Maybe you just unwrapped a shiny new iPhone—perhaps your first iPhone ever. Maybe you just don’t pay much attention to those iOS update notifications and have finally gotten around to hitting the update button. (If you haven’t, do it now: open Settings, tap General, then Software Update.)
Apple’s big iOS update this year offers a bunch of huge improvements and even more have landed with the point releases—the latest is iOS 16.2, which adds several new welcome features. If you’ve updated to the newest version, you should take some time to do these five things first.
Customize your Lock Screen
The most obvious improvement in iOS 16 is the new customizable lock screen. You can set custom wallpapers in a variety of styles, even allowing your iPhone to automatically choose highlight photos on a rotation. You can change the font for the clock and pick widgets from lots of different apps (Apple’s and third-party apps) to see quick information at a glance.
iOS 16.2 has brought a few changes to the Lock Screen. Most notably the Set Wallpaper Photo Shortcut can now set photos for wallpapers that use iOS 16’s new widgets and customization options. There are also new widgets for sleep and medications, and you can customize the always-on display on the iPhone 14 Pro to hide the wallpaper and notifications.
To get to the Lock Screen settings, press and hold on the Lock Screen wallpaper until you see the Collections screen. Tap Customize to edit your current Lock Screen, or the blue “plus” icon to create a new one. Apple offers several wallpapers to get started or can select your own from your Photo Library.
Apple
Encrypt all your iCloud data
By default, Apple encrypts some of the data you store or sync with iCloud on your device—such as Health data—but other data is encrypted in transport and on Apple’s servers. The catch is, Apple has the encryption key and can decrypt and see your data if it wants to.
A new feature in iOS 16.2, which Apple calls Advanced Data Protection, will enable end-to-end encryption on a lot more of your iCloud data—Photos, Notes, iCloud backups, and more. You’ll have the key and Apple won’t, so it’s safer from hackers or overzealous government demands.
Foundry
To enable it, go to Settings, tap on your Apple ID profile at the top of the screen, then tap iCloud. Scroll down a bit to Advanced Data Protection and tap on that.
You’ll have to jump through a few hoops. First, all of your Apple devices using that Apple ID have to be updated to iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, tvOS 16.2, or macOS 13.1. Second, you’ll have to make some sort of backup in case you lose your passcode–you can add a trusted device as a Recovery Contact or generate your own Recovery Key (or both!).
Finally, if you just added a new device to your account you may not be able to enable this just yet–a simple security measure to protect your data against hackers or identity thieves. If you get a warning saying you can’t enable it until a future date, use Siri to set a reminder! Say “Hey Siri, remind me to enable advanced data protection on [the date you can enable it].”</…….