11 neat hidden features in iOS 12

iOS 12 is finally here. And the update is packed with many improvements. In particular, Apple has tucked away many little features that you won’t see right away.

If you want to impress all your friends with your mad iOS skills, here is a list of some of these features. I also wrote a review of iOS 12 if you want to learn more about all the changes coming with iOS 12.

#1: Is it a phone? Is it a trackpad?

Many people don’t know about this superpower, but you can move around an email or text message by turning your phone into a trackpad. On previous versions of iOS, you had to use 3D Touch.

It is now much easier to access as you just needs to tap and hold on the space bar of the keyboard. Goodbye, Gboard!

#2: Second Face ID

RIP, Touch ID. But Face ID is just getting started. Apple knows that you want to let your spouse or friend unlock your phone. Sure, you can always share your passcode. But it’s less secure and people always forget passcodes.

Head over to Settings > Face ID & Passcode > Set Up an Alternate Appearance. Ta-da, second face acquired.

#3: Do Not Disturb a bit, a lot or forever

If you don’t use Do Not Disturb because you always forget to turn it off, this is a thing of the past. You can now use 3D Touch in Control Center to turn on Do Not Disturb for an hour, until this evening (or the next morning), until the end of an event or until you leave a location.

Don’t forget, it’s one of the most powerful tools when it comes to using your phone less.

#4: Quiet please

Even when you don’t have Do Not Disturb on, chances are you receive way too many notifications. On the lock screen, swipe on a notification to turn on “Deliver Quietly”. Notifications won’t make your phone buzz and will skip the lock screen altogether. The only way to view them is by manually pulling up the Notification Center. I already use it for most news apps as I don’t need to see the headlines right away. And everything feels quieter.

#5: AirPods as super ears

If you want to be more like Jack Dorsey, go to Settings > Control Center > Customize and add “Hearing”. This feature called Live Listen lets you turn your AirPods into hearing aid devices.

If you have a hard time listening to conversations in some crowded environment, this is an important feature.

This is cool pic.twitter.com/tfGJKDmKWn

— jack (@jack) September 15, 2018

#6: You forgot your password but it’s fine

Apple has improved how password managers work on iOS 12. If you’re already using a third-party password manager, such as 1Password, LastPass or Secrets, your life is about to become so much easier.

Head over to to Settings > Passwords & Accounts > AutoFill Passwords. You’ll be able to log into websites and accounts using your data from your third-party password manager without having to open it.

Well, this is exciting: @lastpass keyboard integration in iOS 12! pic.twitter.com/5BQ3gTIdpa

— Matt Hauger (@matthauger) September 14, 2018

#7: 637-201

As for one-time codes, if you still rely on text messages (and you shouldn’t), iOS will scan your incoming text messages to automatically copy and paste your one-time codes. Neat!

#8: Drag and drop that Memoji

Yay, Memojis are here! Sure, you can record voice messages and send them in Messages. But don’t forget to take selfies with your Memoji.

You can also drag and drop your Memoji on top of a photo or a message. Emojis are so 2017.

#9: Favicons in Safari

On your iPad, you can finally turn on favicons for browser tabs — those tiny little icons in the tab bar. This way, you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for much more easily. Head over to Settings > Safari.

#10: Is it too late to say sorry?

It’s so annoying when you keep hearing a song in your head but you can’t remember the name of the song. Maybe you just know that one line of the lyrics.

You can now type those lyrics in Apple Music. The service now lets you search by lyrics.

#11: Those sweet, sweet Shortcuts

The most powerful feature of iOS 12 is clearly Siri Shortcuts. Combined with Apple’s Shortcuts app, you can trigger chains of actions with a simple phrase.

The Shortcuts app is available for free in the App Store. Time to think about your own morning routine!

I’ve been busy building some advanced examples for the Shortcuts app in iOS 12.

My Morning Routine shortcut, plus many others, will be coming Monday alongside my iOS 12 review.

I can’t wait to share. It’s going to be fun. pic.twitter.com/4maWP5BJrX

— Federico Viticci (@viticci) September 14, 2018

iOS 12 makes your phone faster than ever

iOS 12 is now available to download

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iOS 12 makes your phone faster than ever

iOS 12 could be summed up in one feature: speed. The rest is just a footnote, especially when you compare iOS 12 to iOS 11.

You may remember that iOS 11 was filled with many new features, especially on the iPad. But it was also the buggiest release to date. Even the Calculator app wasn’t working properly. And let’s not forget about messages arriving out of order or your keyboard replacing the letter “it” with “I.T”.

Like many of you, I’ve been using a beta version of iOS 12 for the past few weeks. Even though it was just a beta, iOS 12 is by far the fastest version of iOS of all time. And Apple just released iOS 12.0 today. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s new in iOS 12.

Low level

If you are reading this article on an iPhone or iPad, chances are you’re using iOS 11. Many devices support iOS 11 — the iPhone 5s, the iPad mini 2, the last iPod touch, and everything that Apple released since then.

And the good news is that Apple hasn’t dropped support for a single device with iOS 12. While this might seem anecdotal, it reveals Apple’s mindset with iOS 12.

In the past, Apple usually added new intensive tasks for your CPU, GPU and RAM. And at the end of the development process, those features would be vaguely optimized for older devices. That’s why older phones never got some features. Or some features were simply too demanding. In some cases, your battery life took a hit.

This time, when it comes to performance, Apple started from the bottom of the iPhone chain. For instance, if you optimize app launches and typing on the iPhone 6, newer devices will also benefit from those optimizations. Even after updating my iPhone X from iOS 11 to iOS 12, everything feels much smoother.

Apple didn’t stop at raw performance. The company worked on some much needed refinements for notifications, Do Not Disturb and the way you use your phone.

Android users will laugh at this feature, but iOS 12 finally groups notifications together. Most of the time, your notifications are grouped by apps. For instance, if you receive multiple New York Times and CNN notifications, you will get two stacks of notifications that you can expand or dismiss altogether.

More interestingly, your notifications are now grouped by threads. For instance, you may have some very active groups in WhatsApp. iOS doesn’t just group all WhatsApp notifications together. You can see all the notifications from a specific group in one stack. This way, you can ignore the noise and concentrate on the rest.

While you could already silence notifications in iOS 11, iOS 12 makes this incredibly easier. You can now swipe on a notification and hit “Deliver Quietly”. This option is the combination of multiple notification settings.

If you select that, notifications won’t make your phone buzz and will skip the lock screen. The only way to view them is by manually pulling up the Notification Center. I already use it for most news apps as I don’t need to see the headlines right away.

And if you keep getting spammed from a free-to-play game and never tap on those notifications, you get a suggestion on your lock screen to silence notifications from this app.

Do Not Disturb is also receiving some minor but important improvements. You can now use 3D Touch to turn on Do Not Disturb for an hour, until this evening (or the next morning), until the end of an event or until you leave a location.

Many people never use Do Not Disturb because they forget to turn it off. And yet, it’s one of the most powerful tools when it comes to using your phone less.

Talking about digital wellbeing, Apple is going all in with a bunch of new features. Screen Time sends you a notification every week to help you understand how you use your phone. You may know that you spend too much time on Instagram, but seeing that you spend an hour or two every day in the app might be an eye-opening moment.

In the Settings, you can now configure Downtime and App Limits so that only the most essential apps remain accessible at night, such as Messages and Phone. You’ll have to bypass the restriction screen to keep using other apps. It’s pretty smart as it works across your devices and also recognizes if you’re trying to access a social network in Safari for instance.

Medium level

A new version of iOS also means new features. Competition with Android means that Apple needs to keep pushing forward on the feature front.

If you have an iPhone X or later, the big new thing is Memoji. In Messages, you can now create your own Bitmoji-style avatar. You can then use your digital face in selfies, use it as a sticker and record audio messages. There are also new Animojis.

The Photos app is getting a new “For You” tab and an improved search experience. There’s not much to say about this except that it works better than before. It’s easier to look for a specific location, events and more. Photos already had some smart albums, but the “For You” tab make them more prominent.

The Stocks app has been redesigned with better looking charts and business news headlines. Apple News has also been slightly redesigned, especially on the iPad. And Voice Memos now works with iCloud. You can record a memo on your iPhone and find it on your iPad or Mac.

Apple Music now supports lyrics and features new artist pages that look more like Spotify. And Apple Books (the new name of iBooks) is getting a visual redesign similar to the App Store redesign from last year. It looks great.

Finally, if your car supports CarPlay, Google Maps and Waze are working on navigation apps for your car. You won’t be limited to Apple Maps anymore.

Apple was supposed to add group conversations in FaceTime, but it isn’t available just yet. Apple says it will be available later this fall.

Top level

Now that the most straightforward features are out of the way, I’d like to talk about Siri, Shortcuts and Siri Shortcuts. While those three names sound similar, those are three different things in iOS 12.

Siri is the voice assistant of iOS 11 that you know and (rarely) use. It can do some basic things reasonably well, such as weather reports and setting timers. And it has also become quite good at understanding your voice and turning it into a text query.

In many cases, Siri understands what you say but can’t answer your question. That’s why many people now rely on an Amazon Echo or Google Home for voice queries.

Apple found a clever way to solve that by leveraging its developer community and acquisition of Workflow. Developers can now add new features to Siri through their apps. Those extensions to Siri’s brain are called Siri Shortcuts.

For instance, you can configure Carrot Weather and ask for hyperlocal weather forecast using Siri. You can start a playlist in Overcast and listen to your latest podcasts on your HomePod. You can open a specific note in Ulysses much more quickly. All you have to do is set up customized phrases to run the Siri Shortcuts.

But expert TechCrunch readers like you can also go one step further and create scripts in the Shortcuts app. It looks and works just like the existing Workflow app.

For instance, you can create a “Going to Bed” shortcut that turns on Do Not Disturb, turns down the brightness and ringtone levels, turns off Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and your Philips Hue lights, and sets Low Power Mode on.

Shortcuts also work with many third-party apps. The ability to chain actions together has changed the way I use my iPhone and iPad. This is not new if you were already using Workflow. But many more users will use Shortcuts now that it is deeply integrated in the operating system and with HomeKit.

Conclusion

iOS has grown immensely over the years. At first, it was a mobile operating system with no support for third-party apps. I’m sure the first release of iOS (iPhone OS 1.0) was much faster than iOS 12. But systems on a chip are also an order of magnitude faster.

That’s why the combination of hardware improvements with software optimizations make iOS 12 a great release when it comes to user experience. For this reason alone, there’s no reason not to install the update.

iOS 12 is now available to download

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iOS 12 is now available to download

Apple has just released the final version of iOS 12. This update is all about making your phone work better — and there are also a bunch of new features. The update is currently rolling out and is available both over-the-air in the Settings app, and by plugging your device into iTunes for a wired update.

Many people try to download these major updates at the same time. Apple usually implements a queue system to ensure speedy downloads once you’re at the front of the queue.

iOS 12 is compatible with any device that can run iOS 11 — the iPhone 5s and later, the iPad mini 2 and later, the iPad Air and later as well as the most recent iPod touch.

But first, backup your device. Make sure your iCloud backup is up to date by opening the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and tapping on your account information at the top and then on your device name. Additionally, you can also plug your iOS device to your computer to do a manual backup in iTunes (or do both, really).

Don’t forget to encrypt your backup in iTunes. It is much safer if somebody hacks your computer. And encrypted backups include saved passwords and health data. This way, you don’t have to reconnect to all your online accounts.

Once this is done, you should go to the Settings app as soon as possible to get in the queue. Navigate to ‘Settings,’ then ‘General’ and then ‘Software Update.’ Then you should see ‘Update Requested…” It will then automatically start downloading once the download is available.

The main feature of iOS 12 is a performance improvement, especially for older devices. If you have an iPhone 6 or an iPad Air for instance, you should see a big improvement when it comes to launching apps, triggering the camera and entering text.

The other big theme of the year is new features to help you spend less time using your phone. There’s a new Screen Time feature to see and control how much time you spend using each app. Notifications are now grouped and you can silence them from the lock screen. You also can turn on Do Not Disturb when you’re in a meeting, for a few hours or for longer.

Apple didn’t stop there, and added new power features as well. Developers will be able to take advantage of a new file format for augmented reality and new features in ARKit 2.0. Apple is releasing the Workflow app as a new Siri Shortcuts app. Developers will be able to add information to Siri, as well, so that you can add a boarding pass or a music playlist to Siri.

The Photos, News and Stocks apps have been improved, as well as Apple Books (the app formerly known as iBooks). Apple is introducing Memoji on the iPhone X. It’s a customized avatar that you can use in iMessage and FaceTime to represent you.

While you download the update, why don’t you head over to my review and read about all the new features in iOS 12.

iOS 12 makes your phone faster than ever

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OnePlus is developing its own smart TV

Smartphone upstart OnePlus’s upcoming 6T flagship promises to bring changes — it’ll see it ditch the headphone jack and sport an in-screen fingerprint reader — but first there’s something else. OnePlus is developing its first smart TV.

CEO Pete Lau revealed the details today, explaining that the device will mark the five-year-old company’s next step to “building a connected human experience.”

“For most of us, there are four major environments we experience each day: the home, the workplace, the commute, and being on-the-move. The home – perhaps the most important environment experience – is just starting to enjoy the benefits of intelligent connectivity,” he wrote on the company’s website.

“We want to bring the home environment to the next level of intelligent connectivity. To do this, we are building a new product of OnePlus’ premium flagship design, image quality and audio experience to more seamlessly connect the home,” Lau added.

Excited to take the next step forward together! What would you like to see in the OnePlus TV? Have ideas for a name? Let us know here: https://t.co/IpSnDtPxkT

— Pete Lau (@petelau2007) September 17, 2018

Shenzhen-based OnePlus has distinguished itself from a raft of Chinese mobile wannabees with some beautifully designed and well-functioning devices — eight phones to date — while it has developed its own Android-based OS and branched out into headphones. It has seen particular success in India, where it has beaten Samsung and Apple to become the country’s top ‘premium’ smartphone brand, and it has also landed a carrier distribution deal in the U.S. — something that has alluded larger rivals Huawei and Xiaomi. That’s impressive for such a young business.

It has tinkered around before. OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei previously told TechCrunch that the company had developed (and then abandoned) a number of prototype devices outside of phones before, but the TV project is very real. That said, the company is opening it up to its community of five million registered users who will be given the opportunity to name it. You can find more details about that in the announcement post here.

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Twitter now puts live broadcasts at the top of your timeline

Twitter will now put live streams and broadcasts started by accounts you follow at the top of your timeline, making it easier to see what they’re doing in realtime.

In a tweet, Twitter said that that the new feature will include breaking news, personalities and sports.

The social networking giant included the new feature in its iOS and Android apps, updated this week. Among the updates, Twitter said it’s now also supporting audio-only live broadcasts, as well as through its sister broadcast service Periscope.

Last month, Twitter discontinued its app for iOS 9 and lower versions, which according to Apple’s own data still harbors some 5 percent of all iPhone and iPad users.

Twitter launches audio-only broadcasting feature on its iOS app and Periscope

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A new CSS-based web attack will crash and restart your iPhone

A security researcher has found a new way to crash and restart any iPhone — with just a few lines of code.

Sabri Haddouche tweeted a proof-of-concept webpage with just 15 lines of code which, if visited, will crash and restart an iPhone or iPad. Those on macOS may also see Safari freeze when opening the link.

The code exploits a weakness in iOS’ web rendering engine WebKit, which Apple mandates all apps and browsers use, Haddouche told TechCrunch. He explained that nesting a ton of elements — such as <div> tags — inside a backdrop filter property in CSS, you can use up all of the device’s resources and cause a kernel panic, which shuts down and restarts the operating system to prevent damage.

“Anything that renders HTML on iOS is affected,” he said. That means anyone sending you a link on Facebook or Twitter, or if any webpage you visit includes the code, or anyone sending you an email, he warned.

How to force restart any iOS device with just CSS?

Source: https://t.co/Ib6dBDUOhn

IF YOU WANT TO TRY (DON’T BLAME ME IF YOU CLICK) : https://t.co/4Ql8uDYvY3

— Sabri (@pwnsdx) September 15, 2018

TechCrunch tested the exploit running on the most recent mobile software iOS 11.4.1, and confirm it crashes and restarts the phone. Thomas Reed, director of Mac & Mobile at security firm Malwarebytes confirmed that  the most recent iOS 12 beta also froze when tapping the link.

The lucky whose devices won’t crash may just see their device restart (or “respring”) the user interface instead.

For those curious, you can see how it works without it running the crash-inducing code.

The good news is that as annoying as this attack is, it can’t be used to run malicious code, he said, meaning malware can’t run and data can’t be stolen using this attack. But there’s no easy way to prevent the attack from working. One tap on a booby-trapped link sent in a message or opening an HTML email that renders the code can crash the device instantly.

Haddouche contacted Apple on Friday about the attack, which is said to be investigating. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

from iPhone – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2xgVhBq

A new CSS-based web attack will crash and restart your iPhone

A security researcher has found a new way to crash and restart any iPhone — with just a few lines of code.

Sabri Haddouche tweeted a proof-of-concept webpage with just 15 lines of code which, if visited, will crash and restart an iPhone or iPad. Those on macOS may also see Safari freeze when opening the link.

The code exploits a weakness in iOS’ web rendering engine WebKit, which Apple mandates all apps and browsers use, Haddouche told TechCrunch. He explained that nesting a ton of elements — such as <div> tags — inside a backdrop filter property in CSS, you can use up all of the device’s resources and cause a kernel panic, which shuts down and restarts the operating system to prevent damage.

“Anything that renders HTML on iOS is affected,” he said. That means anyone sending you a link on Facebook or Twitter, or if any webpage you visit includes the code, or anyone sending you an email, he warned.

How to force restart any iOS device with just CSS?

Source: https://t.co/Ib6dBDUOhn

IF YOU WANT TO TRY (DON’T BLAME ME IF YOU CLICK) : https://t.co/4Ql8uDYvY3

— Sabri (@pwnsdx) September 15, 2018

TechCrunch tested the exploit running on the most recent mobile software iOS 11.4.1, and confirm it crashes and restarts the phone. Thomas Reed, director of Mac & Mobile at security firm Malwarebytes confirmed that  the most recent iOS 12 beta also froze when tapping the link.

The lucky whose devices won’t crash may just see their device restart (or “respring”) the user interface instead.

For those curious, you can see how it works without it running the crash-inducing code.

The good news is that as annoying as this attack is, it can’t be used to run malicious code, he said, meaning malware can’t run and data can’t be stolen using this attack. But there’s no easy way to prevent the attack from working. One tap on a booby-trapped link sent in a message or opening an HTML email that renders the code can crash the device instantly.

Haddouche contacted Apple on Friday about the attack, which is said to be investigating. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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