After you upgrade your iPhone, try these new features in iOS 16.4. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
Apple released iOS 16.4 on Monday, bringing significant changes and new features to its iPhone operating system.
Once you install iOS 16.4, the biggest point release of iOS 16 so far, check out these 15 features to try right away — including the new “high five emoji” combo.
iOS 16.4 beta packs plenty of new features and changes. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
A week after the second iOS 16.4 beta dropped, Apple seeded the third build to developers. Unlike the first and second build, the third beta is light on changes.
You can find everything new in iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4 beta 3 below. There’s also an archive of the new features spotted in beta 1 and 2.
Podcast searches are set to get way better in iOS 13. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Apple added full transcript search to its podcast directory in iOS 13. Even though you can’t actually read the podcast transcripts, this is still huge. You can search across the content of podcast episodes the way you can search websites with DuckDuckGo (or other search engines) today.
iTunes is being replaced with Apple Music and several other apps. Photo: Apple
Headlines this week trumpeted the death of iTunes. While these stories made good clickbait, they understandably caused concern for those who used this application to build up extensive music and video libraries. You may be one of the people left wondering what’s going to happen to decades of purchases.
Relax, your music and video collection isn’t going anywhere. It’s actually getting easier to access.
Turn any YouTube channel into a proper video podcast. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Did you ever wish you could take your favorite YouTube channel and subscribe to it as a video podcast? Instead of having to go check in on the YouTube website over and over to see what’s new, you could just subscribe, like any other podcast.
Every time a new video became available, it would automatically download and show up in your favorite podcast app, ready to watch offline. Better still, you could watch it in the native iOS video player, full-screen or picture-in-picture, without all that YouTube junk surrounding it.
If this sounds like a dream come true, then you’re in for a real treat today, because it’s super-duper easy with a service called PodSync.
Podcasting is like radio, only way better. Photo: Tom Page/Flickr
Castro, one of our favorite podcast apps, just added two really great new features that aren’t yet available elsewhere. The first is the ability to load any audio file into the app, just by dropping it into a folder in your iCloud Drive. The second lets you preselect the podcast chapters you want to listen to.
We've had time to play with the developer beta of watchOS 5, here's what's new. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Even if you already saw the WWDC 2018 keynote where Apple showed off watchOS 5, there are tons of features that got brushed over — and some did not get mentioned at all.
As is our duty, we installed the first developer beta of watchOS 5 and gave it a full run-through so we can show you all the new features in action. Check out the video below.
It’s time to cut the cable and set Apple Watch free Photo: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac
For activity tracking, fitness and notifications, Apple Watch is pretty awesome, and these days, that’s all most people use it for. Which is a shame.
When it launched back in 2015, Apple had a much bigger vision: a wearable computing platform supporting a rich and varied ecosystem of apps. Like an iPhone strapped to your wrist. But the reality has turned out to be rather different. Instagram is just the latest of a series of high profile apps to desert the platform. So what’s up?
I believe Apple Watch’s dependence on iPhone is holding it back, and the time has come for Cupertino to set its smartwatch free. In this, the third and final part of my wish list of watchOS 5 features, I’ll focus on how I hope Apple will improve setup, apps and iCloud to create a badass stand-alone device.
The best gesture in iOS 11 isn't just for iPad. Photo: Apple
Developers just got an early preview of Apple’s upcoming iOS 11 update for iPhones and iPads today during the company’s WWDC 2017 keynote in San Jose.
The new update packs some huge new features that make iOS more powerful and easier-to-use than ever. Apple’s update is so jam packed that some of the best new additions didn’t even get some stage time at WWDC.
Apple seeded iOS 9 beta 2 to developers today and while there aren’t any groundbreaking new features or drastic improvements, the company did manage to add a bunch of little changes and tweaks across the OS.
Most of the improvements are small design changes, but there are a couple really useful additions too, like adding Handoff to the app switcher, search improvements are more.
Take a look at everything that’s new in iOS 9 beta 2: