iOS 16 Has An Amazing New iPhone Privacy Feature—Here’s How To Use It

Apple’s iOS 16 has been out for a little over a month, including a bunch of amazing new features for your iPhone. One of the best of these, in my opinion, is the security check.

Headlines have so far touted iOS 16’s security check as a privacy feature that can help prevent abusive partners from accessing your iPhone.

While that’s great, Safety Check also has a broader appeal – the new iOS 16 feature can be used by anyone to quickly check which iPhone apps have access to various permissions. The security check also allows you to quickly revoke any permissions you don’t want or need.

Here’s how to do a quick security check on your iPhone with iOS 16.

Update to iOS 16

First things first – you need to update to iOS 16 to use this feature. If you’re still using iOS 15.7, which you should for security reasons, go to your iPhone settings and download the latest version – iOS 16.0.2 at the time of writing. You can always save this article for later if you are not ready to update to iOS 16.

Once you’ve updated your iPhone to iOS 16, go to your Settings > Privacy & Security and scroll down to Security Check. Once you’re in security check, go to Manage Sharing and access and authenticate with Face ID. You can then review people and apps that have access to your data and increase your security.

The first step in the iOS 16 security check is to check sharing in Apple’s Find My, Health, Photos, Notes, Calendar, and Home. If you don’t see anything here—as in my case—skip to step two, which outlines which iPhone apps can access what.

Use Security Checker to check iPhone app permissions

Some apps need access to certain permissions – a map app needs access to your location while you’re using it. However, the same iPhone app doesn’t need access to your camera and you can revoke this permission in the security check if needed.

The next step in iOS 16’s security review is to review Information Access, where you can choose the information you no longer want to access – for example, a shopping app shouldn’t need to access your microphone.

Use iOS 16 security check to check iPhone security

Then it’s time to use Security Check to check the security of your iPhone. The iOS 16 feature allows you to see which devices are currently signed in with your Apple ID and revoke them if necessary. You can then add a trusted phone number to protect your account.

Finally, you can use iOS 16’s security check to update your password and add emergency contacts, as well as change your device passcode if needed.

Apple’s security check is easy to use and fast, and is available to all iOS 16 users. What are you waiting for? Try it.