There are so many changes, in fact, that Apple simply couldn’t go through all of them during its keynote presentation. Here are some of the most important new iOS features that Apple didn’t shine a light on at its Worldwide Developer Conference this year.
Stock iOS apps are now deletable
You read that right, you can finally delete many of the iOS stock apps. Unless you’re part of the 1 percent of people that actually uses the Stocks app, you’ll now be able to declutter your home screen and get rid of the apps that you never use. Part of this change means that Apple’s stock apps are now available through the App Store, so if you happen to delete something by accident, you’ll be able to download it again.
Of course, not all stock apps are deletable — some of them, like Safari, Messages, and Settings, are tied too deeply to iOS and how it functions, so they’re sticking around. Many of the others though, simply don’t need to be there unless you’re part of a very specific group of people, so it’s nice to not need to keep them on your device any longer. Read more here.
You can edit RAW photos
Most consumers don’t know this, but professional photographers rarely edit photos in .jpg or .png formats — they edit them in RAW. RAW photos are basically photos that haven’t been compressed in any way. All the information captured by the camera’s sensor is there, as opposed to the photos most people take with their phones, which are compressed, diminishing their quality to a certain extent.
Of course, the ability to edit RAW photos could be indicative of some additions to the next iPhone — perhaps the device will be able to shoot photos in RAW. This wouldn’t be all that surprising, considering many Android devices already allow for this. Read more here.
New bedtime and wake feature
The Clock app in iOS has gotten a number of new features in iOS 10, including a tab called bedtime. Bedtime basically lets you set yourself a time to sleep, and then sends you notifications telling you its time to go to sleep. It’s coupled with that is the new “wake” feature, which is basically just an alarm that can wake you up at a specific time each day.
The thinking here is that a consistent sleep schedule is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Too often we forget to go to bed at a decent time, and while that might sometimes be because we’re too busy, sometimes we just lose track of time. Hopefully this new feature will help cut down on that.
Storage optimization
If you tend to run out of space on your phone, this feature’s for you. Storage optimization is exactly what it sounds like — if enabled, it will automatically remove music that you don’t listen to from your phone to conserve storage space. You can set different options for when the device should delete music — with choices between 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of storage left, and once that mark is hit, music will start being deleted.
Live photos stabilization
Live Photos are great, but so far they’ve generally been super jittery — something Google fixed with its Motion Stills app, which stabilizes Live Photos, ensuring they look as smooth as they were intended to be. Of course, Apple doesn’t want to be left out of the action, and will be adding a feature in iOS 10 that does the same thing.
It’s not yet known exactly what form that will take — a slide was simply shown at the end of the WWDC keynote with “Live Photos Stabilization,” as a feature. Hopefully it will be as good as what Motion Stills does, and with any luck, it will be an automatic process.
Toll avoidance in Maps
Apple Maps has largely lagged behind Google Maps, but a new update to the app should bring it a little more in line with Google’s offering. One of the main features? The ability to avoid highway tolls — an important feature, to be sure.
Using this feature you’ll be able to simply tell Maps to take you around tolls, at which point you’ll likely have to take a longer route, but you’ll avoid having to pay. Of course, if the route ends up being much longer, you may spend more on gas than you would spend simply paying the toll, but at least you can make that decision with the new version of Apple Maps.
RIP Game Center
This one isn’t as much of a feature as it is the deletion of a feature. It turns out no one used Game Center, and Apple has finally decided to retire it.
Game Center was originally aimed at being a social media network of sorts for mobile games, but ended up being more of a flop. Chances are you won’t miss Game Center, but if you were part of the few that did use it, unfortunately for you that feature will no longer be accessible.
Unlimited Safari tabs
Sometimes 36 browser tabs just isn’t enough. Just kidding — sometimes you need to close your damn tabs when you’re done with them. If you don’t want to, there’s good news for you — Safari now supports unlimited tabs. Sure, that number will eventually be limited by how much your device’s processor can handle and how much RAM your phone has, but at least on the software side of things, you’ll be able to enjoy as many Safari tabs as you can handle.
Seriously though, close those tabs.
Notes collaboration
This was another feature thrown up in a not-talked-about slide at the end of WWDC, but it should prove useful for those that use notes often. Thanks to the new feature, you’ll be able to share Notes to others, who will be able to edit those notes, essentially creating a note that can be used for collaborative work.
Not too much is known about this feature since it wasn’t really talked about, but it could certainly help those who don’t want to start a completely new document for small collaborative tasks.
Conversation view in Mail
A pretty small change, to be sure, but fans of conversation view in Mail on the Mac will appreciate the feature being brought to iOS too. Apple Mail has long been an important part of iOS, and it’s nice to see Apple continuing to develop it despite the fact that people would continue to use it whether it had conversation view or not.
