iOS 16.4 Is A Killer Update — Five Amazing Features!

I’m sad the RC is out already. I needed more of such amazing features.

All the unattributed images below are by the author.

#1. Voice Isolation arrives to cellular calls 📞

Voice Isolation, if turned on, prioritises your voice in a call, filtering out the surrounding ambient noise — so the other person would hear you clearer.

Until now, this was offered only for FaceTime and other internet-based calls (like WhatsApp, Zoom, Teams). But with iOS 16.4, it arrives to normal cellular calls too!

To use it, while on your first iOS 16.4 cellular call, open Control Center, tap Mic Mode, select Voice Isolation.

It’s a one-off process — so all your next cellular calls will have Voice Isolation enabled.

Let it be so. Nothing to lose. Everything to gain.

Also, if you’ve observed it, the image says ‘Wide Spectrum is currently unavailable”.

It’s a mode that enhances all the background noise, suitable when a group of people physically sit nearby and talk to someone on a call. So the iPhone won’t mistake the voice of distant people as background noise.

Currently, cellular calls don’t support this.

#2. ‘Feature a Person Less’ in Photo Memories

Head over to a photo with one or multiple faces, and tap the three-dots glyph at the top-right corner.

You’ll now see one of these:

• Feature This Person Less, or
• Feature a Person Less

depending on the number of faces in the photo.

This way you can choose to feature someone less in your Memories — directly from a photo. Until now, you only had this option in the People album.

#3. Covid Exposure Notifications may end soon 🦠

To help prevent you from contacting a Covid-infected patient, Apple launched Exposure Notifications in iOS 13 back in 2020.

It’s an API facility that let health departments integrate their contact-tracing tech to its backend and help iOS users be safe from Covid.

But now, as lockdowns and safety precautions are ending in many parts of the world, Apple sets the underlying infra for health depts to end support for the feature.

Once that happens in your place, you’ll see this message:

“Your health authority has turned off Exposure Notifications. Your iPhone is no longer logging nearby devices and will not be able to notify you of possible exposures. Previously collected exposure data is automatically deleted.”

Have you ever used “Mask ID”?

#4. Visual Lookup extends to more places 🔍

If you didn’t know, Visual Lookup was introduced back in iOS 15, and enhanced of its capabilities with iOS 16.

I’ve first covered about it in #6 of this article:

It uses Siri Knowledge to detect landmarks, animals, birds, and statues in an image you snapped. Plus, lets you lift and copy the detected subject to paste it in a different app.

It now extends to Philippines, Chile, Israel, Vietnam, Canada when the default iPhone language is French.

#5. VoiceOver extends too… 🗣️

VoiceOver is a screen-reader feature that describes out loud what’s on screen for people with visual difficulties.

If you’re a VoiceOver user, you’ll be happy to know VoiceOver now supports city maps in Weather app.

Isn’t iOS 16 awesome?

250+ new features of iOS 16: A Compilation (Always Updated):

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