
Apple hasn't given up on taking control of your home automation. The Home App —which you can delete!—offers to take control of your smart home devices. You can control by room, or just set things up to activate when you get home or leave home, etc. Mine didn't notice any of my installed Nest products, but your mileage may/will vary, as the automation devices have to support HomeKit to be seen by the app.

4. Sing to the New Control Center

Sing to the New Control Center
Like before, you access the Control Center—a quick way of using/activating/deactivating various iOS features—by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. It's redesigned slightly for iOS 10 with two pages of controls. The features you're used to are on the first page—Airplane Mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb, volume, AirPlay, AirDrop, Flashlight, Clock, Calculator, and Camera quick access, and now the Night Shift color shift toggle.

But swipe left and you get controls purely for music and audio. If you have any home-automation devices set up in the Home app, swipe left again to access them. You can use 3D Touch to access some, like using it to change the color on smart lightbulbs.

5. Get to Camera Quick

Get to Camera Quick
The iPhone camera is pretty great, even if the one on iPhone 7 Plus is NOT sporting a real telephoto lens. Previous versions of iOS made getting to the camera app semi-easy via either Control Center or even just swiping up from the lock screen. In iOS 10 it's even faster—on the lock screen, swipe left anywhere. Instant camera access.

6. Get Loud With Messages

Get Loud With Messages
If you're using the Messages app and sending to others on iMessage (you'll know because the word balloons are all blue, not green), you have new options to animate what you send. The word balloon on the other end, whether you're sending a text or an image, can be set to Slam, Loud, Gentle, or Invisible Ink (where the user has to "scratch" the message on screen to see what it says).

You can set other effects to rock the recipient's entire screen, not just the word balloon—they include fireworks, balloons, confetti, lasers, and a shooting star.

Hold the send button to pull up the Effects menu; click Bubble or Screen at top to pick which you want to impact. Recipients without iOS 10 will just get a normal text.

7. Draw Your Message

Draw Your Message
Interestingly, you can only get to the Slam/Loud/etc. effects in Messages when the iPhone is in portrait orientation. Turn the device 90 degrees to landscape and you can't access 'em. You do, however, get access to the new full-screen drawing option for hand-writing messages. If it doesn't automatically come up, hit the curly-cue key at bottom right of the keyboard. A few pre-hand-written missives like "Happy birthday" are provided. This is simply black "ink" on white.

8. Scribble Your Message

Scribble Your Message
Another big change for Messages: quick access to Digital Touch. Click the heart icon now found at the bottom of the Messages app and you get a little drawing screen in the center bottom with a black background (as opposed to the full-screen white-background you get when switch orientation). It comes with different colors to draw with on the left. On the right are a list of gestures—use them to make instant (and to be honest, nonsensical in the context of messages) animations, go full-screen for your art, or pull up video to annotate John Madden-style.

9. Quick Reply to Messages

Quick Reply to Messages
Another one for iMessage users only: double tap any incoming message to get the quick-reply pop-up menu for a "tapback." It's like assigning a Facebook like/reaction to messages: pick a heart, thumbs up, thumbs down, "ha ha," double exclamation or a question mark—that icon then shows up on the sender's original message so they know your quick reaction. Non-iMessage users get a text saying something like "Joe liked your message."

10. Display Video and Images in Messages

Display Video and Images in Messages
Previously, if you shared a link in Messages, the person got the link, that was it. But now, iMessage recipients will get the full image or video (if that's what you're sending) in their messages, ready to view or play back instantly. If the video or image is part of an article, the recipient can just click to read it.

11. Edit Images in Messages

Edit Images in Messages
There has always been a camera icon in messages so you could attach pictures or videos, either by taking a new pic or adding from the Photo Gallery. In iOS 10, you can mark up or edit the image. In fact, you can use the new drawing option to start the camera and make a video of yourself or other things, annotating it as you go. The lines can be vectorized—draw a square, it'll turn it into a perfect square; the same goes for lines and circles and ovals. Plus, you can pop in a little magnifier to highlight important parts. Increase the magnifier and even zoom for more detail.

12. Turn Off iMessage Receipts

Turn Off iMessage Receipts
WhatsApp could learn from this one: in individual threads/conversations that are entirely iMessage-based, click the I in the circle icon at top. If you then check off "Send Read Receipts" the person at the other end will know if you read the message or not. It only works for conversations with individuals, not group iMessage or SMS threads.

13. Raise to Wake

Raise to Wake
You used to have to unlock a screen to get notifications. But on iPhone 6s, SE, or 7, the phone springs to life with notifications—or when you lift the phone, a feature known as Raise to Wake. It can be annoying, though; to turn it off, navigate to Settings > Display and Brightness > Raise to Wake. Older phones lack the motion coprocessor to make this happen, so you won't see it in settings.

14. Work Together in Notes

Work Together in Notes
The Notes app has gone from being a boring text-only note-taker to now, as of iOS 10, being a collaborative tool. Use the Share function on a note to add people to it, sending invites via Twitter or email or other methods. If the person you pick also has iOS 10, they can make edits on the note as needed.

15. Add Apps and Stickers to Messages

Add Apps and Stickers to Messages
In the "why did it take so long?" department: Messages continues to try to one-up Facebook Messenger by adding features like stickers. Among the first is Marvel Stickers, which for $2 gets you a bunch of images of super-heroes to add to messages. You can find those and many, many more by clicking the App Store logo (the A) in Messages and then clicking Store. It's not just stickers, there are other apps like Dubsmash, and games like Words with Friends that you can insert into a message. You can pair apps to Messages and even auto-add them. They all typically install like a separate app, kinda like Bitmoji, but if it's specific to Messages the app will only work under iOS 10.

16. Access New Emoji

Access New Emoji
There were 100 new emoji in the default emoji keyboard that came with iOS 10; iOS 10.2 added 38 more with many skin tone variations, for a total of 2,373 emoji options. A lot of them include new designs; Twitter users openly mocked Apple for changing the gun emoji to a squirt gun, for example. New options include "crossed fingers" (finally!), a "call me" hand signal, and the all-important avocado for setting up guacamole dates.

If you send three or fewer emoji in the Messages app with iOS 10 by themselves with no text, they go through at three times the previous size, so they're easier to read.

17. Convert Text to Emoji

Convert Text to Emoji
If you type a message and write out words that have an emoji equivalent, Messages will highlight the words you could swap out for an emoji in an orangey red. Tap it to pick the emoji you want (for example "smiley" gets four different options).

18. Sleep Better

Sleep Better
Inside the Clock app there is now a Bedtime tab. Set it up with the hours of sleep you wish to get and your mandatory wake time; the app will start a wind-down process for you so you'll know when you should be hitting the hay (aka, not after binge-watching three more episodes of Stranger Things.)

19. Siri Announces Callers

Siri Announces Callers
Like a butler, Siri can announce who's calling if you're not close to the iPhone. Go to Settings > Phone > Announce Calls, where you can set it to happen always, only when you're using headphones, or when you're using CarPlay in a vehicle.

20. Use Siri for More

Use Siri for More
With the opening up of Siri to more developers, lots of apps can take advantage of things you say. For example, you can now use Siri directly to send WhatsApp messages, send money via Venmo, leave reviews on Yelp, order an Uber or Lyft car, or talk on Slack (Visit Site at Slack) . And that's just the start with more to be added, rest assured. Set it up via Settings > Siri > App Support.

21. Return to the Car

Get Back to the Car
With the huge mix of data coming at an iPhone, it's certainly smart enough to know when you exit a parked car away from home. Apple's using that to track your every move help you find your way back the vehicle. You'll need a connection to your car's Bluetooth or CarPlay stereo to trigger an alert when you get out of your car at a location that's not your home. That should show up in your notifications. (Some iPhone users are having trouble getting it to work, however, mostly on older devices like iPhone 5s.)

22. Avoid Toll Roads

Avoid Toll Roads
Another new feature of Apple Maps: it can plot a course that totally avoids highways with tolls on them. Go into Settings > Maps > Driving & Navigation to turn off the tolls.

23. Type on Apple TV

Type on Apple TV
Using apps on iPhone as a remote is nothing new—check it out for YouTube or Netflix sometime. Apple took it a little further with its own streaming media box running what it now calls tvOS: if you encounter a box that needs to be typed into, say for search, a pop-up appears on your iPhone or iPad that will make it easier to do just that without using the limited Apple TV ($148.38 at Amazon) remote control.

24. Transcribe Voicemails

Transcribe Voicemails
Ever had a voicemail you wanted to write down (or just avoid listening to)? Let iOS 10 do it. You don't have to do anything; the transcription should just show up. After you have the text, share it (click and hold then drag the selection bars to get just what you want to send), create a calendar event based on dates or times mentioned in the transcript, even send feedback to Apple regarding bad transcripts so they can try to make it better in the future. Just don't forward anything you shouldn't share.

25. Go Multilingual on the Fly

Go Multilingual on the Fly
Previously, you could only pick one language to use on your iOS keyboard. Now you can go into Settings > General > Dictionary and select multiple languages; then go into Keyboards > Add New Keyboard to add it. From then on, the autocorrect and text prediction features will take all the languages into account as you type. You can switch directly to the other language by tapping the Globe icon, just like you do to access emoji or any third-party keyboard.

26. Unsub From Mailing Lists

Unsub From Mailing Lists
In the Apple Mail app, if you get a message from what's obviously a mailing list with an Unsubscribe option (typically hidden at the bottom), the Mail app will provide a pop-up that offers to unsubscribe you automatically, by sending a message on your behalf to make that happen.

27. Delete Unlistened to Music Auto-Magically

Delete Old Music Auto-Magically
It's possible you have not subscribed to a streaming music service like Apple Music ($10.99 Per Month at Apple Music) or Spotify because you buy your music, thank you very much. We get it. You want to own your tunes. What happens if you don't have a lot of storage space on iPhone to store those songs for listening? iOS 10 has a new solution called Optimize Storage. You'll find it under Settings > Music. There, you can set up a maximum amount of storage for music transferred from iTunes: 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB (maybe more if you have a phone with more than 64GB capacity). That's enough for roughly 800, 1,600, 3,200, or 6,400 songs, respectively. If you move new songs to the iPhones, any tunes that haven't been played for a long time get automatically deleted off the phone. But they should still be in your iTunes.

Note: This feature requires a paid subscription to iTunes Match (for storing all your music in iCloud, whether you purchased it from Apple or note) or to Apple Music (which allows you to locally store some tunes for those times you can't stream). You must have "iCloud Music Library" activated to see it.

28. Multi-Device Cut and Paste

Multi-Device Cut and Paste
As long as the devices are from Apple and run iOS or macOS, this will work: sign into all of them with the same Apple ID and what you cut/copy on one will be available to paste on another via the universal clipboard.

29. Disable Press Home to Open

Disable Press Home to Open
In iOS 10, older iPhones that you used to just unlock by putting a finger on the Touch ID now require a full push of the Home button. It even says "Press Home to Open" on the screen, despite your fingerprint doing the hard security work. For some this will seem like a bug—but it's a feature, and one you can disable. If you don't want that extra step, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Home Button and toggle "Rest Finger to Open." Then the Home button will go back to "normal."

30. Light Up Your Life With 3D Touch

Light Up Your Life With 3D Touch
The flashlight function—using what's supposed to be the camera flash on your iPhone—usually is a simple on/off affair. If you have an iPhone 6s or 7—one with 3D Touch capability—you can change the brightness. In the Control Center, hold your finger on the Flashlight icon to switch between Bright, Medium, and Low light. (Or just do like everyone else and use your front screen as a low-end flashlight when climbing stairs in the dark.)

In fact, if you've got an iPhone with 3D Touch you can use it to get a little something extra out of almost everything in Control Center and beyond. For example, press your finger on the Settings icon. You'll get a quick pop-up menu with access to settings for the Battery, Cellular Data, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Same goes for the Camera icon in the Control Center: you get to jump instantly to Take Photo, Record Slo-Mo, Record Video, or Take Selfie. Try it on the Wi-Fi icon to pick a network, the Bluetooth icon to pick a device, set the timer to preset times (1 hour, 20 minutes, 5 minutes, or 1 minute), hold Do Not Disturb to change settings, even touch and hold the Calculator icon to copy the last resulting calculation to the clipboard.

31. Touch to Access Wireless Connections

Touch to Access Wireless Connections
The 3D Touch options with iPhone 6s and 7 offer another new feature: Press down on the Settings icon and you'll get a pop-up menu to quickly access the settings for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Cellular Data, or the Battery.

32. Touch to Prioritize

3D Touch to Prioritize
When iOS apps update, it can take a while and you may be waiting to use a particular app until it reaches the top of the queue and gets downloaded. With a 3D Touch-enabled iPhone, push on the app that's lower in the update queue, and you can give it priority over the rest (or pause or cancel the download entirely).

33. Log Into TV

Log Into TV
If you use a lot of apps that require logging into your TV provider account—like HBO GO or FX Now, etc.—Apple's new TV app (not to be confused with Apple TV proper) lets you log in once, stay logged in, and access everything you're watching from one app.

The app arrived with iOS 10.2, but Apple is still adding TV and app providers. See if yours is supported by going to Settings > TV Provider.

Once you're signed in, click "Find More Apps" and you'll automatically get a search result in the App Store of all the TV apps that use the login for streaming shows. You can then use the new TV app provided by Apple to keep track of the shows you are watching on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV.

34. Close All Safari Tabs

Close All Safari Tabs
Got a lot of tabs open for web pages? Hold your finger down on the Done button. Even without 3D Touch, you'll be given an option to open a new blank tab, or best of all, close ALL the open tabs at once.

35. Re-Open Closed Tabs

Re-Open Closed Tabs
If you just closed a tabbed web page in Safari on iOS 10, but want to reopen it, just hold down a finger on the + button at the bottom; it should bring up a list of recently closed tabs (as long as you haven't closed out of the browser).

37. Preserve Your Camera Settings

Preserve Your Camera Settings
Got a particular mode or filter you use absolutely all the time? Go into Settings > Photos & Camera > Preserve Settings. Toggle Camera Mode and Photo Filter to on, and your settings will be the same whenever you open your camera app. If you have iPhone 6s or above, you can do the same for Live Photos here.

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About Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally for over 30 years, more than half of that time with PCMag. I run several special projects including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys, and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, plus Best Products of the Year and Best Brands. I work from my home, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

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