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It’s been a few weeks now since Apple released the newest iOS update. For those of you who already have it or those of you who don’t, here’s a list of the biggest changes:
1. You now access the camera by swiping left on the lock screen instead of swiping up.
This is so you can easily find the camera for those picture perfect moments.
2. The widgets screen is more customizable and looks way cooler.
There’s tons of widgets to choose from, weather, maps, calendar and more. It looks sleek and is an awesome way to peek ahead and stay organized during the busy school year. You can access it by swiping right on the lock or the home screen.
3. In the control center, if you have an iPhone with 3-D touch, you can now get more options for the flashlight, timer, calculator or camera.
For the flashlight you can control the brightness, the timer gives pre-set times, the calculator copies your last result and the camera lets you take a photo, record slo-mo, record video, or take the perfect selfie.
4. In Photos you can search for people, places, and things.
This makes looking for that embarrassing picture of your friend to post on their wall so much easier since people are sorted using facial recognition! You can also look for certain locations and categories too.
5. Bedtime in the clock app can remind you to get to bed.
You tell it how many hours of sleep you want and it will remind you when you should go to bed, which is super useful for those nights that you get caught up in studying and lose track of time.
6. Music has its own set of controls.
Now you just have to swipe left on the control center to access the music control screen and also determine what device to play it on (headphones or speakers).
7. There’s a new notes feature that lets you add contacts making it super easy to figure out the grocery list with your roommates.
You write a note as usual, however, once you tap the collaboration icon – the top middle button – you can decide how to share your collaboration invitation through Message, Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and more.
8. You can now reply to texts that come in by swiping down on them in your home screen.
Yes, I know you used to be able to do this, but now you can scroll through the entire conversation instead of just seeing that person’s reply. Helpful for when you forget the context of the convo.
9. iMessage got way more fun.
As if you didn’t already need a reason to text your best friend or that cute guy from your tutorial, you can now send a full screen effect like lasers or balloons. You can also include effects like invisible ink which first hides the message from the recipient until they rub it off. You can handwrite notes too for that extra personal touch and tap back to a message to make a comment on how you feel! Just hold down on the send button to have the effects come up for you to choose from.
And lastly,
10. YOU CAN FINALLY DELETE THOSE USELESS APPS!!
Say goodbye to Stocks, Podcasts, Videos, Mail, Apple Watch and more (thank god). Take back some much needed storage on your iPhone. Worst case, you can always reinstall them in the app store if you decide you can’t live without them.
Now go enjoy the new iOS, collegiettes!