The Top New Features Of iOS 12

Take a look at the top new features of iOS 12, available today for iPhone and iPad. You can now customize Siri, adding your own commands that trigger actions. You can use filters and graphics in FaceTime. You can create your own Memoji on newer iPhones and even use them in live FaceTime conversations. Screen Time lets you keep track of your use. Notifications and Do Not Disturb get more controls. There are also redesigned apps and more.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Let's take a look at the new features of iOS 12. I think the most powerful new feature by far is the ability to customize Siri. These are called Siri Shortcuts. There are two ways to add them. One is to go into Settings, then go into Siri & Search. Here you can add shortcuts. Now there's suggestions that appear right there for things that you've done, websites that you've gone to, phone numbers you've called. Things like that. So you can go ahead and select one of those. Just hit the plus button there. Say if I wanted to go to  this website here I could customize it by pressing the red button here. Make me laugh. Now I can say Done and now that's added there so that I could just say, you know ask Siri, to make me laugh and it's going to go to the website.
Now much more powerful than that is the ability to use the Shortcuts app and build your own shortcuts. So this is similar to the workflow app that existed before as a stand alone third party app. You can go ahead and add a new shortcut and you can drag actions. There are tons of different actions you can drag and you can put them together. It's like Automator on the Mac. As a matter of fact not only can you have different commands that control different apps but you can do scripting things like asking for input, getting Clipboard, you know doing loops, doing variables, doing all sorts of things. You can construct your own scripts in Shortcuts and then assign a Siri commands to those.
Now if you use Animoji, you need to have one of the new iPhones or last year's iPhone X, you can get four new Animoji now to the list. But more important than that you can get your own. So you can create a Memoji. There a whole little builder here for creating your own character and customizing the character. So you can have a lot of fun with that and then use these characters in your messages. But you can also use them in FaceTime. So here I am talking to myself in FaceTime and I can tap this button here and I can select Animoji or Memoji and actually use that instead of myself. You can see it still includes the background. You can see my hand there. It just replaces my head with it.
But you can also do more than just that. You can use all these different effects here. Like there's filters that you can use. There are all sorts of other little things that you can do. You can draw for instance. Put shapes. So you have lots of effects that you can use in FaceTime now. 
There are also improvements to Notifications. So there's a bunch of new improvements and settings you can change. One of the main ones is grouping. You can see I've got a group of twenty notifications all from the same source there. So instead of just filling up the screen with notification I've got that. Also, wherever you see Notifications you can go in now and you can manage the notifications. So you can set it on to Deliver Quietly or Turn Off Notifications or go to Settings. So you don't have to go and find that Notification source in Settings to change it. You can just do it right there when you see a notification.
There's a small but significant improvement to how Do Not Disturb works. When you turn it on from Control Center, you can of course just turn it on, but you can also tap and hold and now you can actually turn it on for an hour or until this evening. Not until tomorrow morning, or Until I leave this location. So now when you have a meeting, you want to turn on Do Not Disturb, you can say Until I Leave this Location and now you don't have to remember to turn it on.
Another big new feature is ScreenTime. You can find this in the Settings app. You can go into it and it gives you a complete rundown on how you're using your phone or iPad. You can go in and see all the different categories. You can dig down by category or by app. You can set a passcode so somebody can't make these changes. You can actually do limits on different apps and different categories of apps. You can even impose that on yourself or you can kind of set it up as parental restrictions for maybe an iPad that you're going to give to a child.
There are a lot of other changes as well. There's some major redesigns to apps. For instance the Stocks app has a big new redesign. It has news in it. The News app, itself, has some new things. There's a redesigned Voice Memos app. The iBooks app is now Books and it's got a slight redesign to it as well. 
There's security stuff. Safari is better at preventing websites from tracking you. There's also security code autofill which is a neat feature. When you get one of those texts, you know, for a security code to fill-in for an app or website that text will automatically become part of Autofill on the keyboard so it makes it easier. Instead of having to copy and paste or remember that code.
If you use CarPlay, now Goggle Maps and Waze are both now going to be  available as apps in CarPlay. It's nice of Apple to make third party maps available there as well as their own. There's some new AR stuff. There's a new measurement app that you can measure things in a room. There's also the ability for developers to create AR apps where you're actually like playing a game or experiencing something with another person. So you're both seeing a shared augmented reality. Like a pool table in the middle of a room and you can both see it through your device.
There's a whole bunch of other things too. There's an English thesaurus that you can access in addition to the dictionary that's already built in . The battery info, in Settings, now has some more detail to it which is really nice as well. So there's a lot of cool new things in iOS 12.
One notable missing thing that was hyped was the group FaceTime. The ability to FaceTime with lots of other people. But that's not going to be in the initial release. Apple has promised that it will come out as part of iOS 12 at some point in the future. So look for that in coming months.

Comments: 13 Responses to “The Top New Features Of iOS 12”

Robert Sigafoos

6 years ago

Does the new Shortcuts app replace Workflow app? Or do both exist in iOS12?
Thank You

Gary Rosenzweig

Robert: Shortcuts will almost certainly replace Workflow. I can't think of any reason to keep Workflow around, except maybe for people running iOS 11 or earlier.

nick

hi Gary, I just upgraded to iOS 12 but don't see the Shortcuts app? Is it part of the iOS?

nick: Grab it from the App Store.

Roger Rossman

It is too bad you can’t just select the upgrades that a person wants, rather than having to accept all the upgrades. So many of the upgrades the common user will not need or use. For me, I just would like the dictation to be improved and the battery life..

Martin Kimeldorf

Is there a way to use Siri to start A voice memo. I couldn’t figure out how to use the general app to do this ? Perhaps a future video showing how to do something this simple would be helpful to many people

Martin: Just try "Record a voice memo." Doing so takes you right into the Voice Memos app.

Bill Sinclair

Tried “Record a voice memo.” — Siri responds " It doesn't look like you have an app named “Record a voice memo.” If you'd like , I can helpyou look for it on the App Store."

Q: Why do I need Siri help me look in the App Store for an inbuilt facility?

Bill: That's odd. Are you using the latest iOS? And you have the Voice Memos app, you didn't delete it or anything?

Ertugrul

I'm using 5S and I've upgraded it to iOS12.
However, as is known, not every new features is applicable on 5S.
So, can you publish a full "what features are applicable (or not) list" for this purpose?
Or any internet link is also possible for this listing...
Regards

Ertugrul: Check out the footnotes at the bottom of https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-12/

Comments Closed.

The Top New Features Of iOS 12

Comments: 13 Responses to “The Top New Features Of iOS 12”

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