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iPhone and iPad tips and tricks

Impress your family and friends while at the same time making yourself much more productive, with these iPhone and iPad tips and tricks.
Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Contributing Writer

Here is a quick rundown of some of the new features contained in the latest iOS 10 updates that you might have missed.

While most of these features should be available on all devices that support iOS 10, some will only be available on newer devices.

Allow selected contacts to bypass Do Not Disturb

The VIP system for allowing selected contacts to still call you has been improved dramatically in iOS 10. Now you can pick out contacts that can make your phone ring individually.

Go into Contacts, select a contact, and click Edit. From there, you can set the ringtone and text tone to Emergency Bypass On.

Prioritize app installations

If you're recovering your iPhone or installing multiple apps, you can control which apps are installed first by doing a long press on any app waiting to be downloaded on the home screen and then tapping the Prioritize Download option.

This requires a device with 3D Touch.

Dude, where's my car?

Fire up Apple Maps to find where you parked your car. If it's not immediately obvious from the little car icon on the map, you can search for Parked car.

Send smaller photos in iMessage

Go to Settings > Messages and enable Low Quality Image Mode.

If you send a lot of photos and you either have poor signal or you're not on an unlimited data plan, this can be really helpful.

iOS 10.3: 'Power User' tips and tricks

Time for bed

This is a weird feature that people will either love or hate. If you're the sort of person who likes to have a certain number of hours of sleep before your alarm goes off, you can now have your iPhone remind you when to go to bed. (I know, how did we manage before such things?)

To enable this feature, open the Clock app and tap Bedtime.

Turn your iPhone into a magnifying glass

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Convert text to emojis

The Messages app will highlight the words you can swap out for an emoji in orange, and you can emojify a message by simply tapping on the words.

Improve iMessage read receipts

Now you can set your read receipt preferences by clicking on the "I" icon found at the top-right of iMessage window, then turn read receipts on or off.

This setting syncs across all your devices.

Make your iMessages pop

If you're sending a message to other iPhone or iPad users using iMessage then you can animate the message to give it a bit more impact. Just press and hold the send message blue arrow to uncover Bubble and Screen options.

Draw your message

Again in iMessage, rotate your device by 90 degrees to get access to an option that allows you to draw your message and send it to other iMessage users.

Find your Apple Watch

I know a lot of people requested this feature, and now it's present as part of Find My iPhone.

Make Unlock work the way it used to

Apple tweaked the way you unlock your iPhone with the Touch ID sensor, but if this new feature annoys you there is a way to make it work like it did in iOS 9.

Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Home Button and enable Rest Finger to Open.

Delete those undeletable apps

Apple's own apps used to be a fixed feature, and the best you could do was hide them from view. But now you can delete apps such as Main, Stocks, and Weather just like you'd delete any other app (and if you change your mind, they're in the App Store).

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Bright lights!

You can now alter the brightness of the flashlight by using a long press on the flashlight icon in Control Center to choose between Bright Light, Medium Light, and Low Light.

This requires a device with 3D Touch.

Get to the camera -- fast!

The icon might be gone, but you can still get to the camera from the lock screen. All you need to do is swipe left.

Search your photos

From Memories in the Photos app you can search for photos containing particular objects. This is also quite spookily accurate.

Easy unsubscribe

Mail automatically floats unsubscribe links from mailing list emails to the top, so you can find them easily.

Avoid toll roads

If you're a heavy user of Apple Maps and want to save yourself a few bucks then you might want to go into Settings > Maps > Driving & Navigation to turn off the tolls.

Save on storage space

If you're low on space you can get iOS 10 to remove music you've not listened to in a while by going to Settings > Music > Optimize Storage and enabling Optimize Storage. From here you can pick how much free space you want to try to keep on your iPhone or iPad.

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