iOS 16 is here and ready for your iPhone. Here’s what you need to know about Apple’s big iPhone update for 2022.
Apple announced iOS 16 at WWDC on June 6, 2022. There, the company shared all the main crowd-pleasing features alongside its iPadOS 16 and MacOS Ventura previews. As of September 12, iOS 16 is now available as a free update for anyone with an iPhone 8 or newer. It will also ship the iPhone 14 with iOS 16 pre-installed for anyone who buys this year’s newest iPhone.
Here’s a quick look at everything coming from iOS 16.
Apple is known for supporting its iPhones for extended periods compared to Android rivals. The Pixel 3 and 3a, for example, won’t be getting Android 13 this fall, while the similarly aged iPhone X and XS can download iOS 16 without a problem.
iOS 15 is currently supported on all iPhones from the iPhone 6S and on. With iOS 16, the iPhone 6S and 7 have been put to pasture. Apple supports newer iPhones from the iPhone 8 and second-generation iPhone SE all the way up to the iPhone 13 (plus the iPhone 14). You’re almost certainly not getting every feature on older iPhones, but it’ll be good enough to chug along another year.
iOS 16 is a significant iOS update, with immediately visible design changes, quality-of-life additions, under-the-hood improvements, and more. Apple’s lead feature here is the new lock screen. It’s what you see when you look at an iOS 16 device, and it steals some of Google’s customization thunder to boot. Updates to Messages will please everyone, while changes to Spotlight and Safari provide more power to those who want it. Apple also has dove into the Buy Now Pay Later market with Apple Pay Later, while a new Safety Check feature sees the company pivot back towards being socially responsible.
“iOS 16 is a big release with updates that will change the way you experience iPhone,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. “We have reimagined how the Lock Screen looks and works with exciting new features that make it more personal and helpful, introduced iCloud Shared Photo Library for families, streamlined communication through new capabilities in Messages and Mail, and harnessed enhanced intelligence with updates to Live Text and Visual Look Up.”
The face of iOS 16’s changes are the lock screen changes, and those are spectacular. They add a touch of personalization to the iPhone’s lock screen, with support for new-found interactive widgets and live lock screen notifications.
It’s a really meaningful update. Apple offers a selection of colors and fonts for your lock screen, and the clock interacts with the image so that it appears to be behind it. Everyone’s lock screen can, for the first time, look a fair bit different.
It’s not just a customization-only update — the new lock screen also sees itself tied to the Focus mode features Apple introduced with iOS 15. This means if you’re in your gaming, personal, or work Focus, you can assign wallpapers and lock screen widgets to each mode. It’s a more thoughtful application of customization that recalls the profiles you’d see in now-ancient feature phones. As for Focus mode itself, it’s now gone system-wide. This means apps like Chrome and Safari can hide distracting websites from you, possibly sherlocking extensions that make it their business to do so.
