50 hidden features of iOS 8

 

50 hidden features of iOS 8

1. Toggle predictive text on and off easily

If you tap and hold on the keyboard switcher (the globe or smiley icon) at the bottom of the on-screen keyboard, a pop-up opens in which you can quickly swap keyboards. At the top is a control to instantly switch iOS 8’s QuickType predictive text engine off or on again. (You don’t even have to lift your finger after opening the pop-up, just slide your finger up to this.)

2.Flyover City Tour

Maps’ Flyover has a new feature called Flyover City Tour that whizzes you around famous landmarks. Open Maps and enter ‘New York City’ in Search. At the top of the screen is a button marked 3D Flyover Tour Of New York City. Tap Start to begin a 3D tour of the city. Flyover points out interesting landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building.

3.Separate focus and exposure in Camera

In the Camera app you can now set the exposure separately from the focus. Tap on the screen to set the focus point as before, and you’ll notice a new yellow vertical line to the right of the Focus Square. Simply slide your finger up the screen to increase the exposure and down to decrease it. This is very useful for lightening low light shots, especially if you focus on something in shadow.

4.RSS subscriptions in Shared Links

Safari’s Shared Links feature now enables you to subscribe to your favourite RSS feeds from websites. Visit a website with an RSS feed in the Safari app, and tap Bookmarks > Shared Links. Now tap Subscriptions > Add Current Site. Stories from the RSS Feed will appear alongside stories from your social media accounts.

5. Rich text editing

In Notes, tap and hold on text to reveal a menu, tap More and the ‘BUI’ formatting icon. This reveals the Bold, Underline and Italics options that you can use to stylise your text

6. Accurate brightness in Control Centre

Sometimes it’s the little details that count. Open Control Centre and tap the Brightness Slider to see the screen light back up. Control Centre in iOS 8 removes the dimmed effect when you’re using the Brightness slider, so you can accurately see how the brightness setting you choose will look in the actual iOS 8 interface. Finally!

7.Enter Medical ID

You can use the new Health app to create a Medical ID that contains personal medical information. Paramedics can access this essential information from your iPhone’s Lock Screen. Open the Health app and tap Medical ID > Create Medical ID to reveal a range of fields to fill in. There are options such as Medical Conditions, Medical Notes and Medications. You can also tap Add Emergency Contact and choose a contact from your Contacts list. People can access this information by tapping on Emergency > Medical ID from the Touch ID or Enter Passcode screen.

8.Use Touch ID to end Guided Access

Owners of any iPhone with a Touch ID sensor can now use finger recognition to swiftly exit Guided Access mode. Tap on Settings > General > Accessibility > Guided Access > Passcode Settings and set Touch ID to On. Now you can use Touch ID to exit Guided Access mode.

9.Delete iCloud tabs

Open Safari and tap the pages icon. Scroll down to reveal the iCloud tabs open on all your devices. Slide your finger to the left across any iCloud tab to reveal the Delete button. Tap it to remove the iCloud tab.

10.Request desktop site in Safari

Safari now lets you request the desktop version of any website you visit. If you’d rather view the full-fat version of a site, tap the Search field and drag down to reveal Request Desktop Site. This new option will reload the page in Safari using the standard desktop site, which may offer more features than the mobile version.

11.Quick website search

The new Smart Search field enables you to bypass Google and use a website’s built-in search engine directly within Safari.

12.DuckDuckGo

Privacy advocates will be overjoyed to hear that DuckDuckGo is now available as a default search engine option in Safari. DuckDuckGo has a big emphasis on keeping its users’ privacy intact. Tap Settings > Safari > Search Engine > DuckDuckGo. Now when you tap the Search field in Safari it will return results from DuckDuckGo and not from Google.

13. Add to favourites

Website bookmarks have been replaced by Favourites on the iPhone. To mark a page as a favourite, tap the Search bar and pull down to reveal the new Add To Favourites option. Sites marked as Favourites show above the Frequently Visited section (tap Search) and under Bookmarks > Favourites. Drag icons from Frequently Visited to Favourites to save them.

14.Remove individual notifications

You can now clear individual notifications, not just apps, from the Notifications screen. Simply drag your finger down from the top of the screen to open Notification Centre and tap Notifications. Slide your finger to the left across the unwanted notification and tap the Remove icon.

15.Edit Notification Centre

You can customise the new Notification Centre as much as you like. An Edit button sits at the bottom of the Today view in Notification Centre. Tap it to add, remove and rearrange items in your Today view. By default there is Today Summary, Traffic Conditions, Calendar, Reminders and Tomorrow Summary. New apps will be able to add widgets which extend the Today view.

16.Adjust text size in Safari Reader

Safari’s Reader mode now has two handy icons to adjust the text size (the same options normally found in iBooks). Open Safari and visit a page; now tap the Reader icon (in the left of the Smart Search field). You will see the two icons for text size above the web page.

17. Battery usage by app

The new Battery Usage feature enables you to identify, and potentially remove, apps that are sapping too much battery life. Tap Settings > General > Usage > Battery Usage to view the stats. You can view Battery Usage data by Last 24 Hours or Last 7 Days using the two tabs. The figures in the Battery Usage feature show the percentage of your battery that is used by each app when your iPhone isn’t charging.

18.Attachments in Messages

Messages has a new Details view that displays all the attachments in a chat thread. Open Messages and select a conversation from the list on the left. Now tap Details in the top right. Scroll down to view all attachments from that message (photos, movies, audio clips and any other documents). You can tap an image to view it full size, and tap the list icon in the top left to view all the attachments as a list. Tap Done and the person’s name in the top left to return to the normal view.

19.Battery life suggestions

When you view battery life in Settings it will offer handy suggestions on features that give you better battery life. If you turn off Auto-Lock, say, the Battery Usage section in Settings will suggest that you Enable Auto-Lock and provide a shortcut to the feature.

20.Search keyboard shortcuts

Power users of the iOS keyboard shortcuts feature will appreciate the new search and index function. Tap Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts to view the new features. Use the Search bar at the top to search for both the Phrase and Shortcut. On the right is an A-Z index for you to browse large shortcut lists.

21.Grayscale mode

If you fancy using your iPhone without any colour (or find that it’s easier to read the screen in monochrome), click Settings > General > Accessibility and set the Grayscale option to On.

22.Enter Health data manually

The new Health app captures data from medical apps linked to wearables. Open the Health app and tap Health Data; pick a category such as Body Measurements and a sub-category such as Height, and tap Add Data Point. Fill in the fields and tap Add to insert into the Health app. Ensure that Show on Dashboard is set to On and tap the Dashboard icon to see the card with health data.

23.All new Weather information

Open the Weather app and scroll down to reveal new weather data. This includes Sunrise, Sunset, Chance of Rain, Humidity, Wind, Feels Like, Precipitation, Pressure, Visibility and UV Index. This extra data is available because Apple has replaced Yahoo with The Weather Channel as its weather provider. At the bottom left of the app is an icon for The Weather Channel; tap it to open Safari and go direct to Weather.com.

24.EU Internet

There’s a helpful option in Mobile/ Cellular settings when travelling in the EU. Tap Settings > Mobile and set Data Roaming to On to make the new option beneath it, ‘EU Internet’, available. Set that to On and then set the Data Roaming feature back to off. You’ll now be able to use your iPhone when roaming in the European Union but not other parts of the world.

25.Delete and export Health data

You can remove unwanted information from your Health app by tapping Health Data > Show All Data and tapping Edit. Tap the Delete icon and Delete again to remove the data from the Health app (or Clear All to remove all that type of data). You can also export your data by tapping Health Data > All Share and Export. A small spinning icon will appear in the middle of the iPhone display as it cranks through all of the data in Health. This can take a few minutes before you get to share the data in a zip file via Mail.

26.Hide or reveal the QuickType Keyboard

You can hide the QuickType Keyboard by pulling it down. This replaces the QuickType options with a thin grey strip with a white tab in the middle. If you do this by accident, you might wonder where the QuickType options have gone and check in Keyboard Settings, where you can’t get it back. Get the QuickType Keyboard back by flicking upwards from above the keys.

27.Do Not Disturb

It’s now possible to mute individual conversations in Messages with a new Do Not Disturb feature. Tap Messages and select a conversation from the list. Now tap Details and set Do Not Disturb to On. You will no longer get any messages from that conversation until you reset Do Not Disturb to Off. Note that it doesn’t deactivate by itself, so if you forget about it you’ll get no messages at all. Also it works only on that specific device, so you will still get messages on your other devices (the feature can also be found in OS X 10.10 Yosemite, so you can mute conversations on your iPhone, iPad and Mac).

28.Add favourites to Maps

There is no longer a bookmarks icon in Maps. Instead, you add locations to Favourites (by tapping Share > Add to Favourites). These precise map locations appear when you tap the Search field and choose Favourites, and you can also pick the Recents and Contacts fields here.

29.Rotate a photo to any angle

You can now rotate an image to an exact angle in the Photos app. Select the picture in Photos, tap Edit and tap the Crop icon. Slide the Rotation circle around to finely adjust the angle of the picture; clean grid lines appear as you rotate the image. The app can analyse an image and you may see an Auto option to level the image in an instant, based on that analysis. Tap Reset if you want the image back in its original position.

30.Messages share location

You can rapidly share your location during a Messages conversation by tapping Details > Send My Current Location. Sharing your current location sends a map link to where you currently are. You can also tap Share My Location to share your current position using the Find My Friends app. Choose Share for One Hour, Share Until End of Day and Share Indefinitely to share the position with the contact(s) you’re messaging.

31.Separate language and region settings

iOS 8 now has separate options for language and region settings (regional settings control the default currency, date and time settings). For example, you could set the language to English (UK) but the use United States for dates, times and currency. Click Settings > Language > Region and change the iPhone language to your spoken language, then tap Region and choose your desired Region.

32.Remove Spotlight suggestions

Spotlight Suggestions (mostly App Store results) and Bing Web Results are a new part of the Spotlight search experience. If they start to annoy you then you can turn them off by tapping Settings > Spotlight Search, tapping ‘Spotlight Suggestions’ and ‘Bing Web Results’ to remove the tick next to either or both.

33.Photo search

The Photos app has a new search icon (at the top right) and it’s a useful way to hunt down any photo you’re looking for. Tap it to search through all your pictures. You can search for photos by place, album and date. You will also find shortcuts in the search list for Nearby (it shows photos taken near your current location), Favourites (mark a photo as a favourite by tapping the heart icon when viewing it) and recent searches you may want to revisit.

34.Hide photos

Embarrassed by a photo? Then hide it from the Photos app. Open it, then tap and hold anywhere on the image to access the new Hide option. A pop-up appears with Copy and Hide options; tap Hide, then Hide Photo. The image vanishes from the Years, Collection and Moments views. You can still view it in a new Album called Hidden.

35.Describe the screen

With Speak Screen activated you swipe two fingers down the screen to hear the contents of any app dictated to you. To activate this, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speech and set Speak Screen to On. In Safari, for example, you can get the content of a web page read out to you: open Safari, navigate to the page and swipe with two fingers from the top.

36.Tag music with Siri

Siri now supports Shazam and can identify music that is playing. Just activate Siri and say “What song is this?” Siri also provides links to the iTunes Store so you can buy the track. Music tagged by Siri also appears in the iTunes Store app: tap the Menu item in the top right and choose the Siri tab to view all the music you’ve tagged in Siri.

37.Remove the QuickType keyboard

The charming new QuickType keyboard is great for quickly tapping in words, but if you find it distracting, you can remove it by tapping Settings > General > Keyboard and setting Predictive to Off.

38.Customise Mail’s new swipe options

Mail has enhanced swipe gestures for quickly dealing with messages by swiping left or right on them. You can customise these options via Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Swipe Options. You can choose from None, Mark as Read, Flag, and Archive. For Swipe Left, your choice appears in the list of shortcuts that swiping partway reveals, but swiping all the way always deletes a message.

39.Notify Me in Mail

If you have an email conversation that’s important, you can get notifications when a new email arrives as part of the conversation. When you are in the Mail app and a message comes up that you want to keep track of, tap the Flag icon and then tap Notify Me. Now when a new email arrives you will get a notification alert. If you decide you no longer want notifications from that thread, tap on Flag > Stop Notifying and you will no longer get the alerts.

40.iCloud Drive directory service

The new iCloud Drive has a built-in directory service that enables people using apps to look you up by email. They view your first and last name, and apps are able to link to you. To turn this feature off, tap Settings > iCloud > iCloud Drive > Look Me Up By Email to view the apps that look you up by your iCloud email address. You can limit which apps do this, but there is no option to turn it off completely.

41.Keep auto-expiring video messages

You can now send video clips in the Messages app, which expire by default after two minutes. Like Snapchat, this enables you to send messages without them being permanent. Be careful, because recipients can keep the message in the app by tapping the Keep icon. You can also keep all messages permanently by tapping Settings > Messages > Expire > Never.

42.Sharing your data with developers

Apple has made it easy to share your crash data with developers in iOS 8. This enables developers to identify the causes of problems. In sending your data to developers, though, you may also be sending personal information. You get the option whether or not to activate this feature during setup, or you can access it manually under Settings > Privacy > Diagnostics & Usage.

43.Hey Siri

You can now activate Siri just by saying “Hey Siri” or “Hi Siri.” Then ask your question as normal. You don’t have to pause; you can just say “Hey Siri, what song is this” to quickly tag a track, or “Hi Siri, what’s the weather like today”. The “Hey Siri” feature works only when your iPhone is charging; we imagine Siri constantly listening drains the battery otherwise.

44.Turn off app suggestions

A large part of iOS 8 is in Apple making it easier for them to place interesting app suggestions in front of you, so an app for the Tate Gallery could appear when you visit it. If the app suggestions become annoying you can turn them off by tapping Settings > General > Handoff & Suggested apps, and setting the My Apps and App Store options under Suggested Apps to Off.

45.New tips app

There’s a new app called Tips in the Extras folder. Open it to find a bunch of new tips for iOS 8, and tap on the Menu item in the bottom left to view all the tips. These are updated weekly. You can’t delete the Tips app, but you may want to turn off its notifications.

46.Mark addresses in Mail

You can highlight all addresses in Mail that aren’t from a particular email server. If you work in a company where you sometimes send sensitive information internally by email, iOS can make it easier to see when you’re having internal versus external conversations. Tap Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and then Mark Addresses. Enter the name of the ‘safe’ email server (the part in addresses that comes after @). Now, people you enter in the To field who have addresses that don’t match that server will be highlighted in red to alert you.

47.Read out iBooks and Kindle books

The Speak Screen option is outstanding when used in conjunction with iBooks or the Kindle app. Activate the Speak Screen options in Accessibility and open a book in iBooks or the Kindle app. Now pull two fingers down and iOS 8 will start to read your book out loud. It will turn pages automatically and will even read out the whole book if you want it to.

48.Delete old messages automatically

By default, the Messages app keeps messages forever, but there’s a new option in Settings > Messages > Keep Messages that enables you to delete messages after 30 days or a year. When you first select one of these options, it will ask to delete messages older than that date. It’s a good way to do some quick housekeeping.

49.Shared Reminder lists

One very welcome feature is the ability to create shared lists in Reminders from within iOS, so multiple people can add items to the list. Open the Reminders app and tap the list; now tap the Edit button and choose Sharing > Add Person, enter their name and tap Add. They will get an email message asking them if they want to join the shared Reminder list. Items can now be added and completed by all of you.

50.Other calendars

Apple has now provided support for Chinese, Hebrew and Islamic calendars in the Calendar app. Tap Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and tap Alternative Calendars. You can place a tick beside Chinese, Hebrew or Islamic. When you open Mail it will still display the Gregorian calendar as the default, but beneath all the Gregorian options will be a translation.