How to find these great iOS 16 and watchOS 9 features you might have missed

There are dozens – if not hundreds – of new features scattered across the major software updates that Apple releases each fall. But for anyone that gets top billing (such as iOS 16’s new customizable lock screens), there are quite a few that get little if any attention. It’s hardly fair, but hey, that’s life: we can’t all be the stars of the show.

Luckily, the large number of people checking out these updates helps ensure that no new feature stays unknown for long. After spending a lot of time on iOS 16 and watchOS 9 over the past few months, I’ve developed my own sense of what are the best features that you might not try right away – the ones that are often swallowed away by an app you use haven’t opened for a while or that you’ve buried under multiple menu levels. And because I want you to enjoy them too, I’m going to share three of my favorites.

weather or not

Dark Sky has been my favorite weather app since it was released, and while I’ve experimented with many others, I’ve always come back to it. Unfortunately, I’m not the only one who was a huge fan – Apple liked it so much that they bought it back in 2020. More recently, an in-app announcement confirms that it will stop working as of January 1, 2023.

But the good news is that many of Dark Sky’s niceties have found their way into Apple’s own weather app. If you haven’t tried it in a while, I encourage you to check it out: there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye.

foundry

For example, all maps in the Weather app are now interactive; Tap on any of them – temperature, humidity, wind speed, etc. – to get an overview of the whole day as well as future days. There is also a summary field for each metric that provides a handy, easy-to-read text summary of the overall conditions: for example, “Today’s temperature range is between 53° and 70°”.

Second, Weather now not only includes Dark Sky’s precipitation maps and forecasts, but also offers temperature and air quality maps (tap the layers button in the map view). You can even have a list view of all your saved locations and quickly see the conditions at all of them at once.

Yes, the weather app could still be improved. There’s too much scrolling in some cases, and sometimes burying some of the metrics under an extra tap means you’re slower to interact with it, but I’ve been really impressed with the Dark Sky features it packs right down to Precipitation alerts (those, admittedly, are a bit buried: tap the list icon, then the three dots in the top right, then Notifications).

When Dark Sky finally dies – and I’ll throw one out for it – it’s the weather app that will replace it on my home screen first.

All en-compass-ing

The Apple Watch Ultra may have stolen the show during the company’s recent event, but one of the most useful features showcased at its launch is actually available to Apple Watch SE and Series 6 and later owners: compass waypoints and corresponding backtrack function.

This is built into the redesigned Compass app, which is also available to Apple Watch Series 5 owners, although they won’t get the Waypoint feature. The revamped compass app is pretty handy on its own, showing you the current direction it’s pointing and each bearing, and offering different views to switch to by turning the digital crown. These other views also provide your current elevation, incline, and latitude and longitude — all handy to have right on your wrist. You can also set the compass bearing under the top left menu button to stay on course during a hike.

Apple

But the real gems are the waypoint and backtrack features. The first lets you quickly place a GPS marker at your current location, which you can assign a color and icon to. These are then displayed on a small mini-map in the compass; Scroll out on the Digital Crown and they even show up on the compass ring to help you find your way to the location. (I also appreciate that it can automatically place a waypoint where you parked your car – useful even when you’re not out in the wilderness.)

The backtrack feature goes one step further; It can automatically set waypoints that you can use to retrace your steps later. And if you are in an environment without connectivity, it will even be activated automatically. I went for a walk in the woods last week and found that Backtrack was already active and showing me the path I was walking. (Luckily I remembered where I parked my car.)

Why WiFi?

Okay, the latter is a small thing, but it can make a big difference. Last year, during a family vacation trip, my wife needed to connect her work PC to the Wi-Fi network. With Apple devices, that would be easy: the prompt to share the password just pops up and you’re done. But we quickly realized that there was no way to get this information from our iOS devices so she could just enter the password on her PC.

iOS 16 finally fixes this problem. Not only can you see the password for the network you are currently connected to in Settings > Wireless Internet access by tapping the information button next to the network name, but there’s now an Edit button in the top-right corner of the Wi-Fi screen that lets you see all the networks you’ve previously connected to. From there you can view all passwords of these networks and delete them to prevent later automatic reconnection.

It’s a feature that honestly should have been there from the start, but that doesn’t make it any less of a welcome addition now, as it helps alleviate a pain point with the iOS experience. But it’s one of those new features that could get lost in the jumble of flashy new headliners, just another reminder that there’s a lot more to be found beneath the surface in Apple’s latest updates.