Apple rolls out iOS 10 as a free update for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch

As promised, Apple started rolling out its iOS 10 update – as a free software update – for supported iPhone and iPad models on Tuesday (13 September), calling it the biggest iOS release ever. The update introduces massive upgrades to Messages, which allows users to send them in a more expressive way, while the ability of Siri to work with more apps has been enhanced, Maps has been redesigned along with Photos, Apple Music, the News app among others.

Other notable changes include a new Home app that lets you set up, manage and control home in one place. Using the Maps app is now quite simple, which incorporates ride booking apps and reservation services.

Along with iOS 10, Apple has made a brand new version of iTunes 12.5.1 available for users – with support for iOS 10 – and features a redesigned Apple Music with greater clarity. The new version is available for both Mac and Windows owners.

Check out the features below to know more about the detailed changes Apple has incorporated in iOS 10-10.0.1. All these are available for iPhone 5 and later, 12.9in and 9.7in iPad Pro, iPad Air 1st and 2nd generation, iPad 4, iPad Mini 2 and later and iPod Touch 6th generation.

What's new in iOS 10

Messages

Expressive Messaging

• Bubble effects let you send messages loudly, gently, slam or with invisible ink
• Full-screen effects to celebrate special moments
• Tapback for quick replies to messages, links, and photos
• Handwritten messages animate like ink on paper
• Digital Touch lets you send sketches, taps, and heartbeats
• Tap to replace can emojify your text with just a tap
• Rich links show a preview of web pages you share

iMessage apps

• New App Store for iMessage
• Use the power of apps in Messages to share and collaborate with friends
• Download stickers to send and place on text bubbles and photos

Siri

Siri now works with the following apps:

• Messaging apps to send, search and read back text messages
• VoIP apps to place phone calls
• Photos apps to search for images and photos
• Ride service apps to book rides
• Payment apps to make personal payments
• Fitness apps to start, stop, and pause workouts
• CarPlay automaker apps to adjust climate, radio, seat, and personal settings

Maps

• Proactive suggestions for places you're likely to go next, based on your routine or appointments in Calendar
• Improved search with new callout design, clustered results and category filters
• Home, work, favorite locations, and locations from upcoming Calendar events are displayed on the map
• Displays where your car is parked via CarPlay or Bluetooth
• Weather for the currently viewed area

Extensions

• Make a reservation within Maps using extensions from participating reservations apps
• Book a ride to a destination within Maps using extensions from participating ride service apps

Turn-by-turn navigation improvements

• Search along route for gas stations, food, and coffee shops
• Automatic view adjustment of the road ahead
• Use pan and zoom during navigation
• Option to avoid tolls and highways

Photos

• Advanced face recognition designed with deep learning to automatically group similar faces together
• Object and scene recognition to intelligently search for photos by what's in them using advanced computer vision that scans your library locally on device
• Places album to see all your photos, videos and Live Photos on a map

Memories

• Intelligently highlights forgotten events, trips, and people, and presents them in a beautiful collection
• Memory movies automatically edited with theme music, titles, and cinematic transitions
• Related memories make it easy to rediscover even more photos in your collection, based on location, time, people, scenes and objects
• Easily share with family and friends
• Brilliance control applies region-specific adjustments to brightness, highlights and contrast

Home

• New Home app to securely manage and control HomeKit enabled accessories
• Scenes to control groups of accessories with just a tap
• Rich Notifications with quick actions to control accessories
• Optionally share home access with family and friends
• Remote access and automation of accessories with Apple TV or iPad

Apple Music

• An all-new design for Apple Music brings greater clarity and simplicity to every aspect of the experience
• Navigate your Library with an improved menu and see all of the Downloaded Music that you can play on your device while offline
• See recommendations in For You that highlight mixes, playlists, albums, and Connect posts—selected for you based on the music and artists you love
• Visit Browse to more easily see exclusive releases, find curated playlists, and discover the most important new releases—picked by our editors each week
• Listen to Radio more easily—clearly see what's live on Beats 1, hear your favorite shows on-demand, or choose a curated station for any genre of music
• Play music with an improved Now Playing experience—swipe up to view available lyrics and quickly see or edit songs that are coming up next

Apple News

• An all-new design in For You adds bold typography, vibrant color, and distinct sections that make it easier to find stories on specific topics
• See the most important stories of the day within Top Stories—updated by our editors throughout the day
• Find the most popular stories right now within Trending Stories—selected based on what others are reading
• See all of your stories grouped into easy-to-understand sections on the topics you follow or read
• Discover the best and most interesting stories of the week within Featured Stories—selected by our editors
• Share stories more easily—just tap the icon on any story to send it to a friend right from For You
• Receive breaking news notifications from some of your most trusted sources
• Subscribe to your favorite magazines and newspapers directly in News
• New personalised Today View widget lets you keep up with the latest stories throughout the day

Experience

• Raise to Wake automatically wakes the screen as you raise your iPhone
• Rich notifications that support real time information, audio, photos and videos
• Today view is redesigned and supports all new widgets for apps like Weather, Up Next, Maps, Stocks and more
• Control Center is redesigned with easier to access controls including dedicated cards for music playback and Home
• Expanded use of 3D Touch

1. Lock screen notifications to support an expanded view and access to quick actions
2. New quick actions for built in apps like Weather, Stocks, Reminders, Health, Home, FaceTime, iCloud Drive and Settings
3. Home Screen widgets
4. Control Center for access to quick actions for Flashlight, Timer, Calculator and Camera
5. Clear all in Notification Center

QuickType

• New emoji, including gender diverse options to existing characters, single parent family variations, rainbow flag and beautiful redesigns of popular emoji
• Contextual predictions for current location, recent addresses, contact information and calendar availability using deep neural network technology
• Emoji predictions
• Calendar events are intelligently populated using deep learning technology with information from your conversations in Mail and Messages
• Multi-lingual typing now lets you type in two languages at once without having to switch keyboards
• Rest & Type on iPad intelligently adapts to your unique typing patterns
• Predictive typing now uses deep neural network technology for greater prediction accuracy

Phone

• Voicemail transcription (beta)
• Spam call alerts with spam call identification apps
• Support for third party VoIP apps receiving calls on the Lock screen, including support for Call Waiting, Mute and Do Not Disturb

Other improvements

• Apple Pay in Safari
• View two pages at once using Split View in Safari on iPad
• Notes collaboration lets you invite people to work on your notes together
• Markup support in Messages, Photos and PDFs stored in Notes
• Bedtime Alarm in the Clock app lets you set a regular sleep schedule and receive bedtime reminders
• Health adds support for health records and organ donation (US Only)
• Stabilization support for Live Photos for improved camera capture
• Live Filters support when capturing Live Photos
• iCloud Drive now supports Desktop and Documents folders from macOS
• Live search results in Spotlight for Chinese and Japanese
• Siri support for Spanish (Chile), Chinese (Cantonese - China), English (Ireland), English (South Africa)
• Ling Wai and Kaiti Black document fonts for Chinese
• Yu Kyokasho and Toppan Bunkyu fonts for Japanese
• New definition dictionaries in Traditional Chinese and Danish and bilingual dictionaries in Dutch and Italian
• New keyboard for Spanish (Latin America)

Accessibility

• Magnifier now uses the camera on your iPhone or iPad like a digital magnifying glass for real-life objects
• New range of display color filters to support different forms of color blindness or other vision challenges
• VoiceOver adds a Pronunciation Editor to customize the way words are pronounced, additional voices, and support for multiple audio sources
• Additional text highlighting options in Speak Screen and Speak Selection, as well as the ability to speak keyboard letters and predictive typing suggestions to support multi-modal learning
• Switch control now lets you control iOS, macOS and tvOS all from the same iPhone or iPad, so you don't need to configure switches for the secondary device
• Software TTY allows you to place and receive TTY calls without the need for traditional hardware teletypewriter accessories

iOS 10 security content

The security content of iOS 10, as detailed on the support site, suggests that Apple has fixed a bunch of vulnerabilities for several features such as assets, GeoServices, keyboards, Mail, Messages, Printing UlKit and Sandbox profiles. The security patches for these vulnerabilities are available for all devices; iPhone 5 and later, iPad 4 and later and iPod touch 6th generation. iOS 10.0.1 contains all the security features of iOS 10.

How to get iOS 10

The iOS 10 is available as an over-the-air update for eligible iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices. With the latest version of iTunes available, you can also perform a manual installation of iOS 10. Click here for our guide to download and install iOS 10.