20 New iOS 10 Features That Will Spoil You

The estimated reading time for this post is 7 minutes

iOS 10 was released this week and got off to a rough start. Some people who tried to update their iPhones over the air had trouble and their phones were locked or “bricked” until they connected them to iTunes on their computers.

But Apple quickly resolved the issue and soon people were updating to iOS 10 without major issues. People shared on social media their impressions of the new features of iOS 10.

While iOS 10 is filled with new features, there are some that may make a big difference in how you use your phone and may quickly spoil you. After you update to iOS 10 you may wonder how you managed without these features!

[note]The iOS 10 update is available for iPhone 5 and later, iPad 4 and later, iPad Mini 2 and later, and iPod Touch 6. [/note]

Find My Parked Car

Have you ever lost your car in a parking lot? Maybe you swore that you parked your car in a certain place but when you went back to that place your car wasn’t there.

After hunting for it for a long time, you consider calling the police and reporting your car as stolen, but then remember that you have a car no one wants to steal.

Yes, that has happened to me. More than once.

Apple Maps has a new feature that helps you find your parked car. Automatically. You don’t even have to turn this feature on.

After you park your car and walk away from it, Apple Maps will place a pin at the location where your car is parked. Open the Maps app to see your parked car’s location.

You don’t have to remember to drop the pin on the map or do anything, the app remembers where you parked your car — automatically.

You must have had your iPhone connected to your car via Bluetooth or Apple CarPlay for this feature to work. This feature also doesn’t work if you park your car at your home.

Music App

Apple’s Music app has been overhauled to make it easier to find your music. There’s a new Library tab that is organized into:

• Playlists
• Artists
• Albums
• Songs
• Downloaded Music

So you can find your music more easily and see which songs you have downloaded to your phone.

For You

The For You section of Apple Music has songs Apple thinks you’ll enjoy, based on your listening habits and your favorite votes. You can listen to custom playlists created by the app, see your recently played songs, and other playlists the app thinks you’ll like.

Lyrics

Arguments over music lyrics will now be a thing of the past. While a song is playing in the Music app, scroll down and tap Lyrics to see the actual words to the song.

Not all songs have lyrics available but it’s a very useful feature for those songs that do have lyrics available.

Feel free to sing along to your favorite songs at full volume, knowing that you won’t forget the words!

Maximize Storage

If you’re running out of storage on your phone, one way to make more room is to delete songs you rarely listen to. But instead of combing through your Music Library, you can have your phone do the job automatically.

Your phone can delete songs you haven’t played in a while to free up storage on your phone.

Go to Settings => Music => Optimize Storage => On and select how much space you want to free up: from 4-32 GB, meaning 800-6400 songs would be deleted from your phone.

Pressing the Home Button to Unlock the Phone

If you’ve ever missed notifications because you accidentally unlocked your phone by pressing the Home button, you’ll like the new feature that requires you to press the Home button to unlock it

What’s even better is that Apple realized that old habits are difficult to break so it has a reminder on the home screen.

You can go back to the old way of unlocking your phone by going to Settings => General => Accessibility => Home Button => Rest Finger to Open => On.

Siri Can Announce Calls

Want to know who’s calling you? You don’t have to look at your phone any more, Siri can tell you by announcing the name of the caller when your iPhone rings.

You must turn on this feature to have Siri announce the name of the caller.

Go to Settings => Phone => Announce Calls

Choose from Always, Headphones & Car, Headphones Only, Never

Bedtime

Your iPhone can help you get better sleep. With Bedtime you can be reminded to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every night and morning. Bedtime is available in the Clock app on your iPhone.

Answer a few questions, such as what time you like to wake up. Choose which days you want to be reminded and tell your phone how many hours of sleep you want each night. Bedtime will show you a graph of your sleep history during the week.

You’ll get a reminder at night that it’s time for sleep and an alarm in the morning on the days and time you choose.

Dark Mode for Alarms

No need to see a glaring white screen when you set an alarm at night. The alarm section of the Clock app now has a black background.

Messages

Your messages can have so much more than text and emojis with the new Messages app. For others to enjoy these features, they have to be using iMessage and updated their phones to iOS 10.

Stickers, Images and GIFs

You can get stickers, images and GIFs to add to your messages in iMessage in iOS 10.

Tap the arrow icon to the left of the text field, then tap the App Store icon to download sticker packs. You can search for stickers to use as well as images, including GIFs.

Note that some sticker packs cost money but many are free.

Effects

After you’ve entered something into the text field, press and hold the arrow (the same arrow you would tap to send a message). The next screen lets you choose which effects you want to use, including balloons, confetti, and fireworks.

Sharing Music

Not into emojis? You still might like the new Messages app because you can share songs from Apple Music within the app.

Tap the arrow icon to the left of the text field, then tap the App Store icon. Swipe left to share music you’ve recently played via an iMessage.

You don’t need to be a member of Apple Music to use this feature.

Today Screen

Swipe right when you have your home screen open to see the new Today screen. This replaces the Today screen you used to see when you swiped from the top of the screen.

This new Today screen has widgets, such as Calendar, Siri App Suggestions, Maps Destination, and more. Tap the Edit button at the bottom of the screen to add, delete and rearrange widgets.

This new Today screen is easier to read, gives more information and helps you organize your widgets better than the old version.

Find on Page

Finding a keyword or phrase on Safari is now easier. You can tap the sharing icon (the box with the arrow pointing up) and tap Find on Page.

A search box will appear above the keyboard where you can type in your search term. The term will be highlighted on the web page.

While you could find a word or phrase on Safari in previous versions of iOS, the old way was more complicated and required that you leave the page to enter your search term.

Deleting Apple’s Native Apps

Now you can delete the apps that come with your iPhone, such as Weather, Stocks, Calculator, Podcasts, etc. The only one you can’t delete is the Phone app, which makes perfect sense.

Press and hold an app and tap the X to delete it, just as you would delete any other app.

Unsubscribe from Mailing Lists in the Mail App

Apple’s native Mail app can detect when a message is sent to a mailing list. You can unsubscribe by tapping the Unsubscribe link above the email message.

Unread Email Only Filter

Tap the circle icon in the lower left corner of the screen to filter your inbox and see only unread email messages. Tap it again to see all messages.

Find My Apple Watch

Ever since the Apple Watch was launched last year, you could use it to find your iPhone. With a swipe and a tap you could find your phone, getting it to make a ping sound, even if it was on silent mode.

Now you can do the reverse, have your iPhone ping your Apple Watch so you can find it. But you must turn this setting on for it to work.

Open the Find My iPhone app and add your Apple Watch if you want to track it on a map and ping it.

Your Thoughts

Have you updated your phone to iOS 10? Have you tried any of these new features? Which ones are your favorites? Have you ever lost your car in the parking lot (or am I the only one who has ever done this)?

Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.