Technologies

11 Hidden iOS 16 Features You Probably Didn’t Know Your iPhone Had

It’s the hard-to-find iOS features that are sometimes the best.

Your iPhone is more powerful than you might think. Underneath all the major new features on iOS 16, like the revamped lock screen and ability to unsend text messages, there are lesser known tools and settings that are just as impressive, and can help make your day-to-day use more efficient, interesting and fun.

I’m going to walk you through what to know about the best hidden gems in iOS 16, like password-protected photo albums and easily accessible Wi-Fi passwords.

Read more: All the New Features on iOS 16.3

And while you’re here, make sure you also brush up on the major new iOS 16 features you’ll love and a few that you might just hate (luckily, there’s a fix).

View and share saved Wi-Fi passwords

Apple has allowed iOS users to share Wi-Fi passwords for a while now, but only by placing two Apple devices near each other. And if that feature didn’t automatically work, you couldn’t just dig out the password from your settings. Plus if you wanted to share a saved Wi-Fi password with someone else, like an Android user or someone on a computer, you had to remember the password. Until now.

In Settings, go to Wi-Fi and tap the tiny information icon to the right of the network you want the password for. To view the network password, tap the Password section and then use Face ID or enter your passcode to view it. You can then tap Copy to copy the password into your clipboard and share it.

Find and remove duplicate photos and videos

Maybe you’ve saved the same photo multiple times or downloaded a video more than once, resulting in duplicates littering up your photo album. It may not be a problem if you’ve got storage to spare, but you’re running out of space, you can now remove every single duplicate easily with iOS 16.

In Photos > Albums, you should see a new Duplicates album under Utilities. Apple scans through all of your photos and shows you any photo or video you’ve saved more than once in that album. From there, you can either delete any duplicates, or simply press Merge, which will keep the photo with the highest quality (and relevant data) and then move the others to the trash.

Although you’ll probably want to go through each set of duplicates, to ensure that they’re actually exact copies and not similar photos, you can also hit Select > Select All > Merge to remove every single photo and video that Apple thinks is a duplicate, all at once.

Hang up a phone or FaceTime call with Siri

Siri does a lot of things. You can use the virtual assistant to send a text message, get directions or play music — but one thing she’s never been able to do is hang up a phone call. Weird right? Now that’s finally a possibility with iOS 16.

In Settings, go to Siri & Search and first make sure Listen for «Hey Siri» is toggled on. If it is, you should see a new option underneath — Call Hang Up. Go into that option and toggle on Call Hang Up. When you’re on a phone call or FaceTime video chat, simply say, «Hey, Siri,» and ask her to hang up your current call.

Pair Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons with your iPhone

Apple has long allowed you to pair third-party controllers, like the PS5 Sony DualSense and Xbox Core Controller, to your iPhone and iPad, in order to more comfortably play mobile video games like the Apple Arcade library, Minecraft and Call of Duty. Now you can add another console controller to that list.

If you own a Nintendo Switch, you can now pair your Joy-Con controllers to your iPhone or iPad running iOS 16. To start, hold down the little black pairing button on the Joy-Con, until the green lights start running back and forth. This means the device is in pairing mode. Next, open your iPhone and go to Settings > Bluetooth and select the Joy-Con from the list. Repeat this step with the other Joy-Con.

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Hidden and Recently Deleted albums are now password protected

The Hidden album in the Photos app is clearly not hidden, seeing as anyone can easily find it. That makes it impractical for adequately hiding private photos and videos. While Apple does have an option to make the Hidden album «invisible,» anyone with access to your phone could make it visible again and view everything inside.

Thanks to iOS 16, you can now lock the Hidden album. You don’t actually need to do anything to toggle this feature on. If you want to check it out, launch the Photos app and go to the Albums tab at the bottom of the screen. If you scroll down, you’ll see a tiny lock next to the Hidden and Recently Deleted albums. To view the contents of those albums, you’ll need to use Face ID or your passcode.

Copy and paste photo and video edits

If you use the editor tool in the Photos app, you’ll be happy to learn that you can now copy and paste edits, including saturation, contrast and brightness, between photos. If you edit one photo or video and are happy with the look, you can paste those same exact edits to any other photo or video in your camera roll.

To do this, launch the Photos app and open a photo that’s been edited in full-screen. Next, tap on the three-dot menu in the top-right corner and then hit Copy Edits. This option will only appear if the photo has been edited within Photos, not any third-party photo editor. Finally, go to the photo you want to copy these edits over to, tap on the three-dot menu and then hit Paste Edits. After a second or so, you should see the photo edits appear.

Bring haptic feedback to your keyboard

The iPhone has long had haptic feedback. It’s what you feel underneath your fingertips whenever you attempt to delete an app from your home screen or enter the incorrect password on your lock screen. Strangely enough, haptic feedback has never been available for the stock iOS keyboard — until now.

If you want to enable a slight vibration for every single key you type in, go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Keyboard Feedback and toggle on Haptic. The sound option you see is the loud and annoying clacking sound you might hear when you type in something and your phone isn’t on silent mode, so you can keep that disabled.

Pin your favorite tabs in Safari

Safari caps your open tabs at 500, and if you’re nearing that limit, it might be pretty darn hard to find the exact tab you’re looking for. You could scroll endlessly, but there’s now an easier way to find the exact tab you’re looking for.

In Safari, if you press down on an open tab, you now have the option to hit Pin Tab. This will move that tab to the top of Safari, where it will exist as a tiny tab preview, permanently pinned there, which you can then tap to view. If you press down and unpin a tab, it will move to first in your grid of open tabs.

Use Face ID while you’re lying down

If you’ve ever tried to unlock your iPhone while it’s vertical, like when you’re lying on your side, you might have noticed that it doesn’t work. You have to place your iPhone in portrait orientation, or upright, for Face ID to work. With iOS 16, you can finally use Face ID to unlock your iPhone when it’s in landscape orientation. However, for this to work, you must have an iPhone 13 or 14 running iOS 16.

Copy your screenshots to your clipboard without saving them

You don’t need to save a screenshot to your photo album to share it with someone else. A new iOS 16 feature allows you to take a screenshot, copy it to your clipboard, delete it from your phone and paste it where you see fit. After you take a screenshot, tap the screenshot preview that appears, hit Done on the top-right and then tap Copy and Delete to copy the screenshot to your clipboard.

Remove more preinstalled Apple apps

Since iOS 10, you’ve been able to remove some preinstalled iOS applications like Stocks, Maps and Calculator — but not all of them. With the release of iOS 16, you can add three more apps to this list of ones you can remove: Find My, Clock and Health. However, deleting these apps can negatively affect and break support with other apps and connected devices, like your Apple Watch.

For more on iOS 16 and the iPhone, check out our iOS 16 cheat sheet.

Technologies

The Messenger Reinvented: How Verum Is Expanding the Boundaries of Digital Communication

For more than a decade, the global messaging landscape has been defined by a handful of dominant platforms. Despite incremental updates, the core experience has remained largely unchanged: text, media sharing, and voice or video calls layered on centralized infrastructure.

Yet a new category of messaging platforms is beginning to emerge — one that treats communication not as a standalone function, but as part of a broader digital ecosystem.

Verum Messenger is one of the more ambitious entrants in this space. Rather than competing solely on interface or speed, it is positioning itself as an integrated environment that combines communication, privacy infrastructure, connectivity, and financial tools within a single application.

Beyond Messaging: Feature Density as Strategy

At the surface level, Verum includes many of the features now expected in modern messaging platforms, such as an AI assistant embedded directly within conversations, scheduled message delivery, disappearing messages after being read, and the ability to edit sent messages.

But it extends further into behavioral transparency and control. Users can receive notifications when someone takes a screenshot, copies, or forwards their messages, while also having the ability to block screenshots entirely and prevent screen recording. These controls are complemented by granular privacy settings, pinned messages, smart notification prioritization, message reactions and quick replies, customizable chat interfaces, and advanced notification controls.

Privacy as Infrastructure, Not Feature

Where Verum attempts to differentiate more aggressively is in its security architecture. The platform incorporates end-to-end encryption across all communications, including encrypted voice and video calls, along with automatic message deletion timers.

Account-level control is also emphasized through one-tap account deletion, restricted chat access, and active session management. Personal data protection is reinforced by storing security keys exclusively on the user’s device and implementing a multi-layered security model.

Additional safeguards include advanced privacy configuration, biometric authentication such as Face ID or Touch ID, passcode-based app locking, protection against unauthorized access, and dedicated private communication modes.

A Built-In Digital Layer

One of the platform’s more distinctive elements is its attempt to consolidate multiple digital services into a single environment.

This includes an integrated VPN, disposable anonymous email addresses, and built-in eSIM functionality, enabling connectivity across more than 150 countries. The application is designed to unify multiple services while supporting international communication, large file transfers, and group chats of up to 10,000 participants.

These are complemented by broader communication tools and an overarching goal of functioning as a centralized hub for managing digital interactions.

Financial Integration Without Fragmentation

In parallel, Verum incorporates a set of financial utilities that aim to reduce reliance on external applications. These include peer-to-peer transfers in fiat currencies, in-app balance top-ups, and a virtual payment card.

Support for Apple Pay and similar services is intended to streamline transactions, while built-in financial management tools suggest a move toward embedding everyday financial activity directly within the messaging layer.

Toward Network Independence

Perhaps the most forward-looking aspect of the platform lies in its recent technical developments.

Verum has introduced messaging capabilities that function without a traditional internet connection, relying instead on direct peer-to-peer communication between devices. This architecture reduces dependence on centralized servers, aligning with a broader industry trend toward decentralization and resilience.

At the same time, the platform incorporates on-device message translation, supporting dozens of languages with local processing. By avoiding cloud-based translation, this approach attempts to preserve user privacy while enabling cross-language communication.

A Broader Industry Signal

Whether Verum itself achieves mainstream adoption remains an open question. Network effects continue to favor established players, and feature breadth alone does not guarantee user migration.

However, the platform illustrates a broader shift in how messaging applications are being conceptualized. Increasingly, they are evolving into multi-functional environments that combine communication, privacy infrastructure, connectivity, and financial interaction.

In that context, Verum is less a direct competitor to existing messengers and more an early example of what a fully integrated digital platform might look like — one where messaging is no longer the product, but the foundation.

Technologies

YouTube Will Let You Turn Off Shorts, but Only on Mobile

You can set a timer for bedtime or breaks, or just get rid of Shorts once and for all.

You can stop scrolling: YouTube just gave iOS and Android users the power to turn YouTube Shorts off completely.

YouTube’s short-form videos are similar to TikTok and Instagram Reels. The videos are designed to be quick bursts of content, but can lead to more screen time than you may have initially intended. YouTube is rolling out a solution, at least for those who use the YouTube mobile app.

The YouTube Shorts Timer lets you set how much time you want to spend watching YouTube Shorts. Or you can set the timer to zero to stop seeing YouTube Shorts altogether. Google has instructions to disable Shorts or enable the timer in the YouTube app. You can limit your Shorts scrolling session to 15, 30 or 45 minutes, or for an hour or two. When the timer is up, you’ll see a message that you’ve reached your set time limit, but you can dismiss it. Google also says you can set reminders for bedtime and breaks.

The ability to set the timer to zero minutes isn’t available for everyone yet. A Google spokesperson told CNET that the feature was made available first to parents linked to supervised accounts. It’s still rolling out to all other users.

As a parent, I’m relieved to know parents now have more control over screen time through Google’s Family Link, an app and website for Google and YouTube parental controls. It also makes me wonder what other screen-time controls could be on the horizon.

YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A recent Pew Research Center study of teens who use TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram found that their screen time on these social media apps affects their sleep and productivity. Meanwhile, teens are using these apps for entertainment and say that the apps help their friendships — which could be important for teens. However, parental controls, app settings and other timers, like Brick, could help if you’re consistent and set schedules to have screen time without impeding on your time to rest or complete other tasks.

Last month, a California jury found YouTube and Instagram’s respective parent companies liable in a landmark civil case brought by a woman who claimed the apps were designed to be addictive to children. YouTube owner Google has said the platform is a streaming service, not a social media site, and plans to appeal.

YouTube says parents can use the timer to control how much time teens spend watching Shorts, including setting reminders for bedtime and breaks. Or parents can turn off Shorts in the YouTube mobile app by setting the timer to 0 minutes.

The feature is only available for mobile, so Shorts can’t yet be disabled on desktop. TikTok rolled out new time-management features last year, including a positive affirmations journal and missions to earn badges for reducing screen time.

Technologies

MacOS Now Has a Native Gemini AI App

Get faster access to some of Gemini’s best features without switching tabs.

Gemini is getting a native MacOS app so that you have a faster way to talk to Google’s AI chatbot, bringing access to some of its best features with just a couple of clicks.

Artificial intelligence is becoming more ingrained in everyday life, and companies are trying to make it easier than ever to access. On smartphones, AI is already just a button press away, but for desktops, LLMs like Google’s Gemini have been restricted to web applications.

With the new app, Gemini is available via a simple keyboard shortcut.

If you’ve got a MacBook, you can access Gemini at any time by pressing Option and Space on the keyboard, without having to switch tabs or open another window.

Gemini’s best features, like Nano Banana image generation, video and music generation, are also just a few clicks away.

Much like you can do with the Gemini mobile app, the new MacOS app will let you share context from a window instantly so you can get insight on the content you’re viewing. Google says this will also work with local files on your computer and isn’t limited to web pages.

The free, native app is available now for all users on MacOS 15 and up. Google says this is just the beginning and that it’s building the foundation for a «personal, proactive and powerful desktop assistant.»

The app can be downloaded at gemini.google/mac.