Image: Jason Cipriani/ZDNET
Apple has released iOS 16.1 for all iPhone owners and it brings a surprisingly large amount of changes and fixes to iOS 16, which only arrived in September.
As Apple said last week, iOS 16.1 is available for all supported iPhone models. The update includes changes to iCloud Shared Photo Library, Live Activities, Fitness+, Wallet, Home, Books, Clean Energy Charging for US owners, and bug fixes, as well as 20 security fixes.
Live Activities provides real-time updates on the Lock Screen and for, iPhone 14 Pro, updates within the Dynamic Island. Now Live Activities is available from third-party apps.
Smartphones
iCloud Shared Photo Library now offers a separate library for sharing photos and videos with up to five people. There are also filters for switching between the Shared and and Personal libraries, as well as the ability to do shared edits, captioning and deleting. A new sharing toggle in the Camera app lets users send photos directly to the Shared library.
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The Apple Fitness+ service is now available to all iPhone users, even if they don’t have an Apple Watch. The subscription costs $9.99 per month or $79.99 per year and is available in 21 countries.
iOS 16.1 also brings support for Matter-certified smart home devices. This should make connectivity easier across smart home ecosystems, including Amazon Echo, Google Nest, Apple and more.
Via CNET, this update brings a redesign to the new battery percentage number indicator. Users can enable the battery percentage indicator in the Settings app.
The Wallet update allows users to securely share car, hotel room and other keys in Wallet using messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Messages.
iOS 16.1 is available for iPhone 8 through to iPhone 14.
iOS 16.1 also includes updates that address 20 security flaws affecting both iPhone and iPad. Apple says it is aware of a report that a bug in the iOS kernel – tracked as CVE-2022-42827 – “may have been actively exploited”. There are also four potentially nasty bugs affecting Safari’s WebKit engine that can be exploited by users just visiting a malicious web page. The same bugs are addressed in the just-released iPadOS 16, which brings a bunch of new features too.
Users can download and install iOS 16.1 by going to Settings > General > Software Update.