7 Important Changes in iOS 12 Apple Didn’t Mention

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oth online and at their big event, Apple has studiously covered the major changes in iOS 12, including AR potential, new camera and Animoji tricks, and notification customization.

Here are some of the most publicized new features in iOS 12, the ones that you might have heard about already.

Stacked Notifications

For many people, the notifications overhaul will be their favorite new feature. In iOS 12, notifications will finally be grouped together. This change makes a world of difference, but Apple didn’t stop there. You will also be able to manage notifications straight from the lock screen rather than being forced to dig through the Settings menu.

Screen Time

Curbing the use of iOS devices and encouraging a healthier balance of screen-on time is an important focus in iOS 12. Apple has introduced an appropriately named new feature to help. It’s called Screen Time. Screen Time details how much time you’re spending on your device and breaks things down by individual apps and categories. It also shows you how many times you check your iPhone every day and lets you see which apps are sending you the most notifications.

Animoji and Memoji

iPhones with a TrueDepth camera system will get some new Animoji features in iOS 12. Adding new Animoji to the roster is becoming pretty common with major iOS releases, and this time around Apple is adding a ghost, koala, tiger and Tyrannosaurus rex.

Apple has also added a new customizable feature called Memoji. With Memoji, you can make a personalized Animoji in the Messages app that looks just like you. Memoji includes a large set of customization options like skin color, hair color, hair style, eye color, eyebrows, nose, features like freckles and facial hair, accessories and headwear.

CarPlay

CarPlay in iOS 12 will finally support third-party navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze for the first time! This is great news for users who prefer to use something other than Apple Maps for navigation.

But there are also a number of interesting features that Apple didn't discuss – features you probably want to know more about!

Many of these features showed up in the iOS 12 beta, but now that they are officially confirmed, it's time to talk about them. Continue reading to learn more about 7 Important Changes in iOS 12 Apple Didn't Mention.

7 Reverse Lyrics Music Search

Do you really want to find a song, but you can only remember a few words? It's a very frustrating experience, and one that iOS 12 is ready for. Open up Apple Music and type in what lyrics you can remember. Apple will automatically search lyrics and come back with songs that match up so that you can listen through them and find the song you're looking for. It's a lot more efficient than trying to Google lyrics, and if the song is as good as you remember, you can instantly download it.

6 Message Notifications Now Feature Tapback

This feature was a little late in coming, but it's incredibly welcome. Tapback features are now enabled for all text messages. This means that when your phone pops up with a notification about a text you just got, you can tap the notification to immediately open your text app and respond. Double taps on a message will also immediately bring up emoji options for quick reactions to what people are saying. It's a great addition that makes texting far easier, especially if you are multitasking.

5 Siri Shortcuts

To be fair, Apple touched on this feature in various instances, however it's still a big change that might have flew under some users' radars. iOS 12 introduced a number of Siri Shortcuts that you can enable to make your life a little easier. If you look into Siri & Search, you can find recommended shortcuts based on your phone activity. Add them to Siri to make the voice assistant faster and smarter. Or, if you prefer, you can download Apple's own Shortcut app, which allows you to create your own shortcuts for the apps that you most often use. It's an excellent way to make Siri more useful, although using Siri is not required to gain benefits from playing around with the Shortcut app.

4 New Photo Import Process

This one is for all the avid photographers out there who upload photos from their DSLRs to an iPhone or iPad. Importing to Photos is now a bit different than it was: The new Import process allows you to preview photos in a full screen, and has sped up the upload process considerably. Any photos or other media that you upload will now be organized automatically by date, and Photos will tell you if you accidentally try to upload something you have already transferred. Useful!

3 Face ID Swipe Up

This is for iPhone X/XS models only, but if you use Face ID there's a brand new, hidden feature that you might really appreciate. As before, if Face ID fails to recognize you the first few times, the iPhone will bring up the passcode notification so you can type it in. However, in iOS 12, you can also swipe up on your screen. This will automatically restart Face ID to see if it can recognize you for the second round. It's a great feature if you were at a bad angle or in a sudden glare and really want to try Face ID again.

2 Favicon Support in Safari

Favicons are those little unique symbols at the top of browser tabs that help you figure out which website is which when you are visiting a lot of pages. Safari now includes those favicons in iOS 12, making your web browsing that much more organized! Settings > Safari > Show Icons in Tabs.

1 Bedtime Mode

Your iPhone now comes with an optional Bedtime Mode. If you hate waking up to a whole string of notifications and text alerts, Bedtime Mode will help you out. It silences all calls and notifications while you are sleeping, and sends alerts to the notification history so you don't wake up to a phone filled with alert bars begging for attention. Of course, you still have to remember to check and see if anything important happened!