Technologies
iOS 17 Review: Standby Mode, Meaningful Changes in Messages and More
After months of waiting, Apple released iOS 17 to the public on Monday, Sept. 18.
Whether you bought one of the new iPhone 15 models or are holding on to a 5-year-old iPhone XS, you can download iOS 17 now. Apple released the operating system on Monday, Sept. 18 after introducing it at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
Read more: Hidden iOS 17 Settings and Features On Your iPhone
I started beta testing versions of iOS 17 in July on a newer iPhone 14 Pro and an older iPhone XR to see how the latest OS will affect most people with compatible devices. The OS brings a lot of new and useful features to your iPhone, especially in Messages, which might make you wonder why those functions weren’t there in the first place. Some apps, like Shortcuts, are less daunting than they were in previous iOS versions.
iOS 17 picks up visually where iOS 16 left off. Contact Posters in iOS 17 brings visuals to contacts similar to those iOS 16 brought to the lock screen. But I found Contact Posters more fun than useful. The largest visual change is StandBy mode, which turns your iPhone into a mini hub filled with widgets, photos and customizable clocks.
iOS 17 will work on iPhone XS and newer models. But while the new software makes experiences seamless and less burdensome on older and newer iPhones alike, some features really shine on newer models, like the iPhone 14 Pro. That doesn’t mean you should avoid iOS 17 if you have an older iPhone — you’ll still experience about 90% of iOS 17’s benefits. StandBy mode, for example, worked on my XR, but with the display’s sleep timer turned off, I had to lock my screen in order for it to work. Once in StandBy mode, the display goes to sleep a short time later.
Now, let’s get into some of my favorite iOS 17 features.
StandBy mode is a standout
When Apple announced StandBy mode at WWDC, I was skeptical. My wife and I don’t have a smart display, like the Amazon Echo Show, or any other kind of supplementary hub in our home, and we’ve been just fine — and yes, if you come by later, I’ll probably be yelling about the weather. But StandBy mode is my favorite new iPhone feature in years, and it’s not even close.
Sure, you could say StandBy mode makes your iPhone into an expensive bedside clock, but if you just use it as a clock, you’re missing out on so much functionality. Interactive widgets on my screen made it easy to check the weather, read the latest headlines and much more. I could also change music playing through connected smart speakers without fishing my iPhone out of my pocket.
Notifications also showed up on my screen, and I could easily preview them without unlocking my iPhone. So when I got a notification from an app like Ring, I could quickly check if it’s the mail person delivering a package or just a car driving down the road. And with Live Activities and StandBy mode combined, I could follow the score of an MLB game while I watched an NFL game on TV.
StandBy mode even started to improve my relationship with my iPhone. Before iOS 17, if I got up from my desk to grab a snack or go to the bathroom, I’d make sure my iPhone was in my pocket — and if it wasn’t I’d immediately go into detective mode to find it and put it back where it belongs, my right front pocket.
Since I started using StandBy mode, I regularly leave my iPhone behind on its charging stand while I make another cup of coffee or grab the mail. When I notice it’s not in my pocket, I might shrug and think, «It’s on the charging stand. I’ll grab it later,» and those instances are getting more frequent. And I’ve welcomed this change. Disconnecting from our devices could have major health benefits, like reduced anxiety and depression, so whether Apple intended it to or not, StandBy mode could help improve your mental health. I certainly feel more relaxed.
But StandBy mode has room to improve. Currently there are a limited number of widgets that can be used with StandBy mode, and email widgets, like Mail, are sorely missing. Being able to quickly check your email, or any social media app, from StandBy mode would elevate the usefulness of this feature. I’m not seeing more widgets in the iOS 17 release candidate, but a Mail widget still might be included in the final version. If it’s not, Apple should include it in an update soon.
StandBy mode also works best on iPhones with always-on displays, like the iPhone 14 Pro. It will work on other iOS 17 compatible iPhones, like the iPhone XR, but only until your screen goes to sleep.
Messages upgrades beyond autocorrect
Yes, autocorrect will now learn from your messages so it won’t correct you all the «ducking» time. Is this cool? Yeah. Am I immature? Also, yes. The cursing in my texts now flows without interruption or confusion. But more so, autocorrect has improved overall to better understand what you mean. It’s also not as eager to correct things like acronyms or slang.
Messages also gets a host of other new features that make staying in contact with others easy and effortless, including an autocorrect undo function. «But wait, didn’t you just say autocorrect will better understand what I mean and not correct me all the time?» Yes, dear reader, glad to see you’re paying attention, but autocorrect still gets it wrong sometimes — same here, autocorrect. When it does make a correction, Messages will underline the corrected word. If you tap the word, you’ll be given the option to undo the correction, reverting it back to what you originally typed.
Another upgrade is a catch-up arrow in group chats. I go to sleep relatively early — around 8:30 p.m. — and sometimes, when I wake up, a group chat with my family or friends has 30 new messages. Instead of scrolling up to find the start of the messages, there’s a new arrow that will take me to the first message in the conversation that I haven’t read. This has saved me a lot of confusion about why my friend group can’t meet up. However, this feature was present in early beta versions but not later versions. The catch-up arrow is expected to arrive in iOS 17 later this year.
The app bar has been replaced with a drawer. Next to your message field, there’s a plus sign button that you use to pull up iMessage apps like your Camera, Memoji and others. You can rearrange these, too, so apps that you use more, like the #images app, can be easily accessible. This is a small but helpful change. Before iOS 17, sometimes the app bar would disappear on me, and I’d have to swipe my screen up or down to bring it back. Now all the apps are in the same easy-to-find place.
Create and send your own Live Stickers
With iOS 16, Apple introduced the ability to lift a photo’s subject from the background, giving you (mostly) clean-looking cutout pictures. With iOS 17, Apple lets you use these cutouts to create your own stickers, called Live Stickers. You can add different effects to your stickers, like a white outline or a holographic filter, to make your stickers standout. And you can make animated stickers from Live photos.
As a proud pup parent, I make and send more stickers of my dog than I’d like to admit. But I’ll gladly share a small sample of the stickers of Cinnamon Toast Crunch — yes, that’s her name. Are these stickers useful? Not really, but I’m having fun with them.
Read more: How to Create Your Own Live Stickers
iOS 17 can automatically delete verification code messages
Two-factor verification messages are a great way to improve security when logging into an account or service. You know what really annoys me about them though? All the random messages and emails that clutter my inboxes. But that’s no longer a problem.
With iOS 17, your Messages and Mail app can automatically delete two-factor verification codes once the code has been used to autofill its intended field. I love keeping all my inboxes clean and tidy, and this new feature is like a virtual Roomba that gets rid of those unnecessary messages as soon as they are used.
Shortcuts improvements
Confession time: I never used Shortcuts on my iPhone before. Setting them up confused and frustrated me. The Shortcuts homepage intimidated me too, so I convinced myself that Shortcuts weren’t worth it. But thanks to iOS 17, I changed my attitude and have already integrated a few into my everyday life.
For starters, Apple changed the Shortcuts homepage to show a handful of premade ones, like creating a new note in Notes, that you can easily add to your homepage with a long press. The new layout isn’t as daunting, and should make it easier for others to see what Shortcuts can do.
The camera level is a game-changer
When I take photos or record videos for social media, I worry that they’re not going to look straight. Before iOS 17, I’d try to line the grip up with a straight line in frame, but if I was out in nature I’d just try my best.
In iOS 17, the Camera app has an onscreen level so you can straighten your videos and pictures. The level comes across the center of your screen as a thin white line but it turns yellow when it’s level. It’s helped me take straight photos, and I also used it to double-check whether a picture frame on my wall was level when hanging it.
Grocery lists in Reminders
I love grocery shopping. I like walking the aisles, finding my items and seeing all the people and what they’ve picked up. But what I don’t like is forgetting an item on one side of the store after I’ve walked all the way across and picked up everything else I need.
Luckily, Reminders has a new feature that lets you create a grocery list separated into sections with headers like Produce, Breads & Cereals and Household items. The app automatically creates these sections as you add items and sorts them into the appropriate categories. The app even recognizes certain brand names, like Dr Pepper and Ritz, and sorts them appropriately, too.
iOS 17 features not available at launch
The biggest iOS 17 feature that’s not included at launch that I’m excited about is the Journal app. Apple announced the app at WWDC in June, saying it would be able to give you suggestions about what to journal about, keep your entries private and more. However, Apple said the Journal app would launch later this year.
Collaborative Playlists in Apple Music collaborations aren’t available with iOS 17 yet either. This feature is said to let people invite friends and family to edit playlists or react to certain tracks on the playlist. There’s no word on when this feature will be available yet.
Apple had also announced that AirDrop will be able to finish a file transfer when devices move out of range of each other on iOS 17. However, we’re still waiting for word on when this will be available.
The final word on iOS 17
The latest iOS version brings a lot of functional improvements to your iPhone, even if you don’t have the newest model. Not all the changes are big and flashy, like StandBy mode, but most feel meaningful.
A few words of caution for when the new operating system arrives: Before you update your iPhone to iOS 17, you should back up your iPhone as a precaution. And while it might be tempting to download iOS 17 as soon as possible, you might want to wait a day or two to see if other people are having problems with their iPhones, and so that your device downloads the update faster.
For more Apple news, check out the iOS 17 cheat sheet and reviews for the iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max.
Take a Look at Apple’s iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro: New Colors, Prices and More
Technologies
Scientists Use AI to Map Ocean Currents in Incredible Detail
Understanding ocean currents is important for work such as weather forecasting, climate research, search-and-rescue operations and oil spill response.
The shifting patterns of ocean currents shape our climate and weather. Even today, understanding how ocean currents behave is challenging. But researchers have developed an AI tool that can map currents across large swaths of the ocean with a level of detail previously unachievable.
The team from the University of California, San Diego, published their work in the journal Nature Geoscience on April 13. They trained an AI network using thermal imagery from weather satellites in an approach they call GOFlow (Geostationary Ocean Flow).
«We can now observe small, fast-changing ocean currents from space with much greater detail and frequency than before,» Luc Lenain, an oceanographer at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the study’s first author, told CNET. «Those currents are important because they help control how heat, carbon, nutrients and pollutants move through the ocean.»
Ebbs and flows
A few years ago, while Lenain was looking through thermal satellite images of the North Atlantic Ocean, he noticed visual patterns in temperature changes from major currents, such as the Gulf Stream. He had an idea for a new way to measure ocean currents by taking what his eye could see and putting it into an AI tool.
The researchers trained the GOFlow neural network on simulated ocean currents, then used It on real images from a weather satellite. The AI tool used satellite images to track surface temperatures, which shift due to underlying ocean currents.
By tracking temperature changes in the images, GOFlow inferred which current caused them.
The team checked their work against data that was gathered by ships in the Gulf Stream region. They also tested GOFlow’s results against more traditional satellite methods that rely on tracking height changes in the ocean surface.
The researchers found that their outputs aligned with other ship and satellite results, but they say that GOFlow also provided greater detail on ocean currents than had previously been documented only in computer models.
«These kinds of [AI] driven approaches are not replacing physics,» Lenain said. «Instead, AI is helping us extract physical information that is already present in satellite observations, but has been difficult to recover with traditional methods until now.»
The view from above
Despite GOFlow’s achievements, the researchers note that the tool has some limitations, such as cloud cover: Cloudy days can block a satellite’s view of the ocean. They say future work will incorporate additional satellite data to fill these gaps.
The computer code developed by the researchers will be made publicly available to help further work.
«We wanted to make this work transparent, reproducible and useful to the broader community,» Lenain said. «We see GOFlow as a stepping stone toward more routine use of large remote-sensing datasets combined with machine learning.»
Gathering satellite images to learn about ocean currents is an example of Earth observation. Governments and militaries, as well as farmers and insurance companies, rely on this data for decision-making.
The GOFlow project is part of a larger AI trend, as AI tools can speed up and improve the accuracy of data analysis. NASA, the European Space Agency and private space firms have begun building and testing AI tools that can analyze such data.
Technologies
Can’t File Your Income Taxes by Today? You Need to File a Free Extension Now
The best tax software will let you file a federal income tax extension to give yourself six more months to finish your taxes.
Time’s up, US taxpayers. The deadline for filing your income taxes is today. You have until midnight tonight to submit your 2025 tax return electronically or have it postmarked.
If you’re not able to finish your 2025 tax return today, or if you’re still missing important tax documents, don’t fret. You can file a free tax extension with the IRS, which will give you another six months to complete and submit your tax return.
There’s no cost or penalty for filing a tax extension, and most tax software will help you complete the process in a few minutes. However, there are some critical details to be aware of before you make the decision to postpone your taxes for another six months.
Read on to find all of the details for filing a tax extension in 2026 and how it will affect your tax refund or the money that you owe.
What’s the deadline to file an income tax extension?
Along with the tax return submission deadline, there’s a deadline to file for a tax extension. You’ll need to submit it by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, April 15, in your time zone. That’s also the tax filing deadline.
How to file an income tax extension in 2026
If you’re planning to file a tax extension this year, you’ll need to submit Form 4868 (PDF) to the IRS either by paper or electronically using e-file before the April 15 deadline. As long as your electronic extension is transmitted by midnight on April 15, or your letter is postmarked by that date, your extension should be good.
However, if you think that you owe taxes, you’ll need to pay your estimated income tax due using Direct Pay, the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System or using a debit or credit card. If you don’t pay your estimated taxes with your extension and owe money, you’ll have to pay interest on that money and a potential penalty when you file.
Some taxpayers are automatically granted more time to file. This includes military personnel serving in combat zones or people in federally declared disaster areas. US citizens who live outside the country have until June 17 to file.
Does an extension give you more time to pay your tax bill?
No. Extending your filing deadline doesn’t delay when you have to pay taxes that you may owe. According to the IRS, you need to estimate and pay at least 90% of your tax liability by the deadline to avoid late fees. Otherwise, you will have accrued interest on what you owe, which you’ll eventually have to pay — plus possible penalties — on top of your income taxes.
The late-payment penalty is usually 0.5% per month of the outstanding tax not paid by the filing deadline, maxing out at 25%. The IRS can also issue a late-filing penalty of 5% of the amount due for every month or partial month your tax return is late. If your return is filed more than 60 days after the due date, the minimum late-filing penalty is either $450 or 100% of the unpaid tax (whichever is less).
For individual taxpayers, penalties and interest will stop accruing only when your balance is paid in full. For more on penalties or to work out a payment plan with the IRS, check out its web page.
How is child tax credit money related to tax returns?
The child tax credit provides benefits for parents of children, allowing them to lower the amount they owe in taxes each year based on how many dependents they claim. If you had a new baby or gained a dependent, you can both decrease the amount of taxes you owe and increase the amount you may get back in a tax refund.
The Child Tax Credit allows families to receive up to $2,200 per eligible child under the age of 17, as long as certain income requirements are met. By not filing your taxes by the deadline, you could be missing out on up to $2,200 per child.
Will you receive your tax refund later if you file an extension?
Yes. The timeline for getting your income tax refund depends on when you file. But even though you have until Oct. 15 to submit your return if you file an extension, it doesn’t mean you have to wait that long to file.
Some tax refunds, especially for more complicated returns or those that need corrections, could take months to arrive. The IRS encourages taxpayers to file electronically and carefully review their details before submitting to avoid any errors that could potentially delay refunds. The agency also asks that you sign up for direct deposit to get your money even faster.
All of the ways you can file your 2025 tax return
The IRS says that taxpayers can file and schedule their federal tax payments online, by phone or with the mobile IRS2Go app.
If you need to find a tax software service to use, and you made $89,000 or less in 2025, you can find an IRS-approved free filing service easily. You’ll need to gather the following information: income statements (W2s or 1099s), any adjustments to your income, your filing status (single, married, filing jointly), and dependent information. If you made more than $89,000 last year, you still can use the IRS’ Free File Fillable Forms.
If you haven’t already made a tax payment, the IRS prefers that payments be made electronically and offers a variety of ways to do so, including IRS Direct Pay, which is directly linked to a checking or savings account. Another option is by credit card using the mobile IRS2Go app, or through the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System.
How to review your IRS tax account online
An easy way to review all your tax-related details, including your address and payment plan details, is to access your IRS account online. Taxpayers can use information from their accounts if they need to access their adjusted gross income, find their stimulus payment and child tax credit amounts, or review their estimated tax payments or credits. Accessing your tax transcript will give you all the records necessary if you have a tax problem or a missing payment.
If you have additional questions, you can visit the IRS Interactive Tax Assistant to get help.
Technologies
Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for April 16, #1040
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for April 16, No. 1,040.
Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.
Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is tricky. I did love the blue category, which references a favorite Batman character. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.
The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.
Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time
Hints for today’s Connections groups
Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.
Yellow group hint: Make fun of.
Green group hint: Brr, so cold in here!
Blue group hint: Batman’s rival.
Purple group hint: Connected with learning.
Answers for today’s Connections groups
Yellow group: Tease.
Green group: Thermostat settings.
Blue group: Features of a Catwoman costume.
Purple group: Training ____.
Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words
What are today’s Connections answers?
The yellow words in today’s Connections
The theme is tease. The four answers are needle, rib, ride and roast.
The green words in today’s Connections
The theme is thermostat settings. The four answers are auto, cool, fan and heat.
The blue words in today’s Connections
The theme is features of a Catwoman costume. The four answers are bodysuit, claws, mask and whip.
The purple words in today’s Connections
The theme is training ____. The four answers are bra, camp, day and wheels.
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