16 Hidden iOS 16 Features You Didn't Know About

Apple this week released iOS 16, the latest version of iOS with a new customizable Lock Screen, major new additions to Messages, and enhancements to Mail, Maps, and more.

iOS 16 hidden features
Other than the headlining features, there are a number of quality-of-life changes, improvements, and new capabilities baked into iOS 16 that help improve the iPhone experience. We've listed 16 hidden features and changes from iOS 16 that you may not have known about below.

  • Get Rid of Duplicate Photos - The iOS 16 Photos app can let you know if you have multiple identical photos, giving you the opportunity to delete the extras to save space. Duplicate photos are listed in a new "Duplicates" album that appears if you have duplicates to deal with.
  • AirPods Updates - It's simpler to manage AirPods settings in iOS 16 with a dedicated section that pops up in the Settings app when AirPods are connected. iOS 16 also adds a Personalized Spatial Audio feature that uses the TrueDepth camera to scan your ears, providing a unique listening experience tuned just to you.
  • Face ID in Landscape Mode - ‌iPhone‌ models running iOS 16 support Face ID in landscape mode, making it easier to unlock the ‌iPhone‌ when it's not held in the standard portrait orientation. The feature is limited to the ‌iPhone‌ 13 and later.
  • Hidden and Deleted Photo Protection - In iOS 16, you need to authenticate with Face ID or Touch ID before the Hidden and Recently Deleted photo albums can be accessed. This essentially locks these albums from view should someone gain access to your phone while it's otherwise unlocked.
  • WiFi Password - If you've ever been frustrated by an inability to access the WiFi password of the network you're using, that's changing in iOS 16. In the ‌iPhone‌'s WiFi settings, you can see the password of the network that you're connected to.
  • Haptic Feedback for Keyboard - There's a keyboard setting in iOS 16 that lets you enable haptic feedback that can be felt when you're typing. The vibrations are for each key tap, offering users a physical confirmation that a letter has been tapped.
  • Copy and Delete Screenshots - When you take a screenshot on iOS, alongside being able to save the screenshot to ‌Photos‌, save as a Quick Note, and save to Files, you'll now be able to "Copy and Delete." The new option saves the screenshot to your clipboard and then deletes it from your Camera Roll, making it easier to use one-time screenshots without them being saved to your device and needing to be cleaned up later.
  • Ability to Delete Find My, Clock, and Health - With iOS 14, Apple allowed users to offload some of the apps that come pre-installed on the ‌iPhone‌. With iOS 16, Apple is expanding the number of apps you can delete from your phone, which now includes Find My, Clock, and Health. Deleted apps can be redownloaded from the App Store later if needed.
  • Built-In Currency Converison - Thanks to new features in Live Text, iOS now includes built-in currency conversion within the Camera and ‌Photos‌ apps. Simply hold your ‌iPhone‌ camera up to a price tag, wait for the Live Text icon to appear, tap and hold on the price, and select "Convert." Live Text also supports translation and measurement conversion.
  • See Your Battery Percentage - In iOS 16, Apple is giving users the ability to display their battery percentage directly in the status bar inside of the battery icon, removing the need to swipe into Control Center to check on their battery level. The battery percentage toggle is not available on all iPhones.
  • Use Siri to Hang Up a Call - A new settings in iOS 16 lets users use Siri to hang up an active call. By heading into Settings > Accessibility > ‌Siri‌ and activating Call Hangup, users can now say "Hey ‌Siri‌, hang up the call" to end an active call. Note that the other person/people on the call will hear your request to ‌Siri‌ before being hung up on.
  • Prevent Accidental Call Hangups - Users on iOS 16 will now have the ability to disable the side button from ending an active call. In prior versions of iOS, pressing the side button and locking the ‌iPhone‌ while in a call would instantly end it. In iOS 16, Apple allows users to disable that to prevent accidents by going into Settings > Accessibility> Touch and toggling on "Prevent Lock to End Call."
  • Sorting Options for Playlists - In Apple Music on iOS 16, users will now have the ability to sort playlists by title, artist, album, and release date. The new sorting option can be found by pressing the three dots in the upper right-hand corner when viewing a playlist.
  • Full-Screen Music Player - One major but possibly lesser-known feature of iOS 16 is that Apple is bringing back the full-screen Lock Screen music player. When listening to a song from ‌Apple Music‌, Spotify, or other third-party music apps, press on the album art on the Lock Screen from Now Playing to enter the all-new player look. Tap the full-screen album art to minimize Now Playing.
  • Spatial Audio Just for You - With the latest AirPods and some Beats earphones, iOS 16 users can activate Personalized Spatial Audio. Personalized Spatial Audio uses the LiDAR scanner on the ‌iPhone‌ 12 Pro, ‌iPhone‌ 13 Pro, or the iPhone 14 Pro to scan the geometry of the user's ears in order to deliver a better Spatial Audio experience.
  • New Warning While Charging - On iOS 16, if your ‌iPhone‌ is warm, you'll get a new notification letting you know that charging will be paused until your ‌iPhone‌'s temperature cools down. This is done in order to prevent possible long-term damage to your ‌iPhone‌'s battery.

For the ultimate walkthrough of everything new in iOS 16, see our comprehensive roundup.

Related Forum: iOS 16

Popular Stories

New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18

10 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.2

Thursday October 31, 2024 9:42 am PDT by
Apple is set to release iOS 18.2 in December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. There are a handful of new non-AI related feature controls incoming as well. ...
Apple MacBook Pro M4 Cinema 4D Slack Finder Xcode 1

Apple Announces MacBook Pro Models With M4 Pro and M4 Max Chips, Thunderbolt 5 Support, and More

Wednesday October 30, 2024 8:01 am PDT by
Apple today announced new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models featuring M4 Pro and M4 Max chips, alongside a new entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro powered by the M4 chip. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The new M4 Pro and M4 Max machines come with a minimum of 24GB of Unified Memory as standard, up from 18GB in the previous models. Both models feature three...
M4 Pro on Blue

M4 Pro Chip Benchmark Results Reveal an Extremely Impressive Performance Feat

Thursday October 31, 2024 7:06 pm PDT by
The first Geekbench 6 benchmark results for the M4 Pro chip surfaced today. Impressively, the results that are available so far show that the highest-end M4 Pro chip is faster than the highest-end M2 Ultra chip in terms of peak multi-core CPU performance. Here is a comparison of the results: Mac mini with M4 Pro (14-core CPU): 22,094 multi-core score (average of 11 results) Mac Studio...
m3 macbook air blue

Apple Announces MacBook Air Now Starts With Increased 16GB of RAM With No Price Increase

Wednesday October 30, 2024 8:04 am PDT by
Apple today in its new MacBook Pro press release announced that the MacBook Air lineup now starts with 16GB of RAM, up from 8GB previously. This change applies to the 13-inch model with the M2 chip, the 13-inch model with the M3 chip, and the 15-inch model with the M3 chip. In the U.S., the MacBook Air lineup continues to start at $999, so there is no price increase associated with the...
maxresdefault

Apple Announces Redesigned Mac Mini With M4 and M4 Pro Chips, Two Front USB-C Ports, and More

Tuesday October 29, 2024 8:01 am PDT by
Apple today announced fully redesigned Mac mini models featuring the M4 and M4 Pro chips, a considerably smaller casing, two front-facing USB-C ports, Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, and more. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The product refresh marks the first time the Mac mini has been redesigned in over a decade. The enclosure now measures just five by five inches...
M4 M4 Pro vs M4 Max Feature

Apple Announcements Recap: M4 iMac, Mac Mini, and MacBook Pro

Wednesday October 30, 2024 9:24 am PDT by
Apple this week made three key Mac product announcements: new iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro models. These machines bring the M4 chip series to Apple's Mac lineup for the first time, but each in its own way offers several new features and changes that go beyond processors. Below, we've compiled a recap of all the highlights. New iMac Apple on Monday announced its latest 24-inch iMac,...

Top Rated Comments

rileyes Avatar
28 months ago

All of iOS 16’s features will remain “hidden” to me as I won’t be upgrading. There’s zero of any significant practical use to me.
I find the folks that never want to upgrade their software to be a strange lot.
Score: 69 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nate_hannon Avatar
28 months ago
* Spatial Audio Just for You - With the latest AirPods and some Beats earphones, iOS 16 users can activate Personalized Spatial Audio. Personalized Spatial Audio uses the LiDAR scanner on the iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro, or the iPhone 14 Pro to scan the geometry of the user's ears in order to deliver a better Spatial Audio experience.

So much wrong on this part. You don’t need a pro phone to get this. It uses the TrueDepth camera that is used for Face ID, not the LiDAR Scanner. Also this is available for first gen AirPods Pro.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Danindub Avatar
28 months ago

That seems like a weird feature to add. I have signed friends into my wifi network for them because I didn't want to share the password (and I use my guest network for IoT stuff). So, now they technically could go in and reveal the password if they wanted to know it. Not a big deal, but I'm not sure why making it possible to reveal passwords already typed in is every really a good idea from a security standpoint.
That was never a secure way to connect someone: if their keychains are synced across devices, they could have always accessed them in plain text from their Macs…
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rileyes Avatar
28 months ago



* WiFi Password - If you've ever been frustrated by an inability to access the WiFi password of the network you're using, that's changing in iOS 16. In the iPhone's WiFi settings, you can see the password ('https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/06/ios-16-wifi-network-password/') of the network that you're connected to.


That seems like a weird feature to add. I have signed friends into my wifi network for them because I didn't want to share the password (and I use my guest network for IoT stuff). So, now they technically could go in and reveal the password if they wanted to know it. Not a big deal, but I'm not sure why making it possible to reveal passwords already typed in is every really a good idea from a security standpoint.
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
soapropos Avatar
28 months ago
Now do being able to delete CarPlay screenshots (or turn them off altogether) without an obscure shortcut
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DMG35 Avatar
28 months ago
I love articles like these, thanks for this!!
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)