Technologies
11 Hidden iOS 16 Features You Should Be Using on Your iPhone
These lesser-known iOS features and settings will quickly make you an iPhone expert.

It’s been half a year since Apple release iOS 16, and yet there are still new features and settings to discover on the iPhone’s latest software update. These lesser-known features are definitely not as popular as the main features, like the customizable lock screen or ability to unsend text messages, but they’re still worth exploring because they can unlock a whole new experience for you on your iPhone.


I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know about the best hidden gems in iOS 16, like password-protected photo albums, easily accessible Wi-Fi passwords and more.
Read more: All the New Features in 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.


You can view the password for any Wi-Fi network you’ve ever connected to, as long as you’re currently connected to it or near enough that it appears under My Networks.
Screenshots by Nelson Aguilar/CNETFind 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.


Merging will keep the highest quality photo and delete the rest.
Screenshots by Nelson Aguilar/CNETAlthough 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.


For this to work, Listen for «Hey Siri» must be toggled on first.
Screenshots by Nelson Aguilar/CNET 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.
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.


The Hidden and Recently Deleted albums now require Face ID to be accessed.
Screenshots by Nelson Aguilar/CNET 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.


This feature works between photos and videos.
Screenshots by Nelson Aguilar/CNETBring 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.


Every single time you type, you’ll feel a slight vibration for each key you hit.
Screenshots by Nelson Aguilar/CNETPin 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.


All your pinned tabs appear at the top of Safari.
Screenshots by Nelson Aguilar/CNETUse 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.


If you take a lot of screenshots, this feature can help you save storage.
Screenshots by Nelson Aguilar/CNETRemove 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
iPhone WWDC Wishes: What We Want to See Apple Include in iOS 19
Whether Apple calls it iOS 19 or iOS 26, these are some of the things we hope the tech giant brings to the iPhone next.

Apple is set to hold its Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday, when the tech giant will show the world what it’s been cooking up during the past year for iOS 19 — or iOS 26 — the software that runs the iPhone. Until then, CNET’s experts have their own ideas about what Apple should bring to the iPhone.
While iOS 18 brought some useful new features to all iPhones, like RCS messaging, and Apple Intelligence to newer iPhones, we’re still taking bets on what Apple will include in iOS 19. Reports suggest Apple is planning a significant redesign of the iPhone OS, changing everything from icons, apps, menus and more. But CNET’s writers and editors have a few ideas we’d like to see in the upcoming OS. Some things we’ve asked for in the past, like customizable lock screen controls, have come to fruition, so maybe we’ll hit the mark again this year.
Here are some of the features and changes we hope Apple includes in the upcoming iOS software.
Bring split screen to the iPhone
Add a native split screen. It’s been available on Android phones and the iPad for years. But on iOS I still have to run my calculator and budget tracking note in two separate windows.
— Mike Sorrentino
Start a workout right from my iPhone
I’d like the ability to start an outdoor workout from the Fitness app on my iPhone (like I can do in Strava or Polar). That way if I forget to wear my Apple Watch or I don’t have one, I can still record my workout. The Apple Watch uses heart rate data to calculate move minutes but I don’t see why the iPhone can’t give me credit for an actual workout using other indicators like distance/pace on a run.
— Vanessa Hand Orellana
No more green bubbles, please
I’m overjoyed Apple added RCS messaging with iOS 18, but I’m going to dream big here: I’d love it if texts with Android users weren’t still green! While it’s great to be able to finally send high-resolution media and see typing indicators with folks who aren’t also using iMessage, it’s still far too easy for iPhone users to scoff at anyone turning their text thread green. End the pettiness once and for all!
— Abrar Al-Heeti
An easier way to manage unused apps
I have more apps on my iPhone than I’ll ever use, after years of installing things to try out and then forgetting about them. Shunting everything into the App Library helps get it out of mind, but that’s the app version of keeping a box of cables you think you might need some day. So I’d like a way to clean up apps, similar to how you can identify large apps in Settings > General > Storage. Let me see when I installed them, the last time I used them and be able to delete the ones I no longer want. I know this sounds fiddly but the thought of going through them all manually is exhausting, so that will never happen.
— Jeff Carlson
Searchable clipboard manager for all your copy and paste needs
I want a clipboard manager in iOS 19. The iPhone has a single copy and paste option, meaning if you copy something, and then copy something else, that first thing you copied is lost. For iOS 19, I’d love to see a searchable clipboard manager, one that has a history of all the things I’ve copied in the last hour, day, week or even month. And if I paste something, I’d like to see multiple options that I can choose from appear right at my fingertip.
— Nelson Aguilar
More customization options for all screens
I want more lock screen, home screen and Control Center customization options, please. I’d like to place my lock screen controls elsewhere on the screen so I don’t accidentally open any control — including, yes, my flashlight. Same thing with the home screen. I appreciate being able to place apps anywhere as long as they are within Apple’s oppressive grid that locks our apps into little boxes. If you have large icons — like I do — there’s an entire empty row at the bottom where it looks like apps or folders can go there but they can’t. Let us breathe the air of freedom, Apple! Please, for the love of everything good, let me move the scroll bar on the right side of the Control Center. I keep hitting it when I open the Control Center and it takes me to a page I don’t intend to be on, which makes it frustrating to use.
— Zach McAuliffe
Long press, double click and more action button triggers
Now that the Action button is on more iPhones, please add support for triggering different shortcuts with multiple presses. In its current setup, I can set the Action button to trigger one action at a time. By default it can toggle between turning on the ringer and putting your iPhone into silent mode. But there are a number of other options for it like being able to open the Camera app and take a photo or make an elaborate automation in the Shortcuts app like to use it to order coffee from Dunkin’.
But the Action button could do so much more if Apple would add support for multiple input clicks. Like it could be a toggle for ringer/silent mode with a single long press, but do something else (like turn on/off the flashlight) with a double-long press. I think this would add so much functionality to the button and as a result open it up to even more people taking more advantage of it.
— Patrick Holland
Better Log video editing tools
I want iOS 19 to add better editing tools for Log video. The ability to shoot Log footage directly on the iPhone is amazing for enthusiastic filmmakers like me but it can only be edited by transferring it off of your phone to an iPad or MacBook. I’d love to see Apple bring deeper editing tools to be able to add cinematic color grades to your Log footage directly on your iPhone.
— Andrew Lanxon
Intelligently organize photos by event in the Photos app
Okay, we’re all glad that in iOS 18 Apple improved the Photos search by adding AI image recognition to actually bring up all the images of your cats. It slightly makes up for the questionable revamped layout of photos and albums that confuses me to this day. I’d love it if in iOS 19, the Photos app had a new way to view photos: in a timeline intelligently organized by event. Say you go to the park for a birthday and have a bunch of photos clearly from the same occasion — the app prompts you to confirm they’re all connected, asks for a title and, boom, event logged. Then I could look at a vertical timeline of logged events from the past few months or years, all of which can be searched if I can’t quite remember, say, when I last went to the park. Yes, I can do this manually by making albums, but it’s the kind of fastidious labor I just can’t bring myself to keep up with. That’s what I want AI to do for me.
— David Lumb
Simple volume controls across the iPhone
Sometimes it’s the small changes that can help make for a smoother experience. I want to see Apple clean up volume controls. If I set the volume to a certain level, I want it to stay at that level for all applications. Sometimes the settings can vary depending on what you’re doing. Too often I come across the problem of lowering my volume to prepare to listen to something — but surprise! — the volume is loud again because I put in headphones and it keeps the louder setting I used the last time I listened to music in my headphones. It just leads to unnecessary frustrations, and makes users feel like they don’t really have control of their devices.
— Bridget Carey
For more on Apple, here’s what to expect from WWDC 2025 and our thoughts on the iPhone 16 Pro and iOS 18 months after their launch. You can also check out our iOS 18 cheat sheet.
Technologies
Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’: The Huge Tax and Medicaid Implications You Need to Know
The GOP’s contentious budget bill narrowly passed in the House, faces dissent in the Senate and has drawn the ire of Elon Musk in a big way.
President Donald Trump has made the extension of the 2017 tax cuts one of his major second-term economic goals — you know, aside from all those tariffs — but as the so-called «One Big Beautiful Bill» has moved forward, it’s faced major pushback. Some of this opposition might lead to significant changes to the bill and how it might ultimately impact you, especially when it comes to taxes and services like Medicaid.
After much back-and-forth, negotiation and failed votes, the bill passed in the House of Representatives by the thinnest margin possible, 215-214-1. The bill is now moving through the Senate, where it is expected to face more alterations before getting across the finish line. While the GOP has been attempting to use the reconciliation process to avoid the bill being filibustered by Democrats, it is still expected to face intra-party dissent similar to what it went through in the House over its cuts either being too severe or not severe enough.
Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO and one-time Trump adviser who led the «DOGE» government consolidation efforts, spoke out against the bill in an unsparing fashion in a Tuesday post to X, decrying it as too heavy on spending. This disagreement with Trump and his agenda led to a prolonged public spat between the president and his one-time senior advisor.
«This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,» Musk wrote. «Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.»
Despite the broad nature of the bill, one of its central goals remains the extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts. Passed for the first time early in his first term, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, as it was officially known, was one of Trump’s signature legislative accomplishments and has generally become known as the «Trump tax cuts.» Given the nature of how that bill was passed initially, a lot of its provisions are set to expire next year if a new extension isn’t passed, so doing just that has unsurprisingly emerged as a major priority for Trump and the GOP-led houses of Congress.
The president and his allies have also tried to claim that his aggressive tariff agenda could help offset the extension of the tax cuts, although, as we’ve touched on before at CNET, that is just one of the often-contradictory stated goals for the tariffs.
Details about the budget bill Republicans have emerged in the past few weeks as it moved through the House Ways and Means Committee approval process. The Congressional Budget Office, an agency that provides estimates about the economic impacts of budgetary bills that is not affiliated with any party, estimated that the cuts called for in this bill would cost millions of people their health insurance and food benefits. The proposal initially failed to pass a vote in the House, leading to its cuts for Medicaid becoming even heavier.
All this comes in addition to the longstanding criticism from Democrats and other critics that Trump’s tax cuts disproportionately help the wealthiest Americans more than the working class. While there is truth to that argument, and to the Republican counter that the tax cuts would provide some help to taxpayers at all incomes, the new proposed cuts unveiled this week have given more weight to the notion that they will be more harmful for the least wealthy Americans.
For all the details about what extending the tax cuts will actually mean and what the current terms mean for things like Medicaid, keep reading. For more, find out if Trump could actually abolish the Department of Education.
How will the budget bill impact Medicaid?
According to the estimates from the Congressional Budget Office mentioned at the start of this piece, at least 7.6 million Americans would lose Medicaid health insurance under the provisions in the budget proposal. That’s nearly 11% of the 70 million Americans who are currently insured by Medicaid. The proposal would, among other things, require people without dependent children or a disability to meet an 80-hour-a-month work requirement to qualify for Medicaid and increase the frequency with which people will need to confirm their continued eligibility.
These new requirements were originally set to take effect in 2029 under the bill’s failed House version, but they were moved forward to 2026 in the bill’s passed version.
What would extending the Trump tax cuts mean?
While the phrase «Trump tax cuts» has become a common media shorthand for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the current conversation around it might suggest that new cuts could be on the way. Although Trump has floated ideas for additional cuts, it’s important to note that extending the 2017 provisions would, for the most part, keep tax rates and programs at the levels they’ve been at since then.
So while it may be a better option than having the provisions expire — which would increase certain tax rates and decrease certain credits — extending the tax cuts most likely won’t change how you’ve been taxed the past eight years. However, some estimates have predicted that extending the cuts would boost income in 2026, with the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation in particular predicting a 2.9% rise on average, based on a combination of other economic predictions combined with tax rates staying where they are.
What would change if the Trump tax cuts expire?
Republicans contend that the tax cuts helped a wide swath of Americans, and the Tax Foundation predicted that 60% of tax filers would see higher rates in 2026 without an extension.
A big part of that has to do with tax bracket changes. The 2017 provisions lowered the income tax rates across the seven brackets, aside from the first (10%) and the sixth (35%). If the current law expires, those rates would go up by between 1% and 3%.
Income limits for each bracket would also revert to pre-2017 levels. Lending credence to the Democrats’ counterarguments, these shifts under the Trump tax cuts appeared to be more beneficial to individuals and couples at higher income levels than to those making closer to the average US income.
If you’re interested in the nitty-gritty numbers, you can check out the Tax Foundation’s full breakdown. Another point in Democrats’ favor? The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act also cut corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%, and unlike many of its other provisions, this one was permanent and won’t expire in 2026.
What would happen to the standard deduction?
This is another area in which a lot of people would be hit hard. The standard deduction lets taxpayers lower their taxable income, as long as they forgo itemizing any deductions.
For the 2025 tax year, the standard deduction is $15,000 for individual filers and $30,000 for joint filers. If the tax cuts expire, these numbers will drop by nearly half, down to $8,350 for individuals and $16,700 for joint filers.
Under the current reconciliation bill, the deduction would increase to $16,000 for individuals and $32,000 for joint filers, but only through 2028.
What would happen to the child tax credit?
The child tax credit is one of the most popular credits. Its current levels — $2,000 per qualifying child, which phases out starting at a gross income of $200,000 for single filers and $400,000 for joint filers — were actually set by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
If an extension or new bill isn’t passed, next year the child tax credit would revert to its old levels: $1,000 per child, which starts phasing out at $75,000 for single filers and $110,000 for joint filers.
If the current budget bill is implemented, the credit will be upped to $2,500 per child through 2028, before dropping to $2,000 as its new permanent rate.
Do the Trump tax cuts really favor the wealthy?
Higher-income individuals and couples fared notably better with the changes the Trump tax cuts made to tax brackets. An estimate from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, found that the poorest 20% of Americans would see only about 1% of the bill’s net tax cuts. Numerous similar estimates agree that these small benefits for the poorest taxpayers would be outweighed by rising costs caused by tariffs.
Conversely, ITEP’s estimate found that the richest 20% of US taxpayers would benefit from around 67% of the bill’s net tax cuts, with the richest 5% benefitting from half of them.
How much would extending the tax cuts cost?
Both the Congressional Budget Office and the Tax Foundation have estimated that the reconciliation bill’s tax cut extension would raise the US deficit by $4.5 trillion over the course of 10 years. The Tax Foundation also estimated that it could raise the country’s GDP to offset that number, but only by about $710 billion, or about 16% of the deficit increase.
For more, see how Trump’s tariffs might be affecting the prices of several key products in our daily tracker.
Technologies
Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Saturday, June 7
Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 7.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.
Today’s NYT Mini Crossword could be tricky. 1-Down and 5-Down stumped me for a while, but the other letters filled it in for me. Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.
The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times’ games collection. If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.
Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword
Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.
Mini across clues and answers
1A clue: Yoga class need
Answer: MAT
4A clue: Umlaut, rotated 90°
Answer: COLON
6A clue: «That is shocking!»
Answer: OHMYGOD
8A clue: «___ You the One?» (reality TV show)
Answer: ARE
9A clue: Egg cells
Answer: OVA
10A clue: One of two «royal» sleeping options
Answer: KINGBED
12A clue: Bar seating
Answer: STOOL
13A clue: Favorite team of the «Chicago Pope,» for short
Answer: SOX
Mini down clues and answers
1D clue: Slices of life
Answer: MOMENTS
2D clue: Olympic gymnast Raisman
Answer: ALY
3D clue: Request at the end of a restaurant meal
Answer: TOGOBOX
4D clue: Hayes of MSNBC
Answer: CHRIS
5D clue: Medium for Melville or McCarthy
Answer: NOVEL
6D clue: Wood used for wine barrels
Answer: OAK
7D clue: June honoree
Answer: DAD
11D clue: Sticky stuff
Answer: GOO
How to play more Mini Crosswords
The New York Times Games section offers a large number of online games, but only some of them are free for all to play. You can play the current day’s Mini Crossword for free, but you’ll need a subscription to the Times Games section to play older puzzles from the archives.
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