Features

12 new iOS 8 features Apple forgot to mention at WWDC

Time lapse photos! DuckDuckGo! Battery data! Bye bye, Stocks!

12 new iOS 8 features Apple forgot to mention at WWDC
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iOS

With a feature bump as big as iOS 8, the Apple tag team of Tim Cook and Craig Federighi were bound to forget a few features in their whistle-stop tour of the new OS.

Yes, third-party widgets, life-saving HealthKit functionality, a dedicated selfie button, and Mac Handoff probably deserved the spotlight.

But there's much more to iOS 8.

We've been playing around with the beta build for a while and wanted to share 12 awesome features that didn't make the keynote cut.

iOS 8 will be available to everyone, for free, in the autumn.

Create a time lapse Time Lapse

The iOS camera app gets a new mode in iOS 8. Choose 'Time-lapse', hit record, and leave your phone out for several minutes... or several hours. When you hit stop, iOS will crunch the video down into a snazzy seconds-long highlight reel.

Panoramas on iPad

If taking photos on an iPad didn't already look absurd, tablet owners can now spin on the spot to take nifty panoramic shots. Just like with the iPhone, you simply pan your device and keep an arrow in the centre of the screen to complete the picture.

Rich text in notes Notes

The default Notes app has received the best update since Apple ditched Marker Felt. You can now make text bold, italicised, or underlined. And you can embed photos.

Self-timer

A new button in the photos section of the camera app lets you add a 3- or 10-second timer to your pic. Enough time to get yourself in the frame if you've set up a family portrait. Lovely.

Restore deleted photos Photos

Delete a photo in iOS 7 and it's gone for good. In iOS 8, however, a new album called 'Recently Deleted Photos' keeps snaps and videos on your device for a while in case you change your mind. You can recover or permakill files from this album.

Focus and exposure

Previously, tapping on the screen inside the Camera app set the focus point but also dictated the exposure. Now, you can tap to set a focus point, and then swipe your thumb up and down to change the light exposure.

DuckDuckGo in Safari DuckDuckGo

As ever, you can choose the default search engine in Safari. But if you'd rather not send your data to Google, Yahoo, or Bing, you can now elect to use DuckDuckGo. This secretive search engine deliberately doesn't track users to protect privacy.

Better private browsing

Speaking of privacy... you no longer have to close your tabs when going private or turn them all into private tabs. Your normal tabs are kept stored in the background and are restored when you exit private browsing.

Battery usage per app Battery

Want to know which app is destroying your battery? The answer is Facebook. But if you want to see for yourself, the Battery Usage page in 'Settings' now keeps tabs on apps and tells you which apps are sapping your phone's life juice.

Remove notification widgets

In iOS 8, third-party apps will be able to show widgets in the Notification Centre. We'll have to wait on devs to see how that works out. Until then, though, you can remove and re-order the widgets for Calendar, Reminders, and bloody Stocks.

Not everyone has stocks, Apple!

Remove share locations Share locations

Similarly, the imminent addition of extensions means you can now edit the places to which iOS shares stuff. Never use Facebook? You can hide it from the share selection in apps like Safari. Begone, foul beast.

Wi-Fi calling

This feature will apparently enable iPhone users to borrow nearby wireless hotspots to make phone calls and mitigate crappy reception. Your carrier will need to support it, though, and T-Mobile US is the only network to currently use the feature.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer