5 Hidden Features in iOS 11 That You’ll Love (Video)
iOS 11 is now official and bringing with it a bunch of new features to your iPhone and iPad. Thing is, besides the big ones, which you can check out my video on those here, there are a few lesser known or hidden features that I think deserve mentioning. Here are my favorite hidden features in iOS 11.
Audio Video Compression
First up, your videos and images will magically take up less space on the phone. The reason for this is that in iOS 11, Apple has now switch over to HEVC (aka H.265) video and HEIF images. Which stand for High Efficiency Video Codec and High Efficiency Image Format. These newer formats allow the device to take videos and photos with the same quality but at a much smaller end file size. Great for those who are constantly running out of storage.
Better Storage Management
Speaking of storage. iOS 11 now has better storage management options. The once called Storage and iCloud Usage option is now just iPhone Storage and has a better at a glance look of everything on your iPhone.
It’ll also provide quick recommendations (and allow you to take action on them right then and there) to help with running out of storage like deleting old conversations automatically, moving messages to iCloud and off the device, offloading apps you haven’t used in a long time, etc.
For more tips on iPhone storage by the way, you can check out my video on that here.
QR Codes in the Camera
QR codes are those little blocks you see randomly that can be scanned to perform an action like taking you to a website, opening something on the phone, etc. Issue is, your average person 1. has no clue what they are, and 2. doesn’t have an app on their phone that can scan them. Well, with iOS 11, you can now use your normal camera to scan them–no separate app required.
I imagine that this might inadvertently make QR codes a tiny bit more popular, too.
“While Using the App” Location Setting
OK, so this one is just really solving a huge pet peeve of mine, but here me out. iOS 11 now has added the location access option to all apps of only letting the app use your location while the app is open. Before this, developers had to add this option into their app and, out of laziness or some other reason, a lot didn’t. So you were forced to choose between allowing all access or none and choose between the app draining your battery or just not being able to use location.
This new option is just better.
Cross-Site Ad Tracking
Safari and it’s mission against ads (aka Apple’s fight against Google, ehem) has added another anti-ad feature in iOS 11 that tries to prevent sites from tracking you when you go from site to site. This is usually done by creating a cookie that is put on your device’s browser and allows advertisers to follow you around the web with that ad for shoes you looked at but didn’t buy.
This new feature essentially blocks that cookie so you’ll still see ads, but not the following type. I’m pretty sure Google has already figured out a way around this a little bit though, you can read my article on that here though if interested.
Regardless, still a neat hidden feature for those that don’t want the ads.
And there you go a few of the hidden features in iOS 11 that you guys might find interesting. Let me know if there are others you’ve found that you think are cool!
