17 Things You Didn’t Know Your iPhone Could Do With iOS 10

Apple's latest update for iPhone and iPad can be a little confusing. These tips and tricks will help.

By
Nicole Nguyen
by Nicole Nguyen

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Zoe Burnett / BuzzFeed

Apple's newest mobile operating system, iOS 10, is now available for iPhone and iPad.

The Messages, Photos, and Maps apps got the biggest updates, but there are a lot of new, smaller tweaks throughout iOS 10 that may be causing new users some confusion.

If you're wondering what's going on with the home button or where the heck the music controls are now, here are some essential tips and tricks.

1. "Slide to unlock" doesn't exist anymore. You now have to press the home button twice with Touch ID or once to enter in a passcode — but there's a workaround.

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Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Home Button > and then slide Rest Finger to Open to enable. This will allow you to open the iPhone with Touch ID instead of having to press the home button every time.

If you don't have a device with Touch ID (iPhone 5 or older), you'll still need to press the home button to enter your passcode.

2. From the lock screen, access the camera by swiping left (instead of up).

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3. You can finally remove default apps like Stocks, Tips, and Podcasts.

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Press and hold the default app's icon until it shakes, then tap the little "x" button in the corner to remove. You can re-download deleted apps from the App Store.

Removing all of these default apps only amounts to 150MB of freed-up storage, but it *is* helpful if you like keeping your home screen clean.

And if you remove Contacts, you won’t lose that information — the data will still be stored in the Phone app. Some apps will disappear in other places when you delete them (the Calculator will no longer show up in the Control Center, for example).

4. In the control center, a "force touch" will reveal more options for the bottom row shortcuts.

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If you have a 6s or newer with 3D Touch, press and hold the flashlight, timer, calculator, or camera to see quick actions.

5. Swipe left on the Control Center for music controls.

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Accessing music controls now takes two swipes: one up and one to the left.

6. Instead of deleting notifications one by one, you can clear them all with one tap.

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The window you pull down from the top of the screen is called the "notification shade." In iOS 9, each app had its own set of notifications that needed be cleared manually. In iOS 10, you can delete an entire day's worth of notifications by tapping the "x" next to Recent.

And if you have a phone with 3D Touch, you can press down on that "x" for a "Clear all notifications" option.

7. The display will automatically turn on when you pick it up.

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If you have an iPhone 6s, SE, or 7, go to Settings > Display & Brightness and slide to enable Raise to Wake (a good band name, tbh), which allows you to turn on the display to check the time or look at notifications without pressing any buttons.

8. The Spotlight search bar has moved to the notification shade, so you can access it from anywhere in iOS 10.

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In iOS 9, you could only access Spotlight from the home screen. In iOS 10, you can search Spotlight by pulling down on the notification shade from anywhere, even with an app opened.

Spotlight on iOS is a universal search bar that can find items like contacts, emails, restaurant times, Wikipedia articles, and apps. I have a *ton* of apps on my phone, so I use Spotlight to open apps that are buried in folders.

9. Turn off read receipts for specific people.

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Open the iMessage thread and tap the "i" info button on the top right. Scroll down and slide to disable Send Read Receipts for that specific contact.

10. Double-tap a message to react with a heart, thumbs up/down, "ha ha," exclamation points, or a question mark.

Patrick Monahan @pattymo

In iOS 10 you can like texts, which leads to some brutal own potential

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11. Add an effect to a message by long pressing the ^ arrow.

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From there, you can choose from "slam," "loud," "gentle," or "invisible ink," which affect the way the bubble shows up on the screen.

*You will need to turn Reduce Motion (Settings > General > Accessibility) off to view the iMessage effects. Only those with iOS 10 will be able to receive the effects. If your recipient has iOS 9, they’ll get something that sounds really awkward like this: "(Sent with lasers)."

12. You can also send a full-screen effect.

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Like you would a bubble effect, type in the message in the text field, long-press the ^ upward-facing arrow, and at the top of the screen, select "Screen." Here, you can choose between balloons, confetti, lasers, fireworks, or shooting star.

13. The emojis will look a little different, too.

Twitter: @amberdiscko

They're a little more three-dimensional – and there's a female counterpart to every male emoji and vice versa (for example, you can now send a biker with a ponytail and a man getting a haircut). There are some other changes, too. The gun emoji is now a squirt gun. If you send these new emojis to an Android user, however, they'll see the original ones.

14. You can download a lot of different apps for iMessage.

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Tap on the > arrow, then the App Store icon. Then tap the bottom-left icon to see all of your current apps or download more from the iMessage App Store.

There are stickers (like Kimoji and BuzzFeed's own pack) that you can add to messages. Apps like Yelp offer a direct link to the restaurant's page from the text field. Square Cash lets you pay right from iMessage. An amazing app called Grammar Snobs lets you overlay corrections on mistakes. There are a bunch of options available in the App Store, so check them out.

15. The Photos app has a lot of new features too. Now you can search for people, places, or things.

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The app now has image recognition capabilities. It can detect faces and organize photos by people.

In the Albums or Photos tabs, tap the "Search" looking glass icon and type in search terms like "flowers," "food," and "water."

16. Siri now understands commands for a bunch of different apps.

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Siri is now open to developers, which means you can use a limited number of third-party apps with it. Lyft, WhatsApp, Venmo, Pinterest, Uber, LinkedIn, and Square Cash are some of the more popular Siri integrations.

You can check which apps are available in Settings > Siri > App Support.

17. In Voicemail, tap on the phone number to see a transcription of the message.

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This feature is still in beta, so some transcriptions come out as gibberish.

🎉 Bonus Tip 🎉

If you haven't updated yet, do it with iTunes on your computer! iOS 10 is a big update, so doing it over Wi-Fi may result in this black screen that will prompt you to plug in your phone.

Make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed. When you plug in your iPhone, click Summary, then Check for Updates, and, finally, Download and Update.

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