Hidden features of iOS 8

Hidden features of iOS 8

You’ve just installed iOS 8 on your shiny (OK, slightly battered) iPhone. At first glance, it looks rather similar to iOS 7 — but don’t let looks be deceiving! There are lots of cool new features in iOS 8 just waiting to be discovered, such as widgets (!) and the long-overdue ability to install third-party keyboards such as Swype.

Here are some cool hidden features of iOS 8:

Widgets

Widgets in the iOS 8 notification center

At long last, your darling iPhone (or iPad) is finally capable of displaying widgets! Or, well, something at least resembling a widget! If you swipe down from the top of the screen, the Today panel of the notification center will be revealed. Apps will now have the ability to display whatever they like in the Today tab. Most apps will probably use this to display some helpful information, but they can also provide utility — such as quickly adding an item to your to-do list, bidding on an Ebay auction, or otherwise controlling an app without having to actually open it up.

Apps will have to be updated to show a widget in iOS 8, but I’m sure most of your favorite apps will be widgetified in short order.

(And yes, in case you were wondering, this is nowhere near as powerful as Android’s ability to put widgets on the home screen — but hey, one step at a time, right Apple?)

QuickType

QuickType on iOS 8

The iOS keyboard has never been the greatest thing in the world — but with iOS 8 it’s receiving some big upgrades, in the form of QuickType. Basically, the iOS 8 keyboard now offers you word suggestions, so you can (theoretically) type messages much faster.

The clever bit is that QuickType will keep track of your conversational style per person, and per medium — so it will offer up different predictions depending on whether you’re writing to your girlfriend or your boss, or composing a text or an email. The prediction algorithm does appear to be quite good — though, given how you still need to look at the prediction and run it through your brain, just typing might be faster in some cases. Which leads us neatly onto…

Third-party keyboards (and other extensions)

Perhaps the biggest and most important feature of iOS 8 is Apple’s decision to allow extensions — essentially third-party-created features that hook into iOS 8 itself, providing new, extended functionality.

Generally with iOS, if you want to open an app, you open it from the home screen. With iOS 8, apps can now hook into iOS and other apps. One example of this widgets in the notification center — but there will be other kinds of extensions, too. Share extensions will let you share (…) from one app to an online service, such as Tumblr. Photo editing extensions will let you use third-party photo editors — such as VSCO Cam or Photoshop Express once they’ve been updated — without leaving your camera roll. Storage provider extensions will let iOS pull files directly from your Dropbox or iCloud. Action extensions allow for direct manipulation of content within another app — for example, using Bing to translate text in-place.

iOS 8 + OS X Yosemite, showing a phone call being relayed with the Continuity feature

Continuity

While you can’t use Continuity just yet (you need a companion device with OS X 10.10 Yosemite installed), when it does arrive it will be really cool. Basically, Continuity deeply integrates your iOS and OS X device, so that data and some functions can seamlessly travel in between. If your iPhone rings, and you’re sitting at your MacBook, you will have the option of answering the call on the laptop. If you are editing a document on your iPhone, it will automatically appear on your laptop when you get to the office.

Yosemite has an estimated release date of sometime in October.

iOS 8 battery usage [Image credit: Macrumors]

App battery usage

In iOS 8, under Settings, you can now see how much battery each of your apps are using, either in the last 24 hours, or over the last 7 days. I don’t think I need to tell you any more about this one.

Lots of other awesome little tweaks

You’ll discover a lot more little things that make you go “ooh” over the next few days and weeks, but here’s just a quick list to get you started:

• You can now set up notifications for specific email threads (swipe left, then click More)
• There’s now a grayscale mode in Accessibility
• If you plug your iOS 8 device into a Mac, it should appear as a camera, allowing for direct screen capture
• Spotlight now searches your entire device for matching messages, emails, documents, etc.
• Find My iPhone now has an option that forces your iPhone or iPad to send its last known location to Apple when battery life is at a critical level. If you lose your device, Apple should be able to use this to tell you where it is…

and thats it!

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