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10 iOS 16 Hidden Features That Just Make Your iPhone Better

Hidden under the surface, you’ll find features and settings that might change how you use your iPhone.

This story is part of Focal Point iPhone 2022, CNET’s collection of news, tips and advice around Apple’s most popular product.

Your iPhone is way more powerful than you think. Underneath all the major new features on iOS 16, like home screen widgets, Live Activities and Emergency SOS via satellite, there are impressive features and settings that Apple may not give as much shine to, but that you should definitely know about.

If you want to take a closer look at some of the iOS 16 hidden gems that will make your mobile experience better, like password-protected photo albums and easily accessible Wi-Fi passwords, here’s what you need to know.

Read more: Will Your iPhone Run iOS 16? Some Won’t Be Compatible

Want to learn more about Apple’s latest mobile operating system? We’ve got new iOS 16 features that you’ll love and a few that you might just hate (luckily, there’s a fix).

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.

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.

Read more: You Can Finally See Your Saved Wi-Fi Passwords on an iPhone

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.

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.

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 the iOS 16 Cheat Sheet.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for June 8, #728

Here are some hints and the answers for Connections for June 8, #728.

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 could be tricky. The purple category is one of those «sounds like» groups, that can be really tough to figure out. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now 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 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: Keep at it.

Green group hint: Think Wall Street animals.

Blue group hint: Online encyclopedia subheads.

Purple group hint: $$$.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Persist.

Green group: Animal metaphors in economics.

Blue group: Sidebar info on a person’s Wikipedia page.

Purple group: Homophones of slang for money.

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 persist. The four answers are hold, last, stand and stay.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is animal metaphors in economics. The four answers are bear, bull, dove and hawk.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is sidebar info on a person’s Wikipedia page. The four answers are born, education, occupation and spouse.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is homophones of slang for money. The four answers are bred, cache, doe and lute.

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Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for June 8, #1450

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle No. 1,450 for June 8.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.


Today’s Wordle puzzle isn’t too tough, especially if your first guesses are heavy on vowels. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has one repeated letter.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

There are two vowels in today’s Wordle answer, but one is the repeated letter, so you’ll see it twice.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with L.

Wordle hint No. 4: Ending

Today’s Wordle answer ends with a vowel.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer refers to a contract where someone is given the right to use something for a specific time and payment.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is LEASE.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, June 7, No. 1449 was REUSE.

Recent Wordle answers

June 3, No. 1445: ADMIN

June 4, No. 1446: CEASE

June 5, No. 1447: DATUM

June 6, No. 1448: EDIFY

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Technologies

Resident Evil Requiem Revealed, but Where’s Leon Kennedy?

The Resident Evil 9 trailer showed off a new character, but not the much-rumored return of Leon.

After a fake-out earlier in Summer Game Fest on Friday, Resident Evil Requiem, or Resident Evil 9, was shown for the first time. 

The new title is the first mainline entry since Capcom released Resident Evil Village in 2021, and is rumored to feature series stalwart Leon Kennedy. In the trailer, the only person we saw was a character named Grace Ashcroft, who works for the FBI and appears to have ties to Raccoon City.

For the most hardcore Resident Evil fans, the name Ashcroft will ring a bell. Alyssa Ashcroft was one of the survivors of the online-only title, Resident Evil Outbreak for the PS2. Alyssa was a journalist who was trapped in Raccoon City during the events of Resident Evil 2, and she, along with other survivors, had to escape the city before it was destroyed.

Grace is Alyssa’s daughter, and in the trailer, she is going to visit the Remwood Hotel, where Alyssa was murdered. Later in the trailer, images from what appears to be the remnants of a destroyed Raccoon City are shown — including the police department from RE2 — so it appears Resident Evil 9 will return to where the series started. 

Leon’s (rumored) return is a big deal for the series, which has made some of its best games with him in the starring role. He first showed up as a rookie cop in Resident Evil 2, which built on the original game’s success with more story and improved monsters and level design.

He showed up again in Resident Evil 4, which took the series in a new direction by introducing an over-the-shoulder perspective, instead of the usual static camera angles and tank controls. Leon was also one of several playable protagonists in Resident Evil 6, a game that seemed to forget about its survival horror roots. We mostly don’t talk about that one.

But the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 was an excellent return to form, bringing RE4’s gameplay and much better graphics to a fan-favorite entry. The RE4 remake was a similar success.

Resident Evil Requiem is set to drop Feb. 27, 2026, for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, but we’re hoping to get our hands on it this weekend. If you want to catch up on older Resident Evil games, Capcom is having a sale that includes basically all the games, including Village and the three remakes.

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